Voices of Islam (32 page)

ijtihad.
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Finally, an emerging movement of American Muslims, which is largely drawn from the children of Muslim immigrants, is abandoning what they perceive as the stifling effect that Hadith has had on Islam. The followers of this movement feel that Islam should be reformed from within and that many of the centuries-old traditions of Islam must be abandoned for a faith more compatible with modern sensibilities. In his
Risala,
Shafi‘i relates a tradition that appears to foreshadow such views. In this hadith the Prophet says, ‘‘Let me find no one of you reclining on his couch when confronted with an order of permission or prohibition from me, saying, ‘I do not know it; we will only follow what we find in the Book of God.’’’
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The
Sunna
: The Way of the Prophet Muhammad
143

THE SUNNA AND MODERN MUSLIMS IN THE WEST

The Sunna of the Prophet has been on Western shores for many centuries. In Europe, first in Spain and later in other regions, the Sunna was brought by travelers and merchants from the Muslim East. In the Americas, Muslims were brought in slave ships as well as in trading vessels, and some of them courageously attempted to preserve whatever they could of the Prophet’s way. However, never before have such large numbers of Muslims resided in the West. Documentaries about the Prophet have been shown on public tele- vision, and English dictionaries now contain the word, ‘‘Sunna.’’ Increas- ingly, Western people are coming to accept the presence of Muslims and their practice of the Sunna.

Muslims in the West are also studying the books of the Sunna, and indige- nous Westerners are becoming qualified to teach them. The Hadith collec- tions of Bukhari, Muslim, and Malik are studied daily in schools and Islamic centers in Birmingham and Bradford in the United Kingdom, and in New York City and Hayward, California, in the United States. The Sunna is prac- ticed by engineers in Silicon Valley, gas station attendants in Chicago, and taxi drivers in Philadelphia. Turbaned street merchants can be found trying to follow the Sunna in Brooklyn, and the Acacia wood tooth-cleaning stick so beloved to the Prophet is sold in Manhattan and Los Angeles, where it is called a ‘‘Sunna-Stick.’’

The Prophet Muhammad’s prayers have opened sessions of the U.S. Senate, and two U.S. presidents started Ramadan meals in the White House with dates in emulation of the Prophet’s Sunna in breaking the fast. Moti- vated by the example of the Prophet, large numbers of Muslims have col- lected charity from their communities for the victims of natural disasters and have volunteered to help refugees in the United States and elsewhere.

The American historian Michael Hart considered the Prophet Muhammad the single most influential human being ever to have lived, a claim that seems justified when one considers that a fifth of the world’s population is Muslim and that most Muslims attempt to emulate the Prophet’s behavior in some aspects of their lives.
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Every morning, millions of Muslims around the world wake up reciting a prayer that the Prophet Muhammad recited: ‘‘Glory be to the One who has given me life again after taking my conscious life from me in sleep, and to God we return.’’
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Muslims say this prayer because of their desire to follow the Sunna. For the same reason, Muslims say the
Basmalla
before eating a meal and the
Hamdalla
(
al-hamdulillah,
‘‘Praise be to God’’) when they have fi eating. They do this to follow the Sunna. Muslims say the
Basmalla
when they start their cars, emulating the Prophet’s actions when he rode his camel or his horse. They greet their fellow Muslims with the words,
As-Salamu ‘Alaykum
(‘‘Peace be upon you’’), in emulation of the Prophet. Many Muslim men grow beards as the Prophet did, and women cover their heads in reverence for the Prophet’s teachings. Muslims

144
Voices of Tradition

visit the sick because they recall the virtue the Prophet described for doing so. They inculcate the modesty he exemplified and show great deference to their mothers and fathers because the Prophet enjoined it.

Muslims practice the Sunna in many aspects of their daily lives, desiring to be raised up in the Hereafter in the company of the one they try so hard to emulate in their earthly lives. By this means, they hope to receive, from the Prophet’s noble hands, the promised drink from his basin of eternal life, after which, the Prophet promised, ‘‘They will never thirst again.’’
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NOTES

1. Muhammad Hashim Kamali,
   Principles of Islamic Jurisprudence
   (Cambridge: Islamic Texts Society, 1991), 37.
   

2. Malik ibn Anas,
   Muwatta’ al-Imam Malik,
   edited and annotated by Ahmad Ratib ‘Armush (Beirut: Dar al-Nafa’is li al-tiba‘ah wa al-nashr wa al-tawzi‘, 1971), hadith numbers 1619 and 648.
   

3. Kamali,
   Principles of Islamic Jurisprudence,
   37.
   

4. Majid Khadduri, ed. and trans.,
   Al-Shafi‘i’s Risala: Treatise on the Foundations of Islamic Jurisprudence,
   (Cambridge: Islamic Texts Society, 1987), 109–110.
   

5. Ali Hasabullah,
   Usul al-tashri‘ al-Islami
   (Egypt: Dar al-Ma‘arif, 1971), 35.
   

6. Yahya ibn Sharaf al-Nawawi,
   An-Nawawi’s Forty Hadith: An Anthology of the Sayings of the Prophet Muhammad,
   trans. Ezzeddin Ibrahim and Denys Johnson- Davies, 10th ed. (Beirut: The Holy Koran Publishing House, 1982), 107.
   

7. Abu Dawud Sulayman b. al-Ash‘ath al-Sijistani,
   Sunan Abi Dawud,
   edited and annotated by Muhammad Muhyi al-Din ‘Abd al-Hamid (Cairo: al-Maktaba al- Tijariyya al-Kubra, 1935), hadith numbers 83 and 21.
   

8. Sidi ‘Abd Allah Ould Hajj Ibrahim,
   Maraq al-su‘ud
   (Beirut: al-Maktaba al- ‘Asriyya, 2004), 240.
   

9. Muhammad Zubayr Siddiqi,
   Hadith Literature: Its Origin, Development, and Special Features
   (Cambridge: Islamic Texts Society, 1993), 2.
   

10. Kamali,
    Principles of Islamic Jurisprudence,
    47. 11. Ibid., 180.
    

12. Siddiqi,
Hadith Literature,
10. 13. Ibid., 54–55.

1. H. A. R. Gibb,
   Mohammedanism: An Historical Survey
   (New York: Oxford University Press, 1953), 79–80.
   

2. Kamali,
   Principles of Islamic Jurisprudence,
   45.
   

3. Moojan Momen,
   An Introduction to Shi‘i Islam
   (New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, 1985), 173–174.
   

4. Siddiqi,
   Hadith Literature,
   18. 18. Ibid., 118.
   

1. Cambridge Illustrated History of the Islamic World,
   ed. Francis Robinson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 190.
   

2. Siddiqi,
   Hadith Literature,
   123.
   

   The
   Sunna
   : The Way of the Prophet Muhammad
   145
   

3. Shaykh Ahmad ibn ‘Ajiba,
   The Basic Research,
   trans. Abdalkhabir al- Munawwarah and Haj Abdassabur al-Ustadh, ed. Shaykh Abdalqadir as-Sufi (Cape- town: Madina Press, 1998), 53–54.
   

4. See
   The Life, Personality and Writings of Al-Junayd,
   ed. and trans. E. J. W. Abdel Kader, H.A.R. Gibb Memorial Series (London: Luzac and Co., 1962), xii–xiv.
   

5. William Montgomery Watt,
   The Faith and Practice of al-Ghazali
   (Oxford: One World Publications, 1994), 100.
   

6. See, for example, Ignaz Goldziher,
   Introduction to Islamic Theology and Law,
   translated by Andras and Ruth Hamori (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1981), 38–39.
   

7. See, for example, Joseph Schacht,
   The Origins of Muhammadan Jurispru- dence
   (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975), 4–5.
   

8. See M. M. Azami,
   On Schacht’s Origins of Muhammadan Jurisprudence
   

   (Cambridge: The Islamic Texts Society, 1996).
   

9. Yasin Dutton,
   The Origins of Islamic Law: The Qur’an, the Muwatta’ and Madinan ‘Amal
   (Surrey, U.K.: Curzon Press, 1999), xiv.
   

10. Muhammad Shahrur,
    al-Kitab wa al-Qur’an
    (Damascus: al-Ahali li’l-Tiba‘a, 1997), 549.
    

11. Khadduri,
    Al-Shafi‘i’s Risala,
    119.
    

12. Michael M. Hart,
    The 100, A Ranking of the Most Influential Persons in His- tory
    (New York: Hart Publishing Company, Inc., 1978), 33.
    

13. Muhammad ibn Isma‘il al-Bukhari,
    al-Adab al-mufrad,
    edited and annotated by Kamal Yusuf al-Hut (Beirut: ‘Alam al-Kutub, 1984), 400.
    

14. Muhammad ibn Isma‘il al-Bukhari,
    Sahih al-Bukhari
    (Beirut: Dar al-Arqam, n.d.), hadith no. 6579, 1035–1036.
    

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V
ISION OF THE
S
HARIAT

•

Daniel Abdal-Hayy Moore

At the Prophet’s Mosque in Medina I had a vision of the
Shariat
(sacred law) of Islam as a giant, spectacular many-faceted chandelier of hundreds of prisms or lenses, a kind of glittering dome of raw starlight that fits down perfectly over the
Haqiqat
(sacred truth), so that its light shines out from each lens, perfectly focused, a lens or cluster of lenses beaming the light for every aspect of our lives.

One can approach the
Haqiqat
without it, and in some cases get it right, but with the Prophet’s
Shariat
from Allah, peace and blessings of Allah be upon him, both the light of the
Haqiqat
can shine out clearly and one can approach the
Haqiqat
from outside with clear precision.

The lenses are such things as how to do the prayer, the proper way to con- tract a marriage, the laws of inheritance, etc., all the details of our lives down to things as mundane as cleaning our teeth, as well as preparing us for the rapturous experience of face-to-face meeting with Allah with cor- rect spiritual courtesy at the highest station, thus making us well-guided human devotees of The Divine Reality.

NOTE

This poem fi appeared in Daniel Abdal-Hayy Moore,
Mecca/Medina Time- warp.
Reprinted here from a Zilzal Press chapbook, by permission from the author.

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