Gassa,

I don't know the answers to some of these issues raised by that Egyptian
educated young man, but in Islam, we are to follow the Qur'an and the Sunnah
of the Prophet(SAS) only, no additions, no ommissions otherwise that is
innovation. Those two are our sources, and in the Qur'an, it states that the
Prophet was given the Qur'an and somethimg else like it, meaning the sunnah.
Islam is not just  a religion, but a way of life as it encompasses
directives on how we do everything in our lives. Clera directives regarding
funerals, marriage, even using the toilet are given.

There are sects that are considered deviant in Islam, and this is because
they are believed to incorporate into the deen many things that were never
from the Prophet.
This is why Shi'ites, Sufis, the nation of Islam etc all incorporate rituals
into the deen that are not from the Prophet, but that is another topic we can
look at later inshallah.

Prayer and the number of times it is done are quite clear as practiced by the
Prophet who, according to his wife Aish, and the Sahaba, his companions,
used to spend a good part of the night praying.

The idea is that one can never pray enough because according to the hadith in
Buhari, when the Prophet went on the night journey to heaven, it was then
that he was given the prayer, number of times to be performed etc. It states
that he was asked to tell us to pray many more times than 5 times. He came
down to the lower heaven closest to Allah where Abrahim or Moses were ( I
shall check,) and when he told them about this, they said to him, "man that
we know will never pray that many times. Please go back and ask Allah to
reduce the number" He kept going back, and each time, the Prophet in the
lower heaven will ask him to return to Allah to ask for a reduction in the
number of daily prayers. Finally, it was set at 5, and Prophet Muhammed as
shy to go back to ask for any more reductions, so it stayed at 5.

It is said, that there are an untold number of angels in heaven in various
stages of prayer. Some standing, some in rukut position etc, and they will
stay this way until the end of the World, and at that time, they will say.
"oh Allah, we have not worshipped you enough" because they know and have seen
the glory of God almighty because they are around him.
Therefore, it is unsusual that there are condensed prayers that will
subsitutte for a year's worth of prayers. Basically, if the Prophet did not
do it, it is to be avoided.

I saw your questions, and unfortunately, i do not have them handy to
reference and perhaps comment on more of them,but  one thing i  remember and
can comment on is as follows:

You asked why people at home say: Yalla Ak Ebou for e.g.

In this deen, everything is decreed by Allah. if you get something, or have a
problem solved, it is because Allah decreed it so and did it for you via a
person or some other means. We are told that we must always ascribe
everything to him and thank him for it. If anything happens, it is through
that person that Allah administered that particular decree, and not just
because that person decreed to do something to solve your problem. Therefore,
in recognition of that, we say Yalla Ak, then the name of the person, so it
glorifying Allah and recognizing that he had a hand in that, and not deifying
the individual at all.

The hadith books compiled by Imam Buhari and Imam Muslim are the main
reference on hadith or Sunnah, which is the way of life of the Prophet,
exactly what he practiced and which was exactly as directed by the Qur'an and
the guidance brought to him by the angel Gibril from Allah (SWT). It is the
blueprint by which we muslims are to lead our lives.Islam encompasses every
aspect of a believers life, not just the spiritual aspects.

These hadith (sunnah)  were compiled in such a way as to avoid errors,
ommisions, additions because the religion cautions us against additions and
ommissions as that is what has led to the misrepresentation of the messages
of the other prophets before Muhammed.

Everything in these hadith had to be traced directly back to the Prophet,

"he said, she said, he said, the Prophet said"

There had to be an unroken chain of narration back to the Prophet to
ascertain that it was something authentic. if the chain was short of one
person, it was considered a weak hadith and so on, and if it could not be
traced back to the Prophet, it was dismissed..

Buhari & Muslim comprise of several volumes and it is amazing the amount of
information it contains that most of us never knew. I think that this is due
to the fact that these books were not translated into English, and also that
lack of access plays a big role. Add to that the fact that in our part of the
World, many of the people who were our religious advisors did read and write
Arabic, such as my dad, but did not read or write English. The people they
adviced, the general populace were comprised of people who were not readers
or writers of Arabic or English. They depended on the sermons of the  learned
muslims in their midst who translated the hadith they knew for them.
Therefore, our knowledge of the deen was not complete due to these
limitations.
We knew the basics like the 5 daily prayers, fasting, etc and the rituals of
funerals etc as translated by these people in our community, and sometimes,
the fact that these people belonged to different Islamic sects  also affected
how the sunnah was translated, although there should be only one translation,
that which was documented as the way the Prophet practiced it.

However, we are also people with our own strong cultural rituals, and we
continued to practice our culture as well as that part of the religion that
we knew, and were not aware in many instances that there was so much more.
There was so much more that would be considered haram that we were not aware
of.
For example, in Buhari, it states clearly that Allah almighty has cursed the
woman who wears wigs, the person who makes it and the person who puts it on
for her. Now compare that to the braid extensions that are so common in our
culture, and which a lot of people do not know is forbidden.

There is also the practice of going to "serignes" to make charms for the
accomplishment of some desire, or even in many instances to put a charm on
someone else, or to foretell the future.

In Suratul Al-Falakh, It states that we must seek protection from Allah
concerning these things. These practices are considered "shirk" of the worst
kind imaginable as it implies that one depends on these things as opposed to
Allah and his devine pre-ordainment which is the backbone of Islamic belief.

The Qur'an warns us against such things, and says whoever practices such
things will go to the hellfire regardless of whether you pray 5 times a day,
fast and do all the other prescribed things. Why? Because the single most
important thing in Islam is to believe in Allah alone, and to associate
nothing or no one else with him, and if you depend on these things, you have
broken that covenant with Allah. This is why it is said by the Prophet that
if one recites Suratul Iqlaas, (Qulhu wallahu ahadu), then one has recited
1/3 of the Quran because the main message of the Qur'an is the oneness of
Allah. If he is one without partners, and if he is the one who decides what
transpires in your life, and if you say you are a muslim which constitues
above all else that you believe this wholeheartedly, then if you commit
shirk, you have contradicted that most important point. However, if one
ceases doing these things and repents, and refrains from doing them again,
then Allah is most merciful, ever ready to forgive.

However, are these  rituals I mentioned not commonly practiced by a lot of
people in our society. Even so-called learned scholars of Islam go arounf
taking people's money to make some sort of charm for them without flinching.

The idea that one has to work for an "ustaas" to gain knowledge is also
false.

In Islam, the most basic concept of the religion is that all of us can go
directly to Allah with no intercessors needed. We need only  the message of
his Prophet who did deliver everything he was told to bring to us, and if one
looks in the Qur'an and Sunnah, you will find everything you need in there.

We have Imams to lead the prayer, but he cannot save you from anything or
interceed for you with Allah. Infact, the sunnah states that if you have
evidence that your Imama is committing shirk and doing other things that you
know are expressly forbidden in this deen, then you have a right to refuse to
let him lead you in the prayer.

 Our judgement will be dependent on how we lived our lives and how we handled
the directives that have already been given by Allah.If any of us knows
something that another muslim does not know, it is incumbent upon us to tell
them about it.
Allah (SWT) has given us all the tools to cover all aspects of our lives, and
protection from any and all sorts of evil for e.g is to be found in the
recitation of the last 4 suras of the Qur'an.

For guidance with decisions, one can recite Suratul Istehara or commonly
called "Listeharr" in Wollof. Many people pay someone to do this for them,
but all one has to do is recite it and then go about your budiness, and Allah
(SWT) will make it so that you will arrive at the best decision concerning
the matter in question. There are books that have this sura in the
transliterated form and it tells you how to go about reading it and inserting
the problem in question or the matter in which you are seeking guidance.

However, some of the "serignes" amongst us will not tell the people this
because they want to charge a fee and make you think that they go to sleep
and because of some mystic power they posses, the solutions to your life's
problem will unfold before them in technicolour. It is merely a sura to
recite when one has a decision to make or when one is faced with a dillemma
and Allah inshallah will guide you to the best course of action.

The Hadith books also state that men shound not wear gold or silk, that this
is haram.Perhaps this young man was referring to this, but i have never heard
of the other things he mentions, but of course, i have not read all of Buhari
& Muslim.

The main thing about the religion is that we must guard against "shirk"
assocaiting things with God  and his prophets, or taking them as something
the Prophet did when he did not do it, and this again, is to keep the
religion pure as enjoined by the Prophet who got his orders from the Qur'an.

For example, Qur'an said that the Christians have committed shirk by
ascribing something to Essa (Christ)  the son of Marian (Mary) that he did
not tell anyone, namely that he is the son of God, or that he is God in the
person of Christ. The Holy Qur'an says that each time this is said, the
heavens want to rent themselves asunder He is a Prophet of Allah and told the
people so. This is one of the reasons that he is the only Prophet who will
return to set the record straight. The gospel of Jesus the son of mary is
sold in Islamic bookstores  and is contained in a publication called " The
gospel of Barnabas. Allah says his books are three, the Torah, the Gospel and
the final book the Qur'an, and that it is man's hand that has altered some
major things in the first two books.
( I will cover this in detail with Quranic references  concerning Prophet
Jesus later on in the series i will be starting Inshallah)

Buhari & muslim are worth reading and I recommend that those who want to
really know about the forbidden and the allowable first make sure to read the
Qur'an and then these two sources.

The Qur'an translation by the Pakistani scholar, Abdullah Yusuf Ali is
difficult to understand, and infact, there was a new translation ordered by
Macca because there were many things that Ali said in his translation that
raised a lot of concern, plus he was not a native Arab speaker, and
consequently, it is believed that this was why he mis-translated some of the
many sublleties in the Arabic language. For example, Ali said in a footnote
that hell was a state of mind, and that one was a biggie.

The new translation of the Qur'an is easy to read and very srtaight forward
with wonderful footnotes from the Sunnah.

The new translation of the Qur'an is 8 volumes, complete with the hadith of
Buhari and Muslim, At- tabari, Al Qurtubi and Ibn kathir as footnotes, and it
is amazing. There is a summarized one volume version.

This summarized version is called:

"Interpretation of the meanings of the Noble Qur'an in the English language,
A summarized version of At-tabari, Al-Qurtubi and Ibn Kathir, with comments
from Sahih Buhari."
By
Dr Muhammad Taqi-ud-Din Al-Hilali, Phd.
Professor of Islamic faith and teachings,
Islamic University,
Al- Madina Al-Munawwara
AND
Dr Muhammad Muhsin Khan,
Islamic Univerity,
Al-Madina Al-Munawwara

Inshallah, there is a lot that all of  us can learn, and that we can teach
non-muslims concerning our religion, especially in these times when Islam is
so misunderstood and misrepresented by those who have taken it upon
themselves to ascribe things to the religion when they do not know anything
about it. it is our duty as mislims tp make sure we relay what we know this
deen to be about.This is especially important because the Qur'an tells us
that Muhammed (SAS) was the final prophet and that he was sent to all of
mankind, while all the other prophets were sent to their people. The
Al-Qur'an tells us that , to every nation Allah sent a prophet, and only 25
major ones were mentioned in the Quran, but that he sent Muhammed to all of
Mankind, so that is enough to warrant curiosity about this deen even to
non-muslims if nothing else.

I intend to start a series on what is Islam today on the L. It is something i
have been putting off for one reason or other, and inshallah, this is as good
a time as any. In it, i shall share some of the things I have come across and
hopefully, others will do the same.

Jabou Joh



In a message dated 1/6/2002 7:28:34 AM Central Standard Time,
[log in to unmask] writes:
>
> Matarr,
>
> My sincere apologies for seeming to pose the questions I asked to you. I
> meant to commend both you and Malamin Sonko for bringing into focus some of
> the things that we Senegambian take for granted and are now being told are
> un-Islamic.
>
> I wanted to save it as a draft in order to give a background as to why I
> asked the questions but unfortunately pressed the sent button instead.
>
> The reason I asked some of the questions is because of a serious row that
> took place at a funeral that I attended sometime back. On that occasion,
> some elders wanted to follow certain procedures in the Mosque and an
> Egyptian educated young man stood up to denounce the procedure as
> un-Islamic
> and then the row ensued.
>
> Following that rancour, He continued to denounce many of the modern day
> practices as against sharia. The most stattling to me was his assertion
> that
> if a pregnant woman dies in an accident, it is Haram to perform sugery to
> save the baby even if the mother was due for delivery that day and doctors
> could certify that the  baby in her womb was alife and could be saved. He
> also asserted that if one knew of a person who swallows a gold finger ring
> in the morning and dies in an accident that afternoon and people are
> certain
> that the gold was still in his/her stomach, he/she should be operated upon
> to remove the ring and that it was Haram to bury that person with the ring
> still in his/her stomach. When I questioned about certain prayer practices
> that certain people do that were not part of the five daily prayers and
> that
> as far as I knew were not sunnas, at least to my knowledge, he told some
> unusual prayers reciting some of the most basic of verses from the holy
> quran saying that when someone prayed as he had stipulated, it was
> equivalent to having prayed for the whole year. Then I wondered, why pray
> five times a day even when sometimes it is not very convenient and not just
> wait and perform some of the prayers he said could be done to gain up to a
> years blessings. He also claims that there is certain prayer that the
> prophet (PBUH) used to pray and if one prayed the same would never go to
> hell. This he would not tell me because he says it is a prayer one has to
> earn by working for your ustass until he is fully satisfied with your
> services and this could be anything between 5 to 7 years.
>
> I hope people with knowledge about these and the other questions I asked
> earlier would enlighten us. Again sorry for erroneously sending the first
> message instead of storing it as a draft.
>
> Have a very good day, Gassa.
>




Regards,
Mrs Jabou N.Joh,
President/ceo,
Cumberland Investment Group,
557 Holt Valley Rd,
Nashville, TN, 37221
Tel: (615) 269 6949
Mobile: (615) 573 1785
Efax: (240) 371 5557 / (702) 995 0969

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