Correcting Misconceptions

By Mukhtar Hassan

Whilst this book was written in response to another book, the contents address the common accusations of how Islam "oppresses" the rights of women. The book analyses the actual sources, and not use opinions of people who simply believe they have the jurisdiction to pron

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookTrail Publishing
• Release date: Sep 24, 2021
• ISBN: 9781637674680

Mukhtar Hassan

Having completed a degree in computer science and obtaining a number of professional IT qualifications, I began my career working in IT. I am also a web developer and have produced a number of websites for many different clients. I am currently a mobile app producer and am planning on producing my next app. I have always enjoyed writing and have contributed to a number of forums. I am a veracious reader and came across a book that had many inaccuracies. It compelled me to write this work.

Book preview

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Copyright © 2021 by Mukhtar Hassan.

ISBN-978-1-63767-467-3 (Paperback)

ISBN-978-1-63767-468-0 (eBook)

LCCN: 2021917768

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Contents

Introduction

Truth 1

Truth 2

Truth 3

Truth 4

Truth 5

Truth 6

Truth 7

Truth 8

Truth 9

Truth 10

Truth 11

Truth 12

Conclusion

Introduction

In the name of God, the Entirely Merciful, the Specifically Merciful

Currently there is a lot of material that is critical of Islam. Considering everything that’s happening in the world it can be understood why. I’m indifferent to it all because I’d like to believe that honest people know when someone is making a valid observation – and when they’re just being vindictive. When it’s spoken its slander; when it’s written it’s liable. Thank you J. Jonah Jameson. The common theme I have seen when people are criticising Islam is that they have personal grievances with what they’ve experienced. However, this can be extended to all religions – any ideologies which people choose to live their lives by; where someone feels aggrieved by another who claims to be a believer in those principles, but transgresses against them.

What compelled me to write this book, however, is that I came across a book which is different from all the other criticisms. The Authors’ whole contention was that it is actual Islam that perpetuates Misogynist actions towards American Women [I failed to extrapolate why only American women are affected]. I do give her credit for the amount of research she had done but her interpretations of the religious texts, I found to be unbelievable. How ironic. In her introduction she states:

‘… I have nothing but admiration for these people (Muslims), especially the women who have come here to live as Americans in peace and freedom as defined in democracy. This book is not intended as a denigration of these good and decent individuals’

But she fails to understand that it is these very people – I’d like to include myself also – who would be the ones most offended by her work. That’s because we know that our religion does not instigate injustice in any form, let alone towards ‘infidels’ and ‘American women’.

Indeed, God commands you to render trusts to whom they are due. And when you judge between people, to judge with justice. Excellent is that which God instructs you. Indeed, God is ever Hearing and Seeing.

Quran 4:58

Struggling to read through her book, I found out the reason why she had written it is because she had gone through bad experiences personally. I’m assuming she had married an Arab Muslim man, and the anger she now feels about the way he had treated her has been vented out in her book. Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned eh? Her book is an attempt to prove that what happened to her is not a unique circumstance, but one that would happen to any woman who marries an Arab Muslim man.

I am not an Arab but am Muslim. In this work I hope to go through all the quotes used in the book I’m critiquing, and to justify why I think they have been misconstrued. However, I will not go through the majority of the book as she uses examples of experiences Muslims have gone through to justify Islamic transgressions. I absolutely do not condone them, but acknowledge that evil people will use any reason to justify their behaviour: especially religion. Also I know I can use millions of examples of people of other faiths or ideologies who have also committed similar atrocities, but I know that it had nothing to do with their beliefs. That’s because all religions call to good, and anyone who calls to otherwise have only done so because they’ve allowed their evil nature to corrupt their understanding. I will leave it up to you, dear reader, to determine which you think is the truth. God willing.

Women are slaves and infidels… and men are their masters

- al-Ghazali

His full name is Abū Ḥāmid Muḥammad ibn Muḥammad al-Ghazālī (c. 1058–1111). Known as Algazel to the western medievil world, he was a theologian, jurist, philosipher and mystic of Persian descent. Within Islam he is considered to be a Mujaddad or ‘Proof of Islam’ because that is how highly his works are regarded by the Muslims. (Al-Ghazali, 2014).¹

I have gone through the titles of all of his books available in English, and was unable to find a book called Ghazali. I will give the benefit of doubt by requesting the ISBN so I can then make the necessary amendments afterwards. Having said that; we also have to realise when and where he had been alive. Could we know what life was like in 11-12th century Persia? What had been happening at the time that may have caused him to say things that we now may find controversial today? If we can find answers to these types of questions, then it may enable us to be more compassionate towards historical figures where we have not lived their lives.

Muslims do not believe in original sin, but that every child is born in a state of Fitra, or fitrah (Arabic: فطرة / ALA-LC: fiṭrah), is an Arabic word meaning ‘disposition’, ‘nature’, ‘constitution’, or ‘instinct’. In a mystical context, it can connote intuition or insight. It is similar to the Calvinist term Sensus divinitatis. In Islam, we believe that the child is born pure from sin because ‘no soul bears the sin of another’ and the child will remain sinless until they reach puberty: because that it is the age where they become aware of their actions and thus held accountable for them.

It is for this reason that we don’t believe that anyone can be born evil: they can only learn it. It’s very easy for us today to say people like Hitler and Stalin are evil; but if we simply dismiss them as that, and not try to understand why they had done what they did, then the danger is that similar circumstances can arise again which would help create figures such as them. One striking comment I heard was someone was talking about Hitler, and they saw a classroom photo of him as a child; what really affected the viewer was how normal Hitler had looked like the rest of the children there. So what could have happened in his life to transform him into what he became?

The point I’m making here is that what happens to a person in life will absolutely shape who they will become. It’s very easy to assume that a person who believes in an ideology would automatically live every moment by it – but life could force them to transform their principles into the world they are living in. So the many wrongs being committed by Muslims for example, become right because it must be true since all the other Muslims are doing it. Only by going back to the source – of any ideology – could we eradicate all the innovations that have established themselves.

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¹ Al-Ghazali. (2014, January 4). Retrieved from Wikipedia: http://en.

Truth 1

‘Are Women Inferior to Men?’

‘Women are ‘awrat (vagina), pudenda, private part, and deficient in intelligence’

- Allegedly attributed to the Prophet

In Arabic, the term ‘awrah or ‘awrat derives from the root word ‘a-w-r which means defectiveness, imperfection, blemish or weakness. However, the most common English translation is nakedness: not the synonyms used in the quote. Secondly, exactly which hadith did he state this in?

Hadith

It’s extremely important to state what this actually is. As Muslims believe that Muhammad is the Messenger of God: his whole life is the embodiment of obedience to God. Such is the reverence Muslims have towards him that every time his name is mentioned we say peace be upon him which here is denoted by the lovely calligraphy after his name. Because he was the Messenger, then everything he had said and done had been sanctioned by God. So Muslims try and emulate as much as they possibly can from his life, because to follow him we believe we are following God.

Say if you love God, follow me. God will love you and forgive your sins

Quran 3:31

During his Prophethood he was surrounded by Companions who faithfully followed him in every aspect of religion. After his death the companions went to the four corners of the world in order to spread the message. However, the one drawback of this was that it was extremely difficult for an ordinary Muslim to find out what the Prophet had done if they didn’t have access to these companions. As necessity is the mother of invention, this allowed great individuals to arise who created Scholarly methodologies of determining the authenticity of a narration. So instead of simply providing a quote and attributing it to Muhammad [like above] Scholars had devised complex principles of determining a hadith’s authenticity. To state all of it here goes beyond the scope of the book (and copyright) but an excellent introduction into the Science of Hadith is written by Sheikh Suhaib Hasan.² A hadith has two components: matn [text - or whatever the Prophet said/did] and isnad [chain of narrators]. So a Scholar would look at what is being narrated, and knowing the biographies of every person involved with narrating it, classify the hadith into one of four categories: sahih [authentic] hasan [good] da’if [weak] and maudoo [fabricated]. As this is a very difficult thing for a common Muslim to do, there was an Imaam called Bukhari³ who dedicated his life into collecting as many hadiths as he could and then going through the process of canonising as many authentic ones into his collection. His efforts has allowed all the Sunni Muslims to unanimously agree that after the Quran, his collection of hadiths is the most authentic. After his is Imaam Muslim who also collected as many authentic Hadiths as possible.

Thanks to their efforts, Muslims do not need to travel hundreds of miles to collect a hadith and then spend a lot of time trying to ascertain its’ authenticity: you