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TURNING RELIGION INTO A GAME: NASIH-MANSUH 1. That the verse to be abrogated must be abrogated by a new revealed verse (nasýh). 2. That a new verse must have been revealed to abrogate a former one (mensuh). 3. That the abrogation must be made after the revelation of the abrogating verse. 4. That there must be a glaring contradiction between the two of them. When we examine the sources available, we realize that there is no consensus about the chronological order of revelations. The same thing holds true for the order of the hadiths. Under the circumstances, we find ourselves at the mercy of sectarian imams who decide on the issue. This situation gave the imams the authority to abrogate some prescriptions of the Quran. This fact had consolidated the position of the sectarian imams as ‘establishers of religion.’ As we have seen, the sectarian imams chose from among thousands of contradictory hadiths any one hadith that suited their own ends and thus felt authorized to make any change in religion that seemed them best. This liberty enabled them to overrule the Quranic prescriptions as well. The religion about which only God had incontestable authority was made through invented hadiths to appear that in it also the Prophet (in fact, authors of the hadith books) had a part. Thus the sectarian imams had usurped the power to abrogate any verse of his choice as it seemed best to him, a power only God wielded. The responsible figures, as we shall be seeing presently, tried to justify themselves by shifting the meaning of the following ayat: THE MEANING OF SIGN IN THE QURANThe word ayat means ‘evidence’, ‘sign’. According to the Quran, everything created by God contains ayats: plants, men, events that happened to the tribes in the past, night and day, etc. Ayat is never used in the Quran in the sense of ‘verse’ as one can see in the following verses in which the word is used in the singular: 2 The Cow, 106, 118, 211, 248, 259; 3 The Family of Imran, 13, 41, 49, 50; 5 The Feast, 114; 6 The Cattle, 4,25,35,37,109; 7 The Purgatory, 73, 106, 132, 146, 203; 10 Jonah, 20, 92,97; Hud, 64, 103; 12 Joseph, 105,; 13, The Thunder, 7, 27, 38; 15 Al Hijr, 77; 16 The Honey Bees, 11,13,65, 67, 69, 101; 17 The Children of Israel, 12; 19 Mary, 21; 20 Taha, 22, 47, 133; 21 The Prophets, 5, 91; 23 The Believers, 50; 25 The Distinguisher, 37; 26 The Poets, 4, 8, 67, 103, 121,128,139, 154, 158, 174, 190, 197; 27 The Ant, 52; 29 The Spider, 15, 35, 44; 30 The Romans, 58; 34 Sheba, 9, 15; 36 Yasin, 33, 37, 41, 46; 37 Who Stand in Row, 14; 40 The Believer, 78; 43 The Vanity, 48; 51 The Dispersing, 37; The Moon, 2, 15. As we can witness from this long list, the word ayat, which is used in plural in 2 Baqara 106, must be interpreted not as the verses as such of the Quran, but as evidences, miracles, signs of God. Once this point is made clear, the conundrum that involves abrogation of verses becomes absurd. The Quran expressed in many instances that it contained no contradictions.Given the fact that there is no contradiction in the Quran, there should be no abrogation of any of its verses. Had it been otherwise of the two paradoxical statements one should have been rendered null and void As a matter of fact, if one takes the trouble to consult 2 The Cow, 105 that precedes 2 The Cow, 106, one can see that what is meant in the latter are the signs, and evidences. The substitution of an ayat with another ayat is mentioned in 16 The Honey Bees, 101: If we closely examine this verse and those succeeding to it, we can see that the reason of the above accusation of the Prophet as forger is not the mutual abrogation of the verses in the Quran. The Prophet was accused of forgery for having announced that it was God that had sent it. To come back to 2 The Cow, 106 we cannot help witnessing the fact that the new verse is a substitute for the verse that underwent nasih, viz. forgotten. THE ARABIC WORD NASIHNasih has more than one meaning: 1) an abolishing; abolition, abrogation; 2) an effacing; effacement; 3) transcribing, pertaining to copying. According to Prof. Hüseyin Atay (Investigations According to the Quran), the word should mean transcribing, copying, recording. He corroborates this with the verse: 45 The Kneeling, 29 which runs as follows:The verse on which the sectarians have based themselves cannot justify their contention if this meaning is kept in mind as we have already shown. (We have demonstrated that the sectarians could not get the conclusion they wanted to arrive at if ‘abrogation’ were to be used in the sense that they chose.) Assuming that there was an abrogation, how could one establish which verse had abrogated which, since there is no hint about the chronological reference to their revelation? Even though you may consult the hadith books reputed to be the most reliable, you will find almost no prescription of any date. Under the circumstances, the sole authority that decides on this issue remains the sectarian imams. Yet, such a conclusion cannot be reached, given the fact that the sole owner of the Quran is God Himself. The sectarian and traditionalist Islamists, having disregarded such paradoxes, tried to impose statements of their own choice. They even dared to state that hadiths could cancel the prescriptions of the Quran. These commentators, sectarian scholars played havoc with the Quran that contains six thousand verses. For instance, the hadith that said “No will for inheritors” (Abu Davud-Vesaya) was used to misinterpret the Quran, which corroborated the bequeathing of one’s assets to someone by will. Another instance is the rajm (stoning to death) of the adulterer/ess, a result of the attempt to nullify the Quranic verse by a so-called hadith. This issue is examined in the following Chapter 26. THE QURAN IN SHREDS92 –By your Lord, we will question them all. 93 – For all their deeds. To tear the Quran into pieces, that is, to accept one part and reject another, is unacceptable. Yet, this was the attempt of the partisans of the idea that certain verses had been abrogated and substituted by others. God is loath to see such dissension. God mentions the shifting of meanings of certain words by the Jews, to serve their own ends. The display of such an attempt mentioned in 2 The Cow, 41 has unfortunately failed to attract the attention of the Muslim population. Accordingly, they shifted the meaning of words as is mentioned in 2 The Cow, 106 and attempted to divide the Quran. The only solution to this problem is to take the Quran for a whole, an indivisible unity, without any additions or omissions. The traditionalist Islamists have disagreed on this point as well. According to some, there are two hundred abrogated verses, according to others, sixty; again according to others, there are but five, or three according to yet others. We shall now examine the five alleged abrogations. THE FIVE WELL-KNOWN ALLEGATIONS OF ABROGATIONS1. Hamr: Hamr means ‘wine or intoxicant. In 2 The Cow, 219 we read that the profit that man would be deriving from it is inferior to the advantages of it.On the other hand, in 4 Nisa 43 we read: It is claimed that 5 The Feast, 90 abrogated the other two verses. In 2 The Cow, 219 mention is made of (some) advantages of intoxicants, for instance, the heart may thereby profit, but then the sin that one commits in consuming is also mentioned. Likewise, it is said that a person should not perform the prayer in an intoxicated state. As a matter of fact, there are people who drink alcoholic beverages and yet do not neglect performing the prayer, which is obligatory according to the Quran. This shows that all the verses have their respective functions to fulfill, none of which having to nullify the other. 2. War and Peace: Peace is the essential and natural state according to the Quran. War, as prescribed in the Quran, is the state that becomes a necessity in case the Muslims happen to be the object of an aggression. In such a contingency a Muslim has to act, as the ensuing fight will make it necessary. Let us not forget that the Quran, when seen as a whole, presents no contradictions. Therefore, verses related to war cannot abrogate those spoken in favor of peace. Yet a Muslim will fight when the occasion presents itself. This is no contradiction. 3. The proportion of the number of the faithful to the number of disbelievers in case of a war. In the following verse we read: The fewer weaknesses a believer (Muslim) has, the more successful he will be, say the above verses. The essential thing in the proportion between the number of the believers and disbelievers is the superiority of those who are steadfast. Otherwise, there is no contradiction involved. Nor is it an issue of abrogation or substitution of a given verse with another. 4. Will: The Quran prescribes not only the will of a person but also the manner by which an estate is to be shared. Yet, they tried to abolish this explicit prescription of the Quran by a hadith that stated ‘No will for inheritors.’ Let us draw the attention to the fact that at the end of the verses stating the shares of inheritors, we read ‘These refer to what remains after the will is executed.’ So that, according to the Quran, the first thing to do is to execute the will and settle the debts, only after that will one distribute the estate of the deceased according to the prescription of the Quran. 5. Change in the direction of the Kibla: Prior to the revelation of the verse that established the direction, the Prophet used to turn his face, like the people of the Book, toward Jerusalem. Upon the revelation of 2 The Cow, 144, the Prophet altered his direction toward the Mesjid Haram (the Sacred Mosque) in Mecca. In order that there might be an abrogation, there should have been first another verse that said that the direction to turn one’s face was Jerusalem, which is, of course, not the case. Prior to the revelation of the Sura 2 The Cow, 144, the Prophet and the believers turned their faces to Jerusalem not because there had been a previous Quranic prescription.” Before the revelation of this verse, the direction toward which a man turned during the performance of his prayer was not prescribed by the Quran, it was the personal choice of Muhammad and his companions. |