by Dr. Abdul Rahman Awang
According to Ibn Qudamah all Muslim scholars agreed that homosexuality (al-liwat) is forbidden (haram) in Islam. The practice of it would be liable for condemnation from God. It is an abnormal behavior but the act is by no means a new phenomenon in human history. It is therefore a manifestation of moral decadence in a permissive society.
According to the Quran Surah Al A'raf 7:80-82:
80: And Lot! (Remember) when he said unto his folk: Will ye commit abomination such as no creature ever did before you?
81: Lo! ye come with lust unto men instead of women. Nay, but ye are wanton folk.
82: And the answer of his people was only that they are (one to another); Turn them out of your township. They are folk, forsooth, who keep pure.
Surah Hud 11: 77-79:
77: And when Our messengers came unto Lot, he was distressed and knew not how to protect them. He said: This is a distressful day.
78: And his people came unto him, running towards him - and before then they used to commit abominations - he said: O my people! Here are my daughters! They are purer for you. Beware of Allah, and degrade me not in (the person of ) my guests. Is there not among you any upright man?
79: They said: Well thous knowest that we have no right to thy daughters, and well thous knowest what we want.
There are 3 opinions regarding the punishment for homosexuality. According to Malik, Hanafi jurists, Ahmad B. Hanbal and a popular view of Shafii, both the culprits should be killed whether they are married or not married. This view was reported from Abu Bakar, Umar, Ibn Abbas, Ali and others. Hence, the punishment has become a consensus of the companions.
Another view was reported from Shafii and another opinion of Hanbali schools that the punishment for homsexuality is identical to the punishment for 'zina'.
As for the punishment for lesbians (sihaq), it was agreed that the act is forbidden. The Prophet was reported to have said: "If a woman commits an act of sexual relationship with another woman they are adulterers" (see: Qud, p. 189). Despite the fact that the act is considered as immoral, the jurists agree that there is no 'hadd' for it. But the act is considered 'zina' which has no 'hadd' because there is no element of penetration as a basic requirement for 'zina'. However the jurists agree that both of them would be subjected to 'tazir' punishment.
If anyone, man or woman, was found to be engaged in sexual intercourse with an animal, the majority of jurists agreed that there is no 'hadd' for the act but 'tazir'. As for the animal, whether it is edible or not, it is to be killed.
With regard to the punishment of dhimmi (non-Muslims) who engaged in the act of homozexuality it should be first determined the nature of the punishment applicable to this offence.
(NOTE: The word dhimmi (plural dimam) literally means "protection, care, custody, covenant of protection, compact; responsibility, answerableness; financial obligation, liability, debt; inviolability, security of life and property; safeguard, guarantee, security; conscience" and ahl-dhimmi is "the free non-Muslim subjects living in Muslim countries who, in return for paying the capital tax, enjoyed protection and safety." [see: wikipedia )
The above is sourced from Dr Abdul Rahman Awang's book: The Status of the Dhimmi in Islamic Law, International Law Book Services; 1994
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Dr Abdul Rahman Awang graduated with an LL.B from University Al-Azhar, Cairo and received his LL.M from Temple University. He taught Islamic law at University Kebangsaan Malaysia and later at International Islamic University. He received his Ph.D in Islamic law from University of Edinburgh in 1988 and currently is teaching at International Islamic University, Malaysia.
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According to the Quran Surah Al A'raf 7:80-82:
80: And Lot! (Remember) when he said unto his folk: Will ye commit abomination such as no creature ever did before you?
81: Lo! ye come with lust unto men instead of women. Nay, but ye are wanton folk.
82: And the answer of his people was only that they are (one to another); Turn them out of your township. They are folk, forsooth, who keep pure.
Surah Hud 11: 77-79:
77: And when Our messengers came unto Lot, he was distressed and knew not how to protect them. He said: This is a distressful day.
78: And his people came unto him, running towards him - and before then they used to commit abominations - he said: O my people! Here are my daughters! They are purer for you. Beware of Allah, and degrade me not in (the person of ) my guests. Is there not among you any upright man?
79: They said: Well thous knowest that we have no right to thy daughters, and well thous knowest what we want.
There are 3 opinions regarding the punishment for homosexuality. According to Malik, Hanafi jurists, Ahmad B. Hanbal and a popular view of Shafii, both the culprits should be killed whether they are married or not married. This view was reported from Abu Bakar, Umar, Ibn Abbas, Ali and others. Hence, the punishment has become a consensus of the companions.
Another view was reported from Shafii and another opinion of Hanbali schools that the punishment for homsexuality is identical to the punishment for 'zina'.
As for the punishment for lesbians (sihaq), it was agreed that the act is forbidden. The Prophet was reported to have said: "If a woman commits an act of sexual relationship with another woman they are adulterers" (see: Qud, p. 189). Despite the fact that the act is considered as immoral, the jurists agree that there is no 'hadd' for it. But the act is considered 'zina' which has no 'hadd' because there is no element of penetration as a basic requirement for 'zina'. However the jurists agree that both of them would be subjected to 'tazir' punishment.
If anyone, man or woman, was found to be engaged in sexual intercourse with an animal, the majority of jurists agreed that there is no 'hadd' for the act but 'tazir'. As for the animal, whether it is edible or not, it is to be killed.
With regard to the punishment of dhimmi (non-Muslims) who engaged in the act of homozexuality it should be first determined the nature of the punishment applicable to this offence.
(NOTE: The word dhimmi (plural dimam) literally means "protection, care, custody, covenant of protection, compact; responsibility, answerableness; financial obligation, liability, debt; inviolability, security of life and property; safeguard, guarantee, security; conscience" and ahl-dhimmi is "the free non-Muslim subjects living in Muslim countries who, in return for paying the capital tax, enjoyed protection and safety." [see: wikipedia )
The above is sourced from Dr Abdul Rahman Awang's book: The Status of the Dhimmi in Islamic Law, International Law Book Services; 1994
*********************************
Dr Abdul Rahman Awang graduated with an LL.B from University Al-Azhar, Cairo and received his LL.M from Temple University. He taught Islamic law at University Kebangsaan Malaysia and later at International Islamic University. He received his Ph.D in Islamic law from University of Edinburgh in 1988 and currently is teaching at International Islamic University, Malaysia.
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4 comments:
So is our government trying to inflict more punishment than what the Quran has recorded, perhaps for the objectives of its leaders?
Let the person who has no sin cast the first stone.
Gay marriage is not the contemporary invention of decadent Western civilization. The Egyptian city of Siwa has for centuries legitimized and celebrated marriages between Muslim men
. A gay cruising guide to Siwa provides both historical background and tips on finding gay sex partners in that city -- truly a no-brainer. Gay marriage is also practiced in Afghanistan.
If you have a particular interest in the Islamic persecution of homosexuals al-bab.com is a good place to pursue it further.
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Is there a proper Muslim way to have sex with animals? Indeed, there is! Guidelines for sex with animals can be found in the writings of Ayatollah Khomeini. Two excerpts from his writings serve to clarify the matter.
"A man can have sex with sheep, cows and camels and so on. However, he should kill the animal after he has his orgasm. He should not sell the meat to the people in his own village; however, selling the meat to the next door village should be fine." Don't the buyers deserve a discount of some kind?
Khomeini's "Tahrirolvasyleh" fourth volume, Darol Elm, Gom, Iran, 1990
"If one commits the act of sodomy with a cow, a ewe, or a camel, their urine and their excrement become impure, and even their milk may no longer be consumed. The animal must then be killed and as quickly as possible and burned." What if it was really good and invites another lap or two? Must animals always be one-night stands?
These jurist are following sectarian hadiths laid out by Bukhari, Muslim, Ibn Daud and other Zoroastrian with colloboration with the Umayyads and Banu Hasims, two of Muhammad's biggest enemies.
The Koran is not followed by these sectarians Meccan idol worshippers. Their prophets are Aisha the Ummayid and Hussein the Banu Hashimi. Neither the prophet nor ANY of the Caliphs ever compiled any text but the Koran. the Sunnah as its called was invented by Al Shafi almost 170 years after Muhammad. Orientalist have studied these gossips:
Schacht asserts that hadiths, particularly from Muhammad, did not form, together with the Qur'an, the original bases of Islamic law and jurisprudence as is traditionally assumed. Rather, hadiths were an innovation begun after some of the legal foundation had already been built. "The ancient schools of law shared the old concept of sunna or ‘living tradition’ as the ideal practice of the community, expressed in the accepted doctrine of the school." And this ideal practice was embodied in various forms, but certainly not exclusively in the hadiths from the Prophet. Schacht argues that it was not until al-Shafi`i that ‘sunna’ was exclusively identified with the contents of hadiths from the Prophet to which he gave, not for the first time, but for the first time consistently, overriding authority. Al-Shafi`i argued that even a single, isolated hadith going back to Muhammad, assuming its isnad is not suspect, takes precedence over the opinions and arguments of any and all Companions, Successors, and later authorities. Schacht notes that:
Two generations before Shafi`i reference to traditions from Companions and Successors was the rule, to traditions from the Prophet himself the exception, and it was left to Shafi`i to make the exception the principle. We shall have to conclude that, generally and broadly speaking, traditions from Companions and Successors are earlier than those from the Prophet.
Based on these conclusions, Schacht offers the following schema of the growth of legal hadiths. The ancient schools of law had a ‘living tradition’ (sunna) which was largely based on individual reasoning (ra'y). Later this sunna came to be associated with and attributed to the earlier generations of the Successors and Companions. Later still, hadiths with isnads extending back to Muhammad came into circulation by traditionists towards the middle of the second century. Finally, the efforts of al-Shafi`i and other traditionists secured for these hadiths from the Prophet supreme authority.
Goldziher maintains that, while reliance on the sunna to regulate the empire was favoured, there was still in these early years of Islam insufficient material going back to Muhammad himself. Scholars sought to fill the gaps left by the Qur'an and the sunna with material from other sources. Some borrowed from Roman law. Others attempted to fill these lacunae with their own opinions (ra'y). This latter option came under a concerted attack by those who believed that all legal and ethical questions (not addressed by the Qur'an) must be referred back to the Prophet himself, that is, must be rooted in hadiths.These supporters of hadiths (ahl al-hadith) were extremely successful in establishing hadiths as a primary source of law and in discrediting ra'y. But in many ways it was a Pyrrhic victory. The various legal madhhabs were loath to sacrifice their doctrines and so they found it more expedient to fabricate hadiths or adapt existing hadiths in their support. Even the advocates of ra'y were eventually persuaded or cajoled into accepting the authority of hadiths and so they too "found" hadiths which substantiated their doctrines that had hitherto been based upon the opinions of their schools’ founders and teachers. The insistence of the advocates of hadiths that the only opinions of any value were those which could appeal to the authority of the Prophet resulted in the situation that "where no traditional matter was to be had, men speedily began to fabricate it. The greater the demand, the busier was invention with the manufacture of apocryphal traditions in support of the respective theses."
In summary, Goldziher sees in hadiths "a battlefield of the political and dynastic conflicts of the first few centuries of Islam; it is a mirror of the aspirations of various parties, each of which wants to make the Prophet himself their witness and authority." Likewise,
Every stream and counter-stream of thought in Islam has found its expression in the form of a hadith, and there is no difference in this respect between the various contrasting opinions in whatever field. What we learnt about political parties holds true too for differences regarding religious law, dogmatic points of difference etc. Every ra'y or hawa, every sunna and bid`a has sought and found expression in the form of hadith.
And even though Muslim traditionalists developed elaborate means to scrutinize the mass of traditions that were then extant in the Muslim lands, they were "able to exclude only part of the most obvious falsifications from the hadith material." Goldziher, for all his scepticism, accepted that the practice of preserving hadiths was authentic and that some hadiths were likely to be authentic. However, having said that, Goldziher is adamant in maintaining that:
In the absence of authentic evidence it would indeed be rash to attempt to express the most tentative opinions as to which parts of the hadith are the oldest material, or even as to which of them date back to the generation immediately following the Prophet’s death. Closer acquaintance with the vast stock of hadiths induces sceptical caution rather than optimistic trust regarding the material brought together in the carefully compiled collections. End quote
Mohamed,
Thanks for the knowledge sharing. Could you let me have the book or articles pertaining to your comments so that I could counter check?
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