Hadith on the Mahdi (AS)
Hadith on the Mahdi (AS)
Salam `alaykum, a follow-up to the original posting which is on the whole very useful.
[email protected] wrote in message <[email protected]>…
>Ali Ibn Abi Talib (ra), narrated that the Messenger of Allah (saw) said, >”The Mahdi is from us, the people of the (Prophet’s) >Household. Allah will rectify him in one night (after he had not been >pious he will become pious in one night).” (Recorded by >Ahmad).
It is not “Allah will rectify him in one night” but rather “Allah shall fit him [for leadership] in one night.”
Nor is the meaning of this that “after he had not been pious he will become pious in one night”! Rather, it means that Allah shall grant him the resolve and various other means necessary for his huge task, since the Mahdi — upon him peace — shall be daunted by the job at hand as shown in the hadith that he will only reluctantly accept people’s pledges to him in Mecca.
>Q. I am a member of the Muslim Students Association in my university and >for some time now we have been having a >disagreement on what constitutes the Sunnah of Prophet Muhammad (saw). >Is it just Hadiths passed on for the Ummah to >follow, such as his sayings and manners or does it encompass everything >he ever did, such as how he dressed (the turban >and Arab clothing), how he cut his fingernails, and tended to other >personal things? Is there any flexibility in keeping >your own culture, just as long as it is within the bounds of Islam? I >know a lot of people are scared off by the Arabization >of Islam, and I also know that we are not allowed, as ordained in the >Quran to forbid that which is not forbidden by >Allah, nor make halal that which Allah has not decreed. Could you please >address this issue, for it is very important in >following the right path.
We cited the various definitions of the word Sunna as it is used by the scholars of Islam in the post entitled “[1] The meaning of Sunna” on SRI, available from Dejanews.
The turban in originally Arab but was worn by Muslim men from the beginning of Islam, including non-Arabs. It is a vestimentary Sunna. See our extensive documentation of the male head-dress in Islam at the msa-ec page on www.sunnah.org
The original posting also mentioned, in the course of one of the fatwas, the Indian Hasan Siddiq Khan who wrote about 100 years ago. It should be pointed out that this Hasan Siddiq Khan understands the Divine Attributes in an anthropomorphist sense as indicated by his phrase: “If you mean by body what can be pointed to in a sensible fashion then the most knowing creatures of Allah point to Him by their fingers raising them up to the sky,” in the book he wrote and named al-Din al-Khalis (The Pure Undefiled Religion). To believe that Allah lies in a specific direction constitutes apostasy (kufr) — may Allah protect us — according to the vast majority of the scholars of Islam as mentioned by `Ali al-Qari in Sharh al-Mishkat.
And Allah knows best.
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GF Haddad [email protected]
