God's Sharia Laws versus Man-Made Sharia Laws
Published in December 15, 2007
Translated by: Ahmed Fathy
1- The Sunnite imam and scholar Al-Shafei used to live in Iraq for the first half of his life, where he established his doctrine, and when settled for the rest of his life in Egypt, and its capital at the time, Al-Fustat (150 years before Cairo was built), he had to change many of the principles and main ideas of his fiqh doctrine/school, as conditions of Egypt differed from that of Iraq at the same era. Yet, the political trend of Wahabis of the 21st century now in the Arab world, and in Egypt, claims to have the intention to apply fiqh sharia of Al-Shafei – and other Sunnite scholars – in our modern age in the 21st century! What an absurd, silly, and grotesque idea! If we imagine the innovative imam Al-Shafei to be raised from the dead and leave his tomb, now in Cairo, to walk through streets of Cairo now, he would no doubt fall dead again from amazement and changed conditions!
2- Indeed, fiqh and its fatwas are directly linked to life conditions of certain nation(s) in certain era(s), and this is why Al-Shafei fiqh of Iraq differs from the one of Egypt. Besides, the countless differences among all Sunnite doctrines are linked as well to personal traits of each of the imams and their psychological makeup and social conditions in the societies where they lived; for instance, imam Malik in his fiqh doctrine represents conditions of Yathreb in the 2nd century A.H., and he was the only imam to consider deeds and views of the Yathreb dwellers as part of sources of sharia laws; he invented and compiled the so-called hadiths ascribed falsely to Muhammad even if these narratives are weak, fake, contradictory, or without foundation or proofs to support their veracity and authenticity. It is hardly surprising that the book of Malik, titled (Al-Mowata'), quotes not even a single Quranic verse; at the same time, Malik ascribes in his book (written by his disciples as per his dictation) hadiths not only to Muhammad, but also to the so-called companions and their next generation among the Yathreb dwellers, as if their words and narratives are part of sharia laws for him! This celebration of the Yathreb dwellers in (Al-Mowata') by Malik reflects the spirit or zeitgeist of the 2nd century A.H Yathreb, whose dwellers felt they must honor their city and themselves after limelight moved away from them to other major cities: Al-Fustat, Damascus, Basra, Kufa, and Baghdad. Thus, the Yathreb dwellers felt they must revive the glory of the fact that Muhammad lived the last 10 years of his life in Yathreb, and the glorious era of companions and the pre-Umayyad caliphs whose capital was Yathreb. Many of the oral narrators and orators in Yathreb specialized in inventing, fabricating, and concocting tales about battles of Muhammad, history of the prophet and his companions (turned into infallible saints), and the history and anecdotes of the four pre-Umayyad caliphs, as this is all became part of the history of the city of Yathreb itself. Within such context and backdrop, the Malik fiqh has emerged and it reflects the sought-after glory and ambitions of the Yathreb dwellers and their social, historical, and psychological mentality and conditions.
3-At the same time, Abou Hanifa in his fiqh doctrine and school reflects the open society of Iraq at the time with its multiculturalism and many races living there. This is why scholars of the Abou Hanifa school of fiqh went to extremes in ijtihad and reliance on their own personal views to the extent of rejecting the Quranic verses and misusing and manipulating their meanings to serve purposes of the affluent ones and rulers and their cronies. Such fiqh of manipulation that evades Quranic rulings and teachings created a reactionary trend of the other side: the extremist Ibn Hanbal fiqh doctrine who relies heavily on texts of the so-called hadiths while disregarding the reasoning minds and excluding personal views altogether. Both extremes of the Ibn Hanbal and the Abou Hanifa doctrine scholars relied on fiqh views and hadiths of ancient dead scholars of previous eras (i.e., the forefathers and ancestors) and placed them in high esteem, even above the Quran itself. This is a fatal error.
4- During the Arab rule of Andalusia (now modern Spain or the Iberian peninsula), each of the Arab kings who ruled provinces and/or cities used to gather around themselves a number of fiqh scholars that issued fatwas at will to please these kings/rulers while disregarding, misinterpreting, and manipulating Quranic verses by inventing hadiths, and the innovative thinker and scholar Ibn Hazm revolted against such corrupt trends of thought and he established his own school of fiqh that sided to texts of hadiths and Quranic verses at their surface meaning or face-value without any sort of interpretation or suspension of sharia laws and rulings.
5- Hence, fiqh schools in the eras of fiqh imams always reflect conditions lived by those imams who established their fiqh doctrines; each of these imams (with the exception of Abou Hanifa, unlike his followers who betrayed him as imams of his doctrine) used to consolidate their views by inventing hadiths ascribed to Muhammad after his death. Thus, discrepancies and contradictions in hadiths and fiqh views and notions are because of social conditions, psychological makeup, and local circumstances of each of the doctrines and their founders within the history of human communities and man-made religions owned by their authors as they reflect their mentalities and trends of their eras.
6- This is the main difference between the divine religion revealed by God and the earthly, man-made religions; God's religion is revealed in celestial scriptures descended on earth and inspired to prophets/messengers; the last Divine Message is the Quran revealed to Muhammad. Each messenger/prophet had but One Book from God; NO one of them had texts/narratives/hadiths that accompanied scriptures. Thus, there is no such a thing as Sunna/hadiths of Muhammad. The seal of prophets, Muhammad, received from God One Book, the Quran, and he adhered to it and strove to spread the Quranic message, along with early believers with him. But once Muhammad died, so many polytheists established their earthly, man-made religions that falsely raised the banner of Islam, and each falsely ascribed his hadiths/narratives and fiqh views to divine revelation. Within these earthly, man-made religions of the Muhammadans, Muhammad and his contemporaries (i.e., so-called companions) have turned into deities and gods, while scholars of fiqh are turned into demi-gods after their death as well. This occurred to previous prophets before Muhammad, as many prophets and their followers are turned into immortal deities (e.g., Jesus and disciples). With each prophet/messenger sent by God to rectify and correct the way and to refute myths, myths of deifying mortals would resurface again once a prophet/ a messenger dies. This went on until Muhammad, the last of them all, was sent to people with the Quranic message, preserved intact by God after the death of Muhammad and till the end of days and Day of the Resurrection. Muhammadans established earthly, man-made religions of the Sunnites, Sufis, and Shiites who deify Muhammad and other groups of mortals (companions, sheikhs, clergymen, and imams as well as relatives of the household of Muhammad) and rejected the Quranic message. In fact, each of the earthly, man-made religions had its own sharia laws and legislations that are formulated by imams (made immortal and infallible by their followers who deify them) who discarded the Quranic sharia legislations and laws of God. Each of the imams of the earthly, man-made religions had his own prejudices, preference, conditions, educational level, social, historical, geographical, and political circumstances, as well as personal traits and features. This is why countless unsettled discrepancies and differences exist among all doctrines/orders/groups/trends under the three earthly, man-made religions of the Muhammadans. Thus, the earthly, man-made religions are never perfect or complete: they are like bottomless, shoreless oceans whose waters are ever-increasing with the passage of time; even some doctrines emerged and evolved as full-fledged separate religions in many cases, parting away from its original earthly doctrine or religion. In contrast, God's religion, the Quran, has a beginning and an end, and is whole, perfected, and complete in itself as one and only unit with the entire divine message of God and His sharia laws.
7- The Divine Book/Scripture of God descended from Heaven to reform earth dwellers who are disbelievers or polytheists with corrupt religious notions; the aim of God's Word is to raise their awareness, elevate their thinking, guide their souls, and influence their minds/hearts to change themselves for the better. In contrast, earthly, man-made religions reflect the mentality, features, notions, and traits of their owners and authors who manipulate notions, principles, teachings, and labels from the divine religion to distort them to serve their purposes in their man-made false doctrines that aim for control, authority, power, wealth, and dominating over people. This is why in all eras, imams of earthly, man-made religions distort meanings of the Quranic verses and misinterpret them on purpose to serve their needs and to tailor such misinterpretations as per their tastes and whims. This is why those imams invented false hadiths/narratives, biographies of Muhammad, the mythical notion of hadiths replacing Quranic teachings and laws, stories (or hagiology) about the so-called companions, etc. as if the Quran, as God's religion, were incomplete and in need of their books! Those imams disregarded the fact that God preserves the Quran from any sort of distortions and that the Quranic verses are enough as the source of legislations in Islam. God ordains that we should not believe in any other narratives or discourses beside the Quran: "Have they not observed the government of the heavens and the earth, and all the things that God created, and that their time may have drawn near? Which discourse, besides this, will they believe in? " (7:185); "In what discourse, beyond this, will they believe?" (77:50); "These are God's Verses which We recite to you in Truth. In which discourse, after God and His verses, will they believe?" (45:6). Imams an clergy of the earthly, man-made religions of the Muhammadans cannot twist phrasing of the Quranic text; if they were protectors and guardians of the Quranic text, Azharite clergymen would have removed and changed it completely so that nothing remains to Muhammadans but myths of the books of Al-Bokhary, Al-Shafei, Malik, Al-Ghazaly, Al-Shaarany, etc.
8- Muhammad adhered only to One Book, the Quran, and nothing else beside it. Even the Muhammadans in their narratives about the person of Muhammad mention that his morals were based only on the Quran. Thus, the Quranic teachings are the real Sunna (way or method) of Muhammad as he applied the Quran in the Yathreb city-state as per what was possible within the conditions of the 7th century A.D. Arabia. A gap occurred between Quranic teachings and legislations and people's whims and desires formulated by imams in their own invented hadiths and fiqh notions; such a gap widened with the passage of time and entailed the emergence of full-fledged earthly, man-made religions of the Muhammadans, with each of them claiming (until now!) as if it were the only 'true' interpretation of the Quran! Each of the earthly, man-made religions of the Muhammadans has its formulated laws and legislations that express its Middle-Ages culture and historical, geographical, social, and political conditions and background and differences in views and stances are countless between one imam/sheikh and the other even within one doctrine. This is why, for instance, so many trends emerged under the label of the Sunnite religion. Hence, how come that some of Azharite clergymen and Wahabi political agents of the MB group in Egypt and elsewhere demand that Sunnite sharia must be applied?! They cannot define what is this sharia and what are its laws exactly; as per Azharite curricula, all Middle-Ages scholars and imams differed in almost all topics and notions related to fiqh; their contradictions are so many that even within one book of one author, there are many discrepancies and contradictions in the one page of fatwas, hadiths, or fiqh rulings that reflected their rivalry, competition, eagerness to please Middle-Ages rulers, etc. It is a shame and a disgrace that such views and fiqh notion are ascribed to Islam by force! No one is able to sift through such bottomless shoreless ocean to get a 'modern' version of Sunnite sharia laws; this is a fruitless and futile endeavor; we have the Quran already, so why for God's sake we do not use it as the only source of legislations in Islam?! Are not there reasonable persons among the Muhammadans to pay heed to the Quranic Truth?! Even if Sunnites formed groups of scholars to sift through countless sheets of Sunnite books, they will certainly differ and dispute and eventually declare one another as 'apostates' and 'infidels' because of political reasons and motives. This is why the Wahabi MB group members in Egypt raise the hazy, meaningless motto or banner of applying 'sharia'; they cannot agree on what the boundaries and limits of this Sunnite sharia are. Of course, they laud and praise the Middle-Ages obscurantist thought found in the books of Al-Shafei, Ibn Hanbal, Ibn Taymiyya, etc. but they never read these books entirely to see how they contradict the Quran with their hadiths of the so-called torment of the grave, niqab, hijab, massacres, putting fornicators, non-performers of prayers, and apostates to death, stealing money of non-Muhammadans, giving kings within theocracies the 'divine' right to kill up to one-third of their 'subjects', and waging ongoing wars against non-Muhammadans till the end of times, etc. In fact, the Muhammadans lived for centuries within such man-made sharia laws of Satan that support tyranny, violence, injustices, and corruption, and this led them to lose this world and the next in the Hereafter. This is the real aim of the Wahabi MB group members who wreak havoc in Mubarak's Egypt now and its social, political, cultural, and religious life; they aim to create chaos and massacres that lead them to rule Egypt and the Arab world within a Wahabi theocracy typical of the Middle Ages within the venomous Wahabi Sunnite sharia of the Devil. Is this possible in our modern age of human rights, democracy, freedoms, and citizens' rights?!