Islam's Reformers .pdf

someone means to entreat them and to believe that everything,useful and harmful alike, comes from them and made by them.It was stated (by some scholars) that it would be makrûh for theworshippers of Allâhu ta’âlâ to take samples of soil from gravesor to walk around them. According to Wahhâbîs, however, actsof this sort are polytheism. The graves which the Sahâba builtfor the martyrs who had fought against Musailamat-ulkadhdhâb [1] were above ground level, which was intended forothers to recognize them and recite the Fâtiha for their souls.The heretics censure Sahâba for this reason, too. Theydemolished these graves. This shows that they are on al-Kadhdhâb’s way.They said it was a bid’a to build tombs over graves orminarets for mosques or to eat with spoons. They ruinedHusain’s (radiy-Allâhu ’anh) tomb in Karbala and plundered theinvaluable things in it. They burned and ruined the city of Tâ’ifand massacred the Ahl as-Sunna Muslims including the womenand children and plundered their possessions. The mostvaluable books such as the Sahîhain of al-Bukhârî and Muslimand thousands of books on hadîth, fiqh and other fields, eventhe Qur’ân, were trodden underfoot. Out of fear, no one daredto pick them up. They even dug in the ground and looked forpossessions. They set the city afire. They demolished thetombs in Mecca and the blessed houses where the Prophet(’alaihi ’s-salâm), Abû Bakr, ’Umar (radiy-Allâhu ’anhumâ) andFâtima (radiy-Allâhu anhâ) had been born. They said it waspolytheism for muezzins to recite the Salawât for the Prophet’ssoul. They proscribed smoking and burned all the pipes,hookahs, cigarette-boxes and musical instruments in Mecca.Putting forth the âyats, “Besides Allâhu ta’âlâ, do not prayto anybody, who is neither useful nor harmful to you!” and“Do not pray to another person together with Allâhuta’âlâ!” and the hadîth “Prayer is the essence of worship,”they said that he who asked for something from someonebesides Him would become an unbeliever. However, the prayerprohibited in the âyat means the ‘prayer that is performed asworship’ in the Islamic knowledge. This prayer can beperformed only to Allâhu ta’âlâ. And, a person who knows that[1]An unbeliever who claimed to be a prophet. He was killed byWahshî ‘radiy-Allâhu anh’.- 148 -