Wednesday, February 19, 2020

What It Means - Day 338

"When the male mounts another male the angels are alarmed and raise a cry to their lord. The wrath of the mighty One comes down up those [men], the curse covers over them, and the tempters surround them. The earth asks its Lord for permission to swallow them up and the divine throne grows heavy upon those who bear it up, while the angels declare God's greatness and hellfire rears up high."
Muhammad, Hadith (maybe)
Quoted in Scott Siraj al-Haqq Kugle, Homosexuality in Islam, (p. 85)

Once again, I'm drawing from Kugle's work. He sites this as a famous hadith often used to "justify" criticism (or much worse) of the LGBT community. Using the criteria we discussed previously on the validity of ahadith Kugle writes:

"The conservative medieval scholar Ibn Qayyium al-Jawziyya (died 1350) cites this report in his book on love but warns that its chain of transmission is quite weak. A later medieval hadith scholar who was equally conservative but had no particular obsession with  homosexuality declared this report to be an outright fabrication (mawdu). the scholar who publicized this judgment was Muhammad ibn Tahir Patani (died 1578), who was known as the 'King of Hadith Scholars' in his age and revived in his native south Asia the discipline of hadith criticism. He disparages this supposed hadith through traditional methods of isnad analysis in his book entitled Focusing Attention on Reports that Are Fabrication (Tadhkirat al-Mawdu'at). He rejected it along with hundreds of others on a myriad of topics. He disparaged the report even thou it boasts an isnad leading back to Ibn Abbas, an esteemed companion (died 686/87) who was the cousin of the Prophet and whom are attributed 1,660 reports." (p. 85)

Remember, Kugle is a convert to Islam, so he's not judging aspects of it using arguably arbitrary outside and transitory standards. Rather, he's trying to examine the issue from inside the faith. His point here is an obvious one: can we criticize an entire group of people because of a flawed process that cites something that Prophet may have never said? His argument is that all too often a hadith might be either fabricated or misinterpreted, and may only reflect the societal norms of an archly conservative society from a few centuries later rather than the actual opinion of a very loving, tolerant and in most ways open minded prophet?


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