By Dr. Mohammad Akram Nadwi The most striking thing about the wives is that they are so different from each other in many respects: age, intellect, beauty and social status. Similarly, there is a diversity of characters and abilities among the male companions. This diversity is responded to in the Book and Sunnah, so that the very range of human experience and need receives a comment or a response from the guidance of Allah and the insight of His messenger. Khadijah She is the first human being to whom the Prophet announced his prophethood. The fact that he does this,…
View More Difference among the wives of the ProphetAuthor: admin
How to motivate yourself for study?
By Dr. Mohammad Akram Nadwi Eating is possible but difficult and unpleasant when you have no appetite. Similarly, study is difficult and unpleasant when you have no curiosity and no puzzlement in respect of what you intend to study. Curiosity and being puzzled constitute the appetite for knowledge and understanding. Where curiosity exists, any knowledge obtained will prove to be digestible and beneficial, and therefore likely to be more easily remembered and integrated to other elements of knowledge. Without curiosity, new knowledge and information are simply a distraction or entertainment and therefore soon forgotten. Similarly, where there is no puzzlement,…
View More How to motivate yourself for study?The True Meaning of Study
By this link: Something has confounded us and as you are our teacher, can you please remove for us the confusion and clarify for us the correct way to look at it? I said: I have never spared any effort in clarifying what is right and explaining, in revealing the truth and lifting the veil. So what is it that you find difficult and whose reins escape you? They said: We live in a developed age and an advanced time, in which everything has become easy and paths are well-trodden. Sciences are easily attainable and art and literature are readily…
View More The True Meaning of StudyWomen Companions
By Dr. Mohammad Akram Nadwi The Companions of the Messenger of God, salla l-lahu `alayhi wa-sallam, hold, for Muslims, a status and authority over all subsequent generations of Muslims. This applies to the women Companions as it does to the men. The reason for it is the strength of their faith and the depth of their knowledge and understanding of how to preserve the teachings of the religion by embodying them in their practice. Without doubt this high quality of their Islam derives from the fact that they witnessed the prophethood and revelation at first hand: they were able to…
View More Women CompanionsSurah Al-`Imran
By Dr. Mohammad Akram Nadwi The longer surahs at the beginning of the received text of the Qur’an have a complex arrangement of passages because they are simultaneously addressing three major concerns of the Qur’an, and the focus of attention alternates between these concerns. The first is to make people aware of God and the Last Day, that is, of the inevitability of achieving complete self-knowledge. That will happen, whether we will or not, when we receive and have read out the record of all our thoughts, intentions, actions and those consequences for which we are responsible. In the life…
View More Surah Al-`ImranThe Right Pathway to Studying Ḥadīth
By this link: Why is it that you vociferously denounce the manner of teaching the noble Prophetic ḥadīth in most of the religious seminaries today? I replied: Yes, as a matter of fact, I do criticize this approach quite heavily for its mistakes in turning away from the expected aim They asked: And what is that expected aim? I replied: Historical Pathways to Ḥadīth Study The Companions of the Prophet received the Noble Qurʾān from him as well as his Sunnah (religious practice) directly without intermediary. They supported these two sources, understood them deeply, and practiced them. When the next…
View More The Right Pathway to Studying ḤadīthIslamic Law and Water
By Dr. Mohammad Akram Nadwi Water is the basis of life on earth in all its forms. It is a resource as essential as light and air. The spoiling of this resource, or the restriction or abuse of access to it, at the least harms life and, in the extreme, threatens its continuance. It would be astonishing indeed if Islamic Law, which is an inclusive guidance for the proper ordering of individual and collective life, did not offer guidance on the way we think about, the way we hold, and the way we share, this essential resource. Those three ways…
View More Islamic Law and WaterIslamic Finance
By Dr. Mohammad Akram Nadwi Islamic finance over the last three decades or so has grown into a huge industry. It is huge both in the sense that vast sums of money are handled by Islamic finance, and also in the sense that a great many scholars have been attracted to it, and they have helped to invent or justify financial instruments which claim to make it lawful for Muslims to do things with their money very similar to the things that non-Muslims do with theirs. Yet, if using the word ‘Islamic’ before ‘finance’ is to mean anything at all,…
View More Islamic FinanceThe Meaning of Ijāzah: The True Role of Ijāzah within Islamic Scholarship
By this link: We see you greatly welcoming the quest for Ijāzah from various teachers, both verbally and in writing, and we see you placing them in a position of tremendous esteem and respect, even coveting them without end. Our question is: what is the value of these Ijāzahs that you have acquired and are proud of, being charmed by them in the same way people are normally allured by gold, silver, precious stones, and all other human passions? I replied: The full extent of their value only rests upon comprehending the significance and meanings of the sanad. They asked:…
View More The Meaning of Ijāzah: The True Role of Ijāzah within Islamic ScholarshipWomen Scholars in Islam: Some reflections
By Dr. Mohammad Akram Nadwi This Ramadan I had the good fortune to be able to do the retreat in the last 10 days of the month. Throughout those days I recited the Quran and reflected on it and many things came to my mind fresh. For example, I read that God will reward a good deed 10 times over or more than that. As for a bad deed, there is only a single punishment the equivalent of that deed. But then when I read more closely I noticed that God has said that with that punishment there is humiliation…
View More Women Scholars in Islam: Some reflections