Author Archives: Ikram Hawramani

Ikram Hawramani

About Ikram Hawramani

The creator of IslamicArtDB.

IslamQA: Building social skills

What would you recommend to someone who lacks social skills? How can they improve themself? Any suggestions?

As far as I know the best way is to place yourself in a lot of situation situations, such as getting a job where you have to deal with people a lot, such as a store cashier.

IslamQA: Islam and the fate of isolated tribes and civilizations

Something that has bugging me for a while is the fact that there were millions of people throughout history that have lived and died without ever hearing about Islam much less converting to it (wether they be some isolated artic tribe or entire civilisations like the Inca ) which got me thinking on how Allah would judge someone who for whatever reason hasn’t heard of Islam at all , do they get an exemption or are they just unceremoniously tossed into hell ? On that note what would be the case about someone who did hear about Islam but only a distorted version that plays up negative stereotypes and preconceptions?

Please see this previous answer: There are billions of non-Muslims, so how can Islam be the one true path?

IslamQA: Is it permissible to use a credit card to build credit?

Salam, I'm a 19 year old canadian and a few days ago I was kind of pressured into getting a credit card. He said I'll have to start building my credit for my life ahead, mentioning not being able to rent or get housing without a credit score among other things. Since he mentioned that, I'm in a dilemma as to of I should start building credit for my future needs and emergencies or cancel it. Do you have any advise on what I should do about this?

Alaikumassalam wa rahmatullah,

You can use the credit card to build credit. As long as you make sure to pay off the balance before the next statement date, you will not be charged interest, therefore no usury will be involved. Due to the way the banking system works, whether you use a credit or debit card, you are always involved in some sort of usurious transaction. For example, depositing money in a bank allows the bank to lend it at interest to another customer.

You may also use it for emergencies when you are truly desperate.

Reference on the permissibility of using interest-bearing debt for emergencies:

IslamQA: Why does Islam permit cousin marriage?

Salam! Why is permissible in islam to marry one’s cousin/why isn’t it considered incest? Considering the high health risks that could affect the baby?

Alaikumassalam wa rahmatullah,

Islam permits things when prohibiting them would do more harm than good. Sometimes (in an isolated village, for example) the only suitable person for marriage is a cousin. Allowing the marriage despite the risks would be better than requiring the couple to remain celibate. Cousin marriage used to be quite common in Europe until the 20th century. Charles Darwin married his first cousin. Cousin marriage is also far less risky than the Jewish practice of uncle-niece marriages (cousins on average share 12.5% of our genes, while the sharing is 25% between uncles and nieces, and 50% between siblings). 

While cousin marriage can be a burden to the couple due to having children with genetic abnormalities, it can be beneficial to the population as a whole in the long-term. From a scientific article on cousin marriage:

In ‘Consanguinity in Context,’ author and medical geneticist Alan H. Bittles of Murdoch University in Australia examines common misconceptions about cousin marriage from legal, cultural, religious and medical perspectives.

But the risks apply primarily to couples who are carriers of disorders that are normally very, very rare, Bittles explained. “For over 90% of cousin marriages, their risk [of having a child with a genetic abnormality] is the same as it is for the general population,” he said.

One surprising and oft-neglected advantage of marriage between close biological relatives is a phenomenon called purging, in which disease genes are exposed and removed from the gene pool. Thanks to purging, marriage between close relatives in early human populations would have kept the prevalence of genetic disorders low, Bittles explained.

But in the long-term, shrinking family sizes and increased mobility in many parts of the world means that cousin marriage is likely to decline. In the absence of purging, harmful genetic variants could accumulate over time.

“We may be creating a problem for ourselves in future generations,” Bittles said.

And here is a detailed article that shows the risks of cousin marriage are not so clear-cut as is usually thought.

Cousin marriage also has the benefit of creating families that have far more “kin affection” than other families. The children will share more genes with each other. Twins are famous for being especially loving toward their twin siblings. Children born to cousin marriages will be somewhat like that. They will also have far more loving aunts, uncles and grandparents because rather than sharing 25% of their genes with them, they will share something like 35%-40%, so the aunts and uncles and grandparents will treat them almost like their own children. I have seen this in the Middle East where the children of cousin marriages have a very special place in the hearts of their aunts, uncles and grandparents.

So while cousin marriages may not be something to recommend, the risks are not great enough to require prohibiting it if you also consider the benefits.

IslamQA: Does the Quran advocate reading?

Does the word iqra in the quran really mean the quran is advocating people to read and what does God won't not change people unless they change themselves?

iqraʾ is a command that means “read” and “recite”. In many contexts it is used when to mean “read”, for example in Surat al-Alaq (Sura 96) it mentions pens soon after using iqraʾ, and in verse 17:14 it says:

“Read your book; today there will be none but yourself to call you to account.”

But it is not clear if the Quran advocating general reading.

The Quran says God will not change the condition of a people unless they change the condition of their souls. This means that if a people want blessings, peace and ease, then the way to get this is through becoming better people themselves.

IslamQA: Can Muslim women be airline pilots?

Can a woman be a pilot who travels around? She is travelling but for work and is with other staff (flight attendants, cabin crew, other pilots)?

If her faith and dignity are preserved then there is no issue with it, since we do not have any clear statements from the Quran and hadith on such issues and scholars generally use their own reasoning. Whether that work is acceptable or not depends on the specific circumstances of her job. If the staff is full of flirty males then that is different from the staff being polite and reserved. So at the end of the day it is for her to decide whether the job allows her to preserve her faith and dignity or not. Her own personality also matters, some women are more dominant than others and can defend themselves easily, while others are not. It might be perfectly acceptable for a particular woman to work at a job that is not acceptable for a different kind of woman.

IslamQA: If homosexuality is against nature, why do animals engage in it?

If homosexuality is against the rules of nature, why do 1500+ animal species (these are only the ones that have been observed for this purpose yet) exhibit homosexual behaviour?

Homosexuality, adultery, infanticide and murder are normal parts of nature for animals. They are unnatural for creatures that have agency / free will. For humans a desire may be perfectly natural while being immoral if acted upon.

IslamQA: How do I face difficulties in life?

What do you usually do when faced with difficulties and hard problems in life?

Normally people become more religious, pray more and read more Quran when going through a difficult trial. I try to practice Islam in such a way that difficulties do not affect how I do it: I want to always read as much Quran as a person going through great difficulty, regardless of whether I am going through difficulty or not.

So I do not have anything special that I do when faced with difficulties. I want to always live in such a way that I am always ready to face difficulties without having to make any changes.

IslamQA: Is it permissible to read the Quran without wudu and when menstruating?

Should I perform wudu before reading from it? Can I read when I'm going through menstruation?

Reading the Quran without wudu is permissible, but touching a book of Quran without wudu is considered impermissible by most scholars. I’m not entirely convinced by their arguments but just to be safe it is best not to touch an Arabic book of Quran without wudu. This does not apply to reading the Quran from a computer or smartphone; this is allowed even when menstruating. The prohibition on touching a book of Quran without wudu does not apply to translations since they are not considered literal books of Quran.

One can also read from an Arabic book of Quran without wudu and when menstruating as long as they do not touch it, for example if they wear gloves.

References

Weak hadith: “women who are dressed yet naked”, “heads like camel humps”

Below is a hadith found in Sahih Muslim, Ahmad, al-Tabarani and elsewhere:

Abu Huraira reported Allah's Messenger (ﷺ) having said this:

Two are the types of the denizens of Hell whom I did not see: people having flogs like the tails of the ox with them and they would be beating people, and the women who would be dressed but appear to be naked, who would be inclined (to evil) and make their husbands incline towards it. Their heads would be like the humps of the bukht camel inclined to one side. They will not enter Paradise and they would not smell its odor whereas its odor would be smelt from such and such distance.

Sahih Muslim 2128

A person familiar with the study of hadith will immediately sense this hadith to be fabricated; it has the grotesqueness and vagueness that is often found in fabricated hadiths and never found in the highest quality hadiths. And a study of the hadith’s chains of transmitters supports such an impression. Below is a diagram of the hadith’s chains of narrators:

Using probabilistic hadith verification, this hadith receives an authenticity score of 6.72%, which puts it in the inauthentic/weak (ḍaʿīf) category despite being in Sahih Muslim. The main reason is that the hadith comes through the transmitter Suhayl b. Dhakwan, who is a non-hujja, meaning nothing he says can be trusted unless it is backed up by other evidence. But the only authentic evidence we have actually contradicts this hadith, because we have the following in Imam Malik’s hadith collection al-Muwaṭṭaʾ:

Yahya related to me from Malik from Muslim ibn Abi Maryam from Abu Salih that Abu Hurayra said, "Women who are naked even though they are wearing clothes, go astray and make others go astray, and they will not enter the Garden and they will not find its scent, and its scent is experienced from as far as the distance traveled in five hundred years."

Book 48, Hadith 7

Notice that the above hadith is not attributed to the Prophet PBUH, but to Abu Hurayra himself. This hadith is authentic due to having an authenticity score above 30% (36%).

As far as we can tell, this was a statement made by Abu Hurayra that was modified and falsely attributed to the Prophet PBUH. Note that it does not mention flogs or camel humps.

What is Irony? A Unifying Psychological Definition

It is a testament to the sophistication of Western languages that they have a word for irony. None of the Middle Eastern languages I know (Hawrami, Kurdish, Farsi, Arabic) have a word for it. Farsi has wārūneh gūyī (literally “saying the opposite of what is meant”), but this refers to sarcasm and unintended ironical statements.

Below are all examples of irony:

Her heart was as soft as a brick.

She spent years working hard to be a novelist until she gained worldwide renown for winning a poetry prize.

The fire station caught fire.

A serial killer became the victim of a serial killer.

"Let's meet for coffee tomorrow," he said, while the audience knew he would be dead by the evening. [tragic irony]

"My wife is dragging me to this play. Someone please kill me," Abraham Lincoln tweeted.

Someone drank from the Fountain of Youth and died, not knowing that the water had to be boiled first. [from Terry Pratchett's Eric]

What is the thing about all of these that makes them ironical?

Looking up irony on Wikipedia, I saw this:

Henry Watson Fowler, in The King's English, says, "any definition of irony—though hundreds might be given, and very few of them would be accepted—must include this, that the surface meaning and the underlying meaning of what is said are not the same." Also, Eric Partridge, in Usage and Abusage, writes that "Irony consists in stating the contrary of what is meant."

I wasn’t satisfied by any of the definitions of irony given in the Wikipedia article. Meditating on the question, I realized that the problem with defining irony is that linguists expect to find the meaning of irony within the structure of the ironical sentence, image or scene. But I realized that irony is actually a psychological phenomenon:

Irony is anything that attempts to pull your leg by making you expect a certain meaning, giving you a sense of smug self-satisfaction when you recognize the snare and you see the wider meaning.

Irony pulls you in, giving you pleasure when you mentally “pull out”. Thus “as soft as a brick” is ironic because “as soft as” sets you up to expect a proper simile. Once you realize the comparison is with a brick, you mentally pull out of the set up and realize what is going on. This gives you a nice “sense of pride and accomplishment”, as the Electronic Arts spokesperson said.

The fire station being on fire is ironical because the mundane interpretation is that it is just a building on fire. But once you mentally pull out and recognize the wider context, you see the incongruity between a building meant for fighting fire actually being on fire.

Anything ironical has therefore a mundane or naive interpretation (a serial killer is dead) and a wise or wary interpretation (a serial killer is dead by his own category of crime). It is the mental leap from the naive to the wise interpretation that gives us the pleasure of irony.

Tragic irony, as in someone likable in a novel saying “See you tomorrow!” while the author has told us the person is going to die before the day’s end, is the same kind of setup. The difference is that due to feeling sorry for the character, we stop ourselves from feeling the usual smug self-satisfaction at our mental leap. But if we wanted to be unkind, then it would give us exactly the same kind of pleasure as any other kind of irony, as in laughing at Abraham Lincoln’s imaginary tweet asking to be killed.

To give a more technical definition:

Irony is anything that sets you up for a naive interpretation, giving you pleasure when you mentally leap to the wise interpretation.

IslamQA: How does one maintain a strong faith in God?

Salam alaikum. This is a personal question for you, brother. How do you hold onto your belief so firm and sincerely? Do you rely not only to your strong reasoning, but also your intuition to trust the information you gather and the knowledge you have?

Alaikumassalam wa rahmatullah,

I believe our souls have the power to recognize God and to feel His presence. As I write this, all it takes is a tiny bit of effort and I feel God. A connection is established. I believe people lose this ability due to starting to dislike God after suffering losses and hardships. It is a grudge that closes their hearts so that they start to refuse to face God, always refusing to look into that place in their soul where the connection is.

Islam enables me to channel this connection in the right direction, but it is not essential to it. The connection is always there regardless of any thinking. But if I ever rationally doubt Islam, all it takes is reading a few pages of the Quran and all my doubts go away. Reading it, on every page I run into a few verses that clearly could not have been written by a human. It is as if someone wrote a passage that deserves a Nobel Prize in Literature, and did it not just once, but over and over again across 600 pages.

IslamQA: Which one is better: tahajjud or qiyam al-layl?

Asalaam alaikum Which one better between tahajjud and Qiyam layl

Alaikumassalam wa rahmatullah,

Tahajjud is normally considered more virtuous due to it being more difficult, since a person has to interrupt their sleep to do it. But I believe God rewards us based on our efforts, so it depends on each person’s situation. So regardless of whether you perform tahajjud or qiyam, your reward depends on what you do with the time and abilities that God has given you.

IslamQA: Why does Allah let some people suffer so much?

When will my suffering end? it's been long enough since I'm in emotional pain. I think suffering never ends for some people. My mother is a nicest human being anyone would ever meet on the Earth and Allah has tested her through out her life. First she got an abusive husband and because of him one by one all of my mother relatives deserted her. From her parents to her siblings to her cousins to her friends all left her. Why Allah gave her such a life? I think same is going to happen with me. 🙁

There will always be suffering. The difference is that with God our suffering will be meaningful and useful, while without God we suffer pointlessly. Face God and say “I will love You regardless of what You decree for me.” Realize that this entire universe is like a video game maintained by God’s imagination. We are all figments of His imagination. There is no escape from Him. We cannot get away with any evil or sin, He will make us suffer its consequences. Once you acknowledge your utter helplessness before Him, once you offer yourself to Him to do with as He wants, that is when suffering starts to become meaningful.

We need hardship to make us remember our powerlessness and our dependence on Him. But if you do something that always makes you recognize these things without needing hardship, there will no longer be a need for hardship to remind you. Since I started reading the Quran daily for an hour, alhamdulillah all meaningless inconveniences and hardships have left my life. I almost never run into inconveniences like not finding a taxi just when I need one most, or the Internet stopping working in the middle of my work. My life operates like a well-maintained and cleaned machine where almost nothing ever goes wrong.

But my life isn’t empty of suffering. I suffer from multiple chronic illnesses, one of which disables me from getting any work done for weeks at a time, so I cannot hold down a normal job. But God has taken care of my family financially. My inability to work has enabled me to read, which is one of my greatest pleasures. I read 23 books this Ramadan, and I recently finished 4000 pages of C. S. Lewis’s collected letters. My illness prevents me from feeling happiness or joy most of the time, but who cares if I was happy or sad in 2009 if I am a better person because of it now? I would choose a meaningful and beautiful life over a happy life any day.

IslamQA: Is it permissible to marry someone if we do not love them?

Salam brother! As you always say that marriage is an individual's personal matter so cux of some valid reasons I think it's not appropriate for me to get married but at the same time I know very well that getting married is the only way I have, to escape from my toxic parents and purely because of this reason I'm getting married. What Islam says about this? Because if I continued living with my parents I would become severely psychologically ill.

Alaikumassalam wa rahmatullah,

Islam does not require us to marry for love. Many marriages take place due to the couple finding each other good fits due to coming from the same kind of family or having the same degrees. So if you want to marry to get away from your parents, that is perfectly fine. I believe a person is capable of falling in love with almost any person of the opposite sex as long as there isn’t something horribly wrong with the two persons. So regardless of what reason you marry for, as long as both of you are reasonably decent human beings, love always develops.

IslamQA: Islam and GMOs (Genetically Modified Organisms)

Hello, I'm the anon who asked about the homunculus. Thank you for answering my question. I have another question to ask of you. Is GMO, or genetically modified organism, generally a good thing or a bad thing?

Hello,

The Quran speaks against “changing God’s creation”, but as I discuss in my answer on cosmetic surgery, this refers to mutilating living things for superstitious reasons. Islam permits the castration of farm animals, grafting one type of plant onto another, creating new varieties of plants using selective breeding, and hybridization, all of which are major ways of “changing God’s creation”.

My conclusion is that making changes to living things, including genetic changes, is permissible in Islam, as long as it is done for a good reason. I have nothing against genetic modification in itself, although like any tool it can be used to create dangerous and harmful things as well as beneficial things. 

A disease could wipe out all banana trees that bear the kind of bananas we are used to, due to the fact that they are all the same genetically, and genetic modification may be the only way to enable the trees to survive. And one day we may have genetic therapy that can be used to change a person’s genes to cure things like autism and bipolar disorder. 

From a theological point of view, I believe that God created the earth’s creatures through “topological evolution”, which refers to the fact that the shape of the earth, the presence of seas, rivers and mountains, the strength of gravity, and various other factors all went into creating the creatures we know. And since topology is changeable (we are permitted in Islam to remove hills and mountains, dam rivers, create canals that link disconnected seas), this means that the creatures are changeable. Linking two disconnected seas will cause genetic changes to various creatures by changing the topology in which they exist. It was never God’s plan to create changeless creatures, but to create creatures whose genetic code could respond to the environment and change with it. For more on this see my essay: Reconciling Islam and Darwinian Evolution: Al-Ghazali’s Matrix and the Divine Template

IslamQA: Can you pray nightly prayers (tahajjud) if you do not pray other sunnah prayers?

Can you pray nightly prayer even if my usual prayers aren't up to the mark? I usually stay awake at night and I end up thinking maybe I should pray but since I mostly only pray obligatory prayers and not sunnah out of laziness I feel like I can't pray at night? I want to know if there is a ruling about this thank you

You can perform voluntary prayers whenever you want at any time of day or night (except during the few minutes when the sun rising or setting). And if you do not perform the usual sunnah prayers that is all the more reason to perform the night prayers when you feel like it.