Ahmad 7166

Its chain of transmission is sahih. Bukhari narrated it at length, in a manner similar to what is here, 10:323-325, through the route of Abdul-Wahid bin Ziyad from Umara, with this chain. Muslim narrated it 2:163, limiting it to its beginning without mentioning the story of the wudu, through the route of Ibn Fudayl. Bukhari narrated it 13:446, limiting it to only the raised portion, through the route of Ibn Fudayl as well, with this chain. Muslim also narrated it, in the same manner as his first narration, 2:163-164, through the route of Jareer from Umara from him. He did not give its wording but referred to the first narration.His saying "gold" and so on, the Hafiz said, means intended. And his saying "like my creation", the comparison is in the act of forming alone, not in every respect. Ibn Battal said, Abu Hurairah understood that image-making covers both what casts a shadow and what does not, and this is why he denounced what is carved on walls. I say [the speaker is Ibn Hajar], this is apparent from the general wording. It is possible that it is restricted to what casts a shadow, based on his saying "like my creation," for the creation he devised is not an image on a wall but a complete creation. However, the rest of the hadith requires generalizing the rebuke against forming any image at all, which is his saying "let them create a grain, and let them create a speck." "Speck" is with a fatha on the dotted letter and a doubled r. This is answered by saying that what is meant is bringing a grain into real existence, not merely picturing it. In Ibn Fudayl's version there is an addition, "and let them create a barley grain." What is meant by "grain" is a wheat grain, indicated by the mention of barley, or "grain" may be more general. What is meant by "speck" is the ant. The purpose is to render them incapable, sometimes by charging them with creating an animal, which is harder, and other times by charging them with creating an inanimate thing, which is easier, and even so they have no power to do it.The Hafiz had earlier discussed at length the disagreement over whether the prohibition of image-making is specific to what casts a shadow or is more general, and over the depiction of animals and other things, in a valuable discussion at 10:322-323.In our own era, we used to hear about certain prominent people attributed to knowledge, whom we never had the chance to hear from directly, who held the view that all image-making is permissible, including colored statues, seeking to please those masters who wish to erect statues as memorials to their corrupting forefathers, their tyrannical or hypocritical supporters, and then seeking to please European pagan creeds that were imposed upon Egypt and upon the lands of Islam by hostile enemies of Islam. The imitators and the common masses followed them in this, followers of every caller, until the lands of the Muslims were filled with open manifestations of paganism, idols and monuments, and with their veneration and glorification, placing flowers and fragrant herbs upon them, and coming forward before them with the full manifestations of paganism, even placing fires beside them at times.Part of the argument of those who legislated this evil for people at the outset, who permitted erecting statues through false, misleading fatwas, was that they interpreted the texts by tying them to a cause the Lawgiver never mentioned and never made the basis of the prohibition, which, as we have been informed, is that the prohibition was only at first because people were close in time to paganism. But now that a long age has passed since then, the cause of the prohibition has gone, and there is no fear that people will return to worshiping idols! These people forgot what stands before their own eyes as manifestations of true paganism, in seeking closeness to graves and their occupants, and taking refuge in them at times of distress and hardship, and that paganism has returned to permeate hearts without its adherents even realizing it. Indeed, they forgot the explicit texts of the hadiths on the prohibition and its cause!We used to wonder at them over this sterile thinking and linguistic ingenuity. We used to think they had invented a meaning no one had proposed before them, even though it was false, obviously false. Until we later discovered that in their falsehood they were mere imitators, and in their supposed independent reasoning and derivation they were thieves!We found the great Hafiz, the authoritative scholar, Ibn Daqiq Eid, who died in the year 702, relating a saying like theirs and refuting it with the most eloquent refutation and the strongest argument, in his book Ihkam Ahkam Sharh Umdat Ahkam, volume 1, pages 359-361, edited by our brother Hamid Fiqi and reviewed by us, and volume 2, pages 171-173 of the Muniriyyah edition, in his commentary on the hadith of Ayesha, that the Messenger of Allah ﷺ said, "Those people, when a righteous man among them died, would build a masjid over his grave, then form those images in it. Those are the worst of creation before Allah."Ibn Daqiq Eid said, In it is proof of the prohibition of an act like this. The proofs of the Sharia have converged in support of forbidding image-making and images. Whoever says that this is to be understood as merely disliked, and that this severity was in that era because people were close in time to idol worship, whereas this era, in which Islam has spread and its foundations have been established, is not comparable to that in this respect, and so it is not comparable in this severity, this or its equivalent meaning, has gone to the furthest extreme of error. This statement is, in our view, decisively false, because the hadiths have come with reports about the matter of the afterlife, about the punishment of image-makers, and that it will be said to them, "Bring to life what you created." This is a cause different from what this speaker claimed. This has been made explicit in his saying, ﷺ "those who imitate the creation of Allah." This is a general, independent, fitting cause, not restricted to one era over another. It is not for us to interpret texts that converge and support one another by means of some imaginative meaning that might possibly be intended, when the wording itself requires that the reasoning be attributed to something else, namely imitating the creation of Allah.This is what Ibn Daqiq Eid said more than 170 years ago, in refutation of a people who toyed with these texts in his time or before his time. Then these misleading agitators come, along with their ignorant imitators or their destructive atheist followers, and they bring it all back wholesale, playing with the texts of the hadiths just as those before them played with them! Then the effect of these ignorant fatwas was that our lands were filled entirely with manifestations of paganism, statues were erected and the country was filled with them, in honor and glorification of the memory of whoever they were attributed to. Then they tell us, "No glorification was intended by them!" Then they increased in disbelief and paganism, and they made monuments and raised them up in honor of those for whose memory they were made. Monuments do not even fall under the category of image-making, so that their interpretation could apply to them. They are pure, complete paganism, which Allah forbade in His Book with an explicit text that admits no interpretation.Part of the effect of these ignorant fatwas was that the state, while claiming to be an Islamic state within an Islamic nation, established what it called the School of Fine Arts, or the College of Fine Arts. It established an institution for utterly clear and complete immorality. It is enough as proof of this that dissolute young men and women enter it together, mixing without restraint, unrestrained by religion, chastity, or jealous protectiveness, drawing there the immoral images of girls who feel no shame standing naked, sitting naked, and lying down naked, in every immoral posture, displaying the allurements of the body and the hidden features of femininity, concealing nothing and caring about nothing. Then they tell us, "This is art!" May Allah curse them, and curse whoever among them approved of this or kept silent about it. Truly to Allah we belong and to Him we return.As for the wudu of Abu Hurairah and his saying, "This is the extent of the ornament," the Hafiz said in Fath al-Bari 10:325, It is as though he is alluding to the earlier hadith on purification, on the merit of the radiance and the marks on the limbs from wudu, supported by his other hadith, "The believer's ornament reaches as far as his wudu reaches." The discussion of this is given in full there, meaning in Fath al-Bari 1:207-208. There is no connection between what the report indicates, namely the rebuke against image-making, and what he mentioned about Abu Hurairah's wudu. Rather, Abu Zura simply reported what he had witnessed and heard on that occasion.