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INDIVIDUAL
EXAMPLES TO CLARIFY THE
INFALLIBILITY OF THE PROPHETS
A small minority of
Muslim scholars have asserted that the Prophets may have committed sins of an
insignificant type called zalla, meaning ‘error’ or ‘lapse’, and give,
in order to prove their assertion, some examples from the lives of, for
instance, Adam, Noah, Abraham and Joseph, upon them all be peace. Before
elaborating their cases, it should be noted that even if we attribute some
lapses to the Prophets, they are not sins in the meaning of disobedience to God’s
Commandments. The Prophets tended to wait for Revelation when they had a
question to judge. On rare occasions, however, it happened that they would
exercise their own power of reasoning in order to give a judgment as they were
the greatest of mujtahids (jurists of the highest rank who can deduce
laws from the principles established by the Qur’an and the Sunna). They
might sometimes have erred in their judgments or decisions, but such errors,
which were immediately corrected by God, can never be regarded as sins.
Secondly, the Prophets
always sought God’s good pleasure in every instant of their lives and tried to
obtain what was the best in a matter. If they had rarely missed the best but
still caught what was better, this should not be regarded as a sin. For example,
suppose a man has to make a choice: whether he will recite the whole of the Qur’an
in ten days and give due attention to each verse, or he will finish the
recitation in seven days in order to express his deep love of the Word of God.
If that man takes the first option without knowing that God’s greater pleasure
lies in the second, he will obviously not be regarded as having committed a sin.
So, a Prophet’s preference of what is better instead of the best is not a sin,
but because of his position before Him, God might sometimes reproach him mildly.
Now, we had better
clarify some individual examples in the lives of certain Prophets.
THE
PROPHET ADAM, upon him be peace
As is known, Adam was in
the Garden before his worldly life. While in the Garden, God commanded him and
Eve not to eat of the fruit of a particular tree. Then, after they ate of it,
they were expelled from the Garden and commanded to live on earth.
Although interpreters of
the Qur’an have offered different views on what the prohibited fruit was, it
was most probably human inclination towards the opposite sex. Satan approached
Adam and Eve and argued that it was a tree of eternity and of a kingdom that
would never decay, the fruit of which had been prohibited to them (Ta Ha,
20:120). Most probably knowing that they were mortal, Adam and Eve must have
desired eternity through offspring. This can also be deduced from the verses:
Then Satan whispered to them so that he might manifest to them that which was
hidden from them of their shame, and he said: ‘Your Lord forbade you this tree
only lest you should become angels or become immortals.’ And he swore to them
(saying): ‘Truly, I am a sincere adviser to you.’ Thus did he lead them by a
deceit; and when they tasted of the tree their shame was manifest to them and
they began to cover (by heaping) on themselves some of the leaves of the
Garden...(al-A’raf, 7. 20-2). The intuition of, and desire for,
eternity are intrinsic to man.
Even if we accept Adam’s
eating of the forbidden fruit as a lapse, it is difficult to regard it as a
deliberate or sustained disobedience, that is, a revolt against God, which may
lead us to see the Prophets as fallible. First of all, Adam was not a Prophet
while in the Garden. Secondly, this lapse of Adam was the result of not willful
disobedience, but merely some sort of forgetfulness. Concerning this, the Qur’an
says:
We had made a
covenant with Adam before, but he forgot, and we found on his part no firm
resolve. (Ta Ha, 20.115)
Sins committed because of
forgetfulness will not be accounted for in the Hereafter. The Prophet said:
My community are exempted
from being questioned about forgetting, unintentional errors, and what they are
compelled to do, not of their will.11
The Qur’an teaches us
this prayer:
Our Lord! Condemn
us not if we forget or fall into error. ( al-Baqara, 2.286)
Adam did not make this
lapse deliberately. Although some have misinterpreted the verse above to suggest
that Adam was not determined to fulfill the covenant God had made with him, the
context does not allow such an interpretation. For Adam and Eve turned to God
immediately after their lapse in sincere repentance and entreated Him, saying:
Our Lord! We have
wronged our own selves! If you forgive us not and bestow not upon us Your
Mercy, we shall certainly be among those who are lost. (al-A’raf,
7.23)
Destiny had a part in
Adam’s lapse. God had destined him to be His vicegerent on earth, before his
creation and settlement in the Garden. This is explicit in the Qur’an:
Behold, your Lord
said to the angels: ‘I will make a vicegerent on earth.’ They said:
‘Will you make therein one who will make mischief therein and shed
blood, whilst we do celebrate Your praises and glorify You?’ He said:
‘I know what you know not.’ (al-Baqara, 2.30)
God’s Messenger, upon
him be peace and blessings, also points to that truth, saying:
Adam and Moses met
each other in the Heaven. Moses said to Adam: ‘You are the father of
mankind, but you caused us to come down to earth from the Garden.’ Adam
replied to him: ‘You are the one whom God addressed directly. Did you
not see this sentence in the Torah: “Adam had been destined to eat of
that fruit forty years before he ate of it?” After reporting this
meeting, God’s Messenger added three times: “Adam silenced Moses.”12
The life of Adam in the
Garden and the trial he underwent were preliminaries he had to pass through
before his earthly life. He passed all the tests to which he was put and, being
chosen and saved from being lost in the swamp of sins and deviation, was made a
Prophet and honored with being made the father of thousands of Prophets,
including the pride of mankind - the Prophet Muhammad - and millions of saints:
Then his Lord chose him;
He relented towards him, and rightly guided him. (Ta Ha, 20.122)
THE
PROPHET NOAH, upon him be peace
The Prophet Noah called
his people to the religion of God for nine hundred and fifty years. When his
people insisted on unbelief and persisted in their wrongdoings, God ordered him
to build an ark. After completing the construction of the ship, Noah embarked in
it, upon God’s command, of each kind two, male and female, and his family -
except those against whom the Word (of punishment) had already gone forth, - and
the believers (Hud, 11.40).
When the Ark was floating
through the waves towering like mountains, Noah saw one of his sons separated
from the believers and called out to him to get into the Ark, but his son
rejected his call, saying: “I will betake myself to some mountain and it will
save me from the water” (Hud, 11.43). When Noah saw his son drowning,
he called out to God, saying:
My Lord! My son is
of my family! And Your promise is true and You are the Most Just of
Judges! (Hud, 11.45)
God Almighty replied to
Noah:
O Noah! He is not
of your family. For his conduct is unrighteous. So ask not of me that of
which you have no knowledge! I give you counsel lest you should act like
the ignorant! (Hud, 11.46)
Some scholars have
regarded the appeal of Noah to God as a sin. However, it is difficult to agree
with them. For the Prophet Noah, who is mentioned in the Qur’an as one of the
five greatest Prophets, described as being resolute and steadfast, thought his
son to be a believer. It is well known that in the religion of God, it is
essential to judge according to outward appearances. That is, if a man professes
belief and apparently performs the religious duties of primary importance like
the prescribed prayers and alms-giving (zakat), he is treated as a
believer. It is for this reason that our Prophet, upon him be peace and
blessings, treated the hypocrites as if they were Muslims. So, the son of Noah
was most probably one who succeeded in hiding his unbelief until the Flood, for
it was Noah himself who had prayed God beforehand that He should forgive him,
his parents, and all who entered his house in faith, and all believing men and
believing women, and grant to the wrongdoers no increase but perdition (Nuh,
71:28).
God had accepted his
prayer and ordered him to embark in the Ark also his family, except those
against whom the Word (of punishment) had already gone forth. Noah’s wife was
among those who were drowned, but Noah did not appeal to God to save her, as he
knew, or was informed beforehand, that she was an unbeliever. He must have
thought his son to be a believer so that he felt the need to express, in a
manner becoming to a Prophet, his astonishment that God had let him drown. To
this, God replied, saying:
He is not of your
family. For his conduct is unrighteous. So ask not of me that of which you
have no knowledge! I give you counsel lest you act like the ignorant! (Hud,
11.46)
The Prophet Noah, upon
him be peace, was, like every other Prophet, kind-hearted and caring. Every
Prophet sacrificed himself for the good of humanity and made tireless efforts so
that they could be guided to truth and attain true happiness in both worlds. God
says concerning the Last Prophet’s attitude in this respect:
You would nearly
kill yourself to death, following after them, in grief, if they believe
not in this Message. (al-Kahf, 18.6)
The Prophet Noah, upon
him be peace, called his people to that Message for 950 years. He never showed
signs of tiredness during this long period. It is natural for a Prophet, a
father, to show disappointment when he comes to know that his son is among the
unbelievers who have been condemned to punishment in both worlds. But, since God
Almighty is the Most Just of Judges and the Most Compassionate of the
Compassionate, the Prophet Noah immediately turned to Him and sought refuge with
Him, lest he should ask Him for that of which he had no knowledge:
O my Lord! I do
seek refuge with you, lest I should ask You for that of which I have no
knowledge. And unless You forgive me and have mercy on me, I should indeed
be lost! (Hud, 11.47)
THE
PROPHET ABRAHAM, upon him be peace
Abraham was one of the
greatest Prophets, one who was called ‘the intimate friend of God’. God’s
Messenger took pride and pleasure in his connection with him, saying: I am the
one whose coming Abraham prayed for and Jesus gave glad tidings of, and I
resemble my forefather Abraham more than anyone else.13 He was thrown into fire
because of his belief in One God, and the fire became, by God’s Will and
Power, coolness and a means of safety for him.
Abraham, like the other
Prophets, never worshipped, nor thought of worshipping, idols in any phase of
his life. Despite this fact, some erroneous and untrue stories have
unfortunately found their way into some Qur’anic commentaries. They have come
from a misunderstanding of the following verses:
When the night
covered him over, he saw a star: He said, ‘This is my lord’. But when
it set, he said, ‘I love not those that set.’ When he saw the moon
rising in splendour, he said, ‘This is my lord’. But when it set, he
said, ‘Unless my Lord guided me, I would surely be among those who go
astray’. When he saw the sun rising in splendour, he said, ‘This is my
lord; this is the greatest (of all).’ But when the sun set, he said: ‘O
my people! I am indeed free from your ascribing partners to God. For me, I
have set my face towards Him who created the heavens and the earth, as a
man of pure faith and one by nature upright, and I am not among those who
associate partners with God’. (al-An’am, 6. 76-9)
These verses clearly show
that Abraham tried, by way of analogy, to convince his people that none of the
heavenly bodies was worthy to be believed in or worshipped as God. Historically,
Abraham lived among the Chaldeans in northern Mesopotamia, a people very
knowledgeable about heavenly bodies and who worshipped them along with many
other idols. Abraham first argued with his father that the idols could not be
worthy to worship, as explicitly stated in the verse preceding those cited
above:
Abraham once said
to his father Azar: ‘Do you take idols for gods? Surely I see you and
your people in manifest deviation.’ (al-An’am, 6. 74)
Since Azar was the maker
of the idols for his people to worship, Abraham, upon him be peace, had started
his mission by opposing him. After that, he turned his attention to his people
to guide them to the truth. Since they had great knowledge of heavenly bodies,
God would instruct him in matters concerning them and showed him the
metaphysical realities behind them so that he might attain certainty of the
highest degree with respect to the truths of belief and convince his people of
their deviation:
So also did We show
Abraham the inner dimensions of, and the metaphysical realities behind,
the heavens and the earth, that he might have certainty. (al-An’am,
6. 75)
While traveling in mind
and heart through heavenly bodies, Abraham began by saying in front of his
people that a star could not be God because it sets. Although the superstitious
might read fortunes into it or attribute some influence to it, true knowledge
shows that it rises and sets according to the laws authored by God, and its
light is extinguished in the broader light of day, so worshipping it is futile.
Abraham took a second
step in his analogy to guide his people to the truth and showed that, although
looking brighter and bigger than the star, the moon could not be God either
because, besides setting like the star, it changes its shape from hour to hour,
and depends for its light on some other body. At this point, Abraham openly
declared that he had already been guided by his Lord, and that those who did not
worship Him alone were among those that went astray.
The last blow which
Abraham struck was to show that the sun could not be worshipped as God either
because, despite its size and light, it also disappears from sight, and
therefore it was folly to worship created phenomena. After rejecting the worship
of creation, Abraham declared his faith:
I have set my face
towards Him who created the heavens and the earth, as a man of pure faith
and one by nature upright, and I am not among those who associate partners
with God. (al-An’am, 6.79)
So, it is sheer illusion
and a great mistake to infer from the verses above that Abraham took heavenly
bodies as God in the early phase of his life.
Abraham’s
appealing to God to show him how He revives the dead
The second point regarded
as a fault or lapse on the part of Abraham is that he appealed to God to show
him how He revives the dead. Concerning this, the Qur’an says:
Behold! Abraham
said: ‘My Lord! Show me how You give life to the dead.’ He said: ‘Do
you not believe?’ He said: ‘Yes indeed, but to set my heart at rest.’
(al-Baqara, 2.260)
In a hadith, God’s
Messenger, upon him be peace and blessings, says that there are seventy thousand
veils separating God from man. This implies that man’s journey towards God is
endless and people have different degrees of knowledge and understanding and
varying capacities for spiritual and intellectual satisfaction. Since God
Almighty is infinite, unbounded with all His Attributes and Names, each man can
obtain only some knowledge of Him and attain some degree of satisfaction
according to his capacity. The Prophet Abraham, upon him be peace, had one of
the greatest capacities and therefore needed to increase in knowledge of God
every day in order to get full spiritual satisfaction. The Prophets were, like
every other human being, in constant spiritual and intellectual growth and,
regarding each of their previous stages of growth as inadequate in knowledge of
God and satisfaction, they incessantly pursued a further degree of conviction.
For this reason, God’s Messenger, upon him be peace and blessings, asked God’s
forgiveness about a hundred times a day and frequently entreated Him, saying:
Glory be to You, we
have not been able to know You as Your knowledge requires, O Known One!
Glory be to You, we
have not been able to worship You as Your worship requires, O Worshipped
One!
Once, Muhyi al-Din ibn
al-’Arabi encountered Mawlana Jalal al-Din al-Rumi and asked him:
- Who is greater?
The Prophet Muhammad, who says, ‘Glory be to You, we have not been able
to know You as Your knowledge requires, O Known One !’, or Bayazid al-Bistami,
who says [in an instance of entranced ecstasy], ‘Glory be to me, how
exalted I am!’?
The reply which Mawlana
gave is also a reply to those who dare to find fault with Prophet Abraham, upon
him be peace:
- Both of these
utterances show to what extent our Prophet is greater than Bayazid. For
the heart or soul of our Prophet was like an ocean so deep and vast that
it was impossible to be satisfied. But the soul of Bayazid was, in
comparison with our Prophet’s, like an ewer, easy to fill and quick to
overflow.14
In order to remove any
possible doubt concerning Abraham’s conviction, God’s Messenger once said:
If Abraham’s were a doubt, we are more liable to doubt than him.15
Abraham’s
allusions
In his whole life spent
in constant struggle with unbelief and polytheism, the Prophet Abraham, upon him
be peace, spoke allusively on only three occasions. That is, in order to either
shun the harassment of unbelievers or explain to them a religious truth more
simply, he chose to divert the attention of his addressees to something else by
indirect reference to the truth. Since, however, some scholars have
misinterpreted those allusions to be lies, I feel it is necessary to clarify
them:
1.
When his people wanted him to accompany them to their religious celebration, he
cast a glance at the stars and said that he was sick.
Abraham was not bodily
sick, but the grief was preying on his mind and soul that he might be associated
with the falsehoods of his people. It was impossible for him to worship idols;
rather, he was determined to destroy them. So, in order to avoid participating
in their ceremonies, he told them that he was sick and when they had left him,
he struck their idols down and broke them.
In saying he was sick,
Abraham certainly did not lie, for what he meant was that he was sick of their
idols and idol-worship. It is because he was sick of the idols, truly, that as
soon as they departed, he turned to the idols and broke them. The Qur’an
praises him for this deed:
Surely among those
who followed his (Noah’s) way was Abraham. Behold, he came unto his Lord
with a pure, sound heart. Behold, he said to his father and to his people,
‘What is it that you worship? Is it a falsehood - gods other than God -
that you desire? What then is your opinion of the Lord of the Worlds?’
Then he cast a glance at the stars, and he said, ‘I am indeed sick!’
So they turned away from him, and departed. Then he turned to their gods
and said, ‘Will you not eat [of the offerings before you]? What is the
matter with you that you speak not?’ Then he turned upon them, striking
them with might (and breaking them). (al-Saffat, 37.83-93)
2.
The second allusion of Abraham is mentioned in the following verses:
We bestowed on
Abraham his rectitude before, and We were well acquainted with him.
Behold! He said to his father and his people, ‘What are these images, to
which you are (so assiduously) devoted in worship?’ They said, ‘We
found our fathers worshipping them’. He said, ‘Indeed you have been in
manifest deviation - you and your fathers.’ They said, ‘Have you
brought us the truth, or are you one of those who jest?’ He said, ‘Nay,
your Lord is the Lord of the heavens and the earth, He who created them.
And I am a witness [to this truth]. By God, I have a plan for your idols
after you go away and turn your backs.’ So he broke them to pieces,
(all) but the biggest of them, that they might turn to it. They said, ‘Who
has done this to our gods? He must indeed be some evil-doer!’ They said,
‘We have heard a youth talk of them: he is called Abraham.’ They said,
‘Then bring him before the eyes of the people, that they may bear
witness.’ They said, ‘Are you the one who did this to our gods, O
Abraham?’ He said, ‘Nay, he did it - this is their biggest one! Ask
them, if they can speak!’ (al-Anbiya’, 21.51-63)
Some think that Abraham
told a lie by saying, ‘Nay, he did it - this is their biggest one!’ The
truth is that Abraham is using here a biting irony. What Abraham wanted was
precisely that the people should understand that things that do not speak and
can be of neither any good or harm to them were not to be worshipped. He
succeeded, and his people, dumbfounded by his reasoning, could find no way out
other than throwing him into the fire to protect their ‘gods’.
Abraham did not say that
the idols had been broken by the biggest of them. Rather, in reply to their
question, ‘Are you the one that did this to our gods, O Abraham?’, he said,
‘He did it’ and stopped - there is a significant stop in the reading of the
verse - and then he continued: ‘This is their biggest one!’. Therefore, by
the phrase, ‘He did it’, he alluded to the one who broke the idols, but
diverted the attention of the people to the biggest one by continuing, ‘This
is their biggest one!’
Once, God’s Messenger,
upon him be peace and blessings, said to an old woman, The old will not enter
Paradise.. When he saw that the old woman was distressed by his irony, he
clarified: Because they will enter it as young people.16 This is, in one way,
similar to what Abraham did for some important purpose, and it was not therefore
a lie.
3.
In a hadith, and also in the Bible, we read that Abraham, upon him be peace,
wanted his wife, Sarah to say, if asked who she was, that she was his sister,
not his wife.17 According to the Bible, Abraham did this because he would have
been killed because of her. This too, is also not a lie, as the other allusions
of Abraham mentioned above are not lies, in that, as declared in the Qur’an,
all the believers are indeed brothers or sisters to each other.
In conclusion, Abraham,
upon him be peace, never lied. If he had lied, he would certainly have been
reproached by God, but there is not a single reference in the Qur’an to God
having reproached him for lying. On the contrary, his allusions mentioned above
are mentioned where he is praised in the Qur’an by God. For this reason, the
Prophetic Tradition about those allusions should not be treated literally.
Abraham’s
prayer for his father
Abraham’s father, Azar,
was the man among his people who shaped idols out of wood or stones. Abraham
started his mission by calling him to desist from idol-worship and turn towards
God, the Creator of the heavens and the earth. When he encountered the
inexplicable opposition of his father, he left him, saying: ‘I will pray for
forgiveness for you,’ and because of this promise, he asked God’s pardon for
him, saying, ‘Forgive my father, for that he is one of those who go astray!’(Shu’ara,
26.86).
Some have regarded
Abraham’s asking God’s forgiveness for his father as a lapse, as his father
was an unbeliever. However, it is difficult to regard it as a lapse. For, first
of all, Abraham was a Prophet deputed by God to call people to the truth and
salvation. Like every Prophet, he was so caring towards all of God’s servants
that he grieved himself to death if they did not follow God’s way to happiness
and salvation in both worlds. We can discern in the following verses to what
extent he desired his father’s guidance:
(Also) mention in
the Book (the story of) Abraham: He was a man of truth, a Prophet. Behold,
he said to his father: ‘My father, why worship you that which hears not
and sees not, and can profit you nothing? My father, surely there has come
to me the knowledge which has not reached you, so follow me; I will guide
you to a straight, even way. O my father, serve not Satan, for Satan is a
rebel against the Most Merciful. O my father, I fear lest a penalty
afflict you from the Most Merciful, so that you become a friend to Satan.’
(Maryam, 19.41-45)
It was Abraham’s duty
to call them to worship the One God regardless of their persistent rejection.
Although the Qur’an openly stated that As to those who unbelieve, it is the
same to them whether you warn them or not, for they will not believe (al-Baqara,
2.6), God’s Messenger never gave up warning them. Besides calling his father
to the truth, Abraham prayed for his father until, as stated in the Qur’an, it
became clear to him that his father was an enemy to God. When Abraham was
convinced that his father was an enemy to God, he dissociated himself from him (al-Tawba,
9.114). God Almighty mentions this not as a lapse on Abraham’s part, but as a
virtue, saying: For Abraham was most tender-hearted, forbearing. He also
introduces Abraham’s conduct as an excellent example to follow:
There is for you an
excellent example (to follow) in Abraham and those with him. They said to
their people: ‘We are clear of you and whatever you worship besides God.
We have rejected you, and there has arisen enmity and hatred forever
between us and you, unless you believe in God and Him alone.’ But
Abraham said to his father: ‘I will pray for forgiveness for you,
although I have no power (to get) anything on your behalf from God.’ -
‘Our Lord! In You we have put our trust, and to You we turn in
repentance; to You is the final return.’ (al-Mumtahana, 60.4)
As indicated above,
Abraham’s prayer for his father was because of a promise he had made to him (al-Tawba,
9.114), and when it became clear to him that his father was an enemy to God, he
dissociated himself from him and gave up praying for his forgiveness.
It should finally be
noted here that some interpreters of the Qur’an do not accept that Azar was
the father of Abraham. Although it is not a defect on the part of Abraham to
descend from an unbelieving father, for God Almighty brings forth the living out
of the dead, and brings forth the dead out of the living (Al ‘Imran, 3.27),
the Qur’an always uses for Azar the word, Ab, meaning also uncle, step-father
or foster-father or grandfather. Although the Prophet Abraham was prohibited to
ask forgiveness for Azar, we see in the Qur’an that he asked forgiveness for
his parents in his old age, saying: Our Lord! Forgive me, my parents, and all
believers on the day that the Reckoning will be established’ (Abraham, 14.41).
In this prayer, he uses the word, walid for father, meaning the one who begets
him. It is therefore a strong probability that Azar was not his father who begot
him. According to the Bible, the real father of Abraham was Terah. However, God
knows best.
THE
PROPHET JOSEPH, upon him be peace
The Prophet Joseph is
exalted in the Qur’an as an example of chastity. In his childhood, he was
envied by his brothers and thrown into a well. A caravan passing by found him
and later sold him as a slave to a high official, probably a minister, of the
Egyptian court, whose name is mentioned in the Bible as Potiphar.
The Prophet Joseph, upon
him be peace, descended from a family of Prophets. When someone told God’s
Messenger that he was a noble man, the Messenger, upon him be peace and
blessings, alluded to this fact, saying: The noble one, son of a noble one
who is the son of a noble one who is the son of a noble one - this is Joseph,
the son of Jacob, who is the son of Isaac, who is the son of Abraham, the
intimate friend of God.18 Joseph was still a child in the well, when God
revealed to him that he would one day tell his brothers the truth of what they
had done (Yusuf, 12.15). Therefore, he was, from the beginning, closed,
protected from any kind of vice.
Joseph, upon him be
peace, was an exceptionally handsome young man when the lady of the house fell
in love with him. In the words of the ladies of the capital city, quoted by the
Qur’an, Joseph ‘inspired her with violent love’ (Yusuf, 12.30). In
order to seduce him, she fastened the doors one day and called to Joseph, ‘Now
come, you (dear one)!’ Joseph, whom God Almighty had granted knowledge, sound
judgment and discernment, replied unhesitatingly: God forbid! Truly my Lord
has treated me honorably. Assuredly, wrongdoers never prosper (Yusuf,
12.23).
The Prophet Joseph, upon
him be peace, had already attained the rank of ihsan, described by God’s
Messenger as ‘one’s worshipping God as if he were seeing God in front of him’.
That is, he felt, at every instant of his life, that he was under the
supervision of God Almighty. He was also one made sincere, pure-hearted and of
pure intentions by God. Therefore, it was inconceivable that he would betray God’s
blessings on him by agreeing to what he was invited. If - God forbid - he had
conceived of taking even a single step toward what the lady invited him to do,
he would have been a wrongdoer. Or, if he meant his master by ‘my lord’,
then he would still have done nothing to betray his trust in him; if he had done
so, he would, again, have been a wrongdoer.
So, Joseph refused the
lady’s suggestion without hesitation. While narrating the rest of the story,
the Qur’an says:
Certainly, she
burnt inwardly because of him; and he burnt inwardly because of her until
he saw the evidence of his Lord: thus We did that we might turn away from
him all evil and shameful deeds. For he was one of Our servants, made
beforehand sincere and pure. (Yusuf, 12:24)
The sentence translated
here as she burnt inwardly because of him; and he burnt inwardly because of her
until he saw the evidence of his Lord, has unfortunately been misunderstood by
some interpreters of the Qur’an to mean ‘she desired, and was moved towards
him; and he desired, and was moved towards her, but just at that point he saw
the evidence of his Lord and stopped’. Some have, in interpreting the ‘evidence
of God’ which Joseph saw, even gone so far as to invent a story that Jacob
appeared with his hand on his lips and saved his son from committing a grave
sin. This is, however, besides being a misunderstanding of the worst kind, a
slander against a Prophet who was honored and presented by God as ‘a most
excellent model of chastity’, and by God’s Messenger as the noblest of all.
In order to clarify the point and remove such doubts, we should concentrate on
the meaning of the verb, hamma, which we have translated literally ‘to
burn inwardly’, and which has confused the interpreters mentioned earlier.
Hamma
literally means ‘to suffer, burn and be troubled inwardly and to be consumed
with passion and longing’. There is a principle in the sciences of morphology
and semantics that the first and most common meaning of a word is preferred
unless an inconsistency or inconformity appears in the context. This principle,
together with two other principles to be explained below, allow us no way other
than to take hamma in its first meaning:
1. Joseph and his
lady were worlds apart from each other with respect to their beliefs,
ambitions, characters and ways of life. Therefore, each had suffering and
anxiety of his or her own, and each was being consumed with completely
different ambitions.
2. The verse
containing the verb hamma is a parenthetical one explaining the
virtue of belief and sincerity, which bring God’s special favor and
protection. It is not there merely as a part of the story. It should also
be noted that there are stops after each phrase to show that they do not
link a chain of events, but express three different realities. In this
case, the exact meaning of the verse will be as follows:
‘Truly, the woman was
burning inwardly because of her love for Joseph. As for Joseph, he got into a
great trouble because of the woman; his chastity, good character and reputation
might have been damaged. He had to find a way out to escape that situation. At
this juncture, God’s evidence - His protection, or something else - came to
his aid and turned all evil away from him, because he was among those servants
of God made by Him sincere and pure. He was not mukhlis, one purified and
who attained sincerity as a result of self-discipline and spiritual training,
but he was mukhlas, one favored by God with utmost sincerity and purity.
There is another point
worth mentioning here that the verb hamma in the verse in question does
not express ‘starting an action’. Because, we read in the previous verse
that the woman had already started the action: she fastened the door and called
Joseph to come to her. But Joseph refused. So, to take the verb hamma in
the meaning of ‘to start towards’ for both Joseph and the woman, will be
contradictory to the previous verse, as well as to the next one which comes to
describe the rest of the story: So they both hurried to the door, and she tore
his shirt from the back. It is clear in this verse that the Prophet Joseph first
hurried to the door to escape, and the woman ran after him to catch him, and
tore his shirt from the back.
Some, however, have
suggested that the woman desired Joseph, and Joseph might have had a desire for
her if he had not seen the evidence of his Lord. Since he had been protected
from the beginning against sins, he did not have any desire for the woman. In
either case, the Prophet Joseph did not feel any inclination towards the woman
and therefore did nothing to start towards her. In conclusion, like every other
Prophet, he too, was infallible.
11. For different versions of the hadith,
see, Bukhari, “Hudud,” 22; Abu Dawud, “Hudud,” 17; Tirmidhi, “Hudud,”
1; Ibn Maja, “Talaq,” 15,16.
12. Bukhari, “Tafsir,”
3; Tirmidhi, “Qadar,” 2; Ibn Hanbal, 2.287, 314.
13. Muslim, “Iman,”
271.
14. Mulla Jami’ Nafahat
al-Uns, 521.
15. Bukhari, “Anbiya’,”
11.
16. Ibn Kathir, Shama’il,
84-5.
17. Bukhari, “Anbiya’,”
8; Muslim, “Fada’il,” 154
18. Bukhari, “Anbiya’,”
21.19; Ibn Hanbal, 2.96, 332.
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