DR. ABDUL KARIM ZAIDAN PRESENTED THE BOOK "THE CORRECT SAYING ON APPOINTING THE SACRIFICE "

  The book (The Correct Saying Concerning the Appointment of the Sacrifice) was written by the Iraqi preacher, Professor Muhammad Sa`id Salih Muhammad al-Ani, may God have mercy on him. He is our master Ismail, not our master Isaac, may God be pleased with them, as some claim .

For the benefit of the site, it publishes Sheikh Abdul Karim Zaidan's introduction to this book, which included many clarifications and digressions about the title and content of the book .

Note: The translation below may need revision... We welcome any correction by emailing us

Praise be to God, Lord of the worlds, and may blessings and peace be upon our master Muhammad and his family and companions. And after :

1) For God Almighty revealed His great book to our Prophet Muhammad ﷺTo enlighten it in the paths of life and evaluate its meanings on the affairs of our life and our bond with our Lord and worship Him, glory be to Him, by the methods that He prescribed for us in the Great Qur’an, and all this necessarily requires contemplating His verses, understanding its meanings and knowing its rulings, and all this does not take long. Only with the correct interpretation of his verses .

2)  One of the best and correct methods of interpretation, as Imam Ibn Katheer says, is to interpret the Qur’an with the Qur’an. If you do not find such an interpretation, we turn to the purified Prophet’s Sunnah because it explains the Qur’an, clarifies it, and explains its meanings. And our Prophet Muhammad said , الا (Except that I have attained the Qur’an and the like), meaning the Sunnah .

3)  If we did not find the interpretation in the Qur’an or in the Sunnah, we went back to the sayings of the Companions because, God was pleased with them, they knew more than others of the meanings of the Qur’an and its interpretation of what they saw of the circumstances and conditions for which the Qur’an was revealed or to deal with them, and what they gained from their companionship with the Prophet of knowledge of the goals of the law and its meaning The Qur’anic verses, and because of their quality of mind, good awareness, purity of compassion and depth of faith, all of this definitely helps them to know the correctness of the meaning of the verses and what is meant by them, and then the interpretation of the Companions transmitted from them had great value, especially the one quoted from the well-known and well-known caliphs in jurisprudence and science such as Abdullah bin Masoud and Abdullah Ibn Abbas, whom the Messenger of God called for, where he said (God is the jurisprudence of religion and taught him interpretation ).

4) If we did not find the interpretation in the Qur’an, nor in the Sunnah, or in the sayings of the Companions, then many imams preferred to refer to the sayings of the followers who are known for their knowledge, know-how and understanding, like Imam Mujahid who received the interpretation of the Qur’an from Abdullah bin Abbas until it became a verse in the interpretation and a reference in it. That is why Imam Sufyan said Al-Thawri, if the explanation came to you from Mujahid .

Among the famous followers of Tafsir are Saeed bin Jubayr, Ikrimah, the freed slave of Ibn Abbas, Ataa Ibn Abi Rabah, Hasan al-Basri, and many others .

5)  With the clarity and soundness of the approach that we have presented in the interpretation of the Qur’an, however, we see in the folds of the Qur’an interpretations some hadiths and sayings that are known as Israeli women, which were received by some of the commentators on the authority of the People of the Book, especially the Jews, so that some people marvel at this act, and perhaps some of them compounded anger to So much so that they raised doubts about the intentions of those commentators, who crammed many Israeli women into their interpretation .

6)  In fact, some commentators have more than mentioned the Israeli women and the narration of the sayings of the People of the Book as they interpret in the Book of God, and they did not need this, but it is a danger in their actions because the scholars warned about the places of error in what these commentators mentioned from the sayings of the People of the Book. Most of these Israeli women, which some commentators were keen to include in their interpretations, were related to some aspects of the Quranic stories that the Holy Qur’an beautified, such as the owners of the cave and their conditions before they took refuge in the cave, the location of the cave and the color of their dog, and like Moses’s stick from which trees it was, and the names of the birds that God revived. Exalted be to Abraham, peace be upon him, and the same length or capacity of Noah’s Ark, peace be upon him, and the type of its wood, and the name of the boy who was killed by Al-Khader, and (some) with which Moses, peace be upon him, struck from the cow to other than what the Holy Qur’an neglected, which is useless in appointing him to those responsible In their world or in their religion .

7) But we ask here about the permissibility or inadmissibility of mentioning Israeli women in the interpretation of the century? ... And the answer needs some detail, because the narration of the sayings of the People of the Book in some of what the Holy Qur’an covered and talked about has become permissible with conditions after it was forbidden in the beginning. It came in the authentic hadith on the authority of the Prophet ﷺthat he said: (Report me even if a verse And they talked about the children of Israel and there is no problem.) And the meaning of the hadith related to the hadith about the children of Israel is that there is no constraint for you to talk about the Children of Israel because it had already been mentioned about it Forbade to take from them and look at their books, and this prohibition was before the establishment of Islamic rulings and religious rules, then the permission came And permissibility in the narration about them and the narration of their sayings when hearing the news that was in their time of consideration. As for the scope of this license in the narration of the sayings of the People of the Book, Imam Malik said that it is permissible to update them on what was a good thing, but what he knows is a lie, it is not permissible to transfer it from them. Imam Al-Shafi’i said: (It is known that the Prophet does not permit speaking falsehood, the meaning is, Then tell the children of Israel about what you do not know a lie .)

Imam Ibn Taymiyyah, may God Almighty have mercy on him, said that the Israeli hadiths mention martyrdom, not belief, and that it has three parts :

( The First Section) What we have learned from the Qur’an and Sunnah from the Qur’an and Sunnah is what we know to be authentic, then that is true .

( Section Two) What we have learned of a lie in terms of the Qur’an and Sunnah, that is an untrue lie .

( The third section) What is silent about it is not from one of the previous two sections. This section does not believe it or deny it, and it is permissible to narrate it according to the previous noble hadith, and for his saying (Do not believe the People of the Book and do not deny them. If what they tell you about is likely to be true and false, do not believe them or lie to them .

But it must be known that the prohibition did not stem from their denial of what was stated in our law to the contrary, and indicated the falsehood that was reported about them .

8) It is oncluded for us from all the foregoing that the transmission of the People of the Book is a permissible matter if we know its validity according to our Sharia, or we do not know its truthfulness or a lie, provided that we do not believe it or deny it .

9)  Among the things that some of the Israeli commentators mentioned in the story of the slaughter of Abraham, peace be upon him, for his son, they said that the sacrifice is Isaac, not Ishmael. Also, some reports from the People of the Book state, refer, or imply that the sacrifice is Ismail, and for this creation in the reports on the People of the Book, many commentators disagreed. Some of them went to the sacrifice is Isaac, and some went to the fact that the sacrifice was Ishmael and some of them stopped. Health of what they went to. It was necessary for all commentators to have gone to this opinion or to this saying because of the correctness in this issue .

However, the excuse for those who stop giving preference to one of the two sayings on the question of who is the sacrifice, Ishmael or Isaac, is that there is a possibility for the aspect of each of the two sayings, and with the possibility, the weight is not in their view .

As for the excuse of the one who prefers that the sacrifice is Isaac, it is that the Qur’an did not explicitly and categorically state that the sacrifice is Ishmael, and since the People of the Book claim that the sacrifice is Isaac and their claim this is likely to be truthful and false, so their truthfulness is preferred - according to their view - with the Qur’an not explicitly stated that The sacrifice is Ismail. I say that the preponderance of what the People of the Book said - according to some of the commentators - is the first .

10)  But in fact, what we have apologized to to those who stop weighing and to those who are likely to be sacrificed are Isaac. The sacrificial animal is Ismail, and it is supported by the hadiths of the Prophet and some news of the People of the Book. This amount of evidence is sufficient to say that the sacrifice is Ismail. As for the existence of a weak possibility, unlike this apparent preponderance, it should not be considered because it is by virtue of nullity because of his extreme weakness .

11) And this message to which we present this introduction has collected the sayings of the commentators on the issue of Abraham's slaughter of his son, and what was said about the name of the sacrifice, the place of slaughter, and the argument for each saying, so that the author, Mr. Muhammad Saeed Al-Ani, may God Almighty preserve him, has almost absorbed all the sayings of the commentators and what they invoked. The author discussed them with a scholarly discussion, even if it was dominated in some discussions by severity and cruelty in saying jealousy about the meanings of religion, even if this jealousy does not require this severity and cruelty. The author, may God preserve him, went back to the books of the People of the Book and mentioned the texts in them related to the issue and discussed it and stated that it is an argument for those who say that the sacrifice is Ismail and not an argument for those who say that the sacrifice is Isaac .

There is no doubt that our brother, the author, has made a grateful effort in editing this letter by referring to the many books of the commentators that he was able to reach, and he also referred to other references .

In conclusion, this nice message and this good research carried out by Professor Muhammad Saeed Al-Ani is considered a good and beneficial product, God Almighty willing. He contributed to the clarification of a matter in which the sayings of many commentators were confused. And the correct view was shown by some of the commentators among the commentators ...

We ask God Almighty to reward the author and benefit from his message those who stand on it. and thank Allah the god of everything .

Dr. Abdul Karim Zidan

29 Rabi` al-Awwal 1402 AH , January 24, 1982