THE ISSUE: ABUSE OF THE PROPHET

THE ISSUE: ABUSE OF THE PROPHET M USLIMS in general believe that, judging by the Islamic shariah­—religious law, the punishment for one who abuses the Prophet should be death. If you ask them to substantiate this claim, they will immediately refer to Fiqh Islamic jurisprudence. They will say that it is an accepted ordinance in Islamic Fiqh that anyone held to have been abusing the Prophet should be executed. This kind of reference in itself is baseless. For killing a person comes under capital punishment and a law of this nature has to be derived directly from the Quran and Hadith, the source books in Islam, rather than from some discipline developed later on the basis of interpretation. It is an established fact that in Islam only the Quran and Hadith hold the position of authentic sources. No third source is legally tenable. So far as fiqh is concerned, it is totally based on Qayas (inference). And inferences made by the scholars can never be an accepted source in any law. It is an established fact that in Islam only the Quran and Hadith hold the position of authentic sources. No third source is legally tenable. The issue of shatm-ar-rasul (abuse of the Prophet) has been discussed in the books of law and a number of books have been written exclusively on this subject. Some of these are: Al-Sarimul-Maslul ‘ala Shatimir-Rasul by Taqiuddin Ahmad Ibn Taimiyya (1328). Al-Saiful-Maslul ‘ala man Sabbar-Rasul by Taqiuddin Abul-Hasan ‘Ali bin ‘Abdul-Kafi Al-Subuki (1355). Tambihul-wulat Wal-Hukkam ‘ala Akahmi Shatimi Khairil-Anam by S. Muhammad Amin bin ‘Umar al-Shami (1836). But all these and other such books written on the subject carry no valid reference from the Quran and Hadith. The first question to be asked in this regard is: which verse of the Quran gives this injunction to kill the abuser of the Prophet? In all the chapters of the Quran with all of