not hardly...

Submitted by Taj (United States), Jun 22, 2008 at 01:14

Plato:

There are a couple of things you seemingly are ignorant of when it comes to tenets of Islam - the first is that they are based on interpretation of the Quran and Sunnah of Muhammad. The Sunnah of Muhammad is derived primarily from hadith literature - and rarely, if ever from biographies.

There is a good reason why biographies are generally absent in al fiqh - they are generally recensions of earlier works by individuals whose original works are lost and thus not subject to scrutiny of veracity...additionally, the methodologies of authors such as At Tabari differ greatly from classic scholars(ship) and are looser and not the most reliable...While At Tabari is a popular author, his work has been shown to be full of holes when compared to the meticulous methodologies of, say, hadith criticism or tafsir criticism. One major difference is that for his historical work, At Tabari collected from many and any sources, regardless of the validity of what he collected or who he collected from.

His work, like ibn Hisham's, is an edit of Ibn Ishaq's, so to cite Ishaq and Tabari as separate sources is indicative of a bit of ignorance on the issue...

I do have Tabari's work (both of them), but I have it in Arabic (i used to have the 40 volumed english version but prefer the original-languaged and less-volumed work...

Here, I should note the amusement I had in reading the different citations you posted of the Sermon from Tabari and "Guillaume". What you might not be aware of is that Guillaume's work is simply a combo of Tabari and Hisham's - he (mistakenly) thought that by combining the two in overlap style, he was extending forth a new and better work of Ibn Ishaq's. In seeing two separate quotations of the same Sermon, by 2 people rescending the same work, one might wonder, why does one say that women are "domestic animals" and the other say "captive"...? These are not synonomous terms... and this problem is a clear indicator of the problem of such works...

The Farewell Sermon can be found in various hadith - which were extant and compiled before Tabari or Hisham's works - so the opinion that Tabari or Ishaq is "as early as you can get" to Muhammad or the Sahaba is not accurate...

Regarding the Sermon, I cited in my prior post from Al Bukhari, the most reliable compilation of hadith - however, let's for the sake of argument use Guillaume's rescension:

I would then note to you that while you have taken "captive" in the perjorative sense, it bears no such implication in the Sermon- this metaphor describes how a woman is "taken" from her father's house (ie "family"), a common consideration of marriage in arab culture...

The non perjorative sense of this term is contextually clear with regard to the subsquent sentence:

"You have taken them only as a trust from God "

So...while you assume that women are considered "captives" or "domestic animals", the Prophet makes clear that they are a trust from God...

BIG difference...

Cheers!

Taj

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