78012- Front Cover 12/24/15 01:23 PM Page 1 AMERICAN JOURNAL OF ISLAMIC SOCIAL SCIENCES SOCIAL ISLAMIC OF JOURNAL AMERICAN VOLUME 34 SUMMERWWW 2017 NUMBER 3

In this issue AMERICAN JOURNAL OF ISLAMIC ARTICLES SOCIAL SCIENCES A Pre-Modern Defense of the Hadiths on Sodomy: An Annotated Translation and Analysis of al-Suyuti’s Attaining the Hoped-for in Service of the Messenger (s) Jonathan Brown Can Islam Accommodate Homosexual Acts? SPECIAL ISSUE Qurʾanic Revisionism and the Case of Scott Kugle Mobeen Vaid ISLAM AND HOMOSEXUALITY

REVIEW ESSAYS

BOOK REVIEWS

CONFERENCE, SYMPOSIUM, AND PANEL REPORTS VOLUME 34 NUMBER 3 SUMMER 2017 WI

INTERNATIONAL INSTITUTE OF ISLAMIC THOUGHT ajiss34-3-final_ajiss 8/16/2017 1:01 PM Page a

Editor-in-Chief Editor AbdulHamid A. AbuSulayman Ovamir Anjum International Institute of Islamic Thought University of Toledo

Assistant Editor Basit Kareem Iqbal University of California, Berkeley Copy Editor Jay Willoughby

Editorial Board Hussein A. Agrama Andrew F. March University of Chicago Yale University Mehmet Asutay Shuruq Naguib Durham University Lancaster University Jonathan A. C. Brown Ahmed El Shamsy Georgetown University University of Chicago Marcia Hermansen Ousmane Kane Loyola University Harvard Divinity School Sherman A. Jackson Ermin Sinanović University of Southern California International Institute of Islamic Thought

International Advisory Board Khurshid Ahmad Mehdi Golshani Akbar Ahmed M. Kamal Hassan Manzoor Alam Mohammad H. Kamali Khalid Blankinship Enes Karic Katherine Bullock Seyyed Hossein Nasr Charles Butterworth James P. Piscatori Ahmet Davutoglu Anne Sofie Roald John L. Esposito Tamara Sonn Sayyid M. Syeed

A publication of The International Institute of Islamic Thought (IIIT)

Mailing Address: All correspondence should be addressed to the Editor at: AJISS, P.O. Box 669, Herndon, VA 20172-0669 USA Phone: 703-471-1133 ● Fax: 703-471-3922 www.iiit.org ● www.ajiss.org [email protected] ajiss34-3-final_ajiss 8/16/2017 1:01 PM Page B

Note to Contributors

The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences (AJISS) is a double-blind, peer-reviewed in - terdisciplinary and international journal that publishes a wide variety of scholarly research on all facets of Islam and the Muslim world: anthropology, economics, history, philosophy and metaphysics, politics, psychology, and law.

Submissions must conform to the following guidelines: • It must be the author’s original research. A submission submitted simultaneously to other journals or published previously in any format and language will not be accepted. • A main article submission must be between 7,000 and 10,000 words in length (shorter ar - ticles may be accepted when justified by their exceptionally high quality); book reviews and conference reports are generally expected to be between 1,000-1,500 words. • A main article submission must include a 250-word (max) abstract. • Please cite all bibliographical information in notes as noted in the journal’s style sheet (available upon request). • Avoid including any of the author’s names in headers or footers, and avoid including any personal references in the body or the endnotes that might reveal the author’s identity to referees. • Include a cover sheet with the author’s full name, current university or professional affili - ation, mailing address, phone/fax number(s), and current e-mail address. Provide a short biography (up to 75 words). • Transliterate Arabic words according to the journal’s style sheet, which is based upon the style used by the Library of Congress. • All submissions should be submitted electronically in MS-Word, double-spaced. • Please contact the editor for any exceptions to any of the aforementioned guidelines.

AJISS is indexed in the following publications: a) U.M.I. (16 mm microfilm, 35 mm microfilm, 105 mm microfiche for article copies of 1990 issues and after); b) Religion Index One: Period - icals and Index to Book Reviews in Religion (1987 and after). These indexes are part of the ATLA Religion Data-base, available on the WilsonDisc CD-ROM from H. W. Wilson Co., and online via WilsonLine, BRS Information Technologies, and Dialog Information Services; c) Public Affairs Information Service (December 1990 and after); d) Sociological Abstracts - Pro- Quest (1985 and after); and e) International Current Awareness Services (1992 and after). Se - lected material is indexed in the International Bibliography of the Social Sciences. Opinions expressed in AJISS are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the editors or publishers. No commercial reproduction is allowed without the express permission of the publisher. See last page for distributors and subscription rates.

© International Institute of Islamic Thought ISSN 0887-7653 ajiss34-3-final_ajiss 7/27/2017 9:55 AM Page A

VOLUME 34 SUMMER 2017 NUMBER 3

AMERICAN JOURNAL OF ISLAMIC SOCIAL SCIENCES

A double-blind and peer-reviewed interdisciplinary and international journal

SPECIAL ISSUE

Islam and Homosexuality

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CONTENTS

Editorial ...... v Articles A Pre-Modern Defense of the Hadiths on Sodomy: An Annotated Translation and Analysis of al-Suyuti’s Attaining the Hoped-for in Service of the Messenger (s) Jonathan Brown ...... 1 Can Islam Accommodate Homosexual Acts? Qurʾanic Revisionism and the Case of Scott Kugle Mobeen Vaid ...... 45 Review Essays Islam’s Foundational Equality David Raeburn Finn ...... 98 Timeless or Timely? Vantage Points of Mosque Design Tammy Gaber ...... 113 Book Reviews Islamophobia and Racism in America (by Erik Love) Todd M. Michney ...... 125 Arabic-Islamic Views of the Latin West: Tracing the Emergence of Medieval Europe (by Daniel G. König) Eyad Abuali ...... 129 Nationalism, Language, and Muslim Exceptionalism (by Tristan James Mabry) Brendan Newlon ...... 132 The Emergence of Modern Shi‘ism: Islamic Reform in Iraq and Iran (by Zackery Heern) Liyakat Takim ...... 135 Disagreements of the Jurists: A Manual of Islamic Legal Theory (by al-Qadi al-Numan; ed. and trans. Devin Stewart) Yasmin Amin ...... 137 Making Refuge: Somali Bantu Refugees and Lewiston, Maine (by Catherine Besteman) Saulat Pervez ...... 141 The Muslimah Who Fell to Earth: Personal Stories by Canadian Muslim Women (by Saima S. Hussain, ed.) Katherine Bullock ...... 145 ajiss34-3-final_ajiss 8/16/2017 1:01 PM Page D

Conference, Symposium, and Panel Reports The Islamic Association of Social and Educational Professions in Germany Paul M. Kaplick ...... 149 Current Trends in the Middle East Muhammed Haron ...... 151 ajiss34-3-final_ajiss 8/16/2017 1:01 PM Page v

Editorial

Elements of a Prophetic Voice of Dissent and Engagement

In your hands is another thematic issue of AJISS, one that consists of two main contributions that address the Islamic tradition’s prohibition of the homosexual act. Jonathan A. C. Brown’s essay analyzes the authenticity of pertinent hadith traditions, whereas Mobeen Vaid’s essay explores the Qur’anic perspective. Both articles had their origin in presentations by a number of scholars at a col - loquium held at the International Institute of Islamic Thought (IIIT) in Herndon, VA, on November 1-2, 2015. Although an earlier version of Vaid’s essay is available online, its original intent and thematic complementarity with Brown’s essay on hadith merit its inclusion here. Together, they make crucial contribu - tions to the scholarship that has reopened the question of how the Islamic scrip - tural and jurisprudential traditions view this particular sexual practice. In the same workshop, I presented my reflections on the stakes of the rise of new pro- homosexual (or at least neutral) laws and cultural formations for Muslim schol - arship as well as politics, which I share in a modified form in this editorial essay. In keeping with this issue’s theme of sexual ethics, we also include David Finn’s critical and extensive evaluation of Aysha Hidayatullah’s important Fem - inist Edges of the Qur’an (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014). Scholarship does not always need to address burning issues; however, scholarship on Islam is often unable to provide the quiet anonymity that serious scholars often crave. What is at stake for American Muslims in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2015 Obergefell decision on gay-marriage, the me - teoric rise of homosexual assertiveness over the last few decades in the country, and the sea-change – let’s label it “homonormativity” – in cultural and intel - lectual norms that this decision has ushered in? As Muslims around the world are avid consumers and targets of American culture, norms, policies, and wars on terror – not to mention presidential sermons about the essence of Islam – the repercussions of its culture and norms in this era of globalization and Amer - ican hegemony are not limited to American Muslims. Yet no one is more di - ajiss34-3-final_ajiss 8/16/2017 1:01 PM Page vi

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rectly affected by the former, nor better placed to most intimately understand and critically evaluate its imperatives or exports. IIIT’s aforementioned collo - quium intended to do precisely that. This editorial seeks to frame the political as well as religious issues raised by homonormativity and suggest why and how Islamic norms, despite their origins in what was, as Dreher and his likes have argued (see below), a radically different time and place, remain relevant. As a minority residing under non-Is - lamic legal norms, Western Muslims may be justified in disarticulating their political and legal stances from their moral, cultural, and religious lives. With - out claiming to offer political advice or critique, I wish to highlight the stakes involved in Western Muslims’ support for or opposition to same-sex marriage and in the arguments proffered for these positions. One index of the stakes of the Obergefell decision can be found in the sobering words of Rod Dreher, an American Christian and editor of The Amer - ican Conservative magazine, who writes in his bestselling The Benedict Option ,

The advance of gay civil rights, along with a reversal of religious liberties for believers who do not accept the LGBT agenda, had been slowly but steadily happening for years. The U.S. Supreme Court’s Obergefell decision declaring a constitutional right to same-sex marriage was the Waterloo of religious conservatism. It was the moment that the Sexual Revolution tri - umphed decisively, and the culture war, as we have known it since the 1960s, came to an end. In the wake of Obergefell , Christian beliefs about the sexual complementarity of marriage are considered to be abominable prejudice – and in a growing number of cases, punishable. The public square has been lost. 1

Whether this is all mere hyperbole remains to be seen; however, the unde - niable fact that a large number of conservative Americans felt this way served as one of several reasons why many voted against the Democrats in the fateful 2016 presidential election. The ongoing electoral upset is epoch-making indeed, and yet it only reinforces trends long underway in American politics toward cultural liberalism and political conservatism. After citing the declining reli - giosity among young Americans (one in three 18-to-29-year-olds have put re - ligion aside), Dreher turns to those who claim to be religious and finds even greater cause for concern. A 2005 sociological study of American teenagers from a wide variety of backgrounds found the most common religious views, regardless of the formal affiliation and denomination, to be a “mushy pseudore - ligion” that the researchers labeled Moralistic Therapeutic Deism (MTD). It has five basic tenets: ajiss34-3-final_ajiss 8/16/2017 1:01 PM Page vii

Editorial vii

● A God exists who created and orders the world and watches over human life on earth; ● God wants people to be good, nice, and fair to each other, as taught in the Bible and by most world religions; ● The central goal of life is to be happy and to feel good about oneself; ● God does not need to be particularly involved in one’s life, except when he is needed to resolve a problem; and ● Good people go to heaven when they die.

The author highlights the unsettling vindication of these results in the experi - ences of American Christians at large: “America has lived a long time off its thin Christian veneer, partly necessitated by the Cold War … [t]hat is all finally being stripped away by the combination of mass consumer capitalism and lib - eral individualism.” 2 The decades-long ideological shift has made homosexuality not merely an issue of personal choice, but also the newest frontier of human rights, the de - cisive definition of what it means to be on the right side of history. Late-modern capitalism and its favored ideology of liberal humanism have finally moved to banish the last remnants of interdiction, sanctity, and prohibition from the sov - ereign path of individual desire. But, one might ask, have not Muslims in the West lived in substantial num - bers for nearly half a century alongside norms that violate their own? Why should Western Muslim intellectuals and ulama not treat this recently estab - lished homonormativity as just another such norm? What is it about this issue that poses a greater challenge to people of faith than, say, general sexual promis - cuity and non-marital sexual relations? Some reasons may be suggested as to why the stakes are higher. Homo - normativity has arguably sealed the fate of the founding blocks of the American society that had been based upon a bedrock of Christian (lately dubbed “Judeo- Christian”) norms and that have been under attack since the 1960s. 3 Barack Obama, who presided over this sea-change during his presidency, expressed the uneasiness of this shift well when he wrote, on the same page of his memoir The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream , “our law is by definition a codification of morality, much of it grounded in the Judeo- Christian tradition” and yet “Whatever we once were, we are no longer just a Christian nation; we are also a Jewish nation, a Muslim nation, … and a nation of nonbelievers” (p. 218). One may note the paradox reflected in these words: The same category of “non-Christian” that makes room for nonbelievers also affords breathing space to Muslims. ajiss34-3-final_ajiss 8/16/2017 1:01 PM Page viii

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There is little point in disputing the fact that the opposition to homonor - mativity is often accompanied by an inveterate hatred for Islam and Muslims, an all-encompassing cruelty to all who are not white males, and both planet- threatening and willful ignorance. Lone voices (such as Professor Robert George, see below), notwithstanding, the complicit silence of American con - servatives is deafening. To Muslims who simply wish to avoid ending up in concentration camps or that American bombs would stop incinerating ever more people and referring to them as “collateral damage,” allying with the right appears suicidal. Fateful ironies loom over any options American Muslims may adopt. Pious Muslims cannot avoid seeing the Faustian overtones of the bargain they have struck with the left, often by simply keeping silent. The legacy of black resistance and the civil rights movement, whose masterful deployment fuelled the politics of gay rights, also remains American Muslims’ only haven. Yet what has made the United States more hospitable to Muslims at a cultural level than Europe is precisely its lingering Christianity and conservatism, the same forces that, in their current forms, are bent on annihilating them. Homonormativity aggravates the distance between Islam’s foundational socio-familial makeup and the American legal establishment, such that devout Muslims will be even more likely (whether individually or communally) to construct a cocoon for themselves, thereby disengaging from the larger society as the Orthodox Jews and the Amish have done. The assimilated Muslim main - stream will then become increasingly torn between Islam and the United States, a situation that can only lead them down the path of marginalization and alien - ation familiar to European Muslims. “All of Germany’s Muslim MPs voted in favour of same-sex marriage,” reads the title of a news-piece from the Inde - pendent , “whereas German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, leader of the Christian Democratic Union, has faced criticism for opposing the bill and announcing that ‘marriage is between a man and a woman.’” 4 To many religious American Muslims, the new sexual and gender norms heighten the cost of integration. Whereas anti-racism has been wholeheartedly Islamized as a cause that creates cross-cultural connections and anti-sexism has been embraced in a qualified form, normalizing homosexuality could shake the very foundations of Islamic moral community – unless, of course, this new chasm is met by the creation of sustainable and peaceful prophetic intellectual and counter-cultural movements and alliances. Apart from pro-gay Muslim activists, two kinds of Muslim opinion leaders have encouraged indifference to the country’s shifting sexual mores and gender norms, which I labeled above as “homonormativity”: (1) those who strategi - cally prioritize the community’s civil rights over religious concerns and (2) those who postulate a sharp separation between the political sphere and social ajiss34-3-final_ajiss 8/16/2017 1:01 PM Page ix

Editorial ix

mores and who hope to be “outside” even while being “inside” the country, perhaps even advocating that the community selectively disengage from the larger culture. Some versions of this option rely on a logic of pragmatic reci - procity. Others have invoked the pluralistic model of pre-modern Islamic tol - erance of or indifference to the objectionable practices of other communities to argue that a similar indifference may be justified in this case. The presuppositions underlying this logic invite further questions. Many scholars of the modern state point out its ability to penetrate and reshape its society’s culture; modern states are not empty political shells, but active agents that shape norms. Supreme Court decisions are not merely temporary dispute resolutions between opposing groups governed by legal formalism, but are ac - tual articulations of norms based on political views that, unless actively chal - lenged, define ethics and morality for American society. 5 Unlike the pre-modern Islamic world, in which society governed itself through a communally grounded legal tradition that communities could interpret and negotiate, the modern state governs the individual inside and out. Such critics argue that the role of law, culture, and state in the United States cannot be wished away and that the pre-modern Islamic posture of political apathy, which perhaps once made sense in the context of legally pluralistic and minimally intrusive gover - nance, cannot be used to justify Muslim indifference to these tectonic shifts in the American landscape. It is no wonder, then, that for the vast majority of American Muslim indi - viduals and institutions, American cultural norms are the backdrop and justifi - catory framework within which Islamic norms are reformed and selected, and not the other way around. According to one recent poll, for instance, 42% of American Muslims showed support for gay marriage. 6 A 2007 PEW poll re - vealed that 27% of American Muslims supported homosexuality as a lifestyle and that 61% opposed it. According to the same poll, 50% of Muslims were unsure as to whether the Qur’an was literally true. Another survey put the num - ber of American-born Muslims who abandon Islam at 23 percent. All else being equal, this rate of loss, about half that of Christians, will in all likelihood in - crease in the next generation due to greater assimilation. 7 A passive acceptance of homonormativity among conservative Muslims (as among Christians) may be accompanied by vague hopes of a reversal of trends or by a pessimistic view that, morally speaking, the United States is a lost cause, that it is fast traversing the path of decadence already trod by Europe and that there is no stopping it. Regardless, those concerned with the effects of American foreign policy abroad and with political and social justice at home find little choice but to align themselves with the left. Alternatively, some con - servative Muslims may ally themselves with conservative Americans in their ajiss34-3-final_ajiss 8/16/2017 1:01 PM Page x

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moral dissent against the dissolution of sexual and social mores. Princeton Uni - versity professor and influential Catholic intellectual Robert P. George is a rare and unheeded advocate of such an alliance with American Muslims. 8 A healthy development of principled conservative interfaith discourse at a political level might have helped temper the right’s antipathy toward Islam. The recent swing of American politics in the ultra-right direction appears to have dampened any such hopes for the time being. *** In addressing the challenges raised by homonormativity and the emergence of those Muslims who advocate for it, scholars must explore a number of inter - related fronts. The traditional Islamic case against sodomy, conventionally un - derstood as being unanimous, needs to be explored afresh at both the legal and ethico-philosophical levels. But the applicability of these norms to the phe - nomenon of contemporary homosexuality requires great caution. In order to make a compelling moral and ethical case for the continued relevance and soundness of Islam’s norms, scholars must examine the historical condi - tions that enabled homosexuality’s rise as well as the context, meaning, and implications of the relevant pre-modern prohibitions. Finally, such scholarship cannot disregard the human cost of whatever conclusion it reaches or recom - mendations it makes, and must consider the pastoral and political strategies that Muslims can use to respond to this new homonormativity in an ethical, compassionate, and effective fashion. The two contributions featured in this issue, focused as they are on the exegetical task, are important steps in an on - going discourse. In broaching the challenges involved in formulating Muslim intellectual, political, and social responses to homonormativity, we must recognize that tra - ditions of faith in God are tied to divine interdictions whose reasons, they be - lieve, are not always discernible to the human intellect. These interdictions and the social order they envision stand in the way of modernity’s evisceration of all limits – limits not just on sexual conduct but also the environment; con - sumption; aesthetics and beauty; the human body; the realm of passions, de - sires, and emotions; and interpersonal ethics. Catholics call it “the natural law”; Islamic law has notions of fiṭrah and a natural order of ease and human felicity that is believed to be built into the Sharia. 9 But this divinely ordained and thus “natural” social order (a contradiction in secular terms), in which marriage is tied to procreation, chastity, and honor, and, more broadly, the virtues of self- restraint, humility, and charity are desirable, is fundamentally at odds with the political and economic order of unbridled self-interest and systematic trans - gression that defines capitalism (as many economic philosophers from Adam Smith to J. Maynard Keynes 10 have reiterated). ajiss34-3-final_ajiss 8/16/2017 1:01 PM Page xi

Editorial xi

The conditions of late-capitalist modernity, sometimes called postmoder - nity , are structurally suited to such transgression because once projects of tran - scending natural limits (from the bio-technological refashioning of humans to cloning and age-defying technologies) are normalized, any ethical and creedal system grounded in respecting those natural limits is made to seem irrelevant and irrational. If procreation is undesirable for a planet that is already held to be overpopulated, a lifestyle that seeks pleasure without procreation, whether heterosexually or homosexually, is preferred. Similarly, where a secular welfare state bureaucratically manages all insurances and goods previously furnished by God, the family and community, ranging from laws and guidance to safety nets, marriage and family become inexplicable burdens. Put differently, homo - normativity is structurally related not only to ethical and religious decline and the political success of a vocal minority, but also to the fundamental dynamics of late-modern politics and economy. Muslim thinkers have been only too willing to rethink Islam in a way de - signed to fit into the (often seemingly erratic) developments of the twentieth century, first the welfare state and then neoliberalism, rather than effectively questioning these developments. This post-hoc approach to change is a result, I argue, of the lack of a political philosophy that could help them envision the larger interests of Islam and its community and help replace the tired language of “catching up with the times” with discourses better grounded in Islam’s own vision. Note that I do not mean here merely the maqāṣid -based approach to fiqh , which although certainly helpful, in the absence of further checks and bal - ances, can equally be used to justify the instrumentalization of Islamic law for any externally imposed ends. If fiqh chooses not to theorize political life in a fashion grounded in a coherent vision, then it nonetheless becomes politicized – but in a way that is reactionary and ethically irrelevant.

The Limits of Consent and the Autonomy of the Self The key issue underpinning homonormativity is consent. Any kind of sex is ultimately permissible, under this vision, so long as it is consensual. Consider the advice given by professionals to those who suffer from “virtuous pe - dophilia”: to exercise restraint, remain virtuous, and not act on their desire. 11 Thus, the concepts of self-control, abstinence, refraining from acting out one’s desire, and living without sexual fulfillment until one’s death are not foreign to the liberal world. What makes this case different from homosexuality, how - ever, is the presumption that children are incapable of expressing consent. And yet intractable philosophical as well as legal problems continue to afflict the conceptualization of consent. 12 As feminist and political theorist Carole Pate - ajiss34-3-final_ajiss 8/16/2017 1:01 PM Page xii

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man argued in her The Sexual Contract (1988) and ever since, the very notion of consent becomes meaningless if neither the structural factors (e.g., politics and economy) nor the contractual limitations that individuals place upon them - selves are considered. In the liberal account, consent is an expression of the human self – that mysterious entity which in the modern secular world cannot be judged but which judges all things. Yet the self also has a history. The pre-modern religious self ( nafs , in the Islamic tradition) was thought to be both the source of all desire and also an object that one had to discipline and cultivate. Human desires were either good or bad; they could be judged by their singular creator, master, and sustainer. Good desires were natural, part of one’s fiṭrah , and bad ones came from the Devil and had to be resisted. But in nineteenth-century Europe, a number of modernity’s “prophets” (from Darwin and Nietzsche to Freud and Weber) killed God to their satisfaction and discovered a new one: the human self, which is supreme and sovereign. For Kant, the self is autonomous because not only does it choose to act in accord with what is right, but it also defines or discovers for itself what is right. Nietzsche saw through this charade, for once there was no God or God became irrelevant to the discovery of morality (as Kant would have it), the self was both free and inscrutable. Nietzsche thus reasonably declared that all declara - tions of good and evil and all judgments related to desire were baseless. He taught that all ethics were a tale cooked up by the slaves and the weak to keep the few true men, the “supermen,” chained. It is often acknowledged that there can be no morality without God. But what is less understood is that with God there was no inscrutable self, that the self is governed territory. And precisely because the self is governable, there was no need for the sovereign modern state and its projects of refashioning the self. The self was governable under a regime of beliefs and norms that addressed and directed it. According to the Qur’an there was nothing worse than the unrestrained self ( hawā ), for it is the playground of the Devil. Freud, arguably the greatest prophet of modern unbelief, freed the self from God by theorizing it in terms of a repressed, inscrutable desire, just as God’s prophets had explained the human nafs and its origin: the divine breath (rūḥ ). Freud taught that the self was a world unto itself, only a tiny fraction of which comprised discursive reason. He used the analogy of a vast city under the sway of barbarians, only a small castle of which has been conquered by modern science and examined by objective discourse. Only the tip of the ice - berg was known to us. Our desires came out of an inscrutable world, the id, that could neither be judged nor disciplined because no knowledge or agency could be superior to the human self. ajiss34-3-final_ajiss 8/16/2017 1:01 PM Page xiii

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This is the first element of “consent” – an expression of the sovereign self or psyche that could only have been posited and sustained in a Godless world. Within this world, human desires ( ahwā’ ) cannot be judged. Elsewhere, whether in Aristotelianism, Thomism, or Islam, the self is there to be judged, disciplined, and trained, whether according to rational or revelational principles. This is why “homosexuality” could not have existed as a self’s identity in the pre-modern world: In its place, only an assemblage of desires and acts could be found, already judged by scripture and religious traditions as an abomina - tion. Even in the Greek world, Plato considered male-male sex unnatural de - spite its immense popularity; whether it was good or bad was determined by whether it was natural and good, not simply because it was an irrepressible ex - pression of the self. This is also why Christians and Muslims could relatively easily integrate Greek ethical philosophy, because despite having a radically different theology it did not contradict the Abrahamic notion of the human self as teachable, as a site of the battle between good and evil. Of course, the secular self does not automatically lead to homonormativity in twenty-first-century America. Certain political and economic conditions of modernity that can be best captured as late-capitalism have led to a world in which desire reigns supreme and the conditions of excessive affluence in “win - ner” societies – never mind the enormous corresponding deprivation in the “losing” societies – provide the context in which inscrutable desires could be properly worshipped; not merely satisfied, but idolized, legalized, and infinitely extended and explored. And why not, for what else is there in a world that has lost its God and its raison d’être? After having demolished the community and the extended family, the biological and nuclear family is merely the latest fron - tier in the march of capitalism. Whatever else may be said about capitalism, it is inconceivable without secularism, but (like nationalism) it has often been fueled by foolish religious fervor, passion, or discipline. 13 The non-liberal alternative to the modern, capitalist self was the Marxist self – a place that, while awash with passion for equality and revenge, was fun - damentally empty. Capitalism can tolerate a religion that restricts itself to man - aging the poor, fueling its ideals, justifying its winners and losers, and/or quenching its guilt. But Marxism, bent on ideological consistency and purity, refused to traffic in even this nominal religion. Marxism, ultimately more mod - ern and rational than capitalism, would fall with the rise of postmodernity, a condition best seen as a continuation or logical extension of, rather than a re - jection of, modernity. Unlike capitalism, which promotes greed or expanding desire as a principle and thus leaves the self to freely (“liberally”) choose its own myriad means of satisfaction and extension (limited only by the infinitely disputable principle ajiss34-3-final_ajiss 8/16/2017 1:01 PM Page xiv

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of no-harm), the Marxist self sought to limit itself by its dogma of materialism and the desires of which it approved. Having vanquished its nemesis, late cap - italism has now overcome politics and democracy as well. The task of “man - ufacturing consent,” to use Noam Chomsky’s well-known phrase, may have been pioneered by the nation-state in times of war, but global capitalism, in its current neoliberal phase, has dwarfed states and taken over the task of manag - ing mass desires while deepening the illusion of individual choice and freedom. A world set against divine interdictions and sanctions has proven unsustainable not only in the spiritual but also in the material sense, leading us ever faster to - ward an economic and ecological apocalypse.

The Limits of Historicism and Social Construction It is widely acknowledged that whereas same-sex sexual activity has been recorded in nearly all past societies, homosexuality , the idea that certain per - sons are to be identified by their sexual preference, on the grounds that this is a fundamental part of their identity, is socially constructed and historically novel. Furthermore, whereas the biological and cultural bases of such desire are debated, science has returned empty-handed from its quest for a “gay gene.” According to the new ta’wīl , however, the results are carefully couched in a postmodern framework to draw our attention to the constructedness of all categories. That homosexuality is a cultural construct as opposed to a biological con - struct does not mean that it is based on something other than a real, strongly felt, desire. But as Imam al-Ghazali said, “intention,” the basis and determinant of all actions, is semi-voluntary at any given instance. In other words, one cannot instantly purify and simply will to be as pious as one wishes. Our pas - sional constitution is comparable to our physical one; just as one builds muscle over a long period of time via a process that depends on training, discipline, diet, as well as other environmental and genetic factors, so is our emotional make-up multi-dimensional and only semi-voluntary. From an individual and instantaneous perspective, however, the source of one’s desire may appear moot. The misery of a pious homoerotic individual may indeed be great and is definitely worthy of compassion and support, but one must also be aware of the deployment of such tropes in accounts that are, in fact, key to construct - ing homonormativity. Aside from homoerotic desire, which has been documented in almost every society, the homosexual identity that fortifies it as a right is a modern construc - tion. In The History of Sexuality , Foucault famously shows that Western soci - ety’s views on sex have undergone a major shift over the past few centuries. ajiss34-3-final_ajiss 8/16/2017 1:01 PM Page xv

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Same-sex relationships and desires certainly existed before – but homosexuality was never considered a biological type or social identity. Besides Foucault, various historians have argued that the idea of a homosexual role and stereo - typical behavior emerged in late-seventeenth-century England. 14 Psychologists, at that time still working under the remnants of Christian morality but without Christian belief, sought to replace religion and super - stition and to categorize all untidy phenomena systematically. In this quest, they recast “sodomy” as a disorder (seen as harmful to the family, which was then regarded as an indispensable engine of national progress). When such vestigial Christian moralism came under fire, homosexuality became a new normal, an identity to which some people were simply biologically wired. Later on, Foucault established the relative novelty (and thus historical con - tingency) of both “the idea that our desires reveal a fundamental truth about who we are and the conviction that we have an obligation to seek out that truth and express it.” 15 More broadly, postmodernist critique opposes not only sexual truths about oneself, but also truth in general. Religious truths or religious differentiation of gender roles are thus no less constructed than homosexuality. In other words, the postmodern case for homonormativity argues not that it is an essential part of one’s being, but that since there is no essential norm or truth or self, and thus no rational obligation to discipline the self, homonormativity is just as good or bad as any other option. 16 Historians of Muslim societies tell a similar story about the wide attestation of homosexual behavior, but also the absence of anything like contemporary homosexual identity. Khaled al-Rouayheb shows that in the traditional Muslim world, lustful or romantic behavior toward beardless boys was quite common. 17 He quotes countless testimonies to the spread of sodomy and pederasty, to which one may add the following from al-Aqhisari, a zealous seventeenth-cen - tury Ottoman reformer who wrote that

In this time, sodomy [Michot translates this as “homosexuality”] has spread in this Muhammadan community and expanded among its Arabs and its non- Arabs, its learned ones and its ignorant ones, its elite and its commonality. It has reached such a point that they are proud of it and blame someone who has no beardless friend ( amrad ), speak evil of him, and say that he is not a human ( adami ) and has no taste ( madhaq ). 18

Such accounts, even when corrected for some reformist exaggeration, serve to call into question the widespread pious romanticization of pre-modern Islamic societies. In particular, the reference to the “learned ones” among the pederasts is significant. Remarkably, despite all the incentives to do so and the ajiss34-3-final_ajiss 8/16/2017 1:01 PM Page xvi

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power of custom in Islamic law, the ulama never justified this practice. In fact, denying its prohibition was considered unbelief by consensus, and disagree - ments revolved only around such issues as whether someone who permitted sodomy with a male slave was a believer or should be excommunicated – not for practicing it, but for believing that it was permissible! 19 Although pederasty was at times widespread, especially among the elite, those who engaged in such behavior never claimed to be a distinct type of in - dividual with distinctive desires. The pious simply deemed them sinners. One might say that Muslims saw this behavior in the same way as drinking wine; there was never a question about its impermissibility, even as some or even many, indulged in it. But what does this argument about the historicist construction of social categories entail for the Muslim present? Some use an exaggerated dichotomy between modern homosexuality and pre-modern sodomy to deny the applica - bility of the Qur’anic prohibition of homosexuality.

[Al-Rouayheb’s] seminal work and that of Dr. Scott Kugle clearly indicates that by excluding women and those who do not indulge [in?] the act of anal intercourse, the category of ma’bun does not define queer individuals. When will conservative Muslim leaders recognize that paraphrasing legal texts is not helpful today? Muslim academic Dr. Kecia Ali has indicated that past ex - egetes and jurists addressed superfluous desire that could be channeled to - wards women instead of the exclusive innate orientation towards member of the same sex. Past exegetes and jurists operated in the context of age and status asym - metrical relationships between unequal partners. The 14th century exegete Ibn Kathir noted that Muslim leaders, jurists and memorizers of the Qur’an were complicit in liwat – anal intercourse inflicted on males that included youth, slaves, or those classified as ma’buns .20

Based on the conjecture that the Qur’an and medieval jurists were con - cerned with condemning the homosexual act primarily, if not exclusively, due to the absence of consent, in terms of its being an abuse of power between un - equal partners, and given that contemporary homosexuals feel an “exclusive innate orientation toward member of the same sex,” this argument suggests that the divine judgment expressed in scripture from the Torah to the Qur’an and Hadith is simply outdated. The basis of this unusually harsh scriptural judg - ment, we are told, was the absence of consent and the subsequent humiliation attached to the inferior party. Vaid’s essay challenges, at great length, the spec - ulation that truly felt inclination was precluded from the Islamic or Biblical classifications of crimes or acts. My concern is with the historical element of ajiss34-3-final_ajiss 8/16/2017 1:01 PM Page xvii

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the claim that the nature of pederasty condemned by pre-modern religious tra - ditions is entirely different from the modern, consensual, or uniquely involun - tary urges of a homosexual person. I have already pointed out the difficulty – if not the actual impossibility – of pinning down consent. We have every reason to think that consent is also socially constructed, and that a class or race of peo - ple can be conditioned to accept and even demand a particular kind of treatment that would be seen as denigrating in other cultures. The politics of desire and consent remains complicated. For instance, some of those who self-identify as homosexual claim to choose to be who they are even when reprimanded by advocates of homonormativity that such admissions are politically inconvenient. 21 The primacy of the desiring self and individual - ism that center the idea of consent are certainly modern; however, we have no way to preclude the possibility that some pre-modern individuals who served as passive partners enjoyed or felt naturally inclined toward such a relationship. More importantly, if scripture and tradition had so harshly condemned sodomy only because it meant degradation for the passive partner, or only because the latter’s consent was socially or structurally conditioned and hence not fully fledged, the same should have been said of concubinage or other heterosexual relationships that scripture did sanction. But clearly rape, which is universally condemned in all traditional law as an act of illegitimate intercourse, is cate - gorically distinct from the case of legitimate but unequal relations, for both the Old Testament and the Qur’an permit sexual relations with one’s concubines. Whatever behavior or politics one wishes to endorse today, the Biblical and Qur’anic judgment on sodomy cannot be chalked up to the passive partner’s degradation or lack of consent. We now turn to the class of arguments indebted to a hard Foucauldian (i.e., strong social constructivist) approach to conceptual history, one that pos - tulates the social construction and hence the deconstructibility of all norms. When applied to this case, the argument effectively claims that the concept of male-male sex was identical enough through the 2,500 years that separated the prophets Lot and Muhammad, peace upon them, that the Qur’an, the Sunna, and the subsequent tradition clearly sustained the Torah’s judgment against it. Yet once early modern psychologists in Europe invented the cate - gory of “homosexuality” as social type several centuries ago, the divine judg - ment suddenly became ineffective, outdated, irrelevant, and/or inapplicable. According to this view, notions of sex changed significantly only once in recorded history: in early modern Europe. Implausible as this may sound, the argument is of a piece with a larger cat - egory of claims concerning whether divine norms can survive significant con - ceptual change in history. The post-structuralist, historicist, or deconstructionist ajiss34-3-final_ajiss 8/16/2017 1:01 PM Page xviii

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trend in conceptual history popularized since Nietzsche and then Foucault is, in itself, quite useful as a partial tool, a lens through which one can interpret enormously complex developments in human history and that has successfully exposed the universalist pretensions of modernity and positivism. In this view, all concepts have histories or genealogies. But in its strong form this view leads not only to nihilism, but also undoes itself (i.e., every claim of construction is itself a construction). Even atheists are more attuned to truth and in agreement that it is worth searching for than pure constructionists, who, as existentialists, consider the idea of a true God too superfluous to even refute. According to this strong version of social constructivism, all concepts are in flux and socially constructed: the afterlife, good and evil, and the very notion of the human being all have histories. But – and crucially – since nothing sur - vives historical conceptual ruptures, no religion revealed in the past can affect any meaning or authority outside this historical flux. The notion of one om - nipotent and omniscient God, in the historicists’ view, is the product of the so- called axial age. A weaker version of social constructivism would hold that certain types of concepts (say, metaphysical ones) can perhaps survive historical disconti - nuities, but not social institutions. In other words, specific Qur’anic laws may be deemed outdated without invalidating its general imperatives. This view can yield a critique of the Islamic tradition that, in my view, requires careful and sustained attention by scholars. Unless one believes that modernity is a unique and singular rupture in human history, an event of such magnitude that God’s scripture could not an - ticipate it, it is still difficult to justify the wholesale a priori rejection of Islamic norms and mores for which many modernists and progressivists argue. This is because the Qur’an offers its own history and philosophy of the secular world, just as the secular world wishes to historicize the Qur’an. Revealed in the sev - enth century, the Qur’an upholds many of the Torah’s central laws, including the prohibition of the homosexual act and usury ( ribā ), given over 1,500 years earlier to Moses, while relaxing some peripheral ones. Consider usury, for an analogy: The Qur’an explicitly chastises the Jews for “their consuming of usury, when they had been prohibited from it” (Q 4:161). One historian of the rabbinical prohibition of usury has chronicled how the Jews upheld and ex - panded the prohibition of Mosaic law for several centuries, but then started to rationalize it when confronted with the complex Roman commercial expansion in the name of what we might call “ ijtihād. ”22 All of this happened before the sixth century, and so the Qur’anic chas - tisement can be understood as the divine judicial review of this “ ijtihād ,” so to speak. The point here is that the logic of historical, social, and conceptual ajiss34-3-final_ajiss 8/16/2017 1:01 PM Page xix

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change to explain away the prohibition of usury did not serve our Jewish brethren well. Nor did God spare them, it would seem, on account of the “ kullu mujtahid muṣīb ” (i.e., the Islamic legal principle that every qualified legal rea - soner is correct, so long as he or she does his best) principle. Some interdic - tions, the Qur’an seems to suggest, are meant to permanent.

The Imperative to Draw Reasoned Boundaries Concepts as well as norms change over time and in a way that baffles as well as humbles systematic scholars and utterly eludes others. Many of our modern concepts, including homosexuality, did not even exist in the recent past. The Qur’an itself abrogated many of the previously revealed divine laws, and his - torical change may be offered as one explanation for this. But how adequate is historical change as a causal explanation and in what cases? Taking the premise upheld by all Islamic theological schools that God knows the future as well as the past and hence could not have failed to anticipate a changing world requires that the line between which norms or concepts can be discarded and which cannot has to be drawn from within Islamic tradition, based, if you will, on divine cues. Not all advocates of an Islamic sexual revolution base themselves on scrip - ture or tradition; however, those who believe that that guidance must be sought within divine scripture must grant that its systematic interpretation can only be carried in conversation with the tradition that has preserved it and made sense of it for over a millennium. We must recognize that Islam’s marvelous but im - perfect (because human) tradition of legal and theological reflection has never seen such a dramatic change in its long and far-flung existence. Socio-economic conditions have indeed dramatically changed, as has our epistemology itself. And yet all that our belief in the continued guidance of divine scriptures re - quires, I believe, is that these changes must be traceable and comprehensible. This puts the onus on Islamic scholars and thinkers to document and calibrate both the changes and their implications. Those who deny the significance of this change or the rupture with the past are often excoriated, and deservedly so. What I think is less often appreciated and critiqued is the passive acceptance of certain developments as inevitable, rather than historicizing and hence re - sisting the necessity of changes that, if accepted, render Islam’s legal and ethical guidance utterly incoherent and meaningless. If the terms, norms, and criteria imposed by late capitalism, the modern state, and their global transformations are accepted, then Islamic fiqh and eth - ical norms can only become progressively irrelevant. It is this passivity of the Muslim mainstream that I wish to question also in the case of the rise of homo - ajiss34-3-final_ajiss 8/16/2017 1:01 PM Page xx

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normativity. In an overpopulated and over-stuffed late-capitalist world, pro - creation is neither deemed terribly important nor is it exclusively dependent upon a traditional male-female family. Most Muslims have welcomed the rise of the nuclear family, which is “allergic” to cousins, uncles and aunts, parents and in-laws, along with the modern need to be mobile and independent – a lifestyle that both reflects and requires consumerist capitalism rather than the thick, organic, mutually supportive, and extended families and communities that so many Islamic norms, laws, and mores presuppose. Put differently, the Sharia’s concern, comparable to that of Jewish Halakha and Christian ethics, to protect family, lineage, and sexual virtue are steadily outdated if the terms of capitalism and the modern welfare state are fully embraced. The more func - tions a secular bureaucracy takes away from the family and organic commu - nity, the less relevant the sexual ethics and laws preached by the Abrahamic religions become (I use the qualifier organic not in the Durkheimian sense, but rather to distinguish local, mosque-, and neighborhood-based community from the global religious community). What is at stake in late modernity is not only what Islam is (a private reli - gion or something else), but whether Islamic norms make any sense. The so - lution advanced by Muslims to many socioeconomic changes has often been no more than piecemeal and reactionary ijtihād . Heroic, prophetic struggle against fundamental wrongs and structural corruption is reserved only for the radicals and crazies, as if Islam proper is only the religion of docile, middle- class functionaries. Unless a larger alternative vision of prophetic resistance and rebuilding makes Islam coherent and gives a proactive, visionary edge to fiqh , this appears to be our foreseeable future.

Endnotes

1. Rod Dreher, The Benedict Option: A Strategy for Christians in a Post-Christian Nation (Sentinel, 2017), 9. 2. Ibid., 10. 3. One watershed event in LGBT history was the Stonewall protest of 1969. 4. Greg Wilford, Independent , 2 July 2017, www.independent.co.uk/news/world/ europe/angela-merkel-chancellor-germany-same-sex-marriage-vote-lgbt- mus lim-mps-berlin-bundestag-cdu-sdp-a7819391.html (accessed 3 July 2017). 5. Brian Leiter, an American philosopher and legal scholar at the University of Chicago Law School, argues that despite what the people are told, the Supreme Court judges’ personal moral and political judgment, rather than formal legal rea - son, are of decisive importance in how they fulfill their role and how they are ap - pointed. See idem., “Constitutional Law, Moral Judgment, and the Supreme Court as Super-Legislature,” Chicago Unbound , 2015, http://chicagounbound.uchicago. ajiss34-3-final_ajiss 8/16/2017 1:01 PM Page xxi

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edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1976&context=public_law_and_legal_theory (accessed 4 July 2017). 6. According to the Public Religion Research Institute, about 42 percent of Amer - ican Muslims support same-sex marriage. See Robert P. Jones, “Attitudes on Same-sex Marriage by Religious Affiliation and Denominational Family,” 22 April 2015, Public Religion Research Institute , https://www.prri.org/spotlight/ at titudes-on-same-sex-marriage-by-religious-affiliation-and-denominational- family/#.VZ02XcZVikr (accessed 26 Jun. 2017). 7. “Hindus, Muslims and Jews Have Highest Retention Rates,” PEW Research Cen - ter, 5 May 2017, www.pewforum.org/2015/05/12/chapter-2-religious-switching- and-intermarriage/pr_15-05-12_rls_chapter2-02/ (accessed 28 Jun. 2017). 8. See, for instance, Robert P. George, “Muslims, Our Natural Allies,” 2 February 2014, First Things , https://www.firstthings.com/blogs/firstthoughts/2014/02/ muslims-our-natural-allies (3 July 2017). 9. Islamic thought has historically oscillated between two poles: (1) reasoning that is primarily self-referential or inward-looking, based on the norms derives from revelation, and (2) reasoning that is primarily dialogical and outward-looking, accepting “reason” or “common sense” as the common-ground to persuade non- Muslims of Islam’s truth. In this case, I think it is dialogical reasoning that is called for: demonstrating not only what Islam says, but why it says so. 10. “Capitalism is the astounding belief that the most wickedest of men will do the most wickedest of things for the greatest good of everyone,” a statement widely attributed to the influential British economist John Maynard Keynes. 11. Alan Zarembo, “Many researchers taking a different view of pedophilia: Pe - dophilia once was thought to stem from psychological influences early in life. Now, many experts view it as a deep-rooted predisposition that does not change,” LA Times , 14 Jan. 2015, http://articles.latimes.com/2013/jan/14/local/la-me- pe dophiles-20130115 (accessed 28 Jun. 2017). 12. For studies that highlight problems with the current understandings of consent, see Lila Abu-Lughod, Do Muslim Women Need Saving? (Harvard University Press, 2013), and for the argument that free consent requires ending the marriage contract, see Anne Phillips, “Free to Decide for Oneself,” in D. O’Neill et al. (ed.), Illusion of Consent: Engaging with Carole Pateman (Pennsylvania State University Press, 2008). For recent coverage of the legal issues, see “Campus Rape: The Problem With ‘Yes Means Yes,’” Time , 29 Aug. 2014, http:// time.com/3222176/campus-rape-the-problem-with-yes-means-yes/; “‘No doesn’t really mean no’: North Carolina law means women can’t revoke consent for sex,” The Guardian , 24 June 2017, https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/ jun/24/north-carolina-rape-legal-loophole-consent-state-v-way (accessed 28 Jun. 2017). 13. Consider, for instance, Bethany Moreton, To Serve God and Wal-Mart: The Mak - ing of Christian Free Enterprise (Harvard University Press, 2010), which shows how subjugating the self to the global corporation, the single most destructive force for the planet, the poor, and democracy, draws on a deeper set of ideals ajiss34-3-final_ajiss 8/16/2017 1:01 PM Page xxii

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about the supremacy of family, the morality of self-reliance, and the evangelical justification of free enterprise. 14. The seminal work of Mary Macintosh (1968), the British feminist sociologist and founder of the modern lesbian and gay movement in the United Kingdom, comes to mind. 15. A homosexual author (Jesi Egan) grapples with the problem that Foucault’s social constructivism argument, so ardently supported by feminists, cuts against the LGBT claim that their identity is biologically determined and hence not a choice that can be influenced. www.slate.com/blogs/outward/2014/03/04/sexuality_as_ social_construct_foucault_is_misunderstood_by_conservatives.html. 16. The questioning of the traditional norms against homosexual behavior need not come from a postmodernist or genealogical perspective, of course; liberal reli - gious activists often couch their claims in terms that draw, often unwittingly, on some kind of moral positivism and human rights discourse that may be theoret - ically naïve but is often rhetorically powerful. 17. Khaled El-Rouayheb, Before Homosexuality in the Arab-Islamic World, 1500 – 1800 (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2005). 18. Ahmad al-Rumi al-Aqhisari, Against Smoking: An Ottoman Manifesto , ed.and trans. Yahya Michot (Markfield, UK: Kube Publishing, 2011), 21. 19. Ibid., 124. 20. Junaid Jahangir, “Queer Muslims Deserve More Than Scriptural Zealotry,” Huf - fungton Post, 12 July 2013, www.huffingtonpost.ca/junaid-jahangir/queer-mus - lims_b_3581159.html (accessed 26 June 2017). 21. E. J. Graff, “What’s Wrong with Choosing to Be Gay? Many gay activists insist that they were born this way, hey. But what about those who choose otherwise?” The Nation , 3 February 2014, www.thenation.com/article/whats-wrong-choos - ing-be-gay/; Brandon Ambrosino, “I Wasn’t Born This Way. I Choose to Be Gay,” 28 January 2014, http://www.newrepublic.com/article/116378/macklemores- same-love-sends-wrong-message-about-being-gay. 22. Hillel Gamoran, Jewish Law in Transition (Hebrew Union College Press, 2008). As a rabbi for Beth Tikvah, I assume that the author belongs to reformed Judaism.

Ovamir Anjum, Editor, American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences Imam Khattab Chair of Islamic Studies Associate Professor, Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies Affiliated Faculty, Department of History University of Toledo, Toledo, OH ajiss34-3-final_ajiss 8/16/2017 1:01 PM Page 1

A Pre-Modern Defense of the Hadiths on Sodomy: An Annotated Translation and Analysis of al-Suyuti’s Attaining the Hoped-for in Service of the Messenger (s)

Jonathan Brown

Abstract

This article provides an annotated translation of a treatise written by the famous scholar Jalal al-Din al-Suyuti (d. 911/1505) in de - fense of the hadiths condemning sodomy ( liw āṭ ). The article sit - uates such a defense within the current discourse on Islam and homosexuality, summarizing the main arguments for and against the prohibition of liwāṭ as well as how the “traditionalist” and “Progressive” camps have constructed their arguments.

Introduction The “act of the people of Lot” ( liwāṭ or lūṭīyah ) has long stood out among sins in Islamic thought, 1 partly due to the Qur’an’s singular condemnation for these people and their iniquities, what it calls “a gross indecency such as none in the world committed before you: Indeed you come with desire unto men instead of women” (Q. 8:80-81 and Q. 27:55), and to this fiercely condemned practice’s persistence in Muslim societies. The knot of issues making up the question of “Islam and Homosexuality” is complex indeed. This study focuses on the spe - cific thread of sodomy ( liwāṭ ). 2

Jonathan Brown is the Alwaleed bin Talal Chair of Islamic Civilization, the School of Foreign Service, Georgetown University; director of the Alwaleed bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding; and author of The Canonization of al-Bukhari and Muslim (2007), Hadith: Muhammad’s Legacy in the Medieval and Modern World (2009), Muhammad: A Very Short In - troduction (2011), and Misquoting Muhammad (2014); and editor-in-chief, Oxford Encyclopedia of Islam and Law . ajiss34-3-final_ajiss 8/16/2017 1:01 PM Page 2

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While Muslim scholars compiled impressive lists of the different sins and obscenities indulged by Lot’s people, their juridical discourse on liwāṭ , which they classified as an action as opposed to an inclination or a desire, remained distinctly focused 3: “inserting the penis ( dhakar , sometimes ḥashfah [glans]) into a man’s anus.” The Shafiʿis, Hanbalis, and Hanafis included anal sex with women other than wives and concubines in this definition as well (anal sex with wives or concubines was impermissible, but it was not treated as seriously as liwāṭ ). 4 The discourse on liwāṭ thus differs significantly from most discus - sions surrounding LGBTQ issues, which focus far more on identity, relation - ships, and inclinations than on physical acts. Like zinā (fornication or adultery), liwāṭ was a penetrative act of the penis. As with zinā , any act that did not involve this penetration fell into a lower cat - egory of offense. Sex acts between women (e.g., siḥāq ) thus were lesser of - fenses. As in the case of heterosexual activity, other same-sex contact was condemned and could even be punished by a judge’s discretion. But nothing matched liwāṭ , “the greatest indecency” ( al-fāḥishah al-kubrā ), either in moral condemnation or in the severity of punishment. 5 The main Sunni opinions on the punishment are as follows, listed from the most to the least severe 6:

1) Both the active and passive partners are killed (on the basis of the Hadith of Killing the Active/Passive Partner, see below). This was an early posi - tion of al-Shafiʿi (d. 204/820) and Ibn Hanbal (d. 241/855), and is the main Maliki position (death by stoning). 7 2) Liwāṭ is punished exactly like zinā : The married person ( muḥṣan ) is stoned to death; the never-married person is lashed 100 times and exiled for a year. This is the main opinion of the late Hanbali school and an opinion of the Shafiʿi and Hanafi schools (held by al-Shaybani [d. 189/804], Abu Yusuf [d. 182/798], al-Tahawi [d. 321/932], and others). 8 3) Liwāṭ is punished similarly to zinā , but not exactly. The active partner is executed by a sword; the passive partner is punished with 100 lashes and exiled for one year. This is the dominant opinion in the later Shafiʿi school. 9 4) Liwāṭ is punished by the judge’s discretionary punishment ( taʿzīr ). The judicial authority has the discretion ( siyāsah )10 to execute a repeat offender to protect public order. This is the main historical Hanafi opinion, rooted in Abu Hanifah’s (d. 150/767) own opinion. 11

The evidence for the Shariah’s positions on liwāṭ and its punishment come from (1) the Qur’an’s clear condemnation of “going to men out of desire in - stead of women”; (2) numerous hadiths condemning and prescribing severe ajiss34-3-final_ajiss 8/16/2017 1:01 PM Page 3

Brown: A Pre-Modern Defense of the Hadiths on Sodomy 3

punishments for it; (3) legal analogy on the basis of zinā ; and (4) a variety of legal opinions from the Companions and Successors, presumably based on their understanding of the Qur’an, the Sunnah, and the proper deployment of legal reasoning. Their rulings range from treating liwāṭ like zinā to considering it distinct, and their prescribed punishments range from execution by stoning, burning, or throwing the perpetrator from tall buildings to corporal punishment (e.g., lashing). 12 According to the leading Hanafi scholars, such as Ibn Humam (d. 861/ 1457), the tremendous disagreement among the Companions and Successors over this act’s punishment is evidence that the offense is not one of the ḥudūd crimes (offenses that infringe upon the “rights of God” and have set punish - ments in the Qur’an or Hadith). According to this perspective, those hadiths specifying the death penalty for liwāṭ must either be unreliable or they must not be interpreted as a general rule. If the Prophet had truly identified it as a ḥudūd crime and set a punishment for it, such variation in opinions would not have existed. So reasoned many Hanafis. Doubt over the proper punishment was enhanced by the flaws that Muslim Hadith critics identified in the main hadiths on the topic. Even some non- Hanafis, such as the Shafiʿi hadith scholar Ibn Hajar al-ʿAsqalani (d. 852/ 1449), admitted that the principal hadiths used as evidence to classify liwāṭ as a ḥudūd offense were not sufficiently reliable for that task. But only the Hanafis rejected analogy as a means to include crimes under the rubric of ḥudūd of - fenses. Shafiʿis had no problem with doing this, so Ibn Hajar and others still insisted that both liwāṭ and bestiality were ḥudūd crimes on the basis of their analogy with zinā .13 The criticism of the hadiths surrounding these practices took place against the backdrop of this debate, which was – and remains – in essence, an intra- Sunni one over the nature of liwāṭ and its proper punishment. There has been no debate, to my knowledge, over the prohibited nature of anal sex between men. The Shafiʿi scholars Fakhr al-Din al-Razi (d. 606/1210), al-Nawawi (d. 676/1277), and al-Haytami (d. 974/1566) all list “ Liwāṭ being ḥarām ” as one of Islami’s axiomatic tenets ( maʿlūm min al-dīn bi al-ḍarūrah ), as do the Hanafi Badr al-Rashid (d. 767/1366), the Hanbali al-Buhuti (d. 1051/1641) and the Zahiri Ibn Hazm (d. 456/1064). Al-Bayhaqi (d. 458/1066), al-Qurtubi (d. 671/1272), al-Sanʿani (d. 1768), and others have stated that there is consensus on its prohibition. 14 Attempts by Progressive 15 scholars to reconceptualize how the Islamic tradition should view the knot of issues surrounding homosexuality (or, in - verted, the problem of heteronormativity) have rested on four main pillars: (1) attempts to reinterpret the Qur’anic story of Lot’s people as a condemna - ajiss34-3-final_ajiss 8/16/2017 1:01 PM Page 4

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tion of male rape instead of as a condemnation of sodomy; (2) illustrating how Sunni hadith scholars had dismissed the hadiths condemning liwāṭ as unreli - able; (3) the claim that Muslim jurists built their whole structure of law re - garding liwāṭ on a limited, patriarchal understanding of the Qur’anic story; and (4) that Muslim scholars were prisoners of a patriarchal and heteronor - mative narrative. Mobeen Vaid has already addressed the argument that this story should be reread (see his article in this volume). 16 The present study ex - amines the hadiths on liwāṭ primarily through a treatise devoted to defending them by the famous Cairean scholar Jalal al-Din al-Suyuti (d. 911/1505). On one hand, the Hadith/Sunnah pillar of what can be termed “the Pro - gressive argument” on homosexuality is redundant, for Muslim scholars have long held that scriptural texts must be interpreted according to their evident meaning unless some compelling external or internal evidence suggests oth - erwise. 17 The plain language meaning of the Qur’an’s condemnation of men who “go unto men out of desire instead of women” does not readily afford any interpretations other than the obvious one, and the Qur’an provides no signs that would compel a reader to consider an alternative interpretation. Provided that the Hadith/Sunnah corpus or the first principles of reason do not provide such evidence, the evident reading of the Qur’an stands as is: a condemnation of men “going unto men out of desire instead of women.” Fur - thermore, while one might challenge the authenticity of the cited hadiths, there is certainly no hadith evidence that liwāṭ is anything but sodomy. From another perspective, the Hadith/Sunnah pillar of the Progressive ar - gument is crucial. Since the Islamic tradition has consistently rejected impor - tant elements of LGBTQ identities and lifestyles, many advocates of a Progressive revision have jettisoned that tradition and tried to elaborate a new interpretation based solely on a radical rereading of the Qur’an. More influ - ential figures, however, have attempted to engage the tradition and show how it can be recast to support their argument. 18 Scholars who have pursued this strategy have had to accept the traditional Muslim conception of the Sunnah as the authoritative lens through which the Qur’an is read. Since hadiths seem to make it clear that this unprecedented “gross indecency” condemned in the Qur’an is conventionally termed sodomy (see below), it is very difficult to promote a rereading that breaks with this understanding. For Progressive pur - poses, the hadiths thus either have to be shown to be unreliable according to Sunni hadith criticism, or their meaning must be recast. Otherwise, not only do these hadiths clearly condemn liwāṭ and prescribe punishments for it, but they also lock the traditional Muslim understanding of the whole “Sodom and Gomorrah” narrative in place. As early Muslim scholars recognized: “The Sunnah rules over the Book of God.” 19 ajiss34-3-final_ajiss 8/16/2017 1:01 PM Page 5

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Ratings of Ibn ʿAbbas’ Hadith of Killing the Active/Passive Partner The most famous hadith on liwāṭ , narrated from the Prophet by Ibn ʿAbbas, reads: “Whoever you have found committing the act of the people of Lot, kill the active and passive partner. And whoever you have found to have had sex with an animal, kill him and kill the animal .” (The italicized portion will be re - ferred to as the “Bestiality Clause.”) This hadith was declared ṣaḥīḥ by Ibn al-Jarud (d. 307/919-20), al-Tabari (d. 310/923), al-Hakim al-Naysaburi (d. 405/1014), Ibn al-Tallaʿ (d. 497/ 1104), Diya’ al-Din al-Maqdisi (d. 643/1245), Zayn al-Din al-ʿIraqi (d. 806/1404) and al-Suyuti, all of whom are listed in the text of al-Suyuti’s treatise below. It was also judged ṣaḥīḥ or reliable by al-Ajurri (d. 360/970; in fact, it is one of the hadiths he presents as suitable for use “as proof”), Ibn ʿAbd al-Hadi of Dam - ascus (d. 744/1343), al-Zarkashi al-Hanbali (d. 772/1370; the various narrations on the topic all compensate for each other’s weaknesses, he says), Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyyah (d. 751/1350; it meets al-Bukhari’s standard, and Ibn Hanbal used it as proof, he says), Ibn Hajar al-Haytami (it has a ṣaḥīḥ sanad ), Ibn al-Amir al-Sanʿani (d. 1768), and Muhammad Nasir al-Din al-Albani (d. 1999). 20 Even the early Hanafi hadith scholar Abu Jaʿfar al-Tahawi (d. 321/932), who held that liwāṭ should be punished like a ḥudūd crime, uses this particular hadith as the last nail in the coffin of those who disagree with him. 21

Other Reliable Hadiths Condemning Liwāṭ From the perspective of Sunni hadith criticism, the most reliable condemnation actually comes from another hadith narrated from the Prophet by Ibn ʿAbbas: God has cursed those who slaughter to other than God, and God has cursed those who alter the signposts (or boundary markers) in the land, 22 and God has cursed those who lead the blind off the path, and God has cursed those who curse their parents, and God has cursed those who take as patrons those who are not their patrons ( tawallā ghayr mawālīhi ), and God has cursed those who commit the act of the people of Lot, and God has cursed those who com - mit the act of the people of Lot, and God has cursed those who commit the act of the people of Lot. (Some versions contain a clause cursing those who commit bestiality as well). 23 Another version contains almost the same content but is phrased as “Cursed are those who commit the act of the people of Lot…” 24 Versions of this hadith are found in the Muṣannaf of ʿAbd al-Razzaq al-Sanʿani (d. 211/827), 25 the Musnad of ʿAbd b. Ḥumayd (d. 249/863), 26 the Musnad of Ibn Hanbal, 27 the Musnad of al-Harith b. Abi Usamah (d. 282/895-6), 28 the Dhamm ajiss34-3-final_ajiss 8/16/2017 1:01 PM Page 6

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al-Malāhī of Ibn Abi al-Dunya (d. 281/894), 29 the Sunan al-Kubrā of al-Nasa’i (d. 303/915), 30 the Musnad of Abu Yaʿla al-Mawsili (d. 307/919-20), 31 the Ṣaḥīḥ of Ibn Hibban (d. 354/965), 32 the Masāwi’ al-Akhlāq of al-Khara’iti (d. 327/939), 33 the Muʿjam al-Awsaṭ and the Muʿjam al-Kabīr of al-Tabarani (d. 360/ 971), 34 the Mustadrak of al-Hakim, 35 the Sunan al-Kubrā of his student al-Bayhaqi, 36 the Ḥilyat al-Awliyā’ of their contemporary Abu Nuʿaym al- Is bahabi (d. 430/1038), 37 the Tārīkh Baghdād of his student al-Khatib al- Bagh dadi (d. 463/1071), 38 and the Mukhtārah of Diya’ al-Din al-Maqdisi (d. 643/1245). This hadith has been judged ṣaḥīḥ by Ibn Hibban, al-Hakim, and Diya’ al- Din al-Maqdisi (by its inclusion in his Mukhtārah ), Nur al-Din al-Haythami (d. 807/1405) (“its transmitters are used in the Ṣaḥīḥ ”), as well as by al-Albani and Ahmad al-Ghumari (d. 1960). 39

Summary of the Muslim Critiques of Ibn ʿAbbas’ Hadith Pre-modern criticism 40 of this hadith centers on the person of ʿAmr b. Abi ʿAmr (d. 144/761-62), a client of al-Muttalib b. ʿAbdallah and member of the Quraysh tribe from the Successors’ generation. A junior Successor, ʿAmr nar - rated hadiths mainly from the long-lived Companion Anas b. Malik and other Successors like Saʿid b. Abi Saʿid al-Maqburi (his occasional narrations from the Companion Jabir b. ʿAbdallah come through an intermediary, al-Muttalib, as he sometimes specifies). His narrations from ʿIkrimah are rare. Although criticized by some, he was generally held in high regard by critics. Al-Bukhari (d. 256/870) used him for ten narrations in the Ṣaḥīḥ , and Muslim (d. 260/875) used him for five in his collection. But neither used his narrations from ʿIkrimah ← Ibn ʿAbbas ← the Prophet (s), nor did al-Nasa’i in his Mujtabā . Among the Six Books, ʿAmr’s narrations from ʿIkrimah appear in the three Sunan s of al-Tirmidhi (d. 279/892), Abu Dawud (d. 275/889), and Ibn Majah (d. 273/886). Abu Dawud uses the chain for a hadith on the obligation to perform the greater ablution ( ghusl ) on Fridays, for a hadith on reading the Qur’an during prayer, and for an unusual hadith about how to ask permission to enter homes (which Abu Dawud notes is contradicted by a better report from Ibn ʿAbbas) 41 Ibn Majah uses the chain for a hadith on a debt issue. 42 Along with al-Tirmidhi, their only other use of the ʿAmr ← ʿIkrimah chain is for the Hadith of Killing the Active/Passive Partner. ʿAmr b. Abi ʿAmr was thus a hadith transmitter in fairly good standing among early Sunni hadith critics. Ibn Hanbal and Abu Hatim al-Razi (d. 277/890) said: “There is nothing wrong with him ( laysa bihi ba’s ),” and Abu Zurʿa al-Razi (d. 264/878) said he was reliable ( thiqah ). ajiss34-3-final_ajiss 8/16/2017 1:01 PM Page 7

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But ʿAmr was criticized, in particular, for his narrations from ʿIkrimah. Ibn Hanbal’s close colleague Ibn Maʿin (d. 233/848) said that ʿAmr’s hadiths were “not strong,” and al-Nasa’i agreed. Al-ʿIjli (d. 261/875) said he was reli - able but that scholars considered his narration of the Bestiality Clause to be unsubstantiated. Ibn Maʿin also noted that this hadith was considered unac - ceptable from him, including the report’s main liwāṭ clause. Al-Bukhari doubted whether he had heard the Bestiality Clause from ʿIkrimah. In fact, he was not convinced that ʿAmr had heard any hadiths directly from ʿIkrimah. Al-Juzajani (d. 259/873) declared him to be highly inconsistent in his narrations (muḍṭarib al-ḥadīth ). Later scholars like al-Dhahabi (d. 748/1348) considered ʿAmr ṣadūq (honest), and Ibn Hajar al-ʿAsqalani noted that his hadiths were included in the Ṣaḥīḥayn .43 Ibn Dihya (d. 633/1235) used ʿAmr as the textbook example of a narrator of ḥasan ḥadīths. 44 The vast majority of criticism surrounding ʿAmr b. Abi ʿAmr and his nar - ration of this particular hadith only concerns the Bestiality Clause. The main objection stems from the fact that reliable narrators reported that Ibn ʿAbbas advocated a contradictory ruling, namely, that bestiality was not a ḥudūd crime. This is the main criticism raised by al-Bukhari, al-Tirmidhi, Abu Dawud, and the Hanafi al-Tahawi which they note when they bring up the opinion attributed to Ibn ʿAbbās’, via the narration of ʿAsim b. Bahdalah ← Abu Razin ← Ibn ʿAbbas, that the person who commits bestiality is not subject to the ḥudūd pun - ishment. 45 Beyond general questions of ʿAmr’s reliability or his having heard directly from ʿIkrimah, the only other criticism of the liwāṭ portion is al- Tir midhi’s remark on conflicting evidence over the proper punishment for liwāt ; that the hadith in which the Prophet names those who commit the act of Lot’s people as a “group cursed by God” does not ordain their execution. Aside from these criticisms, the main focus of al-Suyuti’s treatise is to crit - icize Ibn Hajar al-ʿAsqalani, the leading hadith critic of the Mamluk period. Like al-Suyuti, he adhered to the Shafiʿi school and thus, in theory, supported categorizing liwāṭ as a ḥudūd crime. Al-Suyuti focuses on Ibn Hajar’s criticism that the Hadith of Killing the Active/Passive Partner is “disagreed upon in terms of its attestation,” and al-Suyuti’s defense of the hadith is premised entirely on the shape and form of this critical comment. But Ibn Hajar’s criticisms were more extensive. Certainly, at one point in his voluminous writings he seems to downplay the hadith’s flaws, noting that its transmitters are “deemed reliable” (mawthūq ) but that there is disagreement on it. 46 But he states in his Fatḥ al- Bārī that this hadith, as well as the one from ʿAli that specifies stoning (see below), are both weak ( ḍaʿīf ). It is impossible to see how al-Suyuti’s attempt to clarify Ibn Hajar’s first comment, detailed in the treatise presented here, could apply to such an unambiguous criticism. This does not mean that Ibn ajiss34-3-final_ajiss 8/16/2017 1:01 PM Page 8

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Hajar was conceding to the Hanafis on liwāṭ not being a ḥudūd crime, for he writes that the main evidence in this regard is not any hadiths, but rather that the act is analogous to adultery/fornication ( zinā ). 47 At another point in the Fatḥ he states that both the liwāṭ and bestiality clauses are “not sound” ( lam yaṣiḥ ), but that both acts fall under zinā .48 More recent criticism of this hadith has moved beyond the person of ʿAmr to that of ʿIkrimah himself. This is a major component of the most compre - hensive critique of the hadiths on liwāṭ , namely, that offered by Scott Siraj al- Haqq Kugle in his Homosexuality in Islam .49 ʿIkrimah (d. 105/723-24), the freeman ( mawlā ) of Ibn ʿAbbas, was probably a North African Berber. He was given as a slave to Ibn ʿAbbas in Basra, but his owner quickly freed him. ʿIkrimah traveled widely in the entourage of leading early Muslims, including to Marv and Yemen, and was sought out as an authority on matters of religion. Criticism of ʿIkrimah is not novel. Since the first centuries of Islam, his reliability as a scholar and hadith transmitter has been questioned due to his alleged espousal of Kharijite beliefs, accepting gifts from rulers, and transmit - ting false material ( kadhib ). Yet he had many, many advocates. Al-Tabari, Ibn Mandah (d. 395/1004-05), Ibn Hibban, and Ibn ʿAbd al-Barr (d. 473/1070), and others all defended him. The best summary of this discussion, as well as the best defense, can be found in Ibn Hajar’s Huda al-Sārī. 50 A recent revival of the anti-ʿIkrimah line has come from the United Kingdom-based Hanafi scholar Atabek Shukurov, 51 to which another United Kingdom Hanafi scholar, Mufti Zameel, has provided a comprehensive rebuttal. 52 The Progressive argument has generally reproduced the intra-Sunni polemics over the hadiths prescribing harsh punishments for liwāṭ . Kugle sum - marizes them well when he observes that those hadiths “that directly affect legal rulings on homosexuality” are “not forged reports that should be dis - missed, but rather reports with solitary chains of transmission, the application of which should be assessed….” 53 They are not forgeries, but they also are not reliable enough to convince many Sunni scholars that liwāṭ should be treated as a ḥudūd crime. The Hanafi scholar al-Jassas (d. 370/981) made this same argument. 54

Progressive Contributions to Criticism of the Hadiths on Liwāṭ Kugle introduces several novel criticisms as well. The first builds on existing accusations that ʿIkrimah was a Kharijite, contending that his Kharijism led him to treat sexual offenses with particular severity. But his only evidence is the Hadith of Killing the Active/Passive Partner and the overall uncompromis - ajiss34-3-final_ajiss 8/16/2017 1:01 PM Page 9

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ing nature of Kharijite beliefs. Although he explains that this group believed that Muslims who committed grave sins like zinā ceased to be believers, 55 Kugle does not investigate ʿIkrimah’s stance on this question. In a famous ha - dith of incredible relevance to Kugle’s argument, ʿIkrimah narrates from Ibn ʿAbbas, from the Prophet, that one who commits zinā , theft, drinks alcohol, or commits murder is not a believer when committing those acts. 56 But this hadith can hardly be dismissed as a Kharijite invention, for the majority of its narra - tions come not through ʿIkrimah, but from the Prophet by Abu Hurayrah, who was not accused of Kharijism (they are included in all the Six Books). 57 More importantly, ʿIkrimah’s version features striking tones of leniency. Unlike those who transmitted it from Abu Hurayrah, ʿIkrimah asks Ibn ʿAbbas to explain how committing such sins can erase a Muslim’s faith and, crucially, how re - penting restores it. 58 For from being a ruthless puritan on sexual sins, ʿIkrimah is our source for the teaching that any apostasy involved in committing these sins can be remedied by repentance. The most significant objection to Kugle’s enhanced criticisms of ʿIkrimah is that it contradicts his overall strategy of constructing an accept - ance of homosexuality within the Sunni legal tradition. Rejecting all evidence narrated by ʿIkrimah would contradict the agreed upon tenets of Sunni hadith criticism (since al-Bukhari considered him reliable and used him in his Ṣaḥīḥ ) and Sunni law (he is relied upon as a transmitter of evidence in all Sunni schools). An argument based on excluding ʿIkrimah would thus hardly be Sunni. A second element of Kugle’s criticism of hadiths on liwāṭ does not affect the hadiths examined in this study; however, it does merit examination. He claims that one of the features of a hadith’s text ( matn ) that revealed it as a for - gery according to Muslim scholars was the Prophet’s supposed uses of the proper names of groups, sects, or schools of thought that emerged decades after his death. This would apply to hadiths that use sodomite ( lūṭī ) or sodomy (lūṭīyah , liwāṭ ). While Kugle admits that this does not apply to the wording “the act of the people of Lot,” which is used in the main hadiths examined in this study. 59 Moreover, Kugle provides no reference for this alleged rule of matn criticism. In fact, although Sunni hadith critics did at times cite anachro - nisms in a hadith’s wording as a factor for declaring them forged, many hadiths that Sunnis have long considered reliable contain what some might consider anachronistic references, such as the Prophet gesturing to Iraq (where the Khar - ijites first emerged) and fortelling that a group interpreted as being the Khari - jites will “come out” ( yakhruju ) from there. 60 This is in great part due to the fact that Muslims have believed that, as a prophet, Muhammad (s) was granted access to the unseen by God. 61 ajiss34-3-final_ajiss 8/16/2017 1:01 PM Page 10

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Aside from this, anachronism does not always entail forgery. Often, as in the case of the hadiths on liwāṭ , narrations with non-anachronistic wordings (e.g., the act of the people of Lot) are transmitted alongside counterparts with anachronistic wording (e.g., lūṭīyah ). It may simply be that as the proper nouns for sects or certain acts became common, less fastidious narrators substituted them for their non-anachronistic counterparts. This would have been permitted by hadith scholars, who generally allowed narrating a hadith by its general meaning ( al-riwāyah bi al-maʿnā ) and not necessarily word for word, provided that the transmitter understood its meaning and kept it intact. 62 The example mentioned by Kugle, namely, hadiths in which the Prophet condemns the Qadariyyah (those who believe in human free will), perfectly demonstrates this. 63 For every hadith in the main Sunni collections (and Ibn Hanbal’s Musnad ) in which the Prophet condemns them by their proper name, there is a corresponding narration in which he refers to them as “the people of qadar ” or “those who disbelieve in qadar .” In fact, Muslim scholars consider these latter narrations to be the most reliable ones. 64 One of Kugle’s main lines of argument is that “there is nothing intrinsic” in the cited hadiths “to encourage us to see the deed of Lot’s Tribe as involving sex.” 65 In the case of the hadith that lists those whom God has cursed, he sug - gests that the common thread is that those deeds either infringe on God’s rights or injure others. He argues that, in the context of this hadith, same-sex rape makes more sense as the meaning of “the act of the people of Lot” than mere anal sex between men 66 and that introducing the Bestiality Clause into these hadiths was intended to “deflect” the interpretation of this “act” of Lot’s people toward anal intercourse. 67 There are three flaws in this argument. First, the hadiths he discusses pro - vide absolutely no evidence that this Qur’anic story should be read in any way other than the plain language meaning of general male-male sexual contact. Kugle’s decision to read the hadiths’ mention of this particular act in another light (i.e., that it was rape) simply imports a baseless interpretive choice from one text into another. The argument thus circles back to its anchorless point of departure: Muslim scholars misconstrued and “misapplied” hadiths mentioning the “act of the people of Lot” because they misread the Qur’an’s Lot pericope. 68 But the only way to establish the Progressive reading of the Lot pericope in the first place is to provide some internal evidence from the Qur’an (lacking, as shown by Vaid) or external evidence from the Sunnah. But as laid out by Kugle, any mention of this act in the external hadith evidence can only be read to support the Progressive argument if one already assumes the Qur’an has been misread. ajiss34-3-final_ajiss 8/16/2017 1:01 PM Page 11

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Second, the claim that male-male anal sex is out of place in a list of cursed deeds due to the insult they cause to the Divine or injuries they cause to others ignores the historical place that sodomy has occupied in human norm making. As Kugle suggests, such a list has a common theme of dis - rupting or inverting the proper order of human relations with each other and with God. For him, this act could not constitute such a transgression, while male rape could. But this betrays a parochial rootedness in the modern liberal conviction that only the transgression of personal autonomy renders a sex act morally wrong. In fact, Kugle’s mistake is not following through on his insight. Ancient law codes condemned sodomy precisely because it was understood as violating the gender and property order established when humans settled into agricultural communities. Far from being an addition intended to shift the narrative on the act of Lot’s people, the Bestiality Clause might actually predate it. From the world historical perspective, it is even more suited for this list because that par - ticular taboo is one of humanity’s oldest, originating with the beginning of set - tled agriculture. 69 It is not surprising to find sodomy and bestiality paired together, as in Leviticus 18:22-23. These two rules draw primal boundaries for newly settled human communities with nascent societal gender divisions: A taboo on same-sex acts emphasizes the primary distinction among humans, whereas the taboo on bestiality reinforces the distinction between humans and the animals surrounding them. Finally, Kugle’s assertion that only the “patriarchal” interpretation of this story leads us to read references to “the act of the people of Lot” in the Hadith as primarily sexual 70 ignores a manifest reality: If this reading was wrong, it was wrong as far back as anyone can reliably date the intellectual artifacts of the Islamic tradition (other than the Qur’an itself). Kugle admits that by the time Hadith collection and compilation had begun and hadiths were being “used in making legal decisions,” this act was clearly understood as male-male sexual penetration. 71 But the most recent, historical critical (i.e., non-Muslim) scholarship on the hadith tradition and early Islamic law has shown that the era referred to here by Kugle was none other than that of the late 600s, when the junior Companions were still alive. Not only does this leave very little time for Muslims to have totally misunderstood the story, but it also begs the ques - tion of precisely what more authentic understanding of the Qur’an we could hope to have than that of junior Companions and Successors. According to the methods developed by the German Orientalist Joseph Schacht (d. 1969), which Kugle tentatively embraces, the most historically re - liable reports are those attributed to the Muslims living during the mid-eighth ajiss34-3-final_ajiss 8/16/2017 1:01 PM Page 12

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century ( atbāʿ al-tābiʿīn ), like Ibn Jurayj (d. 150/767) and Malik b. Anas (179/ 795). According to Schacht, their legal opinions were later pushed back to var - ious Companions, attributions to whom are thus less historically reliable. Fi - nally, these opinions had been pushed back into the Prophet’s mouth by the early- and mid-ninth century. 72 Although the main hadiths dealing with the subject refer to it as “the act of the people of Lot” or sodomy without providing any description of what that meant, some do offer details. One quotes the Prophet as saying: “Whoever has sex with ( waqaʿa ) a man, kill him.” Another has: “Concerning the person who commits the act of the people of Lot, and concerning the man who is had sex with ( yu’tā fī nafsihi ), [the Prophet] said: ‘He is killed.’” 73 Another hadith reads: “A woman does not engage directly with ( tubāshiru ) another woman except that they are committing fornication ( zāniyatān ), nor does a man engage directly with another man except that they are committing fornication.” 74 A Companion’s ruling that, all things being equal, Schacht would consider as more historically reliable than a hadith, describes Caliph Abu Bakr and other Companions discussing how to punish a man “who is screwed like a woman” (yunkaḥu kamā tunkaḥu al-mar’ah ). 75 These hadiths appear in later sources during the tenth and eleventh centuries, so they could well have been forged after the early period of Hadith collection. Turning away from Schacht’s outdated methodology to the most recent Western scholarship on dating reports, we find that reports circulating as early as the late 600s and early 700s clearly understood “the act of the people of Lot” as male-male anal sex. Reports appearing in the earliest surviving sources, such as the Muṣannaf of ʿAbd al-Razzaq al-Sanʿani (d. 211/ 827), offer no graphic details, but they all address it as a direct analog to zinā . ʿAbd al-Razzaq quotes his teacher Ibn Jurayj as describing how its punishment is exactly that as spec - ified for zinā in the Qur’an and well-known hadiths (i.e., a married partner is stoned; a never-married partner is lashed 100 times and exiled for a year). 76 In the Muṣannaf of Ibn Abi Shaybah (d. 235/849), Ibn Jurayj reports from his teacher, ʿAta’ b. Abi Rabah of Makkah (d. 114/732): “Concerning a man who comes sexually ( ya’tī ) to a man, his proper treatment ( sunnatuhu ) is that of a woman.” 77 These reports offer no hint that the act was understood as anything other than the male-male counterpart of heterosexual fornication. As the German scholar Harald Motzki has demonstrated using his com - bined isnād /matn analysis, there is little reason to presume that reports narrated by ʿAbd al-Razzaq ← Ibn Jurayj ← ʿAta’ were forged by anyone in that chain. As a result, states Motzki, this material can be seen as authentic representations of Muslim legal scholarship in Makkah during the late seventh and early eighth ajiss34-3-final_ajiss 8/16/2017 1:01 PM Page 13

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centuries. 78 For our purposes, this means that even during the lifetime of the longest living Companions, this act was understood as sodomy.

Jalal al-Din al-Suyuti: Author of Bulūgh al-Ma’mūl Jalal al-Din ʿAbd al-Rahman b. Abi Bakr al-Suyuti was born in 849/1445 in Cairo. 79 His father, the first one in his family to pursue the life of scholar, was from Asyut (Upper Egypt) and served as a judge there; his mother was a Circassian slave. Al-Suyuti eventually voyaged down the Nile to settle in Cairo. Although his father died when he was only five, the boy received an excellent education under the supervision of prominent scholars close to the family and, at the age of seventeen, received permission to issue fatwas from the Shafiʿi school by the noted scholar ʿAlam al-Din Salih al-Bulqini (d. 868/1464), chief judge of Egypt. He studied with other leading scholars in Cairo as well, including the Shafiʿi jurist Sharaf al-Din Yahya al-Munawi (d. 871/1467) (whose great-grandson ʿAbd al-Ra’uf would write a commentary on al-Suyuti’s Jāmiʿ al-Ṣaghīr ) and the famous Jalal al-Din al-Mahalli (d. 864/1459) (whose Tafsīr al-Suyūṭī would complete, thereby producing the well-known Tafsīr al-Jalālayn ). Although al-Suyuti was a Shafiʿi in law, he also studied Hanafi law. As part of the regular curriculum, he studied Ashʿari/ Maturidi theology and logic with Shams al-Din Muhammad al-Marzubani (d. 867/1463) and others. At the age of eighteen, al-Suyuti inherited his father’s position of teaching law at the Shaykhuniyyah Mosque. Later on, he taught Hadith there as well; was appointed administrator of the Baybarsiyyah and the Barquq Nasiri Sufi lodges; and was initiated, at least symbolically, into the Shadhili, Qadiri, and Suhrawardi Sufi orders. He also spent a great deal of time teaching Hadith in the Great Mosque of Ibn Tulun. Other than travelling to Makkah in 1464 and again in 1468-69 for hajj and some internal travel in Egypt, there is no evidence that al-Suyuti voyaged else - where. There is also no evidence that he married, although he did write a pan - egyric poem for one Ghusun, who seems to have been a concubine who died while pregnant. The fact that upon his death his books were left as a trust under his mother’s supervision suggests that he had no surviving children. 80 In terms of his scholarly and ideological inclinations, al-Suyuti felt con - tempt for the science of speculative theology ( kalām ) and advocated fideistic submission ( tafwīḍ ) to scriptural references to God’s nature and the unseen. Famously, he opposed the use of logic in the Islamic sciences. Al-Suyuti’s early career was marked by involvement in numerous scholarly disputes, such as the ajiss34-3-final_ajiss 8/16/2017 1:01 PM Page 14

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permissibility of reading the books of Ibn ʿArabi and other controversial mys - tics (they were pious saints, but their books should not be allowed to laymen), the permissibility of studying logic, the possibility of unrestricted ijtihād (see below), as well as social conflicts among Cairo’s elite. Al-Suyuti was heavily criticized for allegedly claiming that he had attained the rank of unrestricted mujtahid (mujtahid muṭlaq ), which was widely under - stood as meaning a scholar capable of deriving law and theology directly from Islam’s sources without adherence to any existing tradition or school. As he explained to his student al-Shaʿrani (d. 973/1565) as well as in his writings, this description was actually that of an independent mujtahid (mujtahid mus - taqill ). He agreed with most scholars that this latter rank had not been possible since around 1000 CE . Al-Suyuti acknowledged that he had claimed to have reached this rare level of mujtahid muṭlaq , but he insisted that this rank, the highest possible one in his latter days, consisted of deriving rulings independ - ently but within an affiliation to a certain school of law ( mujtahid muntasib ). In this, he argued, he was like such earlier leading Shafiʿi jurists as al-Muzani (d. 264/878), al-Juwayni (d. 478/1085), and Taqi al-Din al-Subki (d. 756/1356). Al-Shaʿrani reports that his teacher never gave a fatwa outside the Shafiʿi school of law. 81 Al-Suyuti redefines the adjective prolific . Scholars have come up with var - ious final tallies of his books and treatises, but the median count of his works is over 600, 392 of which have been published. 82 The fields of Qur’anic sci - ences, Arabic grammar and rhetoric, as well as history were certainly some of his more pronounced passions. But the collection and discussion of hadiths dominated his oeuvre perhaps more than any other subject. His student al- Dawudi says that he was the most knowledgeable of his time in Hadith and its sciences, and al-Suyuti himself claimed to have memorized 200,000 hadiths, adding that there might not be more than that in the world. His effort to compile all of the extant hadiths in one massive compendium, the Jāmiʿ al-Kabīr , was cut short by his death. What survived is published in thirty large volumes, covering around nine-tenths of an alphabetized ordering of Prophetic sayings (he never began the section on Prophetic actions). 83 While working on this massive project, al-Suyuti seemingly extracted all of the ha - diths that quoted the Prophet’s speech, as opposed to his actions, and compiled them in a smaller work entitled Jāmiʿ al-Ṣaghīr (10,031 hadiths in the published version). He himself wrote an addendum with hadiths that he had missed ( Al- Ziyādah ), but did not incorporate them into the original. 84 In the late 1480s, by then in his forties, al-Suyuti began withdrawing from public life. When he argued with the Sufis of the Baybarsiyyah lodge (he dis - puted their claim to be Sufis because they were not adopting the saints’ manners ajiss34-3-final_ajiss 8/16/2017 1:01 PM Page 15

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and ethics), he was dismissed. Reports exist that the Mamluk sultan then sought to have him killed. Al-Suyuti went into hiding for several months until the sul - tan died, whereupon he retired permanently to his house on Rawḍa Island in the Nile (today part of Cairo) to write in seclusion, perhaps leaving home only to access books. He stayed there until his death in 911/1505, aged sixty-one. In addition to the controversy over his claims of ijtihād , al-Suyuti was heavily criticized (and is still scoffed at) for claiming to be the renewer ( mu - jaddid ) of the tenth Islamic century. Yet his claim was not as arrogant as is often portrayed, for he writes in his autobiography: “This poor soul in need of God’s bounty hopes that God would bestow upon him the blessing of being the mujaddid at the start of the century.” 85 This could be seen as a sign of ego - tism, but few contemporaneous scholars could hope for this mantle with a more reasonable expectation of receiving it. His admirers wrote that al-Suyuti’s writ - ings had spread as far is India during his own lifetime. His learning and, even more, his astoundingly prolific output were quickly seen by many as miracu - lous signs from God of his worthiness. But al-Suyuti was an abrasive man who was confident of his abilities and quick to point out other’s shortcomings. As Saleh writes: “His arrogance and combative personality made it virtually im - possible for other scholars to appreciate his undeniable accomplishments.” 86 We know little of where the treatise presented here, Bulūgh al-Ma’mūl , stood in al-Suyuti’s career. The text includes no hints as to when or exactly why it was composed, other than as part of the longrunning “Hanafis v. Other Schools” debate over the criminal rating of liwāṭ . At one point in his life, al- Suyuti became very exercised over the continued operation of a certain house of ill repute in Cairo, where “all sorts of corruption occurred, like fornication, sodomy, drinking, and playing music….” 87 But there is nothing remarkable here, for few Muslim scholars would have reacted differently. The Structure of Attaining the Hoped-for in Service of the Messenger The outline of al-Suyuti’s treatise is as follows:

1. Presentation of the Hadith of Killing the Active/Passive Partner and related hadiths via Ibn ʿAbbas, Abu Hurayrah, and Jabir, along with critical ap - proval of their reliability. 2. Discussion of the criticisms of ʿAmr b. Abi ʿAmr’s narration and responses mitigating them, adding that other narrations compensate for his flaws. Thus ʿAmr’s hadith should be considered ṣaḥīḥ . 3. Presentation of other hadiths attesting to the content of ʿAmr b. Abi ʿAmr’s narration of the Hadith of Killing the Active/Passive Partner. ajiss34-3-final_ajiss 8/16/2017 1:01 PM Page 16

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4. Presentation of supporting Companion reports. 5. Contextualization of criticisms of ʿAmr b. Abi ʿAmr and the argument that he is reliable. 6. Response to Ibn Hajar’s comment that the hadith is “disagreed on in terms of its attestation.” 7. Conclusion: People should be wary of speaking about hadiths without knowledge of the Hadith sciences.

The Text of Bulūgh al-Ma’mūl Relied on for this Translation There are two published editions of Al-Ḥāwī li al-Fatāwī , a collection of al- Suyuti’s fatwas that he compiled himself. The Dar al-Kutub al-ʿIlmiyyah edi - tion (henceforth, DKI), edited by a team of scholars, relied on a selection of manuscripts and includes a limited critical apparatus. The Dar al-Kitab al- ʿArabi edition (henceforth, DKA), which lacks any mention of the sources re - lied on, seems to have relied on only one manuscript. Unfortunately, that manuscript also seems to be an outlier. As such, this translation is based on the DKI edition of the Ḥāwī .88

Endnotes

1. Books devoted to the topic include Dhamm al-Liwāṭ by Abu Bakr al-Ajurri of Baghdad (d. 360/970), Al-Ḥukm al-Maḍbūṭ fī Taḥrīm ʿAmal Qawm Lūṭ by Shams al-Din Muhammad b. ʿUmar al-Ghamri of Cairo (d. 849/1445); he also wrote a book on gender mixing: Al-ʿUnwān fī Taḥrīm Muʿāsharat al-Shabbān wa al- Niswān and a Risālah fī al-Lūṭīyah wa Taḥrīmihā by Ibrahim b. Bakhshi Dada Khalifah (d. 973/1565); Shams al-Din al-Sakhawi, Al-Ḍaw’ al-Lāmiʿ (Beirut: Dar al-Jil, 1992), 4:239; Hajji Khalifah Mustafa Katib Chelebi, Kashf al-Ẓunūn ʿan Asāmī al-Kutub wa al-Funūn, ed. Muhammad ʿAbd al-Qadir ʿAta (Beirut: Dar al-Kutub al-ʿIlmiyyah, 1429/2008), 2:204. 2. For a study on the etymology and lexicography around the word liwāṭ , see Pierre Larcher, “ Liwāṭ : “agir comme le peuple de Loth…” Formation et interprétation lexicales en arabe classique,” Journal of Arabic and Islamic Studies 14 (2014): 213-27. 3. See Shihab al-Din Ahmad Ibn Hajar al-Haytami, Al-Zawājir ʿan Iqtirāf al- Kabā’ir , ed. ‘Imad Zaki al-Barudi (Cairo: al-Maktabah al-Tawfiqiyyah, 2003), 2:296-97. 4. Khaled El-Rouayheb, Before Homosexuality in the Arabic-Islamic World, 1500- 1800 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005), 124, 136-39. The definition of liwāṭ in the late Shafiʿi school included the clause “… in the anus, whether of a man or a woman.” A hadith in Ibn Hanbal’s Musnad refers to anal sex with one’s wife as “the lesser liwāṭ ” ( al-lūṭīyah al-ṣughrā ), and this wording is attested ajiss34-3-final_ajiss 8/16/2017 1:01 PM Page 17

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even earlier in the Kitāb al-Taḥrīsh of Dirar b. ʿAmr (d. 200/815). In the Hanafi, Shafiʿi, and Maliki schools, anal sex with one’s wife or slavegirl is only punished by discretionary punishment ( taʿzīr ) (in the Shafiʿi school, one opinion is that this is only done if the man repeats the act after a warning). Al-Shaʿrani (d. 973/1565) states that some scholars allowed anal sex with male slaves, but he provides no name or reference. The Hanafi scholar al-Kawakibi (d. 1096/1685) also reported that “there are those” who consider anal sex with male slaves to be permissible on the basis of the Quran’s permission of sex with slaves (normally read as slave women), but again with no mention of who these scholars were. These may be references to the early Shafiʿi scholar Abu Sahl Ahmad al-Abiwardi (d. 385/995), who held that a man who commits liwāṭ with his male slave should only receive a discretionary punishment, since the slave was his property, and this introduced an ambiguity ( shubhah ), which drops the offense from the realm of the ḥudūd . Ibn Hajar al-Haytami states that the ulama had come to consensus that liwāṭ with one’s male slave was the same as with a free man; Muhammad Nawawi b. ʿUmar al-Jawi, Qūt al-Ḥabīb al-Gharīb (Cairo: Matbaʿat Mustafa al- Babi al-Halabi, 1938), 246; Musnad of Ibn Hanbal (Maymaniyyah print), 2:182; Dirar b. A͑ mr, Kitāb al-Taḥrīsh , ed. Hüseyin Hansu and Mehmet Keskin (Istanbul: Sharikat Dar al-Irshad; Beirut: Dar Ibn Hazm, 2014), 132; Muhammad Anwar Shah Kashmiri and Ahmad ʿAli al-Saharanpuri, Jāmiʿ al-Tirmidhī al-Muḥashshā (Karachi: Qadimi Kutubkhane, n.d.), 338; Salih ʿAbd al-Salam al-Abi, Al- Thamar al-Dānī fī Taqrīb al-Maʿānī Ḥāshiyat Risālat Ibn Abī Zayd al- Qayrawānī , 2d ed. (Cairo: Mustafa al-Babi al-Halabi, 1944), 438; al-Suyuti, Al-Ashbāh wa al-Naẓā’ir , ed. Muhammad al-Muʿtasim al-Baghdadi (Beirut: Dar al-Kitab al-ʿArabi, 1414/1993), 746; Taj al-Din al-Subki, Ṭabaqāt al-Shāfiʿīyah al-Kubrā , ed. ʿAbd al-Fattah Muhammad al-Huluw and Mahmud Muhammad al-Tanahi, 2d ed. (Cairo: Hujr, 1413/1992), 4:45-46; al-Haytami, Al-Zawājir , 2:299; Muhammad b. Hasan al-Kawakibi, Al-Fawā’id al-Samīyah Sharḥ al- Fawā’id al-Sanīyah , 2 vols. (Cairo: al-Maṭbaʿah al-Amiriyyah, 1322 AH ), 2:355. 5. Ibn al-Hajj (d. 737/1336) of Cairo, who was famously conservative, divided sodomy ( lūṭīyah ) into three levels: (1) pleasure from looking at other men/boys, which was ḥarām ; 2) sexual contact short of anal sex, which was as bad as the latter if repeated; and 3) anal sex (i.e., al-fāḥishah al-kubrā ); Ibn al-Hajj al-Maliki, Al-Madkhal , 2 vols. (Beirut: Dar al-Fikr, [1990]), 2:8. This tripartite division might come from Abu Bakr Ibn Abi al-Dunya (d. 281/894), who cites one Abu Sahl as describing how there will be three types of lūṭī folk: one that gazes, one that “clasps hands,” and one that does “that act.” See Abu Bakr Ibn Abi al-Dunya, Dhamm al-Malāhī , ed. ʿAmr ʿAbd al-Munʿim Salim (Cairo: Dar Ibn Taymiyyah, 1416/1996), 98. I thank Muntasir Zaman for this citation. See also Abu Bakr Muhammad b. al-Husayn al-Ajurri (d. 360/970), Dhamm al-Liwāṭ , ed. Majdi al- Sayyid Ibrahim (Cairo: Maktabat al-Qur’an, n.d.), 72. 6. For a useful study, see Sara Omar, “From Semantics to Normative Law: Percep - tions of Liwāṭ (Sodomy) and Siḥāq (Tribadism) in Islamic Jurisprudence (8-15th Century CE),” Islamic Law and Society 19 (2012): 222-56. ajiss34-3-final_ajiss 8/16/2017 1:01 PM Page 18

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7. Jalal al-Din al-Suyuti, Miṣbāḥ al-Zujājah Sharḥ Sunan Ibn Mājah (Karachi: Qadim Kutubkhane, n.d.), 184; Abu Bakr Ahmad al-Bayhaqi, Al-Sunan al-Kubrā , ed. Muhammad ʿAbd al-Qadir ʿAta, 11 vols. (Beirut: Dar al-Kutub al-ʿIlmiyyah, 1999), 8:404-5; al-Abi, Al-Thamar al-Dānī , 438. 8. Mansur b. Yunus al-Buhuti, Al-Rawḍ al-Murbiʿ , ed. Bashir Muhammad ʿUyun (Damascus: Maktabat Dar al-Bayan, 1999), 463-4; Abu Jaʿfar al-Tahawi, Sharḥ Mushkil al-Āthār , ed. Shuʿayb al-Arna’ut, 16 vols. (Beirut: Mu’assasat al-Risalah, 1994), 9: 442-43. 9. Al-Jawi, Qūt al-Ḥabīb , 246. 10. See this excellent study on how Sharia rules on same-sex activity are linked pri - marily to public order concerns: Mohammed Mezziane, “Sodomie et masculinité chez les juristes musalmans du IXe-XIe siècle,” Arabica 55 (2008): 276-306. 11. Kashmiri et al., Jāmiʿ al-Tirmidhī al-Muḥashshā , 338. 12. Al-Bayhaqi, Al-Sunan , 8:404-6; al-Haytami, Zawājir , 2:296. 13. Ibn Hajar, Fatḥ al-Bārī , ed. Ayman Fu’ad ʿAbd al-Baqi and ʿAbd al-ʿAziz Bin Baz, 14 vols. (Beirut: Dar al-Kutub al-ʿIlmiyyah, 1997), 12:139, 251. 14. Badr al-Din Muhammad al-Zarkashi, Al-Baḥr al-Muḥīṭ (Beirut: Dar al-Kutub al- ʿIlmiyyah, 2007), 4:566; al-Haytami, Al-Fatāwā al-Ḥadīthīyah (Beirut: Dar Ihya’ al-Turath al-ʿArabi, 1998), 267; Muhammad ʿAbd al-Rahman al-Khamis, ed., Al-Jāmiʿ fī Alfāẓ al-Kufr (Kuwait: Dar Ilaf al-Duwaliyyah, 1999/1420), 92; Muhyi al-Din al-Nawawi, Rawḍat al-Ṭālibīn (Beirut: al-Maktab al-Islami, 1991/1412), 10:65; Mansur al-Buhuti, Kashshāf al-Qināʿ (Beirut: Dar al-Fikr, 1982/1402), 6:172; Ibn Hazm, Al-Muḥallā (Beirut: Dar al-Fikr, n.d.), 12:388; al- Bayhaqi, Al-Sunan , 8:402; Muhammad b. Ahmad al-Qurtubi, Al-Jāmiʿ li Aḥkām al-Qur’ān, 10 vols. (Cairo: Dar al-Hadith, 2002), 4:212; Muhammad b. Ismaʿil al-Amir al-Sanʿani, Subul al-Salām , 4 vols. (Beirut: Dar Ihya’ al-Turath al-ʿArabi, 2005), 4:18-19. 15. For a useful declaration of what “Progressive” means in the Muslim context, see Omid Safi, ed., Progressive Muslims (Oxford: Oneworld, 2003), 1-29. 16. http://muslimmatters.org/2016/07/11/can-islam-accommodate-homosexual-acts- Qur’anic-revisionism-and-the-case-of-scott-kugle/. 17. Abu al-Hasan al-Ashʿari, Al-Ibāna ‘an Uṣūl al-Diyāna , ed. Fawqiyyah Husayn Mahmud (Cairo: Dar al-Ansar, 1977), 138. 18. See Scott Siraj al-Haqq Kugle, Homosexuality in Islam (Oxford: Oneworld, 2010). 19. ʿAbdallah b. ʿAbd al-Rahman al-Darimi, Sunan al-Darimī: introductory chapters, bāb al-sunnah qāḍiya ʿalā kitāb Allāh . 20. Al-Ajurri, Dhamm al-Liwāṭ , 29; Ibn ʿAbd al-Hadi Muhammad b. Ahmad, Al- Muharrar fī al-Ḥadīth , ed. ʿAdil al-Hudba and Muhammad ʿAllush (Riyadh: Dar al-ʿAta’, 2001), 407; Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyyah, Al-Jawāb al-Kāfī li Man Sa’ala ʿan al-Dawā’ al-Shāfī , ed. Muhibb al-Din al-Khatib (Cairo: al-Maktabah al- Salafiyyah, n.d.), 206; Muhammad b. ʿAbdallah al-Zarkashi al-Hanbali, Sharḥ al-Zarkashi ʿalā Mukhtaṣar al-Khiraqī , ed. ʿAbdallah ʿAbd al-Rahman al-Jibrin (Riyadh: Maktabat al-ʿUbaykan, 1993), 6:287; Ibn Hajar al-Haytami, Al-Zawājir , ajiss34-3-final_ajiss 8/16/2017 1:01 PM Page 19

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2:293; al-Sanʿani, Subul al-Salām , 4:18; Muhammad Nasir al-Din al-Albani, Ṣaḥīḥ Sunan Ibn Mājah (Riyadh: Maktabat al-Maʿarif, 1997), 2:324; idem, Ṣaḥīḥ Sunan Abī Dāwūd (Riyadh: Maktabat al-Maʿarif, 1998), 3:73. 21. Al-Tahawi, Sharḥ Mushkil al-Āthār , 9:449-50. His criticism of other hadiths does not involve ʿAmr b. Abi ʿAmr. 22. The Torah forbids shifting existing boundary markers, especially those of neigh - bors. See Deuteronomy 19:14, 27:17; and Proverbs 22:28. In early Roman law, destroying or moving boundary stones was punishable by being sacrificed to Jupiter Capitolinus; O. F. Robinson, “Criminal Law: The Roman Republic,” OUP Encyclopedia of Legal History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 2:268. 23. The narrations through ʿAbd al-Rahman b. Abi al-Zinad – ʿAmr b. Abi ʿAmr are highly inconsistent in their wording, as are the narrations through Sulayman b. Bilal – ʿAmr b. Abi ʿAmr, though they all contain mention of bestiality. By con - trast, the narrations through Zuhayr b. Muhammad – ʿAmr b. Abi ʿAmr and through Muhammad b. Ishaq – ʿAmr b. Abi ʿAmr are extremely consistent in their wording (those through Zuhayr never include bestiality; those through Ibn Ishaq always do). 24. In the Musnad of Ibn Hanbal there is a similar hadith narrated from ʿAli in which he reads from his ṣaḥīfah that the Prophet said: “God has cursed those who slaughter to other than God, God has cursed those who steal signposts in the land, and God has cursed those who curse their fathers, and God has cursed those who give refuge to a murderer” ( laʿana Allāh man dhabaḥa li ghayr Allāh laʿana Allāh man saraqa manār al-arḍ wa laʿana Allāh man laʿana wālidahu wa laʿana Allāh man awā muḥdithan ); Musnad of Ibn Hanbal, 1:108, 118, 152. 25. ʿAbd al-Razzaq al-Sanʿani, Al-Muṣannaf , ed. Habib al-Rahman al-Aʿzami, 11 vols. (Beirut: al-Maktab al-Islami, 1403/1983), 7:365. The isnād is: Ibn Jurayj – ʿAta’ al-Khurasani – (break) – the Prophet: malʿūn malʿūn malʿūn man ʿamila ʿamal qawm lūṭ malʿūn man sabba shay’an min wālidayhi malʿūn man ghayyara shay’an min tukhūm al-arḍ malʿūn man jamaʿa bayn imra’a wa ibnatihā malʿūn man tawallā qawman bi ghayr idhnihim malʿūn man waqaʿa ʿalā bahīma malʿūn man dhabaḥa li ghayr Allāh ʿazza wa jall . And also via the isnād : Ibn Jurayj – (likely break) – ʿIkrimah – Ibn ʿAbbas but without the mention of bestiality. It is debated whether Ibn Jurayj met and heard hadiths from ʿIkrimah; see Ibn Hajar, Tahdhīb al-Tahdhīb , ed. Mustafa ʿAbd al-Qadir ʿAta, 12 vols. (Beirut: Dar al- Kutub al-ʿIlmiyyah, 1994), 6:353. 26. ʿAbd b. Humayd, Musnad ʿAbd b. Ḥumayd , ed. Subhi Badri al-Samarra’i and Mahmud Muhammad Saʿidi (Cairo: Maktabat al-Sunnah, 1408/1988), 203. The key part of the isnād is: … Sulayman b. Bilal – ʿAmr b. Abi ʿAmr – ʿIkrimah …, with the wording: laʿana Allāh man ghayyara tukhūm al-arḍ wa laʿana Allāh man wālā ghayr mawālīhi wa laʿana Allāh man kammaha aʿmā ʿan al-sabīl laʿana Allāh man laʿana wālidayhi wa laʿana Allāh man dhabaḥa li ghayr Allāh wa laʿana Allāh man waqaʿa ʿalā al-bahīma wa laʿana Allāh man ʿamila ʿamal qawm lūṭ thumma laʿana Allāh man ʿamila ʿamal qawm lūṭ thumma laʿana Allāh man ʿamila ʿamal qawm lūṭ . ajiss34-3-final_ajiss 8/16/2017 1:01 PM Page 20

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27. Musnad of Ibn Hanbal in five locations. 1) Musnad 1:217. The isnād is Muham - mad b. Salama (Maslama in some recensions of the Musnad , an error) – Muham - mad b. Ishaq – ( ʿan ) ʿAmr b. Abi ʿAmr –ʿIkrimah – the Prophet, with the wording: malʿūn man sabba abāhu malʿūn man sabba ummaha malʿūn man dhabaḥa li ghayr Allāh malʿūn man ghayyara tukhūm al-arḍ malʿūn man kammaha aʿmā ʿan ṭarīq malʿūn man waqaʿa ʿalā bahīma malʿūn man ʿamila bi-ʿamal (some recensions have ʿamal ) qawm lūṭ . 2) Musnad 1:317. The isnād is Yaʿqub – Ibrahim b. Saʿd – Muhammad b. Ishaq – ( ḥaddathanā ) ʿAmr b. Abi ʿAmr – ʿIkrimah – Ibn ʿAbbas – the Prophet, with almost the identical wording: malʿūn man sabba abāhu malʿūn man sabba ummaha malʿūn man dhabaḥa li ghayr Allāh malʿūn man ghayyara tukhūm al-arḍ malʿūn man kammaha aʿmā ʿan al-ṭarīq malʿūn man waqaʿa ʿalā bahīma malʿūn man ʿamila ʿamal qawm lūṭ qālahā rasūl Allāh (s) mirāran thalāthan fī al-lūṭīyah . 3) Musnad 1:309. The isnād is ʿAbd al-Rahman – Zuhayr - ʿAmr b. Abi ʿAmr - ʿIkrimah – Ibn ʿAbbas – the Prophet: laʿana Allāh man dhabaḥa li ghayr Allāh wa laʿana Allāh man ghayyara tukhūm al-arḍ wa laʿana Allāh man kammaha al-aʿmā ʿan al-sabīl wa laʿana Allāh man sabba wālidayhi wa laʿana Allāh man tawallā ghayr mawālīhi wa laʿana Allāh man ʿamila ʿamal qawm lūṭ laʿana Allāh man ʿamila ʿamal qawm lūṭ laʿana Allāh man ʿamila ʿamal qawm lūṭ. 4) Musnad 1:317. The isnād is Hajjaj – ʿAbd al-Rahman b. Abi al-Zinad – ʿAmr b. Abi ʿAmr – ʿIkrimah – Ibn ʿAbbas – the Prophet: laʿana Allāh man man ghayyara tukhūm al-arḍ laʿana Allāh man dhabaḥa li ghayr Allāh laʿana Allāh man laʿana wālidayhi laʿana Allāh man tawallā ghayr mawālīhi laʿana Allāh man kammaha al-aʿmā ʿan al-sabīl laʿana Allāh man waqaʿa ʿalā bahīma wa laʿana Allāh man ʿamila ʿamal qawm lūṭ laʿana Allāh man ʿamila ʿamal qawm lūṭ laʿana Allāh man thalāthan . 5) Musnad 1:317. The isnād is Abu Saʿid – Sulayman b. Bilal – ʿAmr b. Abi ʿAmr – ʿIkrimah, etc., with the wording: laʿana Allāh man ghayyara tukhūm al-arḍ laʿana Allāh man tawallā ghayr mawālīhi laʿana Allāh man kammaha aʿmā ʿan al-ṭarīq laʿana Allāh man dhabaḥa li ghayr Allāh laʿana Allāh man waqaʿa ʿalā bahīma laʿana Allāh man ʿaqqa wālidayhi laʿana Allāh man ʿamila ʿamal qawm lūṭ qālahā thalāthan . 28. Nur al-Din ʿAli al-Haythami, Majmaʿ al-Zawā’id wa Manbaʿ al-Fawā’id , ed. Husam al-Din al-Qudsi, 10 vols. (Beirut: Dar al-Kitab al-ʿArabi, n.d.), 1:565. The isnād is: al-Khalil b. Zakariyyah – al-Muthanna b. al-Sabah – ʿAmr b. Shuʿayb – his father – his grandfather – the Prophet: malʿūn malʿūn malʿūn man ʿamila ʿamal qawm lūṭ . 29. Abu Bakr Ibn Abi al-Dunya, Dhamm al-Malāhī , ed. Muhammad ʿAbd al-Qadir ʿAta (Cairo: Dar al-Iʿtisam, 1407/1987), 65. The key part of the isnād is … Khalaf b. Hisham – ʿAbd al-Rahman b. Abi al-Zinad – ʿAmr b. Abi ʿAmr… etc., with the wording: laʿana Allāh man ʿamila ʿamal qawm lūṭ thalāthan laʿana Allāh man ʿamila ʿamal qawm lūṭ laʿana Allāh man ʿamila ʿamal qawm lūṭ. 30. Ahmad b. Shuʿayb al-Nasa’i (d. 303/916), Sunan al-Nasā’ī al-Kubrā , ed. Shuʿayb al-Arna’ut et al. (Beirut: Mu’assasat al-Risalah, 1421/2001), 6:485-86. Here al- Nasa’i describes ʿAmr as “not strong” ( laysa bi qawī ). The key part of the isnād ajiss34-3-final_ajiss 8/16/2017 1:01 PM Page 21

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is: … ʿAbd al-ʿAziz b. Muhammad – ʿAmr b. Abi ʿAmr – ʿIkrimah – Ibn ʿAbbas – the Prophet, with the wording: laʿana Allāh man ʿamila ʿamal qawm lūṭ laʿana Allāh man ʿamila ʿamal qawm lūṭ laʿana Allāh man ʿamila ʿamal qawm lūṭ .’ Al- Nasa’i must have omitted the earlier part of the list of things God has cursed, as the whole matn by this isnād is in al-Bayhaqi, Sunan , 8:403. Al-Ajurri includes the narration by this isnād with only the wording: laʿana Allāh man waqaʿa ʿalā bahīma wa laʿana Allāh man ʿamila ʿamal qawm lūṭ ; as well as once with the full list; al-Ajurri, Dhamm al-Liwāṭ , 46-47. 31. Abu Yaʿla al-Mawsili, Al-Musnad , ed. Husayn Salim Asad, 13 vols. (Damascus: Dar al-Ma’mun, 1404/1984), 4:414. The key part of the isnād is: … Zuhayr – ʿAbd al-Malik b. ʿAmr – Zuhayr b. Muhammad – ʿAmr b. Abi ʿAmr – ʿIkrimah…, with the wording: laʿana Allāh man dhabaḥa li ghayr Allāh wa laʿana Allāh man ghayyara tukhūm al-arḍ wa laʿana Allāh man kammaha al- aʿmā ʿan al-sabīl wa laʿana Allāh man sabba wālidayhi wa laʿana Allāh man tawallā ghayr mawālīhi wa laʿana Allāh man ʿamila ʿamal qawm lūṭ qālahā thalāthan yaʿnī qawm lūṭ . 32. Ibn Hibban al-Busti, Ṣaḥīḥ Ibn Hibban , ed. Shuʿayb al-Arna’ut, 18 vols. (Beirut: Mu’assasat al-Risalah, 1993), 10:265. The key part of the isnād is: Zuhayr b. Muhammad – ʿAmr b. Abi ʿAmr – ʿIkrimah…, with the wording: laʿana Allāh man dhabaḥa li ghayr Allāh wa laʿana Allāh man ghayyara tukhūm al-arḍ wa laʿana Allāh man kammaha al-aʿmā ʿan al-sabīl wa laʿana Allāh man sabba wālidayhi wa laʿana Allāh man tawallā ghayr mawālīhi wa laʿana Allāh man ʿamila ʿamal qawm lūṭ qālahā thalāthan fī ʿamal qawm lūṭ . 33. Muḥammad b. Jaʿfar al-Khara’iti, Masāwi’ al-Akhlāq wa Madhmūmuhā , ed. Mustafa al-Shalabi (Jeddah: Maktabat al-Sawadi, 1992), 203. The isnād is: Ahmad b. Mansur al-Ramadi – ʿAbdallah b. Raja’ – Saʿid b. Salamah – ʿAmr b. Abi ʿAmr – ʿIkrimah – the Prophet, with the wording: laʿana Allāh man waqaʿa ʿalā bahīma wa laʿana Allāh man ʿamila ʿamal qawm lūṭ qālahā thalātha . 34. Abu al-Qasim Sulayman al-Tabarani, Al-Muʿjam al-Awsaṭ , ed. Tariq b. ʿAwad Allah al-Husayni, 10 vols. (Cairo: Dar al-Haramayn, 1415/1995), 8:234. The isnād is: Muʿadh – Abu Musʿab al-Zuhri – Muharrar b. Harun al-Qurashi – al- Aʿraj – Abu Hurayrah – the Prophet (al-Tabarani notes that only Muharrar nar - rates this from al-Aʿraj), with the wording: laʿana Allāh sabʿa min khalqihi min fawq sabʿ samawātihi wa raddada al-laʿna ʿalā wāḥid minhum thalāthan wa laʿana kull wāḥid minhum laʿnatan takfīhi fa-qāla malʿūn man ʿamila ʿamal qawm lūṭ malʿūn man ʿamila ʿamal qawm lūṭ malʿūn man ʿamila ʿamal qawm lūṭ malʿūn man dhabaḥa li ghayr Allāh malʿūn man atā shay’an min al-bahā’im malʿūn man ʿaqqa wālidayhi malʿūn man jamaʿa bayn al-mar’a wa bayn ibnatihā malʿūn man ghayyara ḥudūd al-arḍ malʿūn man iddaʿā ilā ghayr mawālihi ; idem, Al-Muʿjam al-Kabīr , ed. Hamdi ʿAbd al-Majid al-Salafi, 25 vols. (Mosul: Maktabat al-Zahra’, 1983/1404), 11:218. The isnād is Abu Yazid al-Qaratisi and Yahya b. Ayyub al-ʿAllaf – Saʿid b. Abi Maryam – ʿAbd al- Rahman b. Abi al-Zinad and ʿAbd al-ʿAziz b. Muhammad – ʿAmr b. Abi ʿAmr – ʿIkrimah – Ibn ʿAbbas – Prophet, with the wording: laʿana Allāh man wālā ajiss34-3-final_ajiss 8/16/2017 1:01 PM Page 22

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ghayr mawālīhi laʿana Allāh man ghayyara tukhūm al-arḍ laʿana Allāh man kammaha aʿmā ʿan al-ṭarīq wa laʿana Allāh man laʿana wālidayhi wa laʿana Allāh man dhabaḥa li ghayr Allāh wa laʿana Allāh man waqaʿa ʿalā bahīma wa laʿana Allāh man ʿamila ʿamal qawm lūṭ wa laʿana Allāh man ʿamila ʿamal qawm lūṭ wa laʿana Allāh man ʿamila ʿamal qawm lūṭ . See also, for almost identical chains, al-Khara’iti, Masāwi’ al-Akhlāq , 201. 35. Al-Hakim al-Naysaburi, Al-Mustadrak (Hyderabad: Da’irat al-Maʿarif al- ʿUthmaniyyah, n.d.), 4:356. The key part of the isnād is: Zuhayr – ʿAmr b. Abi ʿAmr – Ikrimah…, with the wording: laʿana Allāh man dhabaḥa li ghayr Allāh, wa laʿana Allāh man ghayyara tukhūm al-arḍ wa laʿana Allāh man kammaha al-aʿmā ʿan al-sabīl wa laʿana Allāh man sabba wālidayhi wa laʿana Allāh man tawallā ghayr mawālīhi wa laʿana Allāh man ʿamila ʿamal qawm lūṭ . Another narration comes via Abu Hurayrah. The key part of the isnād is: Muharrar b. Harun al-Taymi (al-Qurashi) – al-Aʿraj – Abu Hurayrah – the Prophet: laʿana All āh sabʿa min khalqihi… malʿun malʿūn malʿun man ʿamila ʿamal qawm lūṭ . Al-Dhahabi notes that critics considered Muharrar b. Harun weak. 36. Al-Bayhaqi, Sunan , 8:403. The key part of the isnād is: Ibrahim b. Hamzah al- Zubayri – ʿAbd al-ʿAziz b. Muhammad – ʿAmr b. Abi ʿAmr – ʿIkrimah…, with the wording: laʿana Allāh man tawallā ghayr mawālīhi wa laʿana Allāh man ghayyara tukhūm al-arḍ wa laʿana Allāh man kammaha al-aʿmā ʿan al-sabīl wa laʿana Allāh man laʿana wālidahu wa laʿana Allāh dhabaḥa li ghayr Allāh wa laʿana Allāh man waqaʿa ʿalā bahīma wa laʿana Allāh man ʿamila ʿamal qawm lūṭ laʿana Allāh man ʿamila ʿamal qawm lūṭ laʿana Allāh man ʿamila ʿamal qawm lūṭ . 37. Abu Nuʿaym al-Isbahani, Ḥilyat al-Awliyā’ wa Ṭabaqāt al-Aṣfiyā’ , 10 vols. (Cairo: Maktabat al-Khanji and Beirut: Dar al-Fikr, 1416/1997), 9:232. The full isnād is: Muhammad b. al-Hasan – ʿAbdallah b. Ahmad – his father (a.k.a. Ibn Hanbal) – Muhammad b. Muslim (sic, probably a copyist’s error from the recen - sions of Ibn Hanbal’s Musnad that have Maslamah instead of Salamah) – Muhammad Ishaq (sic) – ʿAmr b. Abi ʿAmr – ʿIkrimah – the Prophet, with the wording: malʿūn man sabba abāhu malʿūn man sabba ummahu malʿūn man dhabaḥa li ghayr Allāh malʿūn man ghayyara tukhūm al-arḍ malʿūn man kammaha aʿmā min ṭarīq malʿūn man waqaʿa ʿalā bahīma malʿūn man ʿamila bi ʿamal qawm lūṭ. 38. Al-Khatib al-Baghdadi, Tārīkh Baghdād , ed. Mustafa ʿAbd al-Qadir ʿAta, 14 vols. (Beirut: Dar al-Kutub al-ʿIlmiyyah, 1417/1997), 5:90. The key part of the isnād is: al-Aʿmash – Abu Salih – Abu Hurayrah – the Prophet, with the wording: malʿūn malʿūn man sabba abāhu malʿūn malʿūn man sabba ummahu malʿūn malʿūn man ʿamila ʿamal qawm lūṭ malʿūn malʿūn man aghrā bayn bahīmatayn malʿūn malʿūn man ghayyara tukhūm al-arḍ malʿūn malʿūn man kammaha aʿmā ʿan al-ṭarīq. Al-Khatib calls this munkar , notes that “it is not reliably established by this isnād (lā yathbutu bi-hādhā al-isnād ),” and places the blame on a later narrator: Ahmad b. al-ʿAbbas al-Khallal. ajiss34-3-final_ajiss 8/16/2017 1:01 PM Page 23

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39. Al-Haythami, Majmaʿ al-Zawā’id, 1:103; al-Albani, Ṣaḥīḥ al-Jāmiʿ al-Ṣaghīr, ed. Zuhayr al-Shawish, 2 vols. (Beirut: al-Maktab al-Islami, 1988), 2:1225; Ahmad b. al-Siddiq al-Ghumari, Al-Mudāwī li-ʿIlal al-Jāmiʿ al-Ṣaghīr wa Sharḥay al-Munawī, 6 vols. (Cairo: Dar al-Kutub, 1996), 6:13. The narration championed by al-Ghumari, that via Ibn Ishaq, is found in Ibn Hanbal’s M usnad: 1:217, 317 and Abu Nuʿaym, Ḥilyat, 9:232. Note: Kugle discusses this hadith and presents a chart of some of its narrations. While he lists Ibn Ishaq as a trans- mitter, he is absent in the actual diagram; Kugle, H omosexuality in Islam, 119. 40. For a useful summary of the criticism of this hadith, see Jamal al-Din ʿAbdallah b. Yusuf al-Zaylaʿi, Naṣb al-Rāya li-Aḥādīth al-Hidāyah, ed. Muhammad ʿAwwamah, 5 vols. (Beirut: Mu’assasat al-Rayyan, 1997), 3:339-43. 41. Sunan Abī Dawud: kitāb al-adab, bāb mā jā’a fī al-isti’dhān fī al-ʿawrāt al- thalāth. 42. Sunan al-Nasā’ī: kitāb al-ṣadaqāt, bāb al-kafāla. 43. Al-Tirmidhi, K itāb al-ʿIlal al-Kabīr, ed. Subhi al-Samarra’i, et al. (Beirut: ʿAlam al-Kutub, 1989), 236; Jāmiʿ al-Tirmidhī: kitāb al-ḥudūd, bāb mā jā’a fī-man waqaʿa ʿalā al-bahīma; S unan al-Nasā’ī: kitāb manāsik al-ḥajj, bāb idhā ashāra al-maḥram ilā al-ṣayd… ; Sunan Abī Dawud: kitāb al-adab, bāb al-isti’dhān fī al-ʿawrāt al-thalāth; Shams al-Din al-Dhahabi, M īzān al-Iʿtidāl fī Naqd al-Rijāl, ed. ʿAli Muhammad al-Bijawi, 4 vols. (Beirut: Dar al-Maʿrifah, [n.d.], reprint of 1963-4 Cairo ʿIsa al-Babi al-Halabi edition), 3:281-82; Ibn Hajar, Tahdhīb al- Tahdhīb, 8:68-69. 44. ʿUmar b. Hasan Ibn Dihya, A dā’ mā Wajab min Bayān Waḍʿ al-Waḍḍāʿīn fī Rajab (Beirut: al-Maktab al-Islami, 1998), 136. 45. Sunan Abī Dawud: kitāb al-ḥudūd, bāb fī-man ʿamila ʿamal qawm lūṭ, bāb fī- man atā al-bahīma; Abu Sulayman Ḥamd al-Khattabi, M aʿālim al-Sunan, 3d ed., 4 vols. (Beirut: al-Maktabah al-ʿIlmiyyah, 1981), 3:333; Ibn Hajar, Tahdhīb al- Tahdhīb, 8:68; al-Tirmidhi, Kitāb al-ʿIlal al-Kabīr, 236; al-Tahawi, Sharḥ Mushkil al-Āthār, 9:440-43. Al-Bayhaqi advanced a more doctrinaire Shafiʿi po- sition when he argued that this claim was not convincing, since ʿAsim – Razin was not any more reliable a chain that of ʿAmr b. Abi ʿAmr; al-Bayhaqi, Al- Sunan al-Kubrā, 8:407. 46. Ibn Hajar, Bulūgh al-Marām, ed. Tariq ʿAwad Allah Muhammad (Beirut: Dar Ibn Hazm, 2008), 420. 47. Ibn Hajar, F atḥ al-Bārī, 12:139. 48. Ibid., 12:251. 49. Kugle, H omosexuality in Islam, 105-10. 50. Ibn Hajar, H uda li al-Sārī Muqaddimat Fatḥ al-Bārī, ed. Ayman Fu’ad ʿAbd al- Baqi and ʿAbd al-ʿAziz Bin Baz (Beirut: Dar al-Kutub al-ʿIlmiyyah, 1997), 596- 601. 51. See https://shaykhatabekshukurov.com/2016/06/13/ikrima-as-imam-of-modern- hanafis/ and https://shaykhatabekshukurov.com/2016/07/09/ikrima-as-imam-of- modern-hanafis-part-2/. ajiss34-3-final_ajiss 8/16/2017 1:01 PM Page 24

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52. See http://ahlussunnah.boards.net/thread/499/response-atabek-ikrimah-mawl-ibn 53. Kugle, Homosexuality in Islam, 88. 54. Abu Bakr al-Jassas, Aḥkām al-Qur’ān (Beirut: Dar al-Kitab al-ʿArabi, n.d.; fac - simile reprint of Istanbul: Matbaʿat al-Awqaf al-Islamiyyah, 1335/1917), 3:263. 55. Kugle, Homosexuality in Islam, 108-110. 56. See Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī: kitāb al-muḥāribīn min ahl al-kufr…, bāb ithm al-zinā . 57. Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī: kitāb al-maẓālim, bāb al-nuhba bi ghayr idhn ṣāḥibihi ; Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim: kitāb al-īmān, bāb bayān nuqṣān al-īmān …; Sunan Abī Dāwūd: kitāb al-sunna, bāb al-dalīl ʿalā ziyādat al-īmān …; Jāmiʿ al-Tirmidhī: kitāb al-īmān, bāb mā jā’a lā yaznī al-zānī …; Sunan al-Nasā’ī: kitāb qaṭʿ al-sāriq, bāb taʿẓīm al-sariqa ; Sunan Ibn Mājah: kitāb al-fitan, bāb al-nahy ʿan al-nuhba . 58. Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhari: kitāb al-muḥāribīn min ahl al-kufr…, bāb ithm al-zinā . 59. Kugle, Homosexuality in Islam, 81, 116. 60. Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī: kitāb istitābat al-murtaddīn…, bāb man taraka qitāl al- khawārij …. 61. The Qur’an states that God only makes knowledge of the unseen ( al-ghayb ) avail - able to those whom He chooses (Q. 72:26). In another verse the Prophet is made to say: “I do not know what will be done with me or with you all” (Q. 46:9), and in another: “I do not tell you all that mine are the treasuries of the world, nor do I known the unseen” (Q. 6:50). Aishah is reported to have said that anyone who claimed that the Prophet knew what would happen tomorrow was lying against God; Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī: kitāb al-tawḥīd, bāb qawl Allāh taʿālā ʿālim al- ghayb …). But numerous hadiths describe the Prophet knowing future events, such as one in which God teaches him “all that is in the heavens and the earth”; Jāmiʿ al-Tirmidhī: kitāb al-tafsīr, bāb min sūrat ṣād . Muslim scholars have thus concluded that the Prophet either had qualified knowledge of the unseen or that God granted him this knowledge at a particular time in his life, often thought to be during his Ascension to Heaven from Jerusalem. See, for example, Ibn ʿAsakir, Tārīkh Madīnat Dimashq , ed. ʿUmar al-ʿAmrawi, 80 vols. (Beirut: Dar al-Fikr, 1995-97), 11:5. Debate over the Prophet’s knowledge of the unseen has proven tempestuous between the Deobandi and Barelwi schools of thought in South Asia. See Usha Sanyal, “Are Wahhabis Kafirs? Ahmad Riza Khan Barelwi and His Sword of the Haramayn ,” in Islamic Legal Interpretation , ed. Muhammad Khalid Masud, Brinkley Messick and David S. Powers (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Uni - versity Press, 1996), 210-12. 62. Al-Khatīb al-Baghdadi, Al-Jamiʿ li Ikhtilāf al-Rāwī wa Ādāb al-Sāmiʿ , ed. Muhammad Ra’fat Saʿid, 2 vols. (Mansoura: Egypt: Dar al-Wafa’, 1422/2002), 2:81. The practice of transmitting the general meaning a hadith ( al-riwāyah bi’ al-maʿnā ) was widely accepted among hadith transmitters of the second/eighth and third/ninth centuries. It was eventually accepted unanimously, as noted by leading scholars like al-Khatib al-Baghdadi (d. 463/1071) and Ibn al-Salah (d. 643/1245). Some early Muslim scholars insisted on repeating hadiths exactly as they had heard them. Ibn Sirin (d. 110/728) even reportedly repeated grammatical errors in hadiths they had heard; al-Khatib, Al-Jāmiʿ , 2:71, 78-79; cf. Jāmiʿ al- ajiss34-3-final_ajiss 8/16/2017 1:01 PM Page 25

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Tirmidhī: kitāb al-ʿilal . Interestingly, al-Qadi ʿIyad b. Musa (d. 544/ 1149) stated that laxity in hadith transmission had led master scholars ( muḥaq-qiqūn ) in the fifth/eleventh century to “close the door of riwāyah bi al-maʿnā ”; al-Qadi ʿIyad, Mashāriq al-Anwār ʿalā Ṣiḥāḥ al-Āthār , ed. Balʿamshi Ahmad Yagan, 2 vols. ([Rabat]: Wizarat al-Awqaf wa al-Shu’un al-Islamiyyah, 1402/1982), 1:23. 63. Kugle, Homosexuality in Islam, 287. 64. For the versions of these hadiths with the non-anachronistic wordings, see Sunan Ibn Mājah: introduction, bāb fī al-qadar ; Musnad Ibn Ḥanbal , 2:125. 65. Kugle, Homosexuality in Islam, 119, 123. 66. Ibid., 120. 67. Ibid., 122. 68. Ibid., 121. 69. Peter Stearns, Sexuality in World History (London: Routledge, 2009), 17. 70. Kugle, Homosexuality in Islam, 118. 71. Ibid. 72. See Jonathan AC Brown, Hadith (Oxford: Oneworld, 2009), 210-13. 73. Al-Bayhaqi, Al-Sunan , 8:403. 74. Al-Tabarani, Al-Muʿjam al-Awsaṭ , 4:266-67. 75. Al-Bayhaqi, Sunan , 8:405. 76. ʿAbd al-Razzaq, Muṣannaf , 7:363. 77. Abu Bakr Ibn Abi Shaybah, Al-Muṣannaf , ed. Kamal Yusuf al-Hut, 7 vols. (Riyadh: Maktabat al-Rushd, 1409/1988), 5:497. 78. Harald Motzki, “The Muṣannaf of ʿAbd al-Razzaq al-Sanʿani as a Source of Au - thentic Aḥādīth of the First Century A.H.,” Journal of Near Eastern Studies , 50 (1991): 11-12. 79. For comprehensive studies on al-Suyuti, see Elizabeth Sartain, Jalāl al-Din al- Suyūṭī , 2 vols. (Cambridge: University of Cambridge Press, 1975); Marlis J. Saleh, “Al-Suyuti and His Works: Their Place in Islamic Scholarship from Mam - luk Times to the Present,” Mamluk Studies Review 5 (2001): 73-89. Invaluable Arabic works include Tahir Sulayman Hammuda, Jalāl al-Dīn al-Suyūṭī: ʿAṣruhu wa Ḥayātuhu wa Āthāruhu wa Juhūduhu fī al-Dars al-Lughawī (Beirut: n.p., 1989), Saʿdi Abu Jib, Ḥayāt Jalāl al-Dīn al-Suyūṭī maʿa al-ʿIlm min al-Mahd ilā al-Laḥd (Damascus: Dar al-Manahil, 1993). For his work in the science of Hadith, see Badiʿ al-Sayyid al-Lahham, Al-Imām al-Ḥāfiẓ Jalāl al-Dīn al-Suyūṭī wa Juhūduhu fī al-Ḥadīth wa ʿUlūmihi (Damascus: Dar Qutaybah, 1994). 80. Sartain, Jalāl al-Dīn al-Suyūṭī , 1:23. 81. Ibid., 1:19-113; Najm al-Din al-Ghazzī, Al-Kawākib al-Sā’irah bi Aʿyān al-Mi’ah al-ʿĀshirah , ed. Jibra’il Jabbur, 3 vols. (Beirut: Dar al-Afaq al-Jadidah, 1979), 1:226-31; ʿAbd al-Wahhab al-Shaʿrani, Al-Ṭabaqāt al-Ṣughrā , ed. Ahmad ʿAbd al-Rahman al-Sayih and Tawfiq Wahba (Cairo: Maktabat al-Thaqafah al- Diniyyah, 2005), 7, 13. 82. Saleh, “Al-Suyuti and His Works,” 83, 89. 83. Here al-Suyuti may have been following in the footsteps of his exemplar, Ibn Hajar, who, according to al-Suyuti, wrote a book called Al-Jāmiʿ al-Kabīr min ajiss34-3-final_ajiss 8/16/2017 1:01 PM Page 26

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Sunan al-Bashīr al-Nadhīr . Many scholars have pointed out al-Suyuti’s failure to exhaust all the extant hadiths in his Jāmiʿ al-Kabīr . The Egyptian al-Munawi (d. 1031/1622) estimated that al-Suyuti had captured no more than two thirds of the extant Prophetic sayings in his Jāmiʿ al-Kabīr , and he compiled his Jāmiʿ al- Azhar min Ḥadīth al-Nabī al-Anwar to include additional material that al-Suyuti had missed in the part of his work that he had completed. Al-Munawi then also picked up where had al-Suyuti left off (around the hadith “ man taraka …”). The Moroccan hadith scholar Abu al-ʿAla’ al-Fasi (d. 1769) wrote in over 5,000 ha - diths in the margins of his copy of the Jāmiʿ al-Kabīr . Meanwhile, the Indian scholar ʿAli b. ʿAbd al-Malik al-Muttaqi al-Hindi (d. 975/ 1567) built on al- Suyuti’s Jāmiʿ al-Ṣaghīr . He added more hadiths, including those describing the Prophet’s actions, and then arranged all the material according to topic in his huge Kanz al-ʿUmmāl fī Sunan al-Aqwāl wa al-Afʿāl ; Muhammad b. Jaʿfar al-Kattani, Salwat al-Anfās wa Muḥādathat al-Akyās mimman Uqbira min al-ʿUlamā’ wa al-Ṣulaḥā’ bi Fās , ed. ʿAbdallah al-Kamil al-Kattani et al., 4 vols. (Casablanca: Dar al-Thaqafah, 2004), 1:150; al-Suyuti, Naẓm al-ʿIqyān fī Aʿyān al-Aʿyān , ed. Philip Hitti (Beirut: al-Maktabah al-ʿIlmiyyah, 1927), 49; ʿAbd al-Ra’uf al-Mu - nawi, Al-Jāmiʿ al-Azhar min Ḥadīth al-Nabī al-Anwar (Cairo: al-Markaz al- ʿArabi li al-Bahth wa al-Nashr, 1980), 1:1-10. 84. This task was performed in the twentieth century by Yusuf al-Nabhani (d. 1932), who titled the resulting work Al-Fatḥ al-Kabīr fī Ḍamm al-Ziyādah ilā al-Jāmiʿ al-Ṣaghīr . 85. Al-Suyuti, Al-Taḥadduth bi Niʿmat Allāh , ed. Elizabeth Sartain (Cairo: al- Matbaʿah al-ʿArabiyyah al-Hadithah, 1972), 227. 86. Saleh, “Al-Suyuti and His Works,” 78. 87. Al-Suyuti, Al-Taḥadduth bi Niʿmat Allāh , 175. 88. Al-Suyuti, Al-Ḥāwī li al-Fatāwī (Beirut: Dar al-Kutub al-ʿIlmiyyah, 1402/1982, reprint of original published in 1352/1933), 2:110-115 and ; idem, Al-Ḥāwī li al- Fatāwī , 2 vols. (Beirut: Dar al-Kitab al-ʿArabī, n.d.), 2:279-85.

Attaining the Hoped-for in Service of the Messenger (may God’s peace and blessings be upon him)

{In the name of God, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful. And praise be to God, and peace be upon His elect servants.} 1 Question: The hadith “Whomever you all have found committing the ac - tion of the people of Lot, kill the active and the passive partners” 2 appears among the hadiths of Ibn ʿAbbas, Abu Hurayrah, and Jabir. The hadith of Ibn ʿAbbas was included by Abu Dawud, 3 al-Tirmidhi, 4 al- Nasa’i [in his Sunan al-Kubrā ], 5 Ibn Majah, 6 Ibn Abi al-Dunya in the Dhamm al-Malāhī (The Condemnation of Distractions ), 7 Abu Yaʿla [al-Mawsili] 8 and ajiss34-3-final_ajiss 8/16/2017 1:01 PM Page 27

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al-ʿAdani 9 in their two Musnad s, by ʿAbd b. Humayd 10 and Ibn al-Jarud in the Muntaqā ,11 by al-Daraqutni in his Sunan ,12 by al-Tabarani 13 and al-Hakim in the Mustadrak – and he rated it ṣaḥīḥ 14 – as well as by al-Bayhaqi in his Sunan 15 and al-Diya’ al-Maqdisi in his Mukhtārah .16 A group of the leading hadith scholars ( a’immat al-ḥuffāẓ ) have declared the hadith ṣaḥīḥ , [among them] al-Hakim, as we have already mentioned; Ibn al-Jarud, since he included it in his Muntaqā and restricted himself in that book to what is ṣaḥīḥ ; and al-Diya’, since he included it in his Mukhtārah and re - stricted himself in that book to what is ṣaḥīḥ but did not appear in the Ṣaḥīḥayn .17 And it has been said that what is ṣaḥīḥ in that book is stronger than what is [declared] ṣaḥīḥ in the Mustadrak . Ibn al-Tallaʿ also declared it ṣaḥīḥ in his Aḥkām ,18 as quoted from him by the hadith master Ibn Hajar 19 in his work documenting the hadiths used by al-Rafiʿi 20 [in his Muharrar in Shafiʿi law]. And when the hadith master Abu al-Fadl al-ʿIraqi 21 reported in his commentary on al-Tirmidhi that al-Hakim ranked it as ṣaḥīḥ , he affirmed that ruling and provided as well numerous transmissions bolstering its isnād . The hadith of Abu Hurayrah 22 was included by Ibn Majah, 23 al-Bazzar, 24 Ibn Jarir [al-Tabari] and al-Hakim, 25 who rated it as ṣaḥīḥ as well, and also by Ibn al-Tallaʿ (NB: It is also included in al-Tirmidhi’s Jāmiʿ ). 26 But the hadith master Ibn Hajar added a corrective comment to Ibn al-Tallaʿ’s rating of ṣaḥīḥ for the hadith: “The hadith of Abu Hurayrah is not reliable ( lam yaṣiḥḥa ).” I say, however, that Ibn Jarir [al-Tabari] rated as ṣaḥīḥ both the hadith of Abu Hurayrah and that of Ibn ʿAbbas in his Tahdhīb al-Āthār ,27 and perhaps this is what led al-Hakim to rate the hadith of Abu Hurayrah as ṣaḥīḥ . But Ibn ʿAbbas’ hadith has been established [as sufficiently reliable] ( thabata ), and al-Dhahabi noted, regarding al-Hakim’s ṣaḥīḥ rating for Abu Hurayrah’s hadith: “In its chain is ʿAsim b. ʿUmar al-ʿUmari, and he is weak ( ḍaʿīf ).” And the hadith master al-ʿIraqi apologized on behalf of [al-Hakim] by saying that he included it only as an attestation ( shāhid )28 for the hadith of Ibn ʿAbbas. As for the hadith of Jabir, al-Tirmidhi 29 alluded to it when he said, after [presenting] the hadith of Ibn ʿAbbas: “And on this subject there are also [ha - diths] from Jabir and Abu Hurayrah.” And al-ʿIraqi said in his commentary [on al-Tirmidhi’s Jāmiʿ ]: Ibn Hazm transmitted it from a path via Muhammad b. al-Qasim, from Yahya b. Ayyub, from ʿAbbad b. Kathir, from [ʿAbdallah b. Muhammad b. ʿAqil, from Jabir, that the Messenger of God, may God’s peace and blessings be upon him, said: “Whoever has committed the action of the people of Lot, kill him”]. 30 Ibn Wahb transmitted it from Yahya b. Ayyub, from a man, from Ibn ʿAqil. Al-Harith b. Abi Usamah also included the hadith of Jabir in his Musnad ,31 as did Ibn Jarir [al-Tabari] in his Tahdhīb al-Āthār , from the path of ʿAbbad b. ajiss34-3-final_ajiss 8/16/2017 1:01 PM Page 28

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Kathir, from ʿAbdallah b. Muhammad b. ʿAqil, from Jabir, that: “I heard the Messenger of God (s) say, while on the pulpit: ‘Whoever has committed the act of the people of Lot, kill him.’ And I saw another path for that hadith from the hadiths of ʿAli, which escaped both the masters al-ʿIraqi and Ibn Hajar. Ibn Jarir [al-Tabari] said, in his Tahdhīb al-Āthār : Muhammad b. Maʿmar al- Bahrani narrated to me, saying: Yahya b. ʿAbdallah b. Bakr narrated to us, say - ing: Husayn b. Zayd narrated to us, from Jaʿfar b. Muhammad, from his father, from his grandfather, from ʿAli, who said: The Messenger of God (s) said: ‘The person who has committed the act of the people of Lot is stoned, whether he is muḥṣan 32 or not ( yurjamu man ʿamila ʿamal qawm Lūṭ uḥṣina aw lam yuḥṣan ).’ NOTE : Al-Hakim only needed to resort to an attesting text for his ṣaḥīḥ rating of this hadith because of its transmitter from ʿIkrimah, from Ibn ʿAbbas, [namely] ʿAmr b. Abi ʿAmr, the freeman ( mawlā ) of al-Muttalib. The majority (jumhūr ) has deemed him reliable ( thiqah ), including Malik, al-Bukhari, and Muslim, who included his hadiths in the main hadiths of the Ṣaḥīḥayn (i.e., as opposed to corroborating narrations). Abu Dawud and al-Nasa’i considered him weak ( ḍaʿʿafahu ), and because of that al-Nasa’i rejected this hadith. Yahya 33 said: “He was weakened.” Al-Dhahabi said in his Mīzān , after report - ing all of this, that “he was not at all weakened, nor was he weak. Yes, he is not as reliable as al-Zuhri and the like.” He continued: “And Ahmad b. Abi Maryam transmitted from Ibn Maʿin that he said: ʿAmr b. Abi ʿAmr is reliable, but he is criticized for the hadith of ʿIkrimah, from Ibn ʿAbbas that the Prophet (s) said: ‘Kill the active and passive partner.’” Al-Dhahabi commented on that: “His hadith is ṣāliḥ ḥasan ,34 falling short of the highest levels of ṣaḥīḥ .” 35 What is established in the hadith sciences is that [a transmitter] of that de - scription, if a parallel 36 or attesting [transmission] if found for him, his hadith is rated as sound. For this reason, al-Hakim needed to provide the hadith of Abu Hurayrah so that it could serve as an attestation for the hadith of Ibn ʿAbbas. Although Abu Hurayrah’s hadith did not meet the condition of ṣaḥīḥ , he only cited it as an attestation and not as a primary hadith ( aṣl ) to complete the rating of Ibn ʿAbbas’s hadith as ṣaḥīḥ . The hadith master Abu al-Fadl al- ʿIraqi produced numerous paths for Ibn ʿAbbas’ hadith to bolster al-Hakim’s ṣaḥīḥ rating of it. He said: It has also appeared via the transmission of Dawud b. al-Husayn, 37 ʿAbbad b. Mansur and Husayn b. ʿAbdallah, [all] from ʿIkrimah. 38 So these three cor - roborate ʿAmr b. Abi ʿAmr. Ahmad [Ibn Hanbal] included Dawud’s narration in his Musnad 39 with the aforementioned wording, and it was included by Ibn Jarir [al-Tabari] 40 and al-Bayhaqi in his Sunan ,41 with the wording: “Who - ever has sex with ( waqaʿa ) a man, kill him.” And the narration of ʿAbbad was included by al-Bayhaqi with the wording: “Concerning the person who ajiss34-3-final_ajiss 8/16/2017 1:01 PM Page 29

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commits the act of the people of Lot, and concerning the man who is had sex with ( yu’tā fī nafsihi ), [the Prophet] said: ‘He is killed.” 42 And Ibn Jarir [al- Tabari] included it in his Tahdhīb al-Āthār 43 with the wording: “The Prophet (s) said, ‘Kill the active and the passive partner in the act of Lot ( al-lūṭīyah ).’” Al-Tabarani included Husayn’s narration in the Muʿjam al-Kabīr 44 with the previous wording.

Al-ʿIraqi also produced two other paths for Abu Hurayrah’s hadith, one of them in the Mustadrak [of al-Hakim] 45 and the Muʿjam al-Awsaṭ 46 of al- Tabarani, and the second in al-Tabarani’s Muʿjam al-Awsaṭ . But these two have wordings that differ with the previous wording. He then produced the hadith of Jabir, as discussed earlier, and then said: “And on this topic, [there are ha - diths] from Abu Musa al-Ashʿari in al-Bayhaqi’s [books] 47 and from Ayyub in al-Tabarani’s Muʿjam al-Kabīr .” 48 This is the sum of the attesting texts that al- ʿIraqi presented to authenticate the hadith of Ibn ʿAbbas. I have said: I have found another attestation in addition to those. Abu Nuʿaym said in his Ḥilyat :

Abu Muhammad Talhah and Abu Ishaq Saʿd narrated to us: “Muhammad b. Ishaq al-Naqid reported to us, both (sic) saying: Muhammad b. ʿUthman b. Abi Shaybah narrated to us: My father narrated to us: Wakiʿ narrated to us: Muhammad b. Qays narrated to us, from Abu Hasin (ʿUthman b. ʿAsim al- Asadi), from Abu ʿAbd al-Rahman, that ʿUthman looked out over the people (ashrafa ʿalā ) on the day he was attacked in his house ( yawm al-dār ) and said: ‘Have you all not come to know that killing is not due except for four cases: A man who has apostatized after having entered Islam, who has com - mitted adultery after having married, who took a life without right, or who has committed the act of the people of Lot?’” 49

[Abu Bakr] Ibn Abi Shaybah said in his Muṣannaf ,50 “Wakiʿ narrated to us: Muhammad b. Qays narrated to us, from Abu Hasin, from Abu ʿAbd al- Rahman that ʿUthman looked out over the people on the day he was attacked in his house and said: ‘Have you all not come to know that the blood of a Mus - lim person does not become licit except for four things: a man who has com - mitted the act of the people of Lot (sic)?’ This isnād is ṣaḥīḥ , and ʿUthman’s, may God be pleased with him, statement to the people ‘Have you all not come to know’ is evidence for that [fact] being well known among them, just as the first three reasons mentioned with it. And Ibn Abi Shaybah said: “Ghassan b. Mudar narrated to us, from Saʿid b. Yazid, from Abu Nadra: Ibn ʿAbbas was asked what the punishment ( ḥadd ) of the sodomite ( lūṭī ), and he said: ‘The highest building in the town is sought out, and he is thrown from it backwards, and then this is followed by stoning.’” And ʿAbd al-Razzaq said in his ajiss34-3-final_ajiss 8/16/2017 1:01 PM Page 30

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Muṣannaf 51 : from Ibn Jurayj ( taḥwīl )52 ; and Ibn Abi Shaybah 53 said: Muham - mad b. Bakr narrated to us, from Ibn Jurayj, who said: ʿAbdallah b. ʿUthman b. Khuthaym reported to me that he heard Mujahid and Saʿid b. Jubayr narrate from Ibn ʿAbbas that he said, concerning the virgin who is found committing sodomy ( lūṭīyah ), that he is stoned. And Ibn Abi Shaybah said:

Wakiʿ narrated to us from Ibn Abi Layla, from al-Qasim Abu al-Walid, from Yazid b. Qays, that ʿAli stoned a sodomite. He also said: Wakiʿ nar - rated to us, from Sufyan, from Jabir, from Mujahid, concerning the sodomite: He is stoned whether he was married ( uḥṣana ) or not. He said: Yazid narrated to us: Hammad b. Salama reported to us, from Hammad b. Abi Sulayman, from Ibrahim [al-Nakhaʿi], concerning the sodomite: If any - one were to be stoned twice, it would be this person. And [Ibn Abi Shaybah] said: ʿAbd al-Aʿla narrated to us, from Saʿid, from Qatadah, from ʿUbayd Allah b. ʿAbdallah b. Maʿmar concerning the sodomite: Stoning is the re - quirement for him, the death of the people of Lot. And he said: ʿAbd al- Aʿla narrated to us, from Saʿid, from Qatadah, from Jabir b. Zayd, who said: The prohibition/inviolability ( ḥurma ) of the buttocks ( al-dubur ) is greater than the prohibition/inviolability of the vagina ( farj ). And Qatadah said: We understand it as [requiring] stoning.

[Al-Suyuti concludes], all of these reports ( āthār ) are attestations for bol - stering the Hadith of Ibn ʿAbbas. And how could Yahya, 54 Abu Dawud, and al-Nasa’i be relied upon regard - ing the weakness of the hadith’s narrator (i.e., ʿAmr b. Abi ʿAmr), assuming he alone had narrated it, when the leading imams had declared him reliable, among them Malik, al-Bukhari, and Muslim, all of whom are considered su - perior to every hadith master in their own age and the ages after? And they in - cluded hadiths through him in the primary ( uṣūl ) hadiths [in their books]. Al-Dhahabi said in his Mūqiẓah : Those who were used for hadiths by the two Shaykhs (i.e., al-Bukhari and Muslim) or by one of them fall into two groups: (1) those that the two of them used as proof in their primary hadiths and (2) those they used for parallel narrations or for attestation texts to be taken into consideration. As for a trans - mitter used as proof by both [imams] or only by one of them, but who was neither deemed reliable [by other critics] nor found fault with, 55 he is reliable and his hadiths [are] strong. As for a transmitter who was used by both as proof or only by one and who had been criticized, sometimes that criticism [is characterized by bad-faith or bias ( taʿannut ), while the majority agrees on him being reliable. In this case, that transmitter’s hadiths are strong as well. And sometimes the criticism] 56 of that transmitter’s laxity or inaccurate re - tention ( ḥifẓihi ) merits consideration. This transmitter’s hadiths do not fall ajiss34-3-final_ajiss 8/16/2017 1:01 PM Page 31

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below the level of ḥasan , which can be called among the lower levels of ṣaḥīḥ . And there is not in the two books, by God’s praise, a man who was used as proof by al-Bukhari or Muslim in their primary hadiths whose trans - missions were weak. Rather, they are either ḥasan or ṣaḥiḥ . And among those whom al-Bukhari or Muslim used for their attesting or parallel [corroborating] narrations are some with some problem [in] their retention ( ḥifẓ ) and some hesitation in declaring them reliable. So everyone whose hadiths were used in the Ṣaḥīḥayn has passed the test ( qafaza al-qanṭarah , literally “jumped over the viaduct”), so there is no turning away from him except with clear proof ( burhān ). Yes, [the category of] ṣaḥīḥ consists of levels, and reliable transmitters fall into classes. Thus ends al-Dhahabi’s discussion in the Mūqiẓah . He also mentioned in his Mīzān that ʿAmr b. Abi ʿAmr’s hadiths “were included in the Ṣaḥīḥayn among the primary hadiths.” 57 So how can his hadiths be ruled weak, as you see in al-Dhahabi’s discussion here, when he was not even alone in narrating the hadith? Indeed, there are corroborating narrations from ʿIkrimah, and his hadith also has attesting texts from the transmission of a number of Compan - ions. So it was for this reason that those hadith masters who declared it ṣaḥīḥ did so, and they did not pay heed to the weak rating of those who declared its narrator weak. Al-Hakim needed to produce an attesting text for the hadith be - cause, [taken] at their lowest level, ʿAmr’s hadiths are ḥasan , so they require attestation to raise them up to the level of ṣaḥīḥ . And God knows best. ANOTHER NOTE : The hadith master Ibn Hajar mentioned in his indexing (takhrīj ) of the hadiths of al-Rafiʿi[’s Mu ḥarrar ]58 that the above-mentioned hadith of Ibn ʿAbbas is “disagreed on in terms of its attestation ( mukhtalaf fī thubūtihi ),” and in this he draws attention to an important point of knowledge in the field of the technical terms of Hadith study ( iṣṭilāḥ al-ḥadīth ). I wanted to clarify this point, since those with no awareness of the science of Hadith will not understand Ibn Hajar’s intention in that, and one might misunderstand it as impugning the Hadith, as those with no knowledge of the science con - cluded from al-Tirmidhi’s statement regarding the Hadith “I am the abode of wisdom and ʿAli is its gate,” in some of the recensions ( nusakh ) [of his Jāmiʿ ] that “This hadith is munkar .” 59 Such people thought, based on that, that al-Tir midhi meant that the hadith is false ( bāṭil ) or forged, [this being due to] their lack of knowledge regarding the technical terms of Hadith and their ignorance that munkar is one of the types of weak hadiths that appear. It is not from among the categories of false or forged hadiths. 60 Rather, scholars adopted that phrase as a technical term, making it a label for a defined type of weak hadith, just as grammarians made “mawṣūl ” (relative pronoun) a technical label for one type of definite nouns ajiss34-3-final_ajiss 8/16/2017 1:01 PM Page 32

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(al-maʿrifah ). And it occurred in the case of al-Khatib al-Baghdadi 61 in his His - tory [of Baghdad ] that he transmitted a false hadith and said after it, “This ha - dith is munkar .” So al-Dhahabi took issue with him in the Mīzān : “What a shock from al-Khatib,” how he used the phrase munkar on this false report. 62 Rather, munkar is used for [hadiths like] the Hadith of the Two Great Buckets (qullatayn ). 63 And in his Mīzān , he described as munkar a number of hadiths from the Musnad of Ahmad [Ibn Hanbal], the Sunan of Abu Dawud and other relied-upon books, indeed, even from the Ṣaḥīḥayn as well. 64 But this only means what is understood by the hadith masters, namely, that the property of munkar (nakāra ) stems from being an isolated transmission (fardīyah ). And being an isolated transmission does not entail that the hadith’s matn is weak, let alone false. One school of thought, such as [that of] Ibn al- Salah, views the terms munkar and anomalous ( shādhdh )65 as synonyms [in describing reports]. How many hadiths are there in the Ṣaḥīḥayn that have been described as anomalous, such as Muslim’s hadith denying the reading of the basmalah [aloud] in prayer? For indeed Imam al-Shafiʿi, may God be pleased with him, ruled that it was anomalous. 66 And it is not for you to say that they (i.e., al-Bukhari and Muslim) required as a condition for the ṣaḥīḥ rating that the hadith not be anomalous, for how would that be correct if it is included in the Ṣaḥīḥ while it is ruled anomalous? This is also due to your lack of knowledge regarding weakness [in hadiths]. For, indeed, Ibn al-Salah, when he mentioned the definition ( ḍābiṭ ) of the ṣaḥīḥ category and set as a condition that it not be shādhdh , said at the end of his discussion: “This is the [condition] for the hadith that is judged to be ṣaḥīḥ without any disagreement among the people of Hadith.” 67 So he alluded to this being the definition for the level of ṣaḥīḥ by agreement ( al-ṣaḥīḥ al-muttafaq ʿalayhi ). But another type of ṣaḥīḥ does fit into that definition, namely, the disagreed-upon ṣaḥīḥ (al-ṣaḥīḥ al-mukhtalaf fīhi ). For this reason al- Zarkashi 68 said in his commentary on the Mukhtaṣar of Ibn al-Salah: “[The category of] disagreed-upon ṣaḥīḥ falls outside this definition.” Then Ibn al-Salah men tioned other important points of knowledge, among them that the [category of] ṣaḥīḥ subdivides into agreed upon and disagreed upon and as well as well- known ( mashhūr ) and rare ( gharīb ), and he clarified all that. 69 Al-Zarkashi said in his commentary and the hadith master Ibn Hajar said in his Remarks [on Ibn al-Salah] 70 at that point that al-Hakim mentioned in his Introduction (Madkhal )71 that ṣaḥīḥ hadiths are divided into ten categories, five agreed upon and five disagreed upon. The first type of the first [category] is what both al-Bukhari and Muslim chose, and that is the first level of the ṣaḥīḥ , which is narrated by a well-known Companion who has two transmitters [nar - rating] from him. And the hadiths transmitted by this criterion do not number ajiss34-3-final_ajiss 8/16/2017 1:01 PM Page 33

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ten thousand. The second: the ṣaḥīḥ hadith narrated by an upstanding, accurate (ḍābiṭ ) transmitter from the upstanding, accurate ( ḍābiṭ ) transmitter, back to the Companion, but who only has one transmitter [who narrates] from him. Third: reports from a group among the Successors that only have one trans - mitter [narrating] from each of them. Fourth: those solitary narrations of limited attestation that are transmitted by reliable, upstanding narrators and narrated by one of the reliable transmitters alone without other paths recorded in the books [of Hadith]. 72 Fifth: hadiths from a group of the imams, from their fathers and from their grandfathers, but the transmission of these hadiths only became widespread from their fathers, from their grandfathers through them. 73 As for the five categories whose soundness is disagreed on, the first is the cast ( mursal )74 hadith, which is considered ṣaḥīḥ by the scholars of Kufa. Sec - ond: the transmission of obfuscators ( mudallisīn )75 when they do not specify hearing transmissions directly. In other words, they do not specify their direct audition ( samāʿ ). This type is ṣaḥīḥ according to a number of scholars. Third: a report narrated by a reliable transmitter from an imam of the Muslims, who then provides an isnād [back to the Prophet] for that report, and then a group of reliable transmitters narrate it from him but via casting ( irsāl ). Fourth: the transmission by a hadith scholar ( muḥaddith ) with sound audition and sound writing, whose upstanding character seems evident, except that he neither un - derstands what he narrates nor retains it exactly ( lā yaḥfaẓuhu ). Indeed, this category is ṣaḥīḥ according to most scholars of Hadith, although some of them do not see that is proof ( ḥujjah ). Fifth: transmissions from heretics ( mubtadiʿah ) and people with various agendas, for their transmissions are accepted according to the people of knowledge if they are truthful ( ṣādiqīn ). Al-Hakim said: “I mentioned these categories so that no one would mistake that only what al- Bukhari and Muslim included [in their books] is ṣaḥīḥ .” Once you have understood this, [you will see that, concerning] the state - ment of the hadith master Ibn Hajar that “the hadith of Ibn ʿAbbas is disagreed on in terms of its attestation,” he wanted to show that it fell into the category of disagreed upon ṣaḥīḥ and not agreed upon ṣaḥīḥ . His intention was to com - plete the point of knowledge, since his method in that book is that, if a hadith fell into the first category, he noted it as being well attested, and if it was from the second category, he drew attention to that. And there are in that noble book precious gems from the craft of Hadith that only one with in-depth knowledge of that science, like its author, would recognize. So let the person be wary of daring to speak about the hadiths of the Mes - senger of God (s) without knowledge, and let him apply himself assiduously to attain that science until he becomes competent, his feet become firm, and he delves deeply into it so that he not fall under the hadith: “Whoever speaks ajiss34-3-final_ajiss 8/16/2017 1:01 PM Page 34

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without knowledge, he is cursed by the angels of the heavens and Earth.”76 And let him not be deluded just because no one repudiated him in this earthly life, for after death the message will come to him either in the grave or on the Bridge, where the Prophet (s) will dispute with him, saying:

How do you speculate about my hadiths and speak about that which you have no knowledge? For either you reject something that I said or you attribute to me what I have not said. Have you not read what was revealed to me: “And pursue not that of which you have no knowledge; hearing, sight and the heart, all of these shall be questioned.” (Q. 17:36)

O what an embarrassment for him on that day! O what a scandal for him, this, if he dies a Muslim, and otherwise he will be punished! And refuge be sought with God from a vile finale (sū’ al-khātimah) [to the affairs of this world]. As the preachers say in the pulpits in some of their sermons: “And sins, how many sins a servant [of God] is punished for because of a vile end.” As Shaykh Muhyi al-Din al-Qurashi al-Hanafi quoted in his Tadhkirah, from Imam Abu Hanifah, may God be pleased with him: “What strips people most of faith upon death, or the greatest cause of this, is injustice (ẓulm),” and what injustice is greater than the insolence of delving into the hadiths of the Mes- senger of God (s) without knowledge?

We ask God for safety and well-being. Endnotes

1. { } not in the ms. relied upon by the Dar al-Kitab al-ʿArabi (DKA) edition. The Dar al-Kitab al-ʿIlmiyyah (DKI) edition says it is missing from some mss. 2. Arabic: man wajadtumūhu yaʿmalu ʿamal qawm lūṭ fa aqtulū al-fāʿil wa al- mafʿūl bihi. 3. Abu Dawud Sulayman b. al-Ashʿath al-Sijistani (d. 275/889), Sunan Abī Dāwūd: kitāb al-ḥudūd, bāb fī man ʿamila ʿamal qawm lūṭ. The key portion of the isnād is: … ʿAbd al-ʿAziz b. Muhammad – ʿAmr b. Abi ʿAmr – ʿIkrimah – Ibn ʿAbbas – the Prophet: man wajadtumūhu yaʿmalu ʿamal qawm lūṭ fa aqtulū al-fāʿil wa al-mafʿūl bihi. See also al-Khara’iti, Masāwi’ al-Akhlāq, 202. Abu Dawud also notes the parallel isnāds of … Sulayman b. Bilal – ʿAmr b. Abi ʿAmr…, and … ʿAbbad b. Mansur – ʿIkrimah…, and … Dawud b. Husayn – ʿIkrimah…. 4. Muhammad b. ʿIsa al-Tirmidhi (d. 279/892), Jāmiʿ al-Tirmidhī: kitāb al-ḥudūd, bāb fī-man ʿamila ʿamal qawm lūṭ. The key portion of the isnād is: … ʿAbd al- ʿAziz b. Muhammad – ʿAmr b. Abi ʿAmr – ʿIkrimah – Ibn ʿAbbas – the Prophet: man wajadtumūhu yaʿmalu ʿamal qawm lūṭ fa aqtulū al-fāʿil wa al-mafʿūl bihi. 5. This particular matn is not found in either of al-Nasa’i’s Sunans. What the Sunan al-Kubrā actually contains is the hadith laʿana Allāh man ʿamila ʿamal qawm ajiss34-3-final_ajiss 8/16/2017 1:01 PM Page 35

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lūṭ, laʿana Allāh man ʿamila ʿamal qawm lūṭ, laʿana Allāh man ʿamila ʿamal qawm lūṭ via the same isnād as the Hadith of Killing the Active/Passive Partner, i.e., … ʿAbd al-ʿAziz b. Muhammad – ʿAmr b. Abi ʿAmr – ʿIkrimah – Ibn ʿAbbas – the Prophet); Ahmad b. Shuʿayb al-Nasa’i (d. 303/916), Sunan al-Nasā’ī al- Kubrā , ed. Shuʿayb al-Arna’ut et al. (Beirut: Mu’assasat al-Risalah, 1421/2001), 6:485-86. Here al-Nasa’i describes ʿAmr as “not strong” ( laysa bi qawī ). The Sunan al-Kubrā is a much larger collection than al-Nasa’i’s more famous Mujtabā , often referred to simply as Sunan al-Nasā’ī . Unlike the Mujtabā , it in - cludes many unreliable hadiths and relies on transmitters whom al-Nasa’i himself considered deeply flawed. For the most recent study on al-Nasa’i and his Hadith collection, see Christopher Melchert, “The Life and Works of al-Nasa’i,” Journal of Semitic Studies 54, no. 1 (2014): 377-406. 6. Muhammad b. Yazid Ibn Majah (d. 273/886), Sunan Ibn Mājah: kitāb al-ḥudūd, bāb fī man ʿamila ʿamal qawm lūṭ . The key portion of the isnād is: … ʿAbd al- ʿAziz b. Muhammad – ʿAmr b. Abi ʿAmr – ʿIkrimah – Ibn ʿAbbas – the Prophet: man wajadtumūhu yaʿmalu ʿamal qawm lūṭ fa aqtulū al-fāʿil wa al-mafʿūl bihi . 7. Abu Bakr Ibn Abi al-Dunya (d. 281/894), Dhamm al-Malāhī , ed. Muhammad ʿAbd al-Qadir ʿAta (Cairo: Dar al-Iʿtisam, 1407/1987), 65. The key portion of the isnād is: ʿAbd al-ʿAziz b. Muhammad – ʿAmr b. Abi ʿAmr – ʿIkrimah – Ibn ʿAbbas – the Prophet, but the matn varies from the others: fī-man ʿamila ʿamal qawm lūṭ yuqtalu al-fāʿil wa al-mafʿūl bihi. 8. Abu Yaʿla al-Mawsili (d. 307/919-20), Musnad , ed. Husayn Salim Asad, 13 vols. (Damascus: Dar al-Ma’mun, 1404/1984), 4:346-8. The key portion of the isnād is: … ʿAbd al-ʿAziz b. Muhammad – ʿAmr b. Abi ʿAmr – ʿIkrimah – Ibn ʿAbbas – the Prophet: man wajadtumūhu yaʿmalu ʿamal qawm lūṭ fa aqtulū al-fāʿil wa al-mafʿūl bihi . The hadith also appears with the clause on bestiality (see ibid., 5:128) via the isnād : … ʿAbd al-Malik b. ʿAmr – Zuhayr b. Muhammad – ʿAmr b. Abi ʿAmr – ʿIkrimah – Ibn ʿAbbas – the Prophet. 9. Abu ʿAbdallah Muhammad b. Yahya al-ʿAdani (d. 243/858) was a hadith scholar who lived for a long time in Makkah. He was a teacher of al-Tirmidhi, Muslim, and Ibn Majah and was one of al-Nasa’i’s sources. His Sunan appears not to have survived. I have found no record of the isnād . 10. ʿAbd b. Humayd (d. 249/863), Musnad ʿAbd b. Ḥumayd , ed. Subhi Badri al- Samarra’i and Mahmud Muhammad Saʿidi (Cairo: Maktabat al-Sunnah, 1408/ 1988), 200. The key portion of the isnād is: ʿAbdallah b. Jaʿfar – ʿAmr b. Abi ʿAmr – ʿIkrimah – Ibn ʿAbbas – the Prophet: man wajadtumūhu yaʿmalu ʿamal qawm lūṭ fa aqtulū al-fāʿil wa al-mafʿūl bihi , with the addition of the Bestiality Clause. See also al-Tabari, Tahdhīb al-Āthār: Musnad Ibn ʿAbbas , ed. Mahmud Muhammad Shakir, 2 vols. (Cairo: Matbaʿat al-Madan, n.d.), 2:554. 11. ʿAbdallah b. ʿAli Ibn al-Jarud al-Naysaburi (d. 307/919-20), Al-Muntaqā , ed. ʿAbdallah ʿUmar al-Barudi (Beirut: Mu’assasat al-Kitab al-Thaqafiyyah, 1408/ 1988), 208. The key portion of the isnād is: … Sulayman b. Bilal – ʿAmr b. Abi ʿAmr – ʿIkrimah – Ibn ʿAbbas – the Prophet: man wajadtumūhu yaʿmalu ʿamal qawm lūṭ fa aqtulū al-fāʿil wa al-mafʿūl bihi . ajiss34-3-final_ajiss 8/16/2017 1:01 PM Page 36

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12. ʿAli b. ʿUmar al-Daraqutni (d. 385/995), Sunan , ed. ʿAbdallah Hashim Yamani, 4 vols. (Beirut: Dar al-Maʿrifah, 1966), 3:124. The key portion of the isnād is: … ʿAbd al-ʿAziz b. Muhammad – ʿAmr b. Abi ʿAmr – ʿIkrimah – Ibn ʿAbbas – the Prophet: man wajadtumūhu yaʿmalu ʿamal qawm lūṭ fa aqtulū al-fāʿil wa al- mafʿūl bihi . 13. Abu al-Qasim Sulayman al-Tabarani (d. 360/971), Al-Muʿjam al-Kabīr , ed. Hamdi ʿAbd al-Majid al-Salafi, 25 vols. (Mosul: Maktabat al-Zahra’, 1983/1404), 11:212. The key portion of the isnād is: … Sulayman b. Bilal – Husayn b. ʿAbdallah – ʿIkrimah – Ibn ʿAbbas – the Prophet: man wajadtumūhu yaʿmalu ʿamal qawm lūṭ fa aqtulū al-fāʿil wa al-mafʿūl bihi . Note: That isnād does not include ʿAmr b. Abi ʿAmr. The hadith also appears at ibid., 11:226 with the clause on bestiality inverted via the isnād of… Dawud b. al-Husayn – ʿIkrimah – Ibn ʿAbbas – the Prophet. This is also found in the Muṣannaf of ʿAbd al-Razzaq al- Sanʿani, 3:364. In my opinion, the narrations of this hadith via Dawud b. al- Husayn are inconsistent ( muḍṭarib ) due to major and erratic variations in the matn s. See also note 39 below. 14. Hakim al-Naysaburi (d. 415/1014), Al-Mustadrak (Hyderabad: Da’irat al- Maʿarif al-ʿUthmaniyyah, n.d.), 4:355-56. The key portion of the isnād is: … Ibn Wahb – Sulayman b. Bilal – ʿAmr b. Abi ʿAmr – ʿIkrimah – Ibn ʿAbbas – the Prophet: man wajadtumūhu yaʿmalu ʿamal qawm lūṭ fa aqtulū al-fāʿil wa al-mafʿūl bihi . It also appears via the isnād : … ʿAbdallah b. Jaʿfar al-Makhrami – ʿAmr b. Abi ʿAmr… etc., with the addition of the Bestiality Clause, as well as via the isnād : … Dawud b. al-Husayn – ʿIkrimah, etc., with the wording man waqaʿa ʿalā rajul fa aqtulūhu , along with the clause man waqaʿa ʿalā dhāt maḥram fa aqtulūhu , whose ṣaḥīḥ rating by al-Hakim is disputed by al-Dhahabi. (this last matn also appears in al-Khara’iti via the isnād : ʿAli b. Dawud al-Qantari – ʿAbdallah b. Salih – Yahya b. Ayyub – ʿAbdallah b. ʿAbd al-ʿAziz – Ibn Jurayj – ʿIkrimah, etc.; al-Khara’iti, Masāwi’ al-Akhlāq , 202.) Later scholars were very critical of al-Hakim’s taṣḥīḥ , with al-Dhahabi stating that, at most, about one third of the material in the Mustadrak was actually ṣaḥīḥ , one quarter ḥasan , and the remainder weak or extremely weak, with around 100 hadiths totally false. As Ibn al-Amir al-Sanʿani states, the notion that the largest part of the Mustadrak is ṣaḥīḥ is wrong. “Rather, the ṣaḥīḥ is the lesser part ( bal al-ṣaḥīḥ fīhi maghlūb ).” Al-Zaylaʿi identified the flaws in al-Hakim’s methodology: The fact that al-Bukhari and/or Muslim used a narrator does not ensure that any ha - dith they narrate is reliable. See al-Dhahabi, S iyar Aʿlām al-Nubalā’ , ed. Shuʿayb al-Arna’ut et al. (Beirut: Mu’assasat al-Risalah, 1998), 17:175; al-Zaylaʿi, Naṣb al-Rāyah , 1:342; Muhammad b. Ismaʿil al-Amir al-Sanʿani, Al-Irshād ilā Taysīr al-Ijtihād , ed. Muhammad Subhi Hallaq (Beirut: Mu’assasat al-Rayyān, 1992), 52. 15. Abu Bakr Ahmad al-Bayhaqi, Al-Sunan al-Kubrā , ed. Muhammad ʿAbd al-Qadir ʿAta, 11 vols. (Beirut: Dar al-Kutub al-ʿIlmiyyah, 1420/1999), 8:403-4. The main part of the isnād is: … ʿAbd al-ʿAziz b. Muhammad – ʿAmr b. Abi ʿAmr – ʿIkrimah – Ibn ʿAbbas – the Prophet, with the wording: man wajadtumūhu ajiss34-3-final_ajiss 8/16/2017 1:01 PM Page 37

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yaʿmalu ʿamal qawm lūṭ fa aqtulū al-fāʿil wa al-mafʿūl bihi . Al-Bayhaqi also gives the isnād : … Dawud b. al-Husayn – ʿIkrimah, etc., with the wording man waqaʿa ʿalā rajul fa aqtulūhu . 16. Diya’ al-Din Muhammad b. ʿAbd al-Wajid al-Maqdisi, Al-Aḥādīth al- Mukhtārah , ed. ʿAbd al-Malik Duhaysh, 13 vols. (Makkah: Dar Khadir, 1421/2001), 12: 204- 05. 17. This is not stated explicitly by al-Maqdisi in his short introduction, but it can be safely inferred. See ibid., 1:69-70. 18. Ibn al-Tallaʿ (d. 497/1104) states that the Hadith of Ibn ʿAbbas “has been estab - lished” ( thabata ); Muhammad b. Faraj al-Qurtubi Ibn al-Tallaʿ, Aqḍiyat Rasūl Allāh (often known as Al-Aḥkām ), ed. Faris Fathi Ibrahim (Cairo: Dar Ibn al- Haytham, 1426/2006), 24. 19. This ḥāfiẓ is Shihab al-Din Ahmad Ibn Hajar al-ʿAsqalani (d. 852/1449) of Cairo. 20. ʿAbd al-Karim b. Muhammad al-Rafiʿi (d. 623/1226) of Qazvin is a leading Shafiʿi figure. His Muḥarrar is a major source for Shafiʿi law. 21. Zayn al-Din ʿAbd al-Rahim b. al-Husayn al-ʿIraqi (d. 806/1404), the great hadith scholar of Cairo and an important teacher of Ibn Hajar. His commentary on Jāmiʿ al-Tirmidhī has survived at least in part and has been edited (but not published) by students at the Islamic University of Madinah. See www.ahlalhdeeth.com/vb/ showthread.php?t=34839. 22. There are several variations, but the main text is: “The Prophet (s) said, concern - ing the one who commits the act of the people of Lot, ‘Stone both the top and the bottom partner’ ( fī alladhī yaʿmalu ʿamal qawm lūṭ qāla urjumū al-aʿlā wa al- asfal urjumūhumā jamīʿan ).” 23. Sunan Ibn Mājah: kitāb al-ḥudūd, man ʿamila ʿamal qawm lūṭ . The key part of the isnād is: … ʿAsim b. ʿUmar al-ʿUmari – Suhayl – his father – Abu Hurayrah – the Prophet: fī alladhī yaʿmalu ʿamal qawm lūṭ qāla urjumū al-aʿlā wa al-asfal urjumūhumā jamīʿan . 24. Aḥmad b. ʿAmr al-Bazzar (d. 292/904-5), Al-Baḥr al-Zakhkhār a.k.a. Musnad al-Bazzār , ed. ʿAdil Saʿd (Medina: Maktabat al-ʿUlum wa al-Hikam, 2009), 16:43. The isnād is: ʿAli b. Sahl al-Mada’ini – ʿAbdallah b. Nafiʿ al-Sayigh – ʿAsim b. ʿUmar – Suhayl – his father – Abu Hurayrah – the Prophet: man ʿamila ʿamal qawm lūṭ fa aqtulū al-fāʿil wa’l-mafʿūl bihi . 25. Al-Hakim, Al-Mustadrak , 4:355. The key part of the isnād is: … ʿAbd al-Rahman b. ʿAbdallah b. ʿUmar al-ʿUmari – Sahl [sic] – his father – Abu Hurayrah – the Prophet: man ʿamila ʿamal qawm lūṭ fa aqtulū al-fāʿil wa al-mafʿūl bihi . This narration is inconsistent ( muḍṭarib ), in my opinion, for it clashes in both isnād and matn wording with the other narrations through Suhayl – his father – Abu Hurayrah. Cf. al-Ajurri, Dhamm al-Liwāṭ , 59. For further confusion regarding the wording, see also al-Khara’iti, Masāwi’ al-Akhlāq , 202. 26. Al-Tirmidhi, Jāmiʿ al-Tirmidhī . The isnād is the same as Ibn Majah’s above, but with the wording: uqtulū al-fāʿil wa al-mafʿūl bihi. Al-Tirmidhi notes that only ʿAsim b. ʿUmar narrates it from Suhayl and that ʿAsim is considered weak due to his retention ( ḥifẓ ). ajiss34-3-final_ajiss 8/16/2017 1:01 PM Page 38

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27. Al-Tabari states that the narration from ʿIkrimah – Ibn ʿAbbas “has a ṣaḥīḥ sanad in our opinion,” but that others find flaws ( ʿilal ) in it, namely, the con - troversy surrounding ʿIkrimah. Al-Tabari, Tahdhīb al-Āthār: Musnad Ibn ʿAbbās , 1:550-51. 28. A shāhid (lit. witness) report provides attestation for a hadith’s meaning. Unlike parallel transmissions ( mutābaʿah ), which corroborate a particular narration from a source, attestations/attesting reports are often separate hadiths but share a similar meaning. Thus, Muslim scholars often said that “ Mutābaʿah strenghens a narration, while a shāhid strengthens a Hadith.” See Jonathan Brown, Hadith: Muhammad’s Legacy in the Medieval and Modern World (Oxford: Oneworld, 2009), 92-93. 29. Al-Tirmidhi, Jāmiʿ al-Tirmidhī . 30. Ibn Hazm, Al-Muḥallā , 11 vols. (Beirut: Dar al-Afaq al-Jadidah, n.d.), 11:383. A hadith with the isnād in braces { } appears in Musnad Ibn Ḥanbal and Sunan Ibn Mājah , but its wording is “ inna akhwaf mā akhāfu ʿalā ummatī ʿamal qawm lūṭ” ; Musnad Ibn Ḥanbal , 3:382; Sunan Ibn Mājah , ibid.; al-Hakim, Al-Mustadrak , ibid., Abu Yaʿla al-Mawsili, Musnad , 4:97; al-Ajurri, Dhamm al-Liwāṭ , 45. 31. Al-Harith b. Abi Usama (d. 282/895-6) wrote a Musnad that has not survived. It has been reconstructed by relying on the work of a scholar who had access to the book, Nur al-Din al-Haythami’s (d. 807/1405) Bughyat al-Bāḥith ʿan Zawā’id Musnad al-Ḥārith . See al-Haythami, Bughyat al-Bāḥith ʿan Zawā’id Musnad al- Harith , ed. Husayn Ahmad al-Bakiri, 2 vols. (Madinah: al-Jamiʿah al-Islamiyyah, 1992), 1:565-66 (via the same isnād as above Hadith of Jabir, with the same wording: man ʿamila ʿamal qawm lūṭ fa aqtulūhu ). This hadith is also found via the same isnād cited by Ibn Hazm in al-Khara’iti, Masāwi’ al-Akhlāq , 301. 32. Muḥṣan is a legal term that denotes a Muslim who has at some point consum - mated a marriage. 33. Identifying the speaker as Yahya here might be an error on al-Suyuti’s part. Al- Dhahabi introduces this comment as coming from “Ibn al-Qattan,” which al- Suyuti understands as the famous Basran hadith transmitter and critic Yahya b. Saʿid al-Qattan (d. 198/813). It is most likely ʿAli b. Muhammad Ibn al-Qattan al-Fasi of Marrakesh (d. 628/1230); Shams al-Din al-Dhahabi, Mīzān al-Iʿtidāl fī Naqd al-Rijāl , ed. ʿAli Muhammad al-Bijawi, 4 vols. (Beirut: Dar al-Maʿrifah, [n.d.], reprint of 1963-64 Cairo ʿIsa al-Babi al-Halabi edition), 3:282. This exact wording appears in Ibn al-Qattan al-Fasi, Bayān al-Wahm wa al-Īhām al- Wāqiʿayn fī Kitāb al-Aḥkām , ed. al-Husayn Ayat Saʿid, 5 vols. (Riyadh: Dar al- Ṭayba, 1418/1997), 4:184. 34. Ṣāliḥ (suitable) is generally used to mean that the hadith is fit either for consid - eration or for direct use as evidence in matters of law. See ʿAbd al-Fattah Abu Ghuddah’s comments on Abu Dawud’s letter to Makkah in Abu Ghuddah, ed., Thalāth Rasā’il fī ʿIlm Muṣṭalaḥ al-Ḥadīth (Beirut: Dar al-Basha’ir al-Islamiyyah, 1997), 38. Though the term ḥasan was used to describe hadiths occasionally by earlier critics like ʿAli b. al-Madini (d. 234/849), it did not become a defined tech - nical term until the work of al-Tirmidhi. He defines ḥasan as a hadith that “does ajiss34-3-final_ajiss 8/16/2017 1:01 PM Page 39

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not have in its isnād someone who is accused of lying or forgery, is not anomalous (shādhdh ), and is narrated via more than one chain of transmission.” In other words, its isnād was not seriously flawed, and it enjoyed corroboration through other narrations, which mitigated the chances of a serious error creeping into the text of the report. Later, the Shafiʿi jurist and hadith scholar al-Khattabi (d. 388/998) described ḥasan hadiths as those “with an established basis and whose transmitters were well-known”; Jāmiʿ al-Tirmidhī: kitāb al-ʿilal ; Abu Sulayman Hamd al-Khattabi, Maʿālim al-Sunan , 3d ed., 4 vols. (Beirut: al-Maktabah al- ʿIlmiyyah, 1981), 1:6. 35. Al-Dhahabi, Mīzān , 3:282. 36. Mutābaʿah : A mutābaʿah narration is one that corroborates a transmitter’s nar - ration from a source. As such, it has been translated as parellelism by Eerik Dick - inson in his translation of Ibn al-Salah’s Muqaddimah . See Ibn al-Salah, An Introduction to the Science of the Ḥadīth , trans. Eerik Dickinson (Reading, UK: Garnet, 2005), 61; Brown, Hadith , 92-93. 37. Interestingly, al-Dhahabi says Dawud b. al-Husayn’s narrations from ʿIkrimah are not accepted; al-Dhahabi, Mīzān , 2:5. 38. See above notes on the Sunan Abī Dāwūd , ibid., as well as ʿAbd b. Humayd, ibid., al-Tabarani, Al-Muʿjam al-Kabīr , ibid; al-Bayhaqi, Sunan , ibid., and al- Hakim, Mustadrak , ibid. 39. Dawud’s narration is inconsistent ( muḍṭarib ), in my opinion, due to erratic dif - ferences in the matn s; see the following note as well. Ibn Hanbal, Musnad Ibn Ḥanbal (Maymaniyyah printing), 1:300. The key part of the isnād is: … Ibn Abi Habibah Ibrahim b. Ismaʿil – Dawud b. al-Husayn – ʿIkrimah – Ibn ʿAbbas – Prophet: uqtulū al-fāʿil wa al-mafʿūl bihi fī qawm lūṭ wa al-bahīma wa al-wāqiʿ ʿalā al-bahīma wa man waqaʿa ʿalā maḥram fa aqtulūhu . 40. Al-Tabari, Tahdhīb al-Āthār – Musnad Ibn ʿAbbas , ed Mahmud Muhammad Shakir, 2 vols. (Cairo: Matbaʿat al-Madanī, n.d.), 1:554-55. The key part of the isnād is: … Ibrahim b. Ismaʿil – Dawud b. al-Husayn… with the wording: man waqaʿa ʿalā rajul fa aqtulūhu yaʿnī ʿamal qawm lūṭ and also: … Ibrahim b. Mujammaʿ – Dawud b. Husayn – ʿIkrimah…, with the wording: uqtulū al-fāʿil wa al-mafʿūl bihi fī al-lūṭīyah wa man waqaʿa ʿalā dhāt maḥram fa aqtulūhu . This is also found in the Musnad of Ibn Hanbal, 1:300 (with the inclusion of the Bestiality Clause as well). 41. Al-Bayhaqi, Al-Sunan , 8:403. 42. In his discussion of this narration, al-Dhahabi notes that ʿAbbad is weak; al- Dha habi, Al-Muhadhdhab fī Ikhtiṣār al-Sunan al-Kabīr li al-Bayhaqī , ed. Yasir Ibrahim et al., 9 vols. (Cairo: Dar al-Watan, 1422/2001), 7:3367. ʿAbbad’s nar - ration also appears in the Mustadrak of al-Bayhaqi’s teacher, but only the clause on bestiality; al-Hakim, Al-Mustadrak , ibid. 43. Al-Tabari, Tahdhīb al-Āthār , 1:550-51. The isnād is: Muhammad b. Sinan al- Fazzaz – ʿAwn b. ʿUmarah – ʿAbbad b. Mansur – ʿIkrimah…, with the wording: uqtulū mawāqiʿ al-bahīma wa al-bahīma wa al-fāʿil wa al-mafʿūl fī al-lūtiyyah wa aqtulū kull mawāqiʿ dhāt maḥram . ajiss34-3-final_ajiss 8/16/2017 1:01 PM Page 40

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44. Al-Tabarani, Al-Muʿjam al-Kabīr , 11:226. 45. Al-Hakim, Al-Mustadrak , 4:356. The isnād comes via Abu Hurayrah – the Prophet, with the wording: laʿana Allāh sabʿa min khalqihi… malʿun malʿūn malʿun man ʿamila ʿamal qawm lūṭ …. 46. Al-Tabarani, Al-Muʿjam al-Awsaṭ , ed. Tariq b. ʿAwad Allah al-Husayni, 10 vols. (Cairo: Dar al-Haramayn, 1415/1995), 8:234. The isnād comes via Abu Hurayrah – the Prophet, with the wording: laʿana Allāh sabʿa min khalqihi… malʿun malʿūn malʿun man ʿamila ʿamal qawm lūṭ …, with al-Tabarani’s remark that only Muharrar b. Harun narrated this hadith from al-Aʿraj – Abu Hurayrah. 47. This is probably Abu Musa al-Ashʿari’s hadith from the Prophet, with the word - ing: idhā atā al-rajul al-rajul fa-humā zāniyān …, which al-Bayhaqi calls “munkar by that isnād ”; al-Bayhaqi, Sunan al-Kubrā , 8:406. See also al-Ajurri, Dhamm al-Liwāṭ , 51. 48. This might be a reference to a hadith in al-Tabarani’s Al-Muʿjam al-Awsaṭ (from Abu Musa al-Ashʿari – the Prophet, with the wording: lā tubāshiru al-mar’a al- mar’a illā wa humā zāniyatān wa lā yubāshiru al-rajul al-rajul illā wa humā zāniyān ); al-Tabarani, Al-Muʿjam al-Awsaṭ , 4:266-67. Or it may be a reference to a hadith in the Muʿjam al-Kabīr concerning a man who had committed an in - decency with a noble Quraysh youth; al-Tabarani, Al-Muʿjam al-Kabīr , 4:132. 49. Abu Nuʿaym al-Isbahani, Ḥilyat al-Awliyā’ wa Ṭabaqāt al-Aṣfiyā’ , 10 vols. (Cairo: Maktabat al-Khanji and Beirut: Dar al-Fikr, 1416/1997), 8:379. Abu Nuʿaym notes, “a rare [narration] ( gharīb ), which Wakiʿ alone transmitted from Muhammad b. Qays, namely al-Asadi al-Kufi. His hadiths are collected. And Abu ʿAbd al-Rahman is al-Sulamī.” 50. Abu Bakr ʿAbdallah Ibn Abi Shaybah’s (d. 235/849) (not his nephew, Muham - mad b. ʿUthman, mentioned just above) work contains the same text cited by Abu Nuʿaym; Abu Bakr Ibn Abi Shaybah, Al-Muṣannaf , ed. Kamal Yusuf al- Hut, 7 vols. (Riyadh: Maktabat al-Rushd, 1409/1988), 5:453. 51. ʿAbd al-Razzaq al-Sanʿani (d. 211/826), Al-Muṣannaf , ed. Habib al-Rahman al- Aʿzami, 11 vols. (Beirut: al-Maktab al-Islami, 1403/1983), 7:363. 52. Pausing the narration here, al-Suyuti adds another source for the narration from Ibn Jurayj. 53. For the next series of opinions recorded by Ibn Abi Shaybah, see his Muṣannaf , 5:497. 54. The ms. used in the DKA edition has mawlā Yaḥyā . The editors of the DKI edition noted that they only saw this in one ms. 55. The one ms. of al-Suyuti’s text relied on for the DKA edition has wa lā ʿ-m-r . The editors of the DKI edition say this appears in some copies. Abu Ghuddah’s edition of the Mūqiẓah , by contrast, has wa lā ghumiza , which makes far more sense in this context. See Shams al-Din al-Dhahabi, Al-Mūqiẓah fī ʿIlm Muṣṭalaḥ al-Ḥadīth , ed. ʿAbd al-Fattah Abu Ghuddah, 4th ed. (Cairo: Dar al-Salam, 1421/ 2000), 79. 56. What appears between the braces { } is not found in al-Suyuti’s quotation from al-Dhahabi; however, it does appear in Abu Ghuddah’s edition of the Mūqiẓah . ajiss34-3-final_ajiss 8/16/2017 1:01 PM Page 41

Brown: A Pre-Modern Defense of the Hadiths on Sodomy 41

See ibid., 80. This was probably a haplographic error due to the repeated word tāratan ; al-Suyuti skipped to the second instance of tāratan , omitting the text in between. 57. Al-Dhahabi, Mīzān al-Iʿtidāl , 3:281. 58. Ibn Hajar al-ʿAsqalani, Talkhīṣ al-Ḥabīr Takhrīj Aḥādīth al-Rafiʿi al-Kabīr , ed. Hasan ʿAbbas Qutb, 4 vols. (Cairo: Mu’assasat Qurtubah, 1416/1995), 4:103. Cf. Ibn Hajar, Al-Dirāyah fī Takhrīj Aḥādīth al-Hidāyah , ed. ʿAbdallah Hashim al-Yamani, 2 vols. (Beirut: Dar al-Maʿrifah, n.d.), 2:103. 59 Early critics like al-Bukhari, al-Tirmidhi, Abu Zurʿah al-Razi, Ibn Maʿin, Ibn ʿAdi, al-Daraqutni, and al-Khatib al-Baghdadi all considered this hadith to be weak or baseless. Later critics, however, like al-ʿAla’i, Ibn Hajar, and al-Suyuti, considered its various transmissions together to raise it to the level of ḥasan . See Ismaʿil b. Ahmad al-ʿAjluni, Kashf al-Khafā’ , ed. Ahmad al-Qalash, 2 vols. (Cairo: Dar al-Turath, n.d.), 1:236–237; and Ahmad al-Ghumari’s book on this hadith: Fatḥ al-Malik al-ʿAlī bi Ṣiḥḥat Ḥadīth Bāb Madīnat al-ʿIlm ʿAli , ed. ʿImad Surur (n.p.: n.p., 1426/2005). 60. The term munkar (unknown or unfamiliar) was etymologically the converse of maʿrūf (accepted or known) See Jāmiʿ al-Tirmidhī: kitāb al-ṣiyām, bāb mā jāʾa fī man nazala bi qawm fa lā yaṣūmu illā bi idhnihim and Zayn al-Din ʿAbd al- Rahman Ibn Rajab, Sharḥ ʿIlal al-Tirmidhī , ed. Nur al-Din ʿItr (n.p.: n.p., 1398/ 1978), 1:409. One of the earliest definitions of munkar comes from Abu Bakr Ahmad al-Bardiji (d. 301/914), who defined it as a hadith known through only one narration; Ibn al-Salah, Muqaddimat Ibn al-Ṣalāḥ wa Maḥāsin al-Iṣṭilāḥ , ed. ʿA’ishah ʿAbd al-Rahman (Cairo: Dar al-Maʿarif, 1989), 244. After Ibn al-Salah (d. 643/1245), the term generally denoted a hadith narrated through only one chain of transmission, but one of whose narrators was not reliable enough (i.e., termed ṣadūq or less) to establish it as reliable. See al-Dhahabi, Mīzān al-Iʿtidāl , 3:140-1. Transmitters who were prolific and respected for their accuracy could transmit uncorroborated material, but with limits. Their reputation was originally earned, in great part, by being corroborated by other leading transmitters. Thus al-Bardiji says that al-Hasan b. ʿAli b. Shabib can narrate solitary ( munfarid ) ha - diths because he is so prolific. Centuries later, Ibn al-Qattan al-Fasi says a reliable (thiqah ) narrator can transmit such material as long as he does not do so too much; al-Dhahabi, Mīzān , 1:365, 504. Ibn ʿAdi reveals the flexibility of munkar during the early period when he describes the material narrated by Jaʿfar b. ʿUmar al- Ibli as “all munkar in either their isnād or their matn ”; al-Dhahabi, Mīzān , 1:561. Particularly in the first four centuries of Islam, munkar was often used to indicate that a particular transmission of a hadith was unacceptable, with no necessary bearing on the overall authenticity of the tradition in question. For example, Abu Hatim al-Razi (d. 277/890) calls one narration of the famous hadith “Deeds are [judged] only by intentions” ( innamā al-aʿmāl bi al-niyyāt ) munkar even though that Prophetic tradition is considered ṣaḥīḥ ; Ibn Abi Hatim al-Razi, ʿIlal al- Ḥadīth , 2 vols. (Beirut: Dar al-Maʿrifah, 1405/1985), 1:131. In other circum - stances, munkar seems to indicate forged or baseless. Some reports that ajiss34-3-final_ajiss 8/16/2017 1:01 PM Page 42

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al-Bukhari describes as munkar , Ibn Hibban and al-Hakim call mawḍūʿāt ; al- Dhahabi, Mīzān , 2:160. As shown in note 63 below, munkar could also be used to show that one was clearly objecting to the hadith’s meaning. 61. One of the most influential hadith scholars of the late-early period, Abu Bakr Ahmad b. ʿAli al-Khatib (d. 463/1071) of Baghdad. 62. The hadith in question is “ʿAli is the best of mankind, and whoever denies this has disbelieved” ( ʿAli khayr al-bashar fa man abā fa qad kafara ), which al- Dha habi considers an extremist Shiite ( rāfiḍī ) report. See al-Khatib al-Baghdadi, Tārīkh Baghdād , ed. Mustafa ʿAbd al-Qadir ʿAta, 14 vols. (Beirut: Dar al-Kutub al-ʿIlmiyyah, 1417/1997), 7:433 (in the text of the Tārīkh Baghdād , the hadith is ʿAli khayr al-bashar fa man imtarā fa qad kafara . Al-Dhahabi goes on to say that hadith scholars use munkar for hadiths that suffer from relatively minor flaws in their transmission, such as the hadith “If water reaches two large pitcher’s full (qullatayn ) it does not bear ritual filth” ( idhā kāna al-mā’ qullatayn …), which appears in the Sunan s of Abu Dawud, al-Nasa’i, and al-Tirmidhi. It lacked ṣaḥīḥ isnād s, but was widely considered reliable. He says the term should not be used for “the likes of this plainly false hadith,” meaning the pro-ʿAli hadith of al- Khatib; al-Dhahabi, Mīzān al-Iʿtidāl , 1:521. As with earlier scholars, al-Dhahabi often uses munkar to denote that a particular transmission of a hadith might be uncorroborated or anomalous. For example, he notes the munkar aspect of one scholar’s transmissions but affirms that the texts ( mutūn ) of those hadiths are fine; al-Dhahabi, Mīzān , 2:358. But examining the hadiths from the Six Books and the Musnad of Ibn Hanbal that al-Dhahabi criticizes as munkar (or gharīb , i.e., rare) in his Mīzān , we find that sometimes munkar is used to object to unaccept - able meanings in the matn of the hadith as well. This is affirmed by ʿAbd al- Fattah Abu Ghuddah, who says that munkar is often used to mean forged, referring to the unknown or unacceptable matn of a hadith as well as its isnād . See Abu Ghuddah’s edition of Mulla ʿAli al-Qari’, Al-Maṣnūʿ fī Maʿrifat al- Ḥadīth al-Mawḍūʿ (Beirut: Dar al-Basha’ir al-Islamiyyah, 1984), 20. The fol - lowing is a list of hadiths that al-Dhahabi rated as munkar from the Six Books and Ibn Hanbal’s Musnad :

1. Mīzān , 3:93: munkar as an objection to meaning. From Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim . Here al-Dhahabi says that the hadith of the Prophet marrying Umm Habibah after the conversion of her father Abu Sufyan is “unacceptable” in its meaning ( aṣl munkar ), since it was reliably established that the Prophet had married her years earlier (see Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim: kitāb faḍā’il al-ṣaḥābah, bāb min faḍā’il Abī Sufyān b. Ḥarb ). 2. Mīzān , 2:18: munkar as an objection to meaning. From Sunan Abī Dāwūd : al-Dhahabi calls a hadith munkar , probably because it contradicts the other narrations in which the Prophet instructs Muslims not to eat any part of the game from which a hunting dog has already eaten (see Sunan Abī Dāwūd: kitāb al-ṣayd, bāb fī al-ṣayd ). Other scholars, such as al-Khattabi (d. 386/996), ajiss34-3-final_ajiss 8/16/2017 1:01 PM Page 43

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sought to reconcile this hadith with the conflicting material; al-Khattabi, Maʿālim al-Sunan , 4:298-94. 3. Mīzān , 2:213: munkar as an objection to meaning. From Jāmiʿ al-Tirmidhī : al-Dhahabi says that he feels in his heart that a hadith in which the Prophet tells his Companion to pray four rakʿah s on Friday, reading certain chapters of the Qur’an, in order to remember the Qur’an, is “very munkar ,” even though he admits that its isnād seems fine (see Jāmiʿ al-Tirmidhī: kitāb al- daʿwāt, bāb fī duʿā’ al-ḥifẓ ). 4. Mīzān , 1:641-2: munkar as an objection to meaning. From Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī : al-Dhahabi says the hadith describing how the Prophet experienced the Night Journey as a child, rather than after his prophethood had begun, was so gharīb that if it were not in Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī he would call it munkar . Al-Dhahabi also calls this narration “one of the gharīb hadiths of the Ṣaḥīḥ ”; idem, Mīzān , 2:270. 5. Mīzān , 1:278 and 4:498: munkar possibly an objection to meaning. From Musnad Ibn Ḥanbal : al-Dhahabi calls one hadith on the virtues of Marv munkar (see Musnad , 5:357), and another one on the virtues of Homs (see Musnad , 1:19). 6. Mīzān , 2:312: gharīb as an objection to meaning. From Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim : al- Dhahabi calls the hadith of the Prophet’s telling the Companions to fast ʿAshura’ like the Jews of Khaybar one of the gharīb hadiths of Muslim’s book (see Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim: kitāb al-ṣiyām, bāb ṣawm yawm ʿāshūrā’ ).

63. This hadith appears in the Sunan s of Abu Dawud, al-Tirmidhi, and Ibn Majah. As described by al-Khattabi, its isnād s have been criticized for a variety of minor flaws. However, “It is testimony enough for its soundness that the stars of the world from amongst the scholars of Hadith have declared it ṣaḥīḥ and acted on it. And they are the example to be followed, and upon them should we rely on this matter”; al-Khattabi, Maʿālim al-Sunan , 1:36. The great Syrian Shafiʿi scholar and hadith master Salah al-Din al-ʿAla’i (d. 761/1359) wrote a small book arguing that the hadith was ṣaḥīḥ ; al-ʿAla’i, Juz’ fī Taṣḥīḥ Ḥadīth al- Qul latayn wa al-Kalām ʿalā Asānīdihi , ed. Abu Ishaq al-Huwayni (Cairo: Mak - tabat al-Tarbiyah al-Islamiyyah, 1992). 64. See note 63 above. 65. The definition used by al-Shafiʿi, and implied strongly by al-Tirmidhi, became the established definition for shādhdh by the fourteenth century: a transmission that disagrees with something more reliable than it ( yukhālifu mā huwa awthaq minhu ). See al-Dhahabi, Mūqiẓah , 42. Al-Khalili (d. 446/1054) and his teacher al-Hakim, however, defined shādhdh as merely that which “has only one isnād ” (laysa lahu illā isnād wāḥid ); al-Hakim, Maʿrifat ʿUlūm al-Ḥadīth , ed. Muʿaz- zim al-Husayn (Hyderabad: Da’irat al-Maʿarif al-ʿUthmaniyyah, 1966), 148; al- Khalil b. ʿAbdallah al-Khalili, Al-Irshād fī Maʿrifat ʿUlamā’ al-Ḥadīth , ed. ʿAmir Ahmad Haydar (Makkah: Dar al-Fikr, 1993), 13. For more on this debate, see ajiss34-3-final_ajiss 8/16/2017 1:01 PM Page 44

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Ibn Rajab, Sharḥ ʿIlal al-Tirmidhī , 1:450-62; Jonathan AC Brown, The Canon - ization of al-Bukhari and Muslim (Leiden: Brill, 2007), 249. 66. See Brown, Canonization , 257-58. 67. Ibn al-Salah, Muqaddimah , 152. 68. Badr al-Din Muhammad b. Bahadur al-Zarkashi (d. 794/1392) of Cairo, a famous hadith scholar and Shafiʿi jurist. See al-Zarkashi, Al-Nukat ʿalā Muqaddimat Ibn al-Ṣalāḥ , ed. Zayn al-ʿAbidīn Muhammad Bila Furayj, 4 vols. (Riyadh: Adwa’ al-Salaf, 1419/1998), 1:101, 125. 69. Ibn al-Salah, Muqaddimah , 152. 70. Ibn Hajar, Al-Nukat ʿalā Kitāb Ibn al-Ṣalāḥ , ed. Masʿud ʿAbd al-Hamid al-ʿAdani and Muhammad Faris (Beirut: Dar al-Kutub al-ʿIlmiyyah, 1414/1994), 109-10. 71. Al-Hakim, Kitāb al-Madkhal ilā Maʿrifat Kitāb al-Iklīl , ed. Ahmad Faris Sallum (Dar Ibn Hazm: 1423/2003), 73-107. Al-Suyuti abridges this section, but does not introduce any material. 72. In other words, the isnād is a single chain for the first two links. 73. The example that al-Hakim gives for this type is the ṣaḥīfah of ʿAmr b. Shuʿayb, from his father, from his grandfather, from the Prophet, which contains crucial rulings on compensation for injuries and manslaughter/homicide; al-Hakim, Mad - khal , 101. For the hadith, see Sunan Abī Dāwūd: kitāb al-diyāt, bāb al-diya kam hiya and Sunan Ibn Majah: kitāb al-farā’iḍ, bāb mīrāth al-qātil . 74. Through the eleventh century, mursal was used to mean a hadith in which a trans - mitter cited the Prophet without actually having met him. By the thirteenth cen - tury, it had come to mean a hadith in which a Successor quoted the Prophet, omitting the Companion from the chain of transmission. Until the mid-ninth cen - tury, many jurists, particularly the Hanafis, did not consider mursal hadiths to be flawed in any way, and thus they served as a major source of evidence. Although he used mursal hadiths selectively, al-Shafiʿi’s incorporation of hadith transmitter criticism into his evaluation of evidence meant that mursal hadiths would be seen as suspect due to the break in their chain. 75. Transmitters who engage in tadlīs (obfuscation in transmission) phrase a trans - mission or many transmissions in such a way that it seems they heard it directly from a source when they actually heard it via some intermediary. 76. Al-Suyuti errs in citing this hadith as man takallama bi ghayr ʿilm laʿanathu malā’ikat al-samāwāt wa al-arḍ. The existing hadith is actually man aftā bi ghayr ʿilm …, as cited by al-Suyuti in his Al-Ḥabā’ik fī Akhbār al-Malā’ik , ed. Muhammad Saʿid Zaghlul (Beirut: Dar al-Kutub al-ʿIlmiyyah, 1408/1988), 187. See al-Khatib, Al-Faqīh wa al-Mutafaqqih , ed. ʿAdil Yusuf al-ʿAzazi, 2 vols. (Dammam: Dar Ibn al-Jawzi, 1417/1996), 2:327; Ibn ʿAsakir, Tārīkh Madīnat Dimashq , ed. ʿUmar al-ʿAmrawi, 80 vols. (Beirut: Dar al-Fikr, 1997), 52:20; “Musnad ʿAlī Riḍā ,” in Musnad al-Imām Zayd (Beirut: Dar Maktabat al-Hayat, 1966), 444. ajiss31-3_ajissajiss32-1-latest-2_ajissajiss32-3-without 5/28/2014 etin_ajiss 1/7/2015 1:24 6/4/2015 PM 2:32 Page 7:40 PM a PMPage Page a a ajiss34-3-final_ajissajiss33-4_ajissajiss33-1_ajiss 10/26/2016 12/29/20157/27/2017 8:27 9:55 8:10 AM AM Page Page a a ajiss304-special-issue_ajiss 8/16/2013 9:23ajiss304-special-issue-no-amss_ajiss AMajiss304-special-issue_ajiss Page a 8/16/2013 8/23/2013 9:23 1:21AM PagePM Page a a

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AbuSulayman Ovamir Anjum INTERNATIONALINTERNATIONAL INSTITUTEINTERNATIONAL Editor-in-ChiefAli MazruiEditorInternationalZ Institute of Islamic Thought University of Toledo TH AMERICAN ASSOCIATION NORTH AMERICAN ASSOCIATIONINTERNATIONAL Ali Mazrui Zakyi Ib F ISLAMIC AND MUSLIMS OF ISLAMICINSTITUTE AND OFMUSLIMS OF ISLAMICINSTITUTE THOUGHT OF INSTITUTE OF Managing Editor ISLAMIC THOUGHT ISLAMIC THOUGHT Aliaa Dakroury STUDIES (NAAIMS) STUDIES (NAAIMS) ISLAMIC THOUGHT Managing ManagingAliaa Editor Dakr Assistant Editor The International Institute of Islamic The International Institute of Islamic Aliaa Dakroury Basit KareemCopy Editor Iqbal sociation of Muslim Social Scientists of The Copy Ed University ofJay California, Willoughby Berkeley merica (AMSS) has formally changed Nor The International Institute of Islamic Thought (IIIT) is an intellectual and Copy JayEditor Willou e to the North American Association of its n cultural foundation. It was established and registered in the United States Jay Willoughby BookCopy Review Editor Editor and Muslim Studies (NAAIMS). It re- Isla of America at the beginning of the fifteenth hijrī century (1401/1981) with Book Revie Jay MahdiWilloughby Tourage s status as an independent non-profit tain the following objectives: Book ReviewMahdi Edito Tou tax-exempt membership-based organ- 501. Mahdi Tourage run by a board of directors that is izati • To provide a comprehensive Islamic outlook through elucidating the EditorialAssociate Board Editors every two years. NAAIMS encom- elec principles of Islam and relating them to relevant issues of contempo- Associate E HusseinImad-ad-Dean A. Agrama AhmadAndrewHaifaa F. JawadMarch the United States and Canada, and is pass rary thought. Associate Edi ors all scholars dedicated to promoting the ope Imad-ad-Dean Ahmad H UniversityMehmet of Chicago AsutayYaleMarcia University Hermansen Imad-ad-DeanMehmet Ahmad AsutayHaifaa J Mehmet AsutayAhmadShuruq Yousif Naguib f Islam and Muslim societies. It was es- stud • To regain the intellectual, cultural, and civilizational identity of the d in 1972 by North American Muslim tabli Mehmet Asutay Marcia Durham University Lancaster University ummah by conducting research in the humanities and the social sci- Ahmad Y s for the sole purpose of establishing an scho Ahmad Yousif Jonathan A. C. Brown Ahmed El Shamsy ences. Georgetown UniversityInternationalUniversity Advisory of ChicagoBoard ic forum where scholars could meet an- aca to debate social issues from an Islamic nual International A MarciaKhurshid Hermansen AhmadOusmaneM. Kamal Kane Hassan • To rectify the methodology of contemporary Islamic thought in order International Advisor Loyola University Harvard Divinity School tive. pers Khurshid Ahmad Akbar Ahmed Mohammad H. Kamali to enable it to resume its contribution to the progress of human civi- Sherman A. Jackson Ermin Sinanović lization and give it meaning and direction in line with the values and Khurshid AhmadAkbar AhmedM. Kam Manzoor Alam Enes Karic S produces and disseminates aca- NA University of Southern California International Institute of Islamic Thought objectives of Islam. Akbar ManzoorAhmed AlamMoham Khaled Blankinship Seyyed Hossein Nasr esearch on Islam and the diverse lived dem ManzoorTaha Alam J. al-AlwaniEnes KaE Katherine Bullock James P. Piscatori nce of Muslims. Its conferences, lec- exp Charles Butterworth Anne Sofie Roald The institute seeks to achieve its objectives by: Taha J.Zafar al-Alwani Ishaq AnsariClovis C International Advisory Board ward programs, research activities, and ture Zafar IshaqKhaled Ansari BlankinshipSeyyed S Ahmad Davutoglu Tamara Sonn tions promote reflective and analytical publ Khaled BlankinshipKatherine BullockJames P.J KhurshidJohn L. Ahmad EspositoMehdiAntony Golshani Sullivan through the disciplines of the social sci- stud • Holding specialized academic conferences and seminars. KatherineCharles Bullock ButterworthAnne So AkbarMehdi Ahmed GolshaniM. SayyidKamal HassanM. Syeed nd humanities. enc Charles ButterworthAhmad DavutogluTamaraT Manzoor Alam Mohammad H. Kamali • Supporting and selectively publishing works of scholars and re- Ahmad DavutogluJohn L. EspositoAntony Khalid Blankinship Enes Karic est Graduate Paper Awards” competi- The searchers in universities and academic research centers in the Muslim John L. EspositoSayyidSayyid M. Katherine Bullock Seyyed Hossein Nasr tablished by AMSS in 2001, encourages tion, world and the West. Mehdi Golshani Charles Butterworth James P. Piscatori ship among emerging Muslim scholars sch Ahmet Davutoglu Anne Sofie Roald ating in its annual conferences. In ad- parti • Directing higher university studies toward furthering work on issues John L. Esposito Tamara Sonn NAAIMS sponsors regional confer- diti of Islamic thought. SayyidA publication M. Syeed of: North America. In 2008, a “University ence A joint public Series” was established to increase the Lect The institute has a number of overseas offices and affiliates, as well as ac- ation’s campus profile and facilitate di- orga ademic advisors, for the purpose of coordinating and promoting its various Association ofA Muslim joint publication Social Scient o The International Institute of Islamic Thought (IIIT) with the academy. alog activities. It has also entered into joint academic agreements with several Association of Muslim Social Scientists of A publication of & Mailing Address: universities and research centers to implement its objectives. & The International Institute of Islamic Thought (IIIT) International Institute of Is All correspondence should be addressed to the Editor at: rship includes a free one-year subscrip- Me International Institute of Islamic T the quarterly American Journal of Is- severaltotion implement to the universities quarterly its objectives. American and research Journal centers of Is- severalto implement universities its objectives. and research centers Mailing Ad AJISS, P.O. BoxMailing 669, Herndon, Address: VA 20172-0669 USA Social Sciences (AJISS), a peer- lamic Social Sciencessciplinary (AJISS),journal published a peer- All correspondenceMailing shouldAddress: be a All correspondencePhone:Phone: 703-471-1133 703-471-1133 should be addressed ● ● Fax: Fax: 703-471-3922 703-471-3922 to the Editor at: ed interdisciplinary journal published reviewed interdi AJISS All correspondenceAJISS, P.O. should Box 669, be addresseHerndo AJISS, P.O.E-mail: [email protected] 669, [email protected] Herndon, ● www.iiit.orgVA● www.iiit.org 20172-0669 USA by NAAIMS and IIIT. jointly by N P.O. Box 669, Herndon, VA 20170-0669 USA AJISS,Phone: P.O.703-471-1133 Box 669, Herndon,● Fax: 703-47 VA 2 Phone: 703-471-1133 ● Fax: 703-471-3922 Phone: (703) 471-1133 • Fax: (703) 471-3922 Phone: 703-471-1133 ● Fax: 703-471-3922www.iiit.org ● Phon/ wE- www.iiit.org ● www.ajiss.org www.iiit.org • www.ajiss .org http://www.amss.net //A p: [email protected] AJISS [email protected]

Phone: (703) 471-1133 • Fax: (703)Phone: 471-3922 (703)Phone: 471-1133 (703) • Fax: 471-1133 (703) 471-3922• Fax: (703) • [email protected] 471-3922 E-mail: [email protected] E-mail: [email protected] 78012- Front Cover 12/24/15 01:23 PM Page 1 AMERICAN JOURNAL OF ISLAMIC SOCIAL SCIENCES SOCIAL ISLAMIC OF JOURNAL AMERICAN VOLUME 34 SUMMERWWW 2017 NUMBER 3

In this issue AMERICAN JOURNAL OF ISLAMIC ARTICLES SOCIAL SCIENCES A Pre-Modern Defense of the Hadiths on Sodomy: An Annotated Translation and Analysis of al-Suyuti’s Attaining the Hoped-for in Service of the Messenger (s) Jonathan Brown Can Islam Accommodate Homosexual Acts? SPECIAL ISSUE Qurʾanic Revisionism and the Case of Scott Kugle Mobeen Vaid ISLAM AND HOMOSEXUALITY

REVIEW ESSAYS

BOOK REVIEWS

CONFERENCE, SYMPOSIUM, AND PANEL REPORTS VOLUME 34 NUMBER 3 SUMMER 2017 WI

INTERNATIONAL INSTITUTE OF ISLAMIC THOUGHT