 Granddad does many mutahs with girls who could have done mutah with his sons  We cover up women but then we also sell them! Our Islam is going right and then left!   WOMEN selling sex in Iran is not a new thing  Mum and daughter used in Afghanistan for sex. Nobody speaks for them against a powerful religious establishment  The Women who want to walk on the path of Syeda Fatimah are misled by to sell their hijab on contract Hard truth about pimping at the shrines - Worth Reading
Mullah giving book references to justify 'jaffary prostitution.'
Mullah justifies 'contract sex' from books he has so much faith in. Urdu lecture on Hidayat TV UK
Scholars beaten up by shia women for wanting to do mutah
BBC report on women who refused to be exploited by mutah justifying mullahs
MUTAH Has Brought Mockery to Islam
Ullema seen as pimps in their passive reading of books that they know are full of suspect stories and narrations
| THE DIRTY TRUTH ABOUT SEX CLUBS IN THE MUSLIM COMMUNITY
By Abid Bata www.truthaboutmutah.weebly.com.
1.1 Introduction An Iranian blogger reported that a sex club in the holy city of Qum was hastily closed down by the authorities after it's shameful revelations came out. The butcher who ran it used to give extra meat to women he lured in to his club. But his sex adventures came to an end after it was discovered that he had even managed to have sex with a mother and her teenage daughter. In his defence the butcher pointed to the religious laws that allow a man to contract sex. He said that as the 'shia' laws did not need men to check out the relationships between the women they slept with it was inevitable that men would end up sleeping with women in the same family. He said that the laws had made women available all over Iran and that is was commonly known that women in the sex trade also ended up sleeping with father and son. The butcher counted himself being pleasured by some eighty women, young and old. He admitted that his sons could also have slept with some of these women. When I first read this story on an Iranian blog I reacted by dismissing it. I could not accept it to be true. It was like a dirty pimping story of some mujra districts in dirty Delhi. I considered Iran to be clean of this - afterall it was Islamic! But then I began to be confronted by more stories like this. My mind began to ask questions: How could Islamic law allow such dirty things when, according to the Quran, Islam is about learning high values of chastity, self-control, love, guidance and lasting relationships? Islam came to clean up the human society, not to spread and legalise the dirt? So where did these laws come from? Who told us these laws were Islamic? Surely laws with loopholes and faults that could result in men sleeping with women in the same family cannot be divinely ordained; or can God's law also be so full of holes? I had to investigate the truth. What I discovered did refresh my ideas of Islam while also destroying my confidence in our religious authorities. Through my investigation I was finally able to make the difference between Islam and what our religious authorities are teaching. Yes, I discovered that our religious authorities have their own version of Islam.What I discovered was how religious authorities define Islam within the limitaton of books that they study parrot fashion. The belief that Islam is okay with Contract Sex is one of the many concepts found in these books which were written hundreds of years after the Nabi. It is these 'second hand' books with many forged and mixed up narrations that the scholars study with passivity. The idea that a man can contract sex with a woman and then move on to another woman is in these books. And there are many other absurd concepts and beliefs that our scholars have brought in to Islam from these books. For example our 'shia' laws against children who happen to be born outside wedlock are from these books. The idea that women are 'faulty in intelligence' is in these books. The idea that 'dharaba' means hitting your wife is in these books. The idea that slavery is Islamic is in these books. The idea that a woman cannot become a judge is in these books. In fact, you can almost derive anything you want from the books - all you need is a good ability to craft answers and quote Arabic narrations. Once a well renowed scholar argued with me on a TV phone-in that women are 'scorpions' because they give you 'sweet poison.' This well spoken mullah quoted Arabic words like 'Nakis E Akal.' He tried to justify the narration in the books where Imam Ali is accused to have said that women cannot be trusted because they are 'scorpions' and inferior in 'eman.' When I realised how our authorities have brought in to Islam their own derivations and extrapolations from selecting narrations in the books then I had to reassess my understanding of Islam. The fact that we are following a derived version of Islam is proven by the fact that the Iranian authorities have managed to legalise brothels under the guise of 'chastity houses' where Iranian women can give or sell sex to earn sawab or to earn money. The Iranian government claims that these sex houses will help women get 'halal' employment and save them from 'exploitation.' The excuse that women can gain employment by selling their bodies is like saying that child slavery is acceptable because it gives employment to children. We all know that there is always a cleverly crafted excuse for every evil deed on this earth and our scholars are today making excuses for what they find in the books they study. They forget to apply the parameters of social justice, human decency and Quranic principles when reading the books. But should we allow ourselves to be deceived by scholars even today when we have the internet highway unlike our forefathers who did not have information at their finger tip? Is it not time to move on, challange what is absurd and define Islam from the Quran rather than passively accept the false excuses and justificaiton of mullahs who have for centuries legalised slavery, prostitution, selling children and beating of wives! First we should not accept that our daughters, sisters, mothers or aunts are 'nakis e akal' and secondly we should not accept that they can sell their bodies by contracting sex. We must not accept that they cannot be judges nor should we accept that Imam Ali ever said that they were scorpions. We must not accept that their 'faith is defective' just because they have monthly periods. In fact we must not accept hundreds of other lies that are regarded as 'Islamic' just because of the fault-line in the thinking of our ulema. I think it is time our scholars came out of their ridiculou boxes instead of pushing us all in to them! In any case, there is an interesting You Tube vidoe of Ayatullah Rafsanjani making the excuse that sex houses are a way for young males to stop getting frustrated. He says that the governmental 'Chastity Houses' will reduce rape in Iranian society as sex will be sold in a 'legal and clean way.' But can this excuse for sex houses be acceptable in Islam which is a religion that came to uplift the human condition and not legalise the absurd. The fact is that these sex houses promise to bring new revenues for the Iranian authorities as it diverts the 'Islamic' sex tourists from holidaying in Dubai and Damascus. Instead those men who go to ziyarats know that it is more than ziyarats they get in Iran. Recently, a mullah in Mashad encouraged hawza girls to entertain pilgrims in order to increase the religious tourists coming in to Iran. Cleverly the mullahs are using their grip on Islam so that women stay exploitable underdogs who can be used to perpetuated and maintained a corrupted version of Islam. Besides women the mullahs have always used the name and sacrifices of the Nabi and his family to keep the crowds satisfied. Exploiting women and misusing the names of the masum imams is something the mullahs are good at and well groomed in. So as soon as you speak against concepts like contracting sex (mutah) they will start crying on the sacrifices of the imams or play politics with Umar and the stories in the books that he was the one who band contract sex while Imam Ali did it every night! Both these stories are full of contadictions and yet the passivity of the mullahs means that they will never accept it. Moving them on is worst than moving a stubbon donkey with books on it's back! If the poor and downtrodden women were empowered to challange the system then things would move on but by opening the door for these downtrodden women to slide in to the sex trade robs the pressure on the failed social system is relieved. Nobdy asks how the sex trade results in men sleeping with mums and daughters, how all sorts of phedophiles benefit from it and how it robs the women of their own dignity and self worth. Women in that state cannot move on nor fight an unjust social system, and I think this is exactly what these power-brand of mullahs want. A reality we Shia Muslims have to accept is that our laws on contract sex have blurred the moral lines for many of our shia populations who are told to blindly follow everything the authorities give them. The fact is that vast majority of our people accept religious authority with passivity and see no difference between Islam and the men who rule us in the name of Islam . When you listen closely to people making excuses for the authorities you realise that to be 'religious' in our society means to be passive to the point of negligence or arrogance. No matter how much evidence there is that contract sex is not Islamic our people will passively deny the truth. This is because our people mixed up their faith in the Imams with the laws manufactured by our scholars. Our people dont like to face the truth about oursleves as it shakes our self-righteous egos and moves us out of our comfort zone. We think we are so right that if anybody points out how much we have got it wrong then we close up and go in to denial. We feel lost when facts are put in front of us and when our authorities are challanged. And to defend our low ideas of Islam we come up with phrases that don't mean anything. Let me give you an example: Once someone confronted me saying that 'Halal E Mohammadi' will alway be Halal and 'Haram E Muhammadi' will always be Haram. He said this to allude that in the days of the Nabi the renting of women for sex was allowed and so cannot be made harram today. So I told him that according to the books even child slavery was halal in those days. I told him that selling your children in to slavery to pay your debts was allowed in those days. To this he turned his back and left. I just wish he had thought about revising his ideas about Islam rather then running away from facing the truth. I wish he was ready for a rediscovery of Islam instead of being so passive. At another occasion another man came up to me and said: "You follow Umar because he removed contract sex!" So I responded that according to the same books that tell us that Umar removed it even Imam Ali is reported to have accepted what Umar did. Why do we pick bits from the books that suit us? I also told him that if we want to judge by books alone then the same books also tell us the Imam Hassan was out of control on sex. These books also tell us in 'mutawatir hadith' that Umar married one of the daughters of Imam Ali. And I told him that according to all the shia books the Quran has been changed. This means that it is 'mutawatir' to accept that the Quran is not original. All that was left for this 'religious' man was to get angry at me and label me as a 'wahabi shia.' Before he left I told him that I was grateful that I was not a 'zombie shia.' He has not spoken to me since! One important thing I realised in my investigation was that many 'religious' people like to cloud the issues so that the real discussion on how laws are manufactured is not exposed. In my quest I discovered that first people make personaliy attacks on Umar and try to convince people that it was Umar who removed contract sex. When you show evidence that this cannot be possible then they label you as a wahabi or they throw phrases at you. And finally they dismiss you with accusations and go in to denial. All these are tactics to divert people from investigating the whole issue of contract sex. And here is yet another shocking fact that I discovered: Recently a famous Iranian actress by the name of Zahra Ebrahimi sold sex for a few days. Her porn home video of what she was doing with her Armenian 'boyfriend' was then posted on the internet. By doing lots of contract sex she had developed a taste for ellicit sex and was filmed in one of her contracts having sex in a doggy style. Ultimatly she denied making the video and blamed it on her mutah boyfried and on camera tricks. But the interesting bit behind this story was that it exposed how porn in Iran has become so wide spread that the Iranian parliament reacted by making laws to execute any woman who appeared in home videos of herself and loading it on the internet. The result has been that Iranian porn videos have become hot sellers in the porn world for dirty Western men to gape at misled and exploited Muslim girls performing sex routines. Some school videos on how Iranian girls act out porn routines in classrooms are also on the internet to be seen by the Western public. The issue of internet porn raises a major question for our so-called 'islamic law' manufacturers. Say a woman decides to contract a man to watch her naked on live web-cam. Is this allowed? Most religious leaders ban it saying that live webcam will mean that the customer will download her naked videos and this would be 'morally wrong' for the youth. So the question is that in what way is this immoral but earning money from contract sex is not? And don't you think that when we start banning things than are we not doing what we accuse Umar of doing? Here are more fact that we ignore in our passivity to follow anything that comes from our religious authorities: 1. It is a false claim of Ayatullah Rafsanjani that Western 'Youth Culture' is to be blamed for increase of rape crime against women in Iran. To blame the youth of being out of control sexually is a lie and a denial of the true reality of the sexual frustration of middle aged men who are tired of their wives and who just want an easy fix. How many middle aged men in our 'shia' society do we know of who have jumped at the chance that sex can be bought under the sharia and jaffery fikh! From East Africa to the Middle East we have men who do the sex but don't want to pay the social tax! If this was a youth problem the why is it that it is the middle aged men who are the ones who regularly frequent sex houses in Syria, Iraq, Dubai and Iran? So Mr Rafsanjani, stop blaming it on the youth! 2. Did you know that to contract sex you do not need witnesses. Yes in our fikh laws a man can buy sex without keeping any witnesses. This again serves the men while it totally disenfrechise sex victims. So for example if a baligh orphan girl is sexually molested or a widow is raped then there is the loophole for a molester and rapist to claim that she contracted sex with him. Clearly the fikh laws have given an advantage to rapists and abusers. It is, therefore, strange that Ayatullah Rafsanjani claims that contract sex will reduce rapes. The question for us is that can laws that have such loopholes that serve rapist be divine or are these laws manufactured by our high religious institutions and just labelled as Islamic. If such laws existed in the Catholic church about child abuse or among the Hindus about burning widows then we would point fingers that it is all the faults of the dirty and crafty Bishops and Pandits, but when we have faulty laws then is it right to become closed minded and go in to denial? 3. As the fikh laws say that a girl of nine can engage in sexual activity on a permission of the father then does this not mean that if a group of fathers have pedophilic tendencies then they can create a sex culture around each other's girl children? To deny this is futile as the UN has already issued reports on how girl children are used in Afghanistan by shia fathers to earn money. In a recent article the BBC highlighted the sad case of several Iranian women whose fathers, uncles and elder brothers pimped them off. These women were coerced in to sex at a young age by their male relatives. The BBC articles quoted the women saying that when they were little girls they were circulated among men in the villages behind the cover of religious laws. At a young age they were taught to do oral as there is no 'iddah' for it. Once again it was the moral line blurred by religion that justified these kind of 'idda' periods. And finally when these girls ran away from the villages they were trapped in brothels in Tehran which again operated under religious laws. These women now suffered mental illnesses, deep emotional scars and were confused about the value of sex in a relationship. One of them said: “ When we were little we just accepted what we were taught as we blindly trusted our fathers and the mullahs in the village” Another one said: “Since age nine they covered us with hijab on the outside to teach us to respect and protect our bodies but on in the inside they abused us and robbed us of our self respect! Our religion wants us to be straight but our parents and the mullahs turn it upside down. 4. There are Tafsirs of the Quran written to tell us that contract sex is allowed in the Quran. Often the verse 4:24 is quoted where the word Istimatum (which means fulfil, pleasure, comply) is used. These tafsirs tell us that the word Istimatum means the 'pleasure of vaginas.' Yes it is as crude as that. In fact Sheikh Thani writes that the original phrase was 'hire of vaginas.; So say we accept that the Quranic word 'Istimatum' means 'Pleasure of Vaginas' then what happens to verse 46:30 where it says that those who do Istimatum will enter hell. This would then mean that those who get 'Pleasure of Vaginas' will enter hell. So if we accept the Tafsirs without analysis then we will first accept that in verse 4:24 we are allowed to take pleasure of vaginas by buying or renting them but then in verse 46:30 we are told not to do it as it will take us to hell. In fact it is written in some of the Tafsirs that the verse 4:24 had the words 'Get pleasure of vaginas for a limited time' until Umar removed the words 'for a limited time.' Poor Umar getting the blame again! I think he should hire a good lawyer! 5 Imam Ali's name is also misused in our history books to justify contract sex. In some books we are told that Imam Ali used to do a contract for sex every night! It is said in our books that the Imam said that if contracting the 'Pleasure' of vaginas was allowed then 'only the wretched would commit adultery.' But if Imam Ali had ever said this then it would mean that he ignored how rapists and molesters are accomodated by such contracts; how moral lines are blurred; how people develop a taste for ellicit sex; how it leads women to cheapen their bodies; how porn starts; how prostitution is made acceptable etc. In fact, the vast majority of married women who commit adultery do so because their husbands are taking pleasure off someone else's vagina. Hence contract sex will increase adultery, not decrease it. Misusing the name of Imam Ali to justify contract sex is like using the name of the Prophet to justify idolatory. How can a man like Ali who was married to a pure lady like Syeda Fatima ever advocate shameless and loopholed laws of contract sex? Shame on us that we have allowed our religious authorities to use his beautiful name to justify such dirty things! If I believed in consipracy theories than I would hypothesis that it was all a Jewish or Umayad consipracy to misuse the name of Imam Ali in order to destory shia moral boundries. 6. When some people could not answer what I was asking then they labelled me as Sunni. They said that my Namaz is not accepted as I entertain ideas against the 'naib e imam.' So say I am a Sunni: Then my question to the shia community is that what is a shia; Is he someone who loves the 12 Imams and follows their true teachings, or it is someone who blindly follows the religious establishment that has monopolised power over the followers of Imam Ali and that miuses the names of the masumeen? Surely a shia is the person who stands up against the establishement and does not side with any one fraction where it is wrong. Recently one famous TV mullah when asked that why was he not married after his divorce responded by saying that what is the use of a 'permanent marriage' when he does a 'temporary marriage' every night. In otherwords, he has a fling nightly. Of course this mullah is out of control with his sex ego but do we really want mullahs with such bad attitudes? I think he is more suited to the night clubs of Ibiza - not on the mimbar of Syeda Fatimah. A larger letany of soical evidences can be quoted to show what blind following of our religious authorities is doing to us. An incident in Nairobi is well known that a widow wanted money to pay fees for her son. She approached some religious leaders in the community hoping that they would be charitable. Each one told her to contract sex with them. She refused and ended up going to the Ismailies to help her. This is the hidden aspect of our community which we ignore. We have become like a rotten papari (paupau) which looks good from the outside but on the inside we have too many diseases. And these diseases are legalised by our religious authorities who use the names of our Imams to convince us that what is bad is actually good. Why else would a dirty and shameless concepts like 'contracting the pleasure of vaginas' become acceptable to us? In the following I have looked closely at the narrations and the logic that is used by our ulema to make us buy in to their derivations. I also intent to complete a passage which gives references from books of narrations that justify contract sex. 1.2 THE VALUES AND PRINCIPLES OF ISLAM Let us start looking deeper in to the issue of how much we have allowed ourselves to be taken for a ride. Consider the following examples: First consider the fact that Islam emphasises on Hijab. But then our religious fikh laws allows the hijab to be removed on a temporary contract basis. So if a woman wears Hijab and covers herself from head to toe then does she truly understand it's purpose if she removes it on contract? It is like saying that you can pledge something but then break the pledge on contract, The hijab of a woman is a pledge to Syeda Fatima to keep chaste. Why would anybody want to break the pledge on dubious contracts justified by dubious mullahs who have a history of deriving dubious things from books which have lot of dubious narrations! Let us look properly at this point: Islam tells us to follow in the footsteps of iconic women like Syeda Fatimah. She stood as an icon of decency in those pagan times pulling women away from the pagan exploitations. We learn from her sense of self respect, her chastity and her value of her own body. The fact is that she never did contract sex nor did she ever allow any man to put a price tag on her. This is why she is our icon. Even in those pagan days she did not look at a man let alone do a sex contract. And this was in those pagan days when women were expected to sell sex. Have those who manufacture laws for us ever neen genuine in considering Syeda Fatimah as a role model or are they just using her name? In fact the life of Syeda Fatima tells us never to put a price on hijab or on your self respect or on your body or on your love. If hijab is on contract than that is not the hijab of Syeda Fatimah or Syeda Zainab. It may the hijab of pagans who became Muslims who did hijab only to satisfy fikh laws. The hjiab of Syeda Fatima was not restricted to fikh laws but based on the high values of Islam. When you mention all this to a mullah then all he does is quote us from books those narrations that are written to justify contract sex. By doing this it proves that Mullahs miss the point about Syeda Fatimah. If she is truly our role model and an iconic woman of Islam then it is her life and teachings we must look at and not other women who were not icons of Islam. Quoting how some prostitutes did contract sex in the days of the Nabi is not an argument to turn contact sex in to an Islamic practice. If what was allowed in those days is labelled as Islamic then selling your children in to slavery must also be Islamic as it too was done and allowed to the pagans. The point is that did the Nabi, Imam Ali or Syeda Fatimah ever do it. If they did not then it cannot be Islamic! Furthemore, narrations have a dubious nature and just quoting them without a proper analysis is wrong. So when a mullah brings out a narration that some loose women in the time of the Nabi did contracts for sex then we have to ask that did any our role model women do it or not. If they did not do it then it becomes a contradiction that we claim them to be our role models and then end up following prostitutes and loose women of those days. There are many more such examples of how on one hand we profess high Islamic values & ideals but then we also accept laws and ideas that contradict them. By wearing hijab on one hand and then putting a price tag on it is a mix up between the high moral values of Islam and the nonsense of paganism. In fact I consider it as an insult on the hijab that a woman covers herself from head to toe and then in an instant she gets naked on contract! What a mockery of Syeda Fatimah's teachings! 1.3 TWO TYPES OF ISLAM MIXED UP
When the clouds lifts from our heads we will see that there are two types of Islams that are mixed up for us: The Quranic Islam and the other is the Islam with flaws, paradoxes and contradictory values called the Unquranic Islam. The authorities have tied up these two Islams so tightly that we are now confused which is which. Consider this examples that prove the point: Example 1: The Quran tells us that any contract between two people has to be witnessed by trustworthy people. This is because the Quranic principle is to protect both parties in a contract. The Nabi practised this principle without exception. Every time he conducted any transaction he had witnesses. Never did he even allow a nikkah without two witnesses despite the fact that the Quran does not directly mention witnesses for nikkah. This is because the Nabi taught us to apply the Quranic principles in all circumstances and made no exception to the Quranic principle. Remember we have to practise Islam the way the Nabi showed us! But in contradiction to this we have the Unquranic Islam where you can contract sex without witnesses. Yes in our fikh book we have laws that tell us that you do not need witnesses to contract sex with a woman or her daughter. So it a girl of nine has lost her virginity in Afghanistan then you are allowed to go there to contract sex with her - like with Garry Glitter did in Bangkok! In fact, our 'islamic' laws are such that if the girl becomes pregnant that the man has the last say to accept the pregnancy or deny it. Until today our fikh laws give the last word to the man to admit the child is his or deny it. Clealry the fikh laws are accommodating men who want to get away with social evils. When you go through the laws and see how they are made in favour of men and at the expense of women you realise that those who benefit from them are men who have little consideration for vulnerable woman. But can Islam be like this? Can Islam pander to accomodate men like these? Why else do we have laws in which witnesses are not needed and a man has the final say to accept the child to be his or not? Who manufactured these unjust laws and then sat on the mimbar in the mosque claiming to a passive people that this was the school of the Ahlul Baith? How ridiculous! In fact, how sad! Example 2. Today, in places like Dubai, Syria and Lebanon the sex tourists from the East and the West come and pretend to be Muslims in order to get the ‘sex transactions’ from destitute Shia girls who have been transported by pimps from Iraq and Iran. These are not exceptional cases because shia girls in thousands are transported from Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria across the world. One blog from an American said; “We screw your girls in Dubai while you Muslims go to the mosque to pray to your moon god!” The sad reality is that there are 'mullahs' everywhere who are ever ready with a hadith or two to fire at anybody who exposes these things. So while the Nabi and his wife Khadija rescued women from prostitution we have mullahs who put women in to it and fire ahadith at us of how it is all allowed in Islam. One thing about the Unquranic Islam is that the name of our Nabi is always used to justify false things. A hadith or two are always quoted in contradiction to the Quran to seduce us to accepting what is totally against the practises of the Nabi. 1.4 Excuses manufactured from books One story that our scholars often use to justify contract sex is from the book Sahih Bukhari. It is of two men who badly wanted sex. The story says that two men came to the Nabi to ask what to do. They claimed that the Nabi permitted them to buy sex. So they hurried in to the desert and found a woman. The woman chose the younger man who gave her a blanket as payment for sex. The story doesn’t tell us what happened to the old man who was also desperate! But are we a kind of people who would accept this story without a proper analysis! Firstly, how possible is it that a woman just happened to be sitting alone in the vast desert and the two men were able to locate her - unless the two men had a magic desert tracking sex GPS system! Then what did happen to the woman after having sex with the younger man: Did she just vanish: Did she get pregnant: Did he ask her if she was married: Did her mother also sell sex: Did she haveVD: Was she a Muslim or a pagan: Did she give sex only because she was frightened of the two men as she was alone? Then, what about the poor old man: Did he end up using a conventional method of relief: Or did he just die in desperation! Clearly this story is totally inadequate to justify turning respectable Muslim women in to prostitutes and sex mistresses. There is yet another major flaw in this story which is that how possible is it that these two men would bring themselves to desperation if it was common to buy sex in those days? As we are told that buying sex was permitted by the Prophet then it is strange that these two men had to publically go to the Prophet and threaten to castrate themselves if they did not get sex. Why threaten to castrate themselves unless they knew that the Prophet was against contract sex? Surely, all these flaws should have raised major doubt among our Sunni and Shia scholars about stories like this. Genuine scholarship is about thorough questioning of anything that is dubious and full of fault-lines. If scholars are true scholars then they would not be afraid to make a proper and critical analysis of books. They should weigh up the stories against the Quranic principle, moral values and spiritual guidance. And they should not make sweeping remarks to dismiss the mountain of evidence against contract sex. However, it would be grossly unfair to blame everything on these so-called scholars because they have only inherited what has been crafted for generations. They have to go through a minefield to avoid all the sectarian traps that have been planted over generations of rewriting and re-interpreting books. In fact, an intelligent mullah who can think outside the box has to defy the whole system if he wants to question anything. Most good scholars will privately admit that the evidence against contract sex is very strong. A person like Sheikh Akhtar Rizvi is an example of a good scholar who told us in his book Marriage & Morals that laws of contract sex are only for co-habiting couples who want to get married or for exceptional situations where a person has no chance of getting married. Ayatullah Mutahari argued the same in his Rights of Woman even though he fell in to the trap of justifying using mutah for women who don’t find husbands. But these type of mullahs can attempt to think outside the box and get engaged in an open healthy discussion are very few. Most scholars, i fear, have fixed views which are difficult to change as they just dismiss you or they live in denial of all the evidences. The same is true for leadership in any religion where only a few have the courage to question. The rest like living in what has been established for them for centuries. The bigger problem for us is actually rooted in the way things are derived. When you look closely you learn that one form of institutionalised knowledge is called Elm ul Rijal which means blindly accepting what is based on chains of narrators. Hence the above story of the two desperate men is blindly accepted by Sunnis as it exists in their books and is regarded as mutawatir and Sahih (True). No Sunni scholar will challenge it for if he did then he risks being ostracised. And the ever flexible and malleable shia mullahs will readily accept stories like these because it serves them. They will not question how shaky it is even though normally the Shia scholars reject Sunni version of Elm ul Rijal. It is like a group of Protestants who first reject the Catholics books but then use the same books to prove that Jesus was the Son of God. Today we Shias use Sunni books to prove acceptance of contract sex but the question to ask is that does this actually prove our point or does it just prove that both Sunni and Shia books have been equally forged and tempered with? The worst irony is that the Sunni themselves take a different view on stories of contract sex in their books. They say that it was only allowed by the Nabi in desperation until Umar forbad even that. They use a story in the same book that Abdullah ibn Abbas admitted that contract sex was only allowed like 'eating pig in desperation.' Umar is quoted to have even refused that! 1.5 The Quran 4:25 The conflicting reports in books can confuse people and so for us Muslims the question must be: "What does the Quran say?" The undeniable truth is that the whole logic of contract sex goes against Quranic verse 4:25. In this verse men in desperation of wanting sex are told to either marry a slave girl or learn to exercise self control? The alternative of contract sex is not given. The obvious question for our scholars is: “If contract sex was valid then why would the Quran not give it even as an alternative to desperation?” It is like the alternative of Tayamum. The Quran gives it as an alternative. Surely nobody can then add to this and give us a different alternative. Similarly how can someone claim that we can have more alternatives to desperation than the ones given in the Quran? If someone did then it would just mean that the Quran is inadequate! Now that would be ridiculous as the Quran says it is a 'complete book of guidance.' 1.3 History of law An interesting historical fact is that many of the laws which are today labelled as Islamic were derived from history books written some 250 years after the Prophet. This is true of books sanctified by both Sunni and Shia scholars. None of these books have even got the story of the Battle of Badr correct and have ended up contradicting the Quran about the battle. So clearly something is wrong when our books have contradicted the Quran even on a major event like the Battle of Badr. Here are some more examples of the Unquranic laws that has been derived by from these books: 1. Parents are allowed to sell their children to settle their debts 2. Also allowed to men is marriages to infant girls 3. If your wife commits adultery then half bury her and stone her to death 4. Stop women from becoming judges 5. Forbid your child to inherit if you fathered him outside wedlock 6. If you are a slave-owner then you can sleep with your slave girls even if they are married. This would not be adultery but a blessing for the followers of the Ahlul Baith! 7. A caliph can murder an apostate; the 12th Imam or the caliph can murder illegitimate children etc. It suffices to say that not one of these things is in the Holy Quran nor in line with Quranic principles. Once Imam Jaffer E Sadik (as) called both Sunni and Shia mullahs and told them that if they bring anything that was not in line with the Quran then it will be thrown away. I think it is high time we practised what the Imam preached. 1.5 Books come first and not the Quran All the above evidence shows that when scholars have tried to derived things against the principles of the Quran then we have got nothing but confusion and contradictions. In fact stopping women from becoming judges is not only an injustice but it has also made us a laughing stock of the modern world. Nevertheless, it needs to be said that when scholars do follow the principles of the Quran we get some excellent laws. Examples are the laws on artificial insemination, laws on cleanliness, laws of inheritance etc. One has to indeed commend the high calibre of scholarships when scholars keep in line with Quranic principles and only accept stories in books which make historical sense and have historical forensics to prove them beyond doubt. My argument is not against what is truth and good in our fikh laws and in our ideas about Islam, but against mixing up truth and falsehood to confuse the people and circumventing us away from Islam by using strange fikh laws. I think our people find it difficult to acknowledge that we have lots of laws, beliefs and ideas that are against the Quran because we are partly a self-righteous people and we like burying our heads in the sand. And shockingly in some case, scholars are known to even shamelessly alter words in the Quran so that laws fit with the books and their sects. Here is a classic example: One thing our shia scholars have found in the books is that the selling of sex is called Mutah. The earliest books written by Sheikh Thani say that Mutah is ‘seeking pleasurs from vaginas!’ This was the most earliest meaning of mutah. He even says: "The bed of a mutah woman is not the same as that of your wife!" The scholars read this on our books with hundreds of justifications for contract sex but they had to find something in the Quran to approve it. They must have looked throughout the Quran. They found nothing and yet they still came out with the claim that they found a ‘mutah’ verse. The verse 4:24 is often quoted to make us believe that mutah is in it. However, the truth is that the word mutah is not even mentioned in this verse. Furthermore, the word mutah does not even exist anywhere in the whole Quran. In fact, in our shia books this verse 4:24 is always misquoted and the word Mutah is inserted in order to mislead us. In fact, some extra words like ‘for a limited time’ are derived and woven in to the verse even though these words do not exist in it. So in the past scholars tried to make a Quranic verse fit in with mutah even though the word mutah does not exist in it. But today's scholars have began to say that it is okay to derive and add words and that it is okay if the word mutah is not in the Quran. They say that the word Istimatum in verse 4:24 of the Quran can be swapped with the word Mutah because ‘the Masumeen had said so.’ If you say anything then they say: "Are you a marja or are you greater than the masumeen!" It is like saying that when you tell a Hindu that idolatry is wrong he says: "Are you as educated as our guru or are you one a specially chosen person!" This type of logic stops all research and investigation in to the truth of things. One scholar of Arabic grammar tries to be more intellectual about mutah and argues that the word ‘istimatum’ is the same as the word ‘mutah’ because they both have the ‘same root.’ He says: "Mutah is the 12th root word of Istimatum." But here are some of the reasons why changing the Quranic word ‘istimatum’ in to ‘mutah’ cannot work: 1. Istimatum means ‘comply, fulfil, achieve or pleasing’ but mutah conventionally means ‘temporary marriage or renting a vagina.’ Both words conventionally mean different things. They are not synonymous. So how can they be interchanged? 2. If you interpret Istimatum and Mutah to both mean ‘comply or fulfil or pleasing’ then it would mean that mutah does not mean ‘temporary marriage.’ Hence what is the point of swapping the words? 3. Istimatum is a verb but mutah is conventionally used as a noun. Hence the two words cannot be interchanged. 4. If you follow the context of the verse then you realise that it is against lust and misusing of women for lust. It also says men have to commit financially to the women which can only mean a proper marriage because in mutah you only give a payment for renting and not make a financial commitment. The context of the verse is also about empowerment of wives because the verse says that they have mutual and equal contractual rights in marriages. Clearly the verse is totally against the context of mutah where a man can annul the contract at any time but the woman can’t. Furthermore, the verse does not mention MAHR which is an essential requirement of mutah. Instead it mentions AJAR which is a 'gift' and not a 'payment.' 5. If Istimatum means mutah because the root words are the same then it would mean that there is a contradiction in the Quran as first the Quran tells women to keep fulfilling (istimatum – 4:24) their pledge in the marriage to stay chaste but then it also says that those who keep fulfilling (istimatum – 46:20) their low desires will enter hell . If the words were interchanged then it would mean that first the Quran is saying that women can do mutah and then it would say that those who do it for sex will enter hellfire. Hence the argument based on ‘root words’ is unworkable and just a red herring. 6. Lastly, there must be a good reason why God left out the word Mutah from the entire Quran. As God has left it out of the Quran it means that it is not in the Quran! And interestingly the only word for marriage in the Quran is AQAD which literally means Nikkah! No other name of marriage is there in the Quran. 1.6 TACTICS TO MAKE MUTAH A SECTARIAN ISSUE Recently, when I challenged a road-show TV scholar regarding mutah I found myself arguing against a personal accusation. When I said to him that Mutah is not mentioned in the Quran he first reacted by saying that even NIKKAH is not mentioned in the Quran. So I corrected him that the Arabic synonym of Nikkah is AQAD which is used many times in the Quran. I also told him most of the laws of the Nikkah are also in the Quran. But there is no synonym of mutah in the Quran. And there is not one law of mutah in the Quran. Immediately, the TV scholar jumped to brand me as a non-Shia. Then I was cut-off the line! So I phoned again! He finally accepted that I was a shia but went on to say this: “The Quran is not enough as the fikh details of Namaz are not in the Quran. Those who say that the Quran is enough are like Umar!” As ever, the TV mullah had the last word and I was cut-off again. Clearly, my arguments were turned in to a sectarian issue. First I was branded as a non shia. Then the Quran was branded as ‘not enough’’ But if the Quran is not enough than does it mean it is inadequate! Would this not contradict the verse that says that in this book is everything? And just because the fikh details are not in the Quran does not mean that scholars have a right to circumvent us from Islam. And then what happens to the words of Imam Jaffer E Sadik in which he says that if anything is against the Quran then throw it away! This clearly proves that the Imam took the Quran as the only yardstick to see what is Islamic and what is not. Clearly, the Quran was ‘enough’ for the Imam. In any case, what had the argument against mutah to do with ‘the Quran is not enough!’ The issue was that the scholars first claim that mutah is in verse 4:24 but when you disprove their claim then they divert to saying that the Quran is not enough. So why first claim that it is in the Quran? Why jump around? What I have noticed that when these type of mullahs can’t prove their point they quickly divert to accusations, cutting you out and jumping from one issue to another until the confuse the issues! Finally, if they can't get away they will label you as a Sunni or a Wahabi Shia! 1.7 An Interesting Experience Once when I tried to convince a married friend not to do mutah with his 'white' woman he laughed and said: “You don’t do it if you don’t want to!” So I told him that a child molester can also use the same logic. He grumbled and argued that if mutah was wrong then he won’t be blamed because his marja will shoulder the blame. So I told him to rename his religion as ‘marjaism’ and not Islam because the Quran tells us not to blindly follow anybody and that on the final day the people will be punished for blindly following their leaders. He had nothing to say but still went ahead with the mutah. From this I learnt that many people only follow their desires no matter what the truth is! For them it is enough to dismiss the mountain of evidence against mutah by using cleverly crafted remarks, personal accusations and saying things like: "Why dont you declare yourself a marja!" Actually I too have many clever remarks and accusations that I too can make if I wanted to lower the calibre of debate! 1.8 More facts Here are some more facts about mutah that add to the evidence against it: 1. FACT 1. By law the Iranian Chastity Houses must be managed by a scholar so that he can monitor the activities to see which girls just do the stripping, the touching and the oral, and which go all the way. I think that those Mullahs who agree to manage these houses are just glorified pimps and sex gurus. This is the worst insult on Islamic scholarship in our history. It is even worst that the taibans who are another group of ‘scholars’ who don’t make sense in their approach to Islamic scholarship. 2. FACT 2. It is astonishing that some shia women cry for the hijab of Syeda Zainab but who cheapen hijab by removing it on contract basis. These are obviously lost and confused women! May be they have no moral sense and so do not mind removing their clothes in front of a man who is not committed to them. May be they do not know the true value of relationships and have learnt nothing from the role models of Islam like Syeda Fatima. May be for them love is casual like a product to use and throw. Or may be they think they should have their fun now before marriage because in a mutah culture the men continue to have ‘fun’ even after marriage but the women get stoned to death if they do. But it must take a truly lowly woman to fall in to mutah with a man who only wants her temporarily and who may also have a wife whom he has no problem deceiving. I suspect that even for a low woman to be used and then thrown aside must be demeaning and a hurtful thing. In one famous case in Iran, a woman slept with a hunky professional footballer, fell in love with him and then went on to murder his wife. The hunky footballer then stood in court crying and claiming how much he loved his wife. He said that he 'only' had sex with this woman on mutah and that she did not mean anything. All the male judges agreed and sentenced the woman to death. The woman had no defence in a system loaded against her. The whole system of mutah teaches people to be fake and fickle. This was the system she once trusted so much. In this fake system we forget that even women who have lowered themselves are not machines but human beings with hearts, minds, emotions and the ability to bond. Every relationship leaves a mark on human souls. God has blessed human being with the spiritual capacity to grow their love in to trees that reach the heaven. This is why the Quran says that men and women are ‘guides and helpers’ of each other. This is the Quranic relationship. Relationship have meanings in a spiritual journey of life. Mutah does not offer any of it. Mutah is primarily about ‘bang bang thank you madam!’The hundreds of Iranian brothels now opening in Iranian cities prove this point! Sadly, there are those silly men in our community who argue that Mutah is to give ‘love’ to widows. They forget that widows do not need quick–fixes which leaves them abandoned once the men have had their bit and gone. The Quran has given us polygamy to love and care for widows - that is if the men are genuine. The Nabi married widows, and never did mutah with them. So do we follow the Nabi or not? Mutah really is not for widows but for men who just want to get their hands on them. Some people even try to justify mutah by saying it is a marriage with a divorce guaranteed. This is called Misyar. But they ignore that in divorce the throne of Allah shakes. They ignore that divorce is the ultimate last resort because it devastates hearts. This is why months of reconciliation are needed to salvage a relationship between husband and wife. May be this itself proves how bad mutah is; otherwise, why would there be a need to compare it to divorces! FACT 3: According to our laws if a girl in a ‘chastity house’ has sexual intercourse then the waiting period is obligatory on her. This naturally handicaps her as a prostitute which would then turn her against the law. She will still have clients as she needs to make a living from prostitution. But then if she is caught violating the idda laws then she literally gets stoned to death. It is a vicious cycle for her. Hence the falwed system of mutah first set ups vulnerable women for prostitution and then get's rid of them if they fail to stay within it's artifical limits of no intercourse but just looking, touching and tasting! 4. FACT 4: One really funny thing in our books to justify mutah is this: 'God gave us the holy institute of mutah because he forbad us the joys of alcohol!' Yes, this is in the books! In fact the scholars who forged this in the books did not know that things are made haram in Islam for a reason. Islamic law is not like a seesaw where if one thing is forbidden then the other is allowed. The fact is that most of the justification for mutah are of this low calibre and yet they are in our 'Books of Shia Islam!' 5. FACT 5: There are other funny excuses for mutah in the books. One story says that if you do one mutah you will die the death of Imam Hussain and if you did four you will be raised to the level of the Prophet. I think these kinds of things not an insult on the struggles and sacrifices of our Masumeen. If Sunni books had such things than our shia TV channels would bombast how it proves that the Sunnis insult our Imams by ranking them with sex studs. But we say nothing when our own books do this. Double standards or not! 6. FACT 6: One most quoted hadith is that if mutah was allowed than only the most wretched will commit adultery. So if the husband wants sex outside marriage he gets sawab with mutah. If the wife then takes a step outside marriage she is wretched. So the man get accomodation but the women get stoned! Would our Imams ever say anything which is sweeping and injustice against a woman who may be forced to take a step outside marriage becuase her husband cheats on her. Adultery is bad and a sin but making remarks that add injustices is not fair. I would say that a man seeking mutah is only doing adultery but hiding it in the cover of religion! That is worst as he associates a lie against God. 7. FACT 7. In the book Al Mizan the writer justifies mutah by saying the Surah Nisa has three types of marriages – Nikkah, Mutah and an unnamed marriage to slaves. He says the payment of Mahr is used for Nikkah and Ajar is used for Mutah. Hence he concludes that since Ajar is mentioned in verse 4:24, therefore, Mutah is implied in this verse. But he forgets that while Aqad (nikkah) is mentioned the mutah is not mentioned in the Quran at all. He also forgets that Ajar is a ‘gift’ and not a payment. He forgets that the word Ajar is used for nikkah gifts in the Quran. He also forgets that a gift is given as reward for ‘istimatum’ or fulfilment and cannot be given before or instead of mahr. He also forgets that you can do nikkah with a slave also and so it does not need a second or third type of unnamed marriage. … So many points conveniently forgotten by a high scholar! 8. FACT 8: And there are more dirty secrets about mutah that most people are in denial about. For example did you know that while nikkah (Aqad) is Islamic the practice of mutah is pre-Islamic? Yes, mutah was started by pagan and ignorant Arabs. These were Arabs who treated women like commodities until Islam came and taught them that women were equal in humanity. This fact gives concrete evidence that we have mixed Islam with what was pre-Islamic. Clearly, mutah has nothing to do with our Imams or with Shiaism. It was the pagan who brought it because they had made women in to commodities and so relationships with them meant nothing. In fact, one conventional meaning of mutah is ‘renting to get the pleasures of vaginas!' Our Imams have told us not be follow that which is risky and which will raise you with adulterous people on the Day of Judgement. Imam Ali told us to stay away from dubious things. Imam Jaffer E Sadik told us to stay away from things not in the Quran. Anybody who believes that mutah is part of the original teachings of the imams is in denial and fooling himself It was the kafirs who brought mutah and it was forged in to our books some 250 years after the Nabi came. 1.9 Explosive Umar So how did mutah becme a ‘shia thing?’ Well it is to do with our hate for Umar and our denial that mutah was an Umayad conspiracy to destroy the Shia moral fabrics. Read on! Hundreds of narrations have been manufactured in both Sunni and Shia books to justify mutah to shias. Today’s scholars will quote them for hours to prove mutah! But when you examine these narrations you see serious fault line just like in the hundred of narrations in both Sunni and Shia books that tell us that women are inferior and ‘nakis e akal’ When you challenge a scholar that women cannot be faulty in intelligence then they say that the Nabi said it. Today even infant marriages are blamed on the Nabi. The Nabi always gets the final blame when the scholars fail to distinguish Islam from the Kufr that is mixed up with it. In any case let us examine the narrations that say contract sex is legal in Islam. One big fact about all pro-mutah narrations is that they are all rooted in just one story of a man called Amr bin Harith who made a girl pregnant and then denied it. He kept denying it until Umar caught up with him. Then he accepted what he had done. But like a true criminal he shifted the blame. He actually blamed it on the Nab saying that the Nabi allowed it. Then Abdullah ibn Abbas came and first agreed with Amr. In some narrations it is written that when Abdullah ibn Abbas was challenged he too changed it and said it was only allowed by the Nabi in desperations. Umar then reacted to them and said: “Even if the Nabi allowed it, I forbid it! But here is a lethal punch on mutah. In one narration in our shia book it is clearly stated that to check if Mutah was allowed Umar ultimately went to Imam Ali (as). One narration in our shia book clearly tells us that Imam Ali said that mutah was totally forbidden! In fact Imam Ali Reza is also reported to have said similar things. Yes this is in shia books which we are never told about! In any case, after Imam Ali told Umar that it was forbidden the case was so crystal clear to Umar that he did not listen anymore to the claims that the Prophet had allowed it. So when men like Amr kept insisting that they will continue to make girls pregnant then Umar reacted and said that he did not care about their claims that the Nabi had allowed it because he would punish them if they did. These reactive words of Umar have been quoted in different variations in different books and are today used to give anecdotal proof that Umar had accepted that mutah was allowed by the Nabi but did not care about it. In fact, in most books the whole case of Mutah is based only on these reactionary words of Umar! Most pro-mutah books will repeatedly quote these words of Umar even though the same books will acknowledge that Umar is historically known for his over reaction and for saying things wrongly in wrong places. Surely, for any honest analysis of his words we have to see what he said in the context and circumstances in which he said it. So let us again examine the evidence: Umar had witnessed that men like Amr Harith had first lied and then changed their stories. And then Abdullah bin Abbas changed it when he was challenged and said it was only allowed in desperation. Then Imam Ali has said it was forbidden. Then Umar knew that mutah was not mentioned anywhere in the Quran. He also knew that the role model of Islam i.e. the Nabi never did mutah. And finally, he witnessed the plight of the vulnerable young girl made pregnant. So clearly Umar had all the evidence to prove that this pagan practice of mutah was forbidden. So he could never have accepted that it was allowed by the Nabi. Hence, his words are clearly a reaction against those who kept denying the evidence. I emailed this evidence to a scholar. He immediately dismissed it. His justification was this: “The narration that Imam Ali said that mutah was harram is only one story against hundreds!” So I then emailed him again and said: "There are hundreds of narrations in our shia books that say that the original Quran has gone missing. So shall we, therefore, accept them!" Needless to say that I have heard nothing from this mullah who has tried his best to justify mutah to me and failed at every count! In the whole story of mutah we actually see the evidence of a different Islam than the one in the Quran. This mixed-up Islam is not Sunni or Shia. It is actually Unquranic Islam. Some call is ‘Mullahism’ and both Sunni and Shia Islam is dominated by it. Mullahism is the Islam of big exaggerated beards, women in hijab led in to zina and prostitution, little girls used for sex, belief that the 12th Imam will murder babies, blind loyalty to marjas and sufi pirs, confusion over moon sighting etc But true Islam is not like this. In true Islam the scholar are not bigoted. They have clear thinking and not fogged up ideas. They challenge what is in contradiction to the Quran and not make excuses like ‘the Quran is not enough.’ True Islamic scholarships is based on truth, deep analysis, moral perceptions, humility and coherency with Quranic principles. It takes good men and women with deep sense of purpose to become true Islamic scholars. Indeed there are such people but we dont appreciate them. Men like Sheikh Akhtar Rizvi are few and more like them are needed so that we can see the real light of Islam. I hope in my presentation I have not offended mullahs who are genuine but I don’t really care about fake mullahs who, despite the evidence, still find excuses for mutah! May God deal with them as anybody who brings and promotes indecencies in to the religion of the Nabi is not well meaning towards his ummah. I feel a stand has to be made against those who corrupt our people and create deep social issues that has brought prostitution to women whose desire is only to follow in the footsteps of Syeda Fatimah. | ||
Chapter 2
THE WORLD OF PARADOXIES AND CONTRADICTIONS
The values of Hijab conflicting with the values of mutah is not the only evidence against Mutah. One more situation points to the corrupt nature of Muta. It is witnesses at the Nikka ceremony where a prayer mentions the name of iconic couples like Adam and Hawwa, Ibrahim and Sarah, Muhammad and Khadij and finally Ali and Fatimah. Clearly Islam has role models for nikkah and so their names are mentioned in the nikkah ceremony. But what about the pagan mutah: Does it have any iconic couples!
Whose names can we mention in mutah ceremonies? May be some bollywood actresses who fling from arm to arm! Here is one possible suggestion of what we can do in mutah ceremonies:
"We do this sex mutah for 2 hours and 3 minutes and mention the blessings in the names of sluts and studs of Bollywood and Hollywood. We seek the blessings by mentioning the names of sex stars of the pop industry. We also want the blessings of the porn industry growing in Iran. We want the blessings of all those Bangkok prostitutes and pimps. Of Gary Glitter the child abuser ...."
This is a joke on our religion! What have we done to the faith that was supposed to be saved by the hijab of Syeda Zainab? What kind of mullahs do we have who make us cry for the hijab of Syeda Zainab and then point our daughters to 'chastity houses' which are no less than brothels! If Jews did it we would call it a conspiracy but when our own mullahs do it then we think of it as 'divine!"
Today the vast majority of the shia population are made to accept that mutah is a shia blessing. This means that the scholars have not told our people the whole story. The facts are that the Prophet Muhammad (as) did not bring it. There is no example from histroy that he ever did it. It contradicts the role model couples of Islam. It is against the criteria of Imam Ali etc. It is againt what Imam Ali Reza said. It is against the values of Syeda Fatimah. And furthermore, it is not in the Quran! And despite all these our mullahs have found excuses for it and have kept insisting that all these paradoxies are to be ignored or re-interpreted so that mutah remains allowed in Isl their cooked up version of Islam.
Even if the scholars craft out new logics to make all the above facts acceptable to a passive audiance there are more facts to follow. Yet I am still wondering why is it that in nikkah we have names of iconic Islamic couples but in mutah there are no names. May be it is because mutah is a pagan invention and so it needs names of pagan sluts and pagan studs. May be the scholoars can craft out some new mutah iconic couples for us too! May be some of the new porn queens coming out of modern Iran could be the role models we can mention in our mutah ceremonies!
CAN WE AFFORD TO IGNORE THE PROPHET?
Yes, the Prophet did not bring it. And there is not one single example of him ever doing it. And yes, even in the pagan society there is no example of Khadija, Fatimah or Zainab ever doing it or going anywhere near it to advising anybody to do it. Even on a journeys the Prophets and the Imams did not do it. Even in battles they did not do it. Even in prisons they did not do it. Even in the pagan harsh realities of Mecca they did not do it. Even in Medina thet did not do it. Intersting eh!
These facts are important as the Prophet is our life guide and his example is the one we follow. The Prophet Muhammad was not a pagan prophet that he came to justify pagan practices! He was an Islamic Prophet who came to develop in us a sense of morality and to teach us justful living. His world was different from the confused world of pagans which we have inherited.
Let us at least have the decency to admit that if we truly follow the example of the Prophet then mutah is a paradox. We have mixed up Islam with paganism and then labelled it with the name of the Imams. We have created narration ranking mutah studs with Imam Hussain. We have altered the criteria of how things are made hallal because our books have told us that mutah was allowed because the joys of alcohol were forbidden. Yet today if anybody says anything against the establishment which has done all this to Islam then he or she is seen as weird and an attempt is made to make him an outcast.
Our inability to question and to reform our ideas about Shiaism is actually a sign of a misguided community which may soon be abandoned by Allah. If we don't admit that blind following of mullahs, zakir, poets, ayatullahs and those female mullianies is bad for us then one day we will find ourselves falling in to deep abbys. We would deserve this as we have already abandoned the examples of the Prophet and have only paid lip service to his moral teachings.
MARRIED SLAVES AND MUTAH
Did you know that according to a famous shia tafsir of the Quran called Al Mizan a man can also do mutah with a married woman provided she is his slave. In the volume called Al Mizan the writer, Ayatullah Tabatabaee, states that a master can have sex with her but then will have to 'retain' her for two months before allowing her return to her husband.
This would be music to our Arab oil studs who have hundreds of beautiful maids in bikinies. Now even if they are married it is okay provided the women do not return to their husbands within two months after their last sexual encounter with the stud. Hoorah for the oily studs!
However, the Quran in verse 4:25 contradicts what Al Mizan says. It actually stipulates a punishment for married slave girls who have sex outside their marriage. Clearly the Islam of the Quran is different from the Islam of interpretations and extrapolations!
THREE MORE FACTS ABOUT MUTAH
Consider these three bare facts about mutah:
Firstly, mutah was invented by pagan men long before Nabi Muhammad came. Hence mutah was not an original or unique derivation from shia sources. The real fact of history is that mutah was actually a pagan invention and only later was given a shia tag. The interesting fact is that today the vast majority of those who blindly jump in to mutah do not even realise that they are jumping in to a pagan thing even though the Quran says: "DO NOT RETURN TO THE WAYS OF THE PAGANS ATER THE NABI HAS REFORMED YOU!"
It is also an important point that the pagans were able to justify mutah from their pagan attitudes without using any of the shia religious tags that are used today to justify mutah. This means that all the stories in our shia books of how mutah will give us all the status of the Prophet need to be abrogated otherwise our pagan friend will also start claiming the same status as that of Imams and Prophets!
Secondly, the original meaning of mutah was not temporary marriage. The original meaning of mutah was 'PLEASURE, COMPLIANCE, SATISFACTION OR FULFILLMENT.’ The meaning depending on the context it is used in. So you can have phrases like mutah-e-hajj. Mutah-e-Hajj does not mean doing temporary marriage with Hajj!
Thirdly, Mutah is not mentioned anywhere in the Quran. In fact Ayatuallah Tabatabi also accepts in his Al Mizan that mutah is not mentioned in the Quran. He takes the word ISTIMATUM and says that it does not literally mean ISTIMATUM but instead means MUTAH. He tries to justify why God used Istimatum and not mutah by saying that the word ISTIMATUM if taken literally would contradict the laws of fiqh and so it is best to use MUTAH instead of ISTIMATUM.
This is a very dubious way to interpret things because he is interchanging words and removing words from the Quran to suit fikh rules. This is upside down because it is for the Quran to dictate the fikh and not for the fikh to dictate the Quran.
Yet today in every one of our shia translation we see that the word ISTIMATUM is removed and inter-changed with MUTAH. Look at some books and website to prove this for yourself. An example is the website where new converts encourage each other to engage in mutah with shia girls. Look at the wording of verse 4:24 they have quoted. The truth is that the word MUTAH is not in the verse or anywhere in the Quran and yet is it falsely used in the verse that is quoted. Here is the url for their website:
http://www.revertmuslims.com/mutah.html
WHAT IS IARAT AL FURUJ?
In one of the earliest shia texts we find that mutah is referred to as 'Iarat al Furujj' which means renting the female vagina. Unlike the holy Quran these early shia text had no reservation in using shameless words and phrases like Iarat al Furujj or mutah. Remember the Quran has no such word as MUTAH in it but our shia books are full of it! Remember also how the writer of Al Mizan has interchanged the Quranic word of ISTIMATUM with MUTAH even though the word MUTAH does not exist anywhere in the Quran. But here are more facts about our books and mutah:
In the most early texts there is no attempt even to package Mutah as a unique shia form of marriage. Actually in the early shia books mutah has the same meaning as the pagan meaning. One of the earliest and renowned shia scholar Sheikh Thani actually says: "The bed of your wife is not the same as that of a hired one!"(2) This means that the wife is the one you married through nikkah and the ‘hired’ one was the one you had through mutah! Isn’t it staggering how women were categorised as wives and hired ones in those days but in today’s time both are regarded as wives. If you look at these early sources you will easily see how definitions of mutah have changed over time as new excuses are made to justify it.
One worst thing in our shia books is this narration: Imam Jaffer E Sadik (as) was asked whether guests at your home can fondle your slave girls and the Imam is reported to allow it provided they pay the master a twelfth of her prize if they finger her vagina (3).
Yes, according to narrations found in our shia books, guests at your home are allowed to fondle and touch up your virgin slave girls provided they pay you for it. In fact, under our fikh law it is also a mustahabat (recommended) if a father allows the unmarried daughters to do mutah with guests. We Shias cannot get away from these facts.
Think about this: On one hand we have the role model like Syeda Fatimah and Fizza on how a muslim family should behave towards it's daughters and the slavegirls and then on the other hand we have our fikhi rules and fikhi experts who have derived from books of narrations that if a man encourages his daughters or his slavegirls to entertain his guests sexually then he is doing a mustahab act! Do you not notice a disparity and a contradiction between the Islam of Syeda Fatimah and Fizza and the islam of our fikh books! Surely we should come to our sense and stop being in denial about this. If such things were in Sunni fikh or in Hindu culture we would all be jumping against them. But the finger points at our scholars who have justified and crafted this in to our fikh books.
I think that the reason our people keep justifying mutah within Islam is to do with our inability to accept the truth. We are clearly a people who blindly follow books, scholars and fikh rules rather than learn be to be open minded to reflect and discard what is wrong in us. We hardly know or reflect on the Quran. Instead we are told that ISTIMATUM is a mistake in the Quran and therefore it is MUTAH. We are told the 'original' Quran explicitly allowed mutah until Umar removed some words from it. We are told that it is okay to do mutah with a married slave woman provided we retain her two months to check that she is not carrying our child because otherwise she can come back and demand payment for the child. We have so many parallels with pagans that is becoming silly to deny that we have got it from the pagans. We have just given pagan things an Islamic tag.
FALLING STANDARDS AND SOME HARD TRUTHS
Sometime ago I met a man from Tanzania who told me that mutah was so wide spread in East Africa that rich men have coined a phrase about it: 'Eat the meat and leave the bones for the real husband!' The situation is such that many well-to-do men and their sons enjoy themselves having sex with poorer women and then after their fill their mutah women go off to marry poorer men from their humble backgrounds. My one big question is that if rich men and their sons are doing this then how can they guarantee that father and son are not bedding the same mutah girls?
In any case, once the girls are used up and then engaged to be married to another man these rich studs then attend the marriage and give lavish gifts to the couple. This gesture must be neutralising any guilt trips they may be getting! May be giving gift is a form of penance! However, how the rich and high status men benefit from this pagan mutah is really not any different from Western male sex seekers who do the same when they turn up in poorer nations looking for sex. The situation has degenerated in the West such that it is now so much out of control that even girl gangs now go on sex holidays looking for 'hot' native boy gangs for group sex. Girls now even pay for it. I would not be surprised if somemisguided shia women are also measuring up sex studs to see what the possibilities are!
But the West is not religious whereas we learn from the Prophet that sex is an ego thing and once out of control then you get pre-occupied in it. You also end up exploiting others and you also get perverted in to all sorts of self gratifying practices and dreams. When I visited Nairobi I was told by a friend that one of the presidents of the Nairobi Jammat was so out of control that he approached a string of young widows and divorcees offering money for sex. He managed to bed a few and soon began sharing his stories with his friends. The kiss and tell culture is part and parcel of the trill culture of sex. This is true also in the West where girls share their secrets and boys brag to each other of whom they have bedded. Clearly what mutah has done is made us Muslims now part of the global sex culture and our new generation of girls and boys will have a lot of confusion and mixed up standards to deal with. But our establishment will never take the blame for it as they know how to craft new excuses and shift the blame.
Today such is the situation in our communities that some girls who have been led in to mutah have built their reputations where everybody wants to do mutah with them but nobody is ready to do nikkah with them. Some of these girls have had abortions, some now only do oral because they don’t have to keep idda and some even have sex with non-muslims while only do mutah with shia men. I believe that once a young girl is touched by a man who is not committed to her but teaches her low standards of how to be casual then she loses her sense of direction. She goes through so many uncertainties about herself, her faith, her body and her values. She does not even know her self worth. Most of these mutah girls end up chasing men to marry them. Such is their plight that they don't know what they want. Many hide their regrets behind their hijabs while other get used to it and mix up their values. Many also learn to separate their bodies from their souls. This is the basis on which prostitution is developed where women divorce themselves from their souls and only become physical.
The minds and hearts of women who sell sex are full of confusion about the value of sex of love and of marriage. They switch on and off between different values. The values of porn queen are similar to mutah where love, life long commitment, to be there for each other in sickness and heath etc have no meaning. It is all about the physical. You should not love! In fact, our scholars who come on TV for their road-shows often make remarks justifying how mutah is only physical and there is no need to love in order to have sex. Clearly the values they are promoting among our youth are entirely pagan. The worst contradiction is that these scholars themselves will never marry a woman who has been used in mutah by other men. These scholars will also never ever allow their sons to marry such a woman either. When it comes to looking for a wife then they want a stable, virginal and 'respectful' girl who will keep the family EZZAT. For most of our scholars the wives of their sons have to come from Pakistan where virginity is almost guaranteed!
And as a reaction most mutah girls now prefer to do mutah with sunni studs in an attempt to keep their reputations in-tack within the shia community. From Kenya to Pakistan we see the dreadful effects of mutah on our families, marriages and on the moral attitude of our people. A report on the girls orphaned in Bam after the earthquake tells of how the girls were sex trafficked to Tehran for rich businessmen, drug addicts and other sexually enraged men before being shipped overseas for sexual exploitation in other countries. The situation is well summarised by a report on the sex trade in Dubai where poor Iranian girls are found in whore houses making a quick buck from American tycoons who pretend to be Muslims for the night. Both parties get what they want: The poor Iranian girls get a lot of American dollars while the Americans get to 'screw the Iranians.' This is happening because mutah is defended by our mullahs who only see and study Islamic law from a sectarian and passive level without ever attempting to see Islamic law from a social and moral perspective.
One report from an Iranian women's magazine estimated that 10% of women in Tehran have engaged in this form of earning through sex which is mutah but which they call Segah(1). The mullas deny that getting money for sex is prostitution. They call it a form of marraige! As a result VDs have spread in religious institutions like wildfire where mullas rule the roost. Another report says that many young girls who runaway from their villages to Tehran are raped by teenage boys in the city. When the girls report it the boys claim they had done the segah with them. One heartbreaking reports speaks of some boys in Baghdad who gang-assulted a young girl of nine by convincing her that it was 'sawab' for her to do mutah with them. Each of the boys gave her some food as a 'payment for mutah' while they touched her up with their fingers. This segah or mutah is justified by our Shia scholars as a solution to modern frustrations of the 'youth' and an 'islamic' way for married men to enjoy sex without attachments. Many of our shia books allow boys and men to even sleep with prostitutes. We have Ahadith that also claim that if a man does four mutahs then he is guaranteed paraside. It is claimed by both Sunni and Shia books written hundreds of years after the Nabi that this mutah was permitted by the Nabi on occasions like conquests. The books tell us that during some conquest mutah was allowed until Umar removed it during his caliphate. In is also written in some books that even the Quran had explicity permitted mutah until Umar removed some of the wordings about it from the Quran.
MORE FACTS
These are just three of many other important facts and we shall look at them later. We will also look at contexts of Quranic text later and see how new excuses have come out to defend mutah when old excuses have failed. But for the moment concentrate on the first fact by asking yourself that why did the non-Muslim pagan Arabs invent mutah. What were their social realities that gave rise to mutah in their society?
A study of social history shows that the number one factor for their mutah was the low value they gave to relationships. It is well documented that the pagan's yardsticks to measure the worth of a relationship were sex and wealth. In fact one of the meanings of Mutah used in pagan times was pleasure 'loaning' meaning loaning of the vagina. This is the business background to mutah!
For that society which saw sex and women as a commodity it even became an expectancy that a poor father would put his daughters out for hiring in order to pay off his debts. It was common for rich men and boys to gather to bid for a poor man's daughters for 'temporary pleasure' through mutah loaning. This was the 'done' thing! It was all approved by the leaders, justified by their inward looking religious establishment and it became an accepted norm. And if a girl was an orphan then her uncaring relatives saw a good chance to make a fast buck by renting her out! The tyranny of using sex in this way was inevitable in a society which gave women a low self worth and ranked women according to their sexual worth.
For that pagan society it was part of life. Religion was used to give it justification and religious leaders were able to craft new answers to support old mistakes made by their male patriarchy. But why has this pagan practice rooted in pagan social failures been given a shia tag and why is our religious establishment defending it as one of the 'mustahabats?' By calling it a 'mutahabat' the scholars have confused things even more and they have ranked it with what the Nabi practised as part of his sunnah. We know the Nabi never did mutah and we know that his sunnah was about taking social responsibilities like freeing slaves, protecting widows by doing nikkah with them and freeing slave girls. A pagan thing like mutah to become mustahabat is, therefore, a bit of a mind twisters!
Obviously our version of Islam has been derived by inter-weaving and mixing up with pagan values and attitudes with what the Prophet taught and practised? Today we get crafted answers to justify the unjustifiable. We are in mix and match culture! Our establishment has moulded Islam in the way that allows them to transmit pagan values in to our lives. In fact Islam is now seen as stagnant and backward looking because we have been confused between what is Islam, what is tradition and what is pagan. Hence, a scholar will preach hijab values from the same mimbar from where he preaches casual sex. He will quote the Quran telling men to gaze down and then tell them that if they copulate in mutah then they are guaranteed paradise.
MULLAHS OR SEX GURUS
A religion should guide people towards self control, resisting lust and strengthening the human character but instead we have religious leaders who are acting like the key holders to open the doors for casual sex for those who want it. We have all heard of stories of scholars who have themselves been associated with sex scandals. Recently I heard of a scholar who had advised a young man to continue with his mutah even though he had a wife from Pakistan. He did not advice the man to become serious about his marriage but instead gave him the rulings to continue with mutah as it was 'natural' for a man to have more than one sex partner. He even justified it by quoting an example about Toronto where women demand that their husbands sign a contract agreeing that they will not do mutah. The scholar said that it was not valid as women cannot take away what is a ‘right’ of men. This self appointed scholar was actually behaving more like a sales sex guru for men than a man who imparted religious moral guidance. I know what these breed of self appointed scholars and TV personalities are doing is wrong but I also know that the wider perspective is not to blame these morally corrupted scholars but to blame the way they are educated. The fault is about how Islam has been taught and how Islam is defined to them. I know that to solve the problem we need to look deeper and see where the problem is rooted from.
For those scholars who justify mutah based on books the world is about what is in the books. It is not about right and wrong or about moral issues. For them as long as their 'shia' bookie arguments win over the 'sunni' bookie arguments then it is the whole universe. Their whole psychological make-up is about sunni versus shia! The rest of the world does not matter. For these scholars the argument of how mutah reduces the value of relationships is not an issue. For them the only issue is about Umar forbidding mutah. It does not matter to them that the Quran does not mention mutah anywhere. It also does not matter that according to narrations neither did the Prophet nor Imam Ali ever did mutah. In fact, nothing matters. Only that matters is how Umar forbad mutah.
And it does not even matter to them that none of the holy women like Syeda Khadija, Fatimab Zahra and Syeda Zainab ever did mutah. This one fact is enough to show that Mutah is not in Islam as these women are role models. They showed the pagans how to live. Their examples are universal. It applies to all women in all situations. And so the fact that none of them did mutah is yet one more nail in the coffin of the pagan practice of mutah.
THE KILLER BALL and IS THE QURAN ENOUGH
Now here is the killer ball: The people who wrote the narrations that Imam Jaffer E Sadik (as) permitted guests to touch up each others virgin slavegirls did not know that the Quran forbids it! This proves that the people who forged things in books to make mutah acceptable did not realise that they were contradicting the Quran. This then makes us ask this killer question about the scholars who forged false stories in the books without knowing what was in the Quran: What kind of scholars were they?
Another very inapt excuse the scholars will use is to give a plastic answer thus: "The Quran is not Enough!" This is a common catch phrase of many who try to justify mutah. But the question is that if the Quran is not a complete yardstick for us than what is? Yes, if the Quran is not the ultimate and foolproof yardstick than why did Imam Jaffer E Saidk say that if anything does not agree with the Quran then throw it away! So did not Imam Jaffer E Sadik (as) say that the Quran is enough as a yardstick! Notice that he did not mention anything else with the Quran! So the next time a scholar uses a getaway clause by saying that the Quran is not enough I swear I will scream! Okay, okay I need to keep my hair on!
THE TYPE OF MEN WHO DO JUSTIFY MUTAH
I also wonder about the men who justified doing sex with women on a temporary and contract basis. Do they really know what they are doing or are they under the tight grip of their sexual egos. Surely they do not value relationships as they put a time limit on it. They even make sex so cheap that they could even do it for a ‘handful’ of dates. They want sex without the committment of love. They even say it is like divorce even though they claim their is no divorce in mutah! Furthermore, divorse create suffering and so if it is like divorce then it means suffering is part of mutah! In fact it is doubtful if the men who wrote justificaton for mutah ever loved a woman for mutah only works when you are cold and businesslike with sex! These men seem to be more in love with themselves, their sexual egos and their rijali derivation than with any woman whose vagina they loan for a time. These men are cold, calculating, rough and tough and they want sex to be as hard as them. They even twist religion in order to accommodate their base egos.
Okay before anybody starts jumping up and down on my head and says that the narrators of the books cannot be blamed for justifying mutah then the argument is that who picks for us what to believe from the books and what to reject?
Look at the broader picture to understand how a pagan social tyranny is justified for us. Even now in the modern world we have mullas who tell us that it has been decided for us that women are nakis e akal (faulty in intelligence), that slavery is allowed, that infant marriages are allowed, that mutah is allowed and that the Quran is not enough as a yardstick! All these these are pagan but brought in to Islam by books written hundreds of years after the Nabi and by mullas who preach them in the modern world. This is the truth that stares us in our faces just as the idols stare their worshipper in the face. Courage and faith is about acknowledging the truth.
So we have the courage to face these things! Okay look at more evidence which proves how deeply mutah is rooted in paganism! The pagan signatures of class division, social oppression, male domination and immorality are imprinted all over mutah. In fact in one of the mutah laws in our books of narrations it is stated that if a woman becomes pregnant from mutah then a man’s witness would be enough to deny that the child is his. Hence a stud could make your daughter pregnant and then the law allows him to get away because his word is final. In other words, injustice is done on the mother and the child. This is another example of the pagan hallmark of mutah but which have been enshrined in our shia books. Please dont bury your head as yet as the argument is that you cannot blame the books for some of the nonsense they contain. But the argument is that even those who are scholars of the books have endorsed some of the sameless things which are in the books. So now what? Shall we blame the books, the scholard or both? Or shall we just close our eyes to the truth and keep pretending how logically sound we are!
But there is worst than these found in our laws: If a vulnerable woman was raped by a man she could not do anything because the man gets cover under our Shia law as mutah does not need witnesses. He could just claim that he did not rape her but had done mutah with her. Mutah is a good cover and a loophole that rapist can easily use against their victims. Actually this would make a good story for a blockbuster movie where rapist rape women and then shia law allows them cover under mutah. And again this loophole proves that mutah cannot be Islamic because Islam in it's essence is comprehensive and cannot give such cover and loopholes to rapists. And as mutah is even allowed to girls of age nine .... I leave it to you to imagine what this must be leading to in many closed and private circles! So how much more evidence is needed to prove that mutah is totally against Islam?
Okay, I will come to the story of Umar forbidding mutah and we will look at the whole story to get the correct reading on it. but first let me tell you the time I turned against mutah.
This happened after I witnessed a heart breaking case of a young woman who was being used by a middleaged man for sex. I was envious of him at first when he would boost to me of how much he enjoyed having her! The man was no less than out of control on sex but because he was very charming he managed to win the confidence of many women. And given the fact that Ayatullah Sistani says that the women do not need the protecting father's permission to do mutah many girls fell for deceptions. But this particular girl became pregnant and the man rushed her to an abortion clinic. When I discovered what had happened to her I began my research and learnt that we are being hoodwinked in many things by the scholars whom we have blindly trusted all our lives. In the process I lost my trust in many high scholars just as many people have lost their trust in politicans, teachers, doctors and even career advisers! It is not the profession but the advantage people have taken of the positions and status these professions give. And when I discoverd that mutah is not even mentioned in the Quran I became more opposed to it. Finally whenever I spoke to a scholar I was given the reply that the Quran was not enough. Or the other one is: "Who are you!" What i realised was that the case of mutah was based on fringe arguments and sectarian passions. It had more to do with people wanting it rather than any concrete and substantiated arguments from islam. In fact all arguments in favour of mutah in the narrations are full of holes and I have shown some of this above. Even the rijali narrators argument for mutah is not watertight! Since then I have posted questions to major scholars who have totally avoided my questions. Only one scholar by the name of Ayatullah Sanai replied to one question telling me that married men should not do mutah. But this did not answer many of my other questions on mutah. And yes, I think the question remains that would any high ranking scholar put his own daughter in to mutah to earn money just as he expects other poor women to do it who do not get the privilages of khums! I think many scholars are two faced for they have one rule for their daughters and another for our daughters! And yes I did warn you that you will need the courage to accept some hard truths of what is going on in our religion. If it is getting too hard for you then I advice that you stop here. May be there is comfort in burying our head in the sand!When I was reading the blog on the butcher in Qum of how men are able to sleep with different women by a contract basis and that this happens more in Qum I was perplexed at the type of arguments and rulings that are manufactured to justify it. I was more shocked that the shrines of the masumeen have been turned in to ‘pick up’ centers. What happens outside night clubs in Europe is now happening outside mosques and shrines of our dear Imams. It is all justified from religious texts in the same way that widow burning was justified by Hindu gurus to the gullible Hindus. If Saddam or the Shah put our women in to brothels we would say: Death to them! We would scream from our mimbars how the honor of the daughtgers of Syeda Fatimah is violated. We would call it a conspiracy of the West against the Islamic family. But these things are endorsed by our scholars who are passive in the way they read books. I believe that if the scholars fails to misleading us then the whole community falls.Today the time is for the so-called scholars to start leading themselves to discoving an unbaised Islam that is based on Quranic principles and values rather then the Islam of rijali hadith, clever phrases and blind following of fikh.
Yes our scholars are guilty because they are supposed to morally guide us but instead they are pandering to the books written hundereds of years after the Nabi and at least a century after Imam Hassan Askari (as). I personally am totally disguisted that how our scholars have become so blinkered that they are even beginning to market 'loaning' of sex parts as a solution for 'youth sex problems.' I believe that have have now manufactured a mutah ideology that is a dream for pimps and studs. They have blindly ignored that when sex is sold or contracted then it becomes a problem rather then a blessing of comfort, warmth, joy and confirmation of love. They have forgotten that pagan values cannot be integrated with Islam. And they have forgotten that they occupy a platform from where they should guide and not mislead our community. But I suspect that the vast majority of scholars who defend mutah do so to prove points against Sunnis because their whole mentality is shaped by an education whose curriculum is based on sunni-shia polemics. Hence their vision is very narrow. If it was broad then instead of me having to write this article it would have been them who would have challanged the absurdities in books! The fact that they have not given guidance to our community, not cared for our vulnerable women and have justified even brothels under the guise of Chastity Houses and have made mosques and shrines in to pick-up centres is an indictment on them. In fact their reading of books does not even make them certain which day is Eid which shows that their science of deriving rijali rules and attitudes is dire!
The reason all this confusion and contradiction is there is because there are now different types of Islam competing for our minds and hearts! I want to dwell on this because we have not reaslied how contradictory logics are broadcasted to us from the mimbars and from TV channels which is confusing us and is dividing the ummah on what is true Islam, what is fake and what is a mix up!
MANUFACTURED ISLAM
The first is the Islam where you JUMP from one argument to another until you convince yourself that you have found a reason to justify your version of Islam. So if you want women to be denigrated then you start by saying: "O Imam Ali said that a woman is Nakis E Akal." If someone says that this is an injustice on women then you say: "This saying is proven by Elm E Rijal!" If then someone says that this is against the Quran then you say: "The Quran is not enough!" Finally you say: "Are you against Imam Ali!"
By this type of jumping around you mislead yourself and many other people who too dont have the mental patience or the stability to analyse each point seperately. So point one is that if a woman is Nakis E Akal then it is an injustice on women for God created them like that. This would mean that God is at fault in designing someone who is naturally faulty in intelligence. Seconldy the Elm E Rijal has got many things wrong. Elm E Rijal is not a perfect science. Because of our total reliance on Elm E Rijal we cannot even decide which day is Eid and what size of stones to use when stonning a woman to death! Finally the Quran is not inadequent! If any body says that the Quran is inadequent than that is against the mission of the Nabi Muhammad and against what Imam Jaffer E Sadik said about how only the Quran should be the yardstick to judge what is Islamic and what is not. And no, I am not against Imam Ali! I am just against misusing his name to commit an injustice on women. I also believe an injustice on women is an injustice on Mother Hawwa, on Bibi Hajra, on Syeda Khadija .... And I believe that since the Quran says that men and women are helpers and guides of each other and that they are part of the same soul it is also an injusitice on men that rijali mullas claim that a woman is nakis e Akal. The simple fact is that if a woman was Nakis E Akal then how can see become a helper and guide of a man who is superior than her? Can an inferior person help and guide a superior one!
WHat is interesting is that this Jumping Logic is used also to defend Mutah. Let me tell you the story of one TV confrontation I had with a mulla. First the mulla said that the Quran endorses Mutah in verse 4:24. So I phoned him and said that the verse does not even mention Mutah! So he said to me I was not a Shia, I was against Imam Ali and that the Quran was not enough. He made three points to dismiss my challenge. But he failed to tell me that why did he start by saying that Mutah is in the Quran which it does not even mention! I just wanted to know what justification is there when neither does the Quran mention Mutah nor are there any collaborative laws of mutah in the Quran. But beside accusations I did not get anything from the mulla. Infact he said: "If you dont want to do mutah than that is your wish!" So now if I confront a terrorist who is about to do a bombing he can turn around with a twisted logic on Jihad and say to me: "If you dont want to believe in suicide bombings then that is your wish!" Would this be an argument or a statement of arrogance! I am therefore still waiting for this particular mulla to answer me instead of making accusations on me and blindling people by statements of arrogance! No answers yet from the mulla!
The second type of logic that is used to divert us from Islam is the mechanistic logic. Here are some examples:
i. Since the Quran is in Arabic we must conclude that Arabic is an Islamic language and must be taught in every madrasah across the land.
ii. Since the Nabi wore a black turban we must conclude that women must wear black hijabs! Black is also a reminder of Karbala! It is the colour of Fatimah. It is the colour on the cloth of the Kaaba.
iii. Since Syeda Fatimah had a slave called Fizza then we must conclude that to keep slaves is mustahab and Sunnah! Slavery is therefore a part of Islam and nobody can forbid us what the Nabi allowed and what the Ahlul Baith practised.
Now look at the gaps in these mechanistic and extrapolated reasoning:
i. If Arabic was Islamic then why did God send revelations in other languages also? Furthermore, why did he send his nabis to all nations of the world where the language was not Arabic? And why does the Quran say that all languages belong to Allah and that it was Allah who taught men to speak in languages! And why does the Quran tell us that God listen to even the throb of the heart which does not speak any particular language?
ii. If you decide the colour of a woman's hijab by the black turban then why not consider the other colour the Nabi wore in those harsh times like a green cloak, white shirt etc? In fact at times he wrapped a colourful blanket from Yemen around him! He also prefered white as it was a colour of coolness and purity. And if Syeda Fatimah wore black then it was only on occasions that merited black. She also attended weddings in clothes that reflected happiness. And yes the Kaaba cloth is black but it is full of gold embrodery. So now are we also going to start wearing black hijabs with gold embrodery?
iii. In those pagan days almost every Arab home had a slave but Syeda Fatimah kept a slave to show that slaves must be paid, educated, allowed to be married and given time off. She did not start slavery! Slavery would be mustahab and sunnah only if it was started by Islam and not a leftover for Islam to deal with. To justify slavery on the basis that Syeda Fatimah had a slave is like saying that since you give Zakat in Islam then it must be that you must also advocate for poverty to exist in Islam!
Clearly the the mechanistic logics to justify the unjustifiable like slavery, forcing people to learn Arabic or making women wear black chadors all the time is totally inadequent and falls down when you consider other stronger points against this logic, but it is this mechanistic logic that our great ulema use to justify prostitution and Chastity houses to open outside the holy shrines in Qum, Sham and Mashad. Even infant girls can be married off through these type of failed logics. Recently scholars of both Iran and Saudi Arabia justified that a girl of seven can be married off by the father because it was done in those pagan days by Muslims. In fact in one shia fikh book it is written that if the girl is too young for sex than her thighs can be used instead! Shocked! Now you know why it is time to confront what is established for us to follow in a blind and begotted manner. In fact recently in the Iranian Parliamen some Ulema justified opening brothels under the guise of Chastity Houses saying that it was only Umar who had removed it and that it was a shia duty to bring it back as a 'blessing and solution' for lonely shia men! Hence now we have the prospectus of Shia women in brothels! All this is coming from our new brand trendy powerful Mullas who are preparing all of us for ... what!
But we need to look for the real Islam. Let us look at a type of Islam that is based entirely on the Quranic principles and where Quranic principles are the sciences to foolproof us from bad narrations. Let us look at this Islam which gives the utmost prominence to the Quran. I believe that it is only the Quranic Islam that will truly filter islam from paganism because it will allow us to weight each narration on the basis of Quranic principles. Here are examples:
First look for values and principles that underpin every verse of the Quran and which are embodden in the whole mission of the Nabi. You will find decency, self value, equality, protection for the vulnerable, empowerment for the dispossesed and justice. Any interpretation, extrapolation, derivation, narration or ideology that goes against these values and principles must be labelled as totally unIslamic even if it is rijali! I know this will cause thunder and lightening among the Ulema but all I am saying is that their science of rijal has failed and so we need to move on! They need to go back to the drawing board and come up with how to filter out lies from the books. In fact the initial intention of rijali science was also to filter out lies from the books but we can see that rijali science is not enough. We now need the Quran to be the base on which to weight things up.
So even if Al Kafi or Al Bukhari make claims that the Nabi said that women are Nakis E Akal or that you can touch up your slavegirls then we have to reject them becaus these things are against justice of God and against the respect for the human beings. We have to reject them even if they have passed through the Rijal or chain of narration. We have to reject them even if there are millions of chains and references in both Sunni and Shia books to justify these type of things. The underlining principles to ultimately decide whether something is Islamic or not is the principle of justice and that includes social justice for the down trodded and vulnerable!
And this Islam of social justice is about protecting infant girls from premature marriages because marriages of infants or young girls restrict, abuse, oppress and handicap the girls and have a dire affect on soceity. And this Islam is against slavery because slavery is against the principles of human development. If Islam allowed slavery in those pagan days then it did so on strict conditions that slaves were paid and be educated because these were the tools for the systemic upliftment of slaves in to freedom. This Islam of principles is actually the Islam that brought light to the world at that time and many other religions and ideologies borrowed from it. Today a lot of social theories of freedom, empowerment, equality etc are rooted in Quranic Islam. And it was this Quranic Islam, I think, that Imam Hussain and Syeda Zainab gave everything for. Remember that Imam Hussain was reading the Quran even from the lance that carried his head! No he was not reading Al Kafi or Al Bukhari because the Quran talks principles and values, while books can be mixed up between truth, opinion, falshood and just plain ignorance!
HIJAB AND MUTAH
Do the values of Hijab and mutah go together? Let us look closely at mutah and see how narrations in books that justify it contradict the principles of hijab and the teachings of the Ahlul Baith which are based on Quranic principle of decency, self control and elevation of the human society. This will show once and for all that how mechanistic and extrapolation arguments to defend mutah are false and weak.
We know that in Islam a woman is guided to be in control of her emotions and actions. This is the main reason for Quranic Hijab where Hijab is seen as way for a woman to be 'known!' A woman in hijab must know the value of her body such that she does not allow it to used by others for sexual ego trips. In Hijab a woman learns to value her space and learn to see herself as special. Islam teaches Hijab because it wants a woman to value her sexuality and not make it a tool to entice men in to a business. A woman who sells her love or gives her body on a temporary basis has only cheapened herself and her love. She is either fallen, confused, desperate or misguided. Islam does not want this. This is against the whole value system behind Hijab. A hijab for a woman who gets naked for men based on temporary contracts or hiring is a contradiction in terms, and an it is a mockety of Hijab itself!
This is also clearly evident from the female role models of Islam: Syeda Zahra, Syeda Khadija! Remember them! If it was okay for women to do mutah then these role models would have shown women how to do it. But they did not! They did not go anywhere near mutah even in those pagan days! Just Imagine that even in those pagan days these ladies of Quranic Islam did not even go near to mutah! And another fact is that the Nabi did not even contemplate his daughter with any other man but Ali. Can we not see from this that in Islam a woman is not to be with anybody but her husband who marries her under the same laws Ali married Fatimah. Can we not see that if we want to follow the masumeen then we need to follow them totally and not manufacture mechanistic arguments to interweave Islam with pagan values and mislead generations of naïve and gullible people! Our ulema have indeed a lot to think about instead of trying to hide behind failed mechanistic arguments of the past eras and mezmorise us with Sunni Shia polemics! Let us recognise our failings and move forward.
The fact is that Syeda Fatimah, Syeda Khadija and Syeda Zainab are our practical role models and to even imagine these women in a sexualized way is forbidden. This is because they came to define what it takes to be an Islamic woman. When we talk of Islamic feminism we look at these women. We don’t look at those fallen Arab women who did mutah off and on and who were slaves of their base egos. For us the role models of Islam like Syeda Fatimah rescued pagan women from self destruction. They starved but they did not sell themselves to sex! They taught that it is better to starve then go in to prostitution as slavery of sex is the worst form of slavery because it robs your spirit and your ability to be a special person for the one man you love. These role models of Quranic Islam uplifted slave girls from the gutters, gave them empowerment through self education and even fed them. Women who are vulnerable today in Qum or Iraq need help like this. They don’t need mutah to feed their stomachs with meat! Our scholars in Qum and Najaf who defend mutah need to come out of their boxes and get in to grips that Quranic Islam is a religion of welfare and support for the muztazafeen. To justify prostitution on the basis of feeding women with meat is an insult to the masumeen and totally unacceptable.
Islam is much higher than what some mechanistic scholars think! We should not give them the reigns of our faith just because they speak eloquent Arabic and are clever at manufacturing arguments. We must seek out genuine scholars who think outside the box of Sunni or Shia division. We want ulema who see Islam as a whole programme of the soul. They promote values which provide social welfare for the war widows and the destitutes! They lead by example to the whole world of how Islam protect the vulnerable from exploitation and misuse. They promote the values taught by Syeda Fatimah of patience and self respect. They talk of a partnership in relationship between husand and wife modelled on the Nabi and Khadija and on Ali and Fatimah. They stop people from denegrading themselves through prostitution desguised as marriages. And best of all they have the science to filter out the false bits from the good bits in our books which are clogged with with so many cobwebs. It will take genuine ulema of Islam to achieve this.
These genuine uleman will see our prayers and fasting as part of spiritually and morally development of the human being and not see these in the narrow context of wajibats and fikh rules. Our prayer and fasting inculcate in a soul the ability to self control, increase self worth and receive spiritual realization. Those who are true scholars will teach us how the spiritual programme of Islam is also for the most vulnerable people like slave girls who too are taught self worth and whom the Quran has given great respect to. The true Ulema will tell us how the Nabi referred to slaves as Muztazafeen and called them part of his family. In fact when we hear the story of Bibi Fizza and Bilal we learn how Islam raised them to see themselves as full three dimensional human beings and not as slaves. Yes if Imam Ali had every done anything to Fizza then the narrations that an owner can touch up his slave girls would have some credibility. But the truth is that Imam Ali treated Fizza as his sister and the children in the family gave her the position of a mother. A true scholar will highlight all this and consider the vales of Islam as totally alien to the values of mutah! You see the true Islam of the Ahlul Baith is very different from the Islam of quick fixes that is today beginning to come out of Qum. And I make no apology in saying that we need genuine high calibre ulema to steer us away from an empending disaster that is looming on our heads because God has punished those who blindly follow ulema who are corrupted in their desires for power and in their thinking about religion.
Let me expose some more experience I have had with some low calibre but high profile ulema on TV! Some time ago I went mad over a mulla who kept justifying that ideally a woman should not go out to work. He even justified rijali narrations that denigrate women saying that women are 'scorpions' because they give you ‘sweet poison!” The mulla said this on TV because it is written in our books that the Imams said that you should not even listen or seek advice from a good woman because she can become ‘big headed.’ So I phoned up and argued that the Quran says that men and women are guides of each other and so how can a woman become a guide if a man does not even listen to her. When I challenged the mulla and his version of Islamic femininity I was confronted by this mulla with accusations. Again think of what accusations he made:1. “You cannot be a shia!”
2. “The Quran is not enough!
3. “You are under the influence of the West!”
4. “Are you better than the masumeens.”
5. “Are you better than our marjas!”
I came off air while the mulla kept quoting ahadith after ahadith to justify what he had said. But my question still remains: “If you claim that Imam Ali said that you should not listen to even a good woman then why is the Quran saying that men and women are helpers and guides of each other for if you don’t listen then how can you be guided?”
Let me also dwell on his point that women should ideally not go out to work. This mulla justified it by saying that he had seen a woman sweeping floor in an American diner and he felt sorry for her. He said a woman should ideally stay at home and that the man is the one who should go out to work. But I put it to him that money is not the only motive for women to work as they also want to enrich themselves, to feel part of society and get a life outside the four walls of their home. My request to those scholars who call themselves shia-e-ahlul baith is to stop hiding behind accusations, labels and mechanistic reasoning when someone asks them a genuine question. Furthermore, if they claim that it is unIslamic for women to go out to work than they should stop those poor widows, divorcees and runaway girls from doing mutah business! May be in the eyes of this mullas the mutah business is the only business they see women fit for as in their derivation a woman is nakis e akal and so it is only her vagina that is not nakis!!!
7. Okay i got a bit excited there but did you know that according to narrations if you do not believe in mutah then you cannot be a shia! One narrations says that the reasons we shias are uniquely given mutah is because it is a reward for following Imam Ali (as). And yet we forget that the pagans were experts in mutah and even did it with animals who were hired out by their owners for sex! You see mutah among non Muslims before Islam was big time, big business and if done with a dog or a bitch then a very noisy affair indeed! Yet they were not shias! And ironically the narrations also tell us that Abu Bakr allowed mutah to Khalid bin Walid who may have been a sex freak! In one narration it is also claimed that Khalid murdered a man and then had sex with his widow. When Umar complained to Abu Bakr of what Khalid had done he justified saying it was allowed in wars by the Prophet. So now does that make Abu Bakr and Khalid in to shias! Okay sorry to make such a cheap remark but the point is that our books tell us that mutah was only halal for shias as a reward for following Imam Ali (as) and that if you did four mutahs you will enter paradise. The point I am making is that you have a wide choice of what narrations you want to follow. it is pick and mix time!
And there is another deadlier irony for us Shia in the narrations! According to narrations, it was Umar who first tried to stamp the practice of mutah out of the Muslim society. The deadlier irony is that according to our shia narration Imam Ali (as) agreed with Umar! Yes Imam Ali (as), categorically and publically, said that mutah was forbidden. And this is written in one of our major shia books called Al Kafi. But we dont like admiting this fact as it does not match with our version of what Islam should be for us!
In order to explain why a book of narration is claiming that Imam Ali did not agree with mutah we are told that Imam Ali was under 'TAKAYA.' In other words he lied for the greater good! But would a person of the caliber of Imam Ali (as) ever lie especially when someone is asking for guidance over the matter?
Remember Takayah is not allowed when someone asks for guidance or for an honest opinion. By having ready-made answers like ‘Imam Ali was doing takayah’ you deceive yourself about who Imam Ali was and what Takaya means. When you think about it then it does not make sense because takaya cannot be practiced by anybody at the expense of Islamic teachings. The whole point of Imam Hussain (as) giving his life is to save true Islam and so how could Imam Ali (as) promote a false version of Islam under Takayah! You cannot sacrifice Islam under the pretence of Takaya! Hence these ready made parrot fashion answers do not work. You just have to be clinical and honest about these kinds of readymade remarks that some so-called scholars throw at you!
The stark reality is that there are some so called Ulema who even misuse necessary fatwas on takayah that only applied for Muslims living under tyranny. Here is an example to clarify the point:
When Ayatullah Khui allowed people to ‘tell lies provided you are safe from it’s harm’ he meant the people of Iraq could lie to Saddam provided they knew they could get away with it in order to save themselves or their friends. The allowance given to Muslims in Iraq under Saddam is fully justified but guess who jumped on it and misused it! Yes liars in the West who thought that it was their passport to play games with the hearts and minds of our people in the UK. So there are now ‘ulema’ and ‘leaders’ who have developed the attitude that to tell lies to save political positions, reputations and even religion is allowed. Once I heard on TV from a mulla that telling lies to save someone marriage is also allowed! My argument was that a marriage based on lies is not a marriage but a deception. Furthermore, each lie we say has a detrimental effect as it spirals in to worst lies – One lie leads to another until a mountain of lies and deceptions are created in society. According to the Quran a liar is damned. Muawiya constantly lied about Imam Ali (as) but Imam Ali (as) never lied about Muawiya! So whose Islam are we practicing? I am sure even the mullas of Muawiya justified everything they said ignoring how immoral it was to lie! We know our lies are written in our Amal Nama and imprinted on our souls. So how can we stand in prayer in front of Allah with souls that lie and that are cowardly with the truth? A Momeen is the one who bears witness to truth even if it is against him, according to the Quran. Hence any ready made answers like ‘Imam Ali lied because he was in Takaya’ is itself a lie and an insult on Imam Ali, and should never be accepted in any debate on mutah or on any matter of religion. In fact I consider it a contradiction that a man would claim to be a following of the Ahlul Baith while also syaing that Imam Ali lied when he said to Umar that Mutah was forbidden!
So the fact remains that in a public event3. WHAT IMAM ALI REZA (AS) SAID
Our scholars have fantastic skills to turn anything upside down and justify it. So even the narrations from our Imams that clearly and explicity forbid mutah are either rejected or turned upside down. Hence the saying of Imam Ali Reza (as) forbidding married men from doing mutah is turned on it’s head by our establishment so that the vast majority of married men are still allowed to do it. The way this is done is by tying up what the Imam said to clauses and conditions.
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Now link this to what the Prophet Muhammad said about your relationship with you wife. Remember, he showed those pagans in Mecca what the value of a wife is when he only stayed with Kadijah in those pagan times. By being loyal to only one wife he showed these pagans what is the meaning of a relationships. He also told his companions that that if anybody commits an injustice to his wife then he will come to Allah with a limp and with his shoulders lowered. So the question is: Does not doing mutah commit an injustice on your wife? Surely, what the Prophet said and what the Imam said are linked and tied together. Surely true Islam of the Prophet and the Imams is about stability in marriage, trust in marriage, life partnership in marriage etc This is clearly what the Prophet and Imams taught. But for our scholars it is okay to have a marriage that it 'temporarily.' This is more in line with pagan ideas of a marriage rather than with the Prophet and Imams taugth.
I have now come to believe that after every Prophet the religous scholars moved in to control the people. They, therefore, re-defined the message of the Prophets. Shia Islam has had the same fate as it is not above the tendencies of human failing that all other societies suffer from. Today our religion is more Mullahism than Islam. The fact that there are so many re-interpretations of what the Imams said and what the Prophet showed by example is evidence that we are following mullahism and not Islam as originally taugth. Very few people realise this as they prefer to lead a life based on false assertions from religious scholars.
I have now come to believe that after every Prophet the religous scholars moved in to control the people. They, therefore, re-defined the message of the Prophets. Shia Islam has had the same fate as it is not above the tendencies of human failing that all other societies suffer from. Today our religion is more Mullahism than Islam. The fact that there are so many re-interpretations of what the Imams said and what the Prophet showed by example is evidence that we are following mullahism and not Islam as originally taugth. Very few people realise this as they prefer to lead a life based on false assertions from religious scholars.
