Three Points on This Hadith

There are three points to make on this hadith. Number one: the use of urine. Is urine najis or ṭāhir? What is the fiqh of it? Without going into much detail — one can refer to the books of fiqh for this — some scholars, on the basis of this hadith, hold that the urine and dung of edible animals are ṭāhir, and these are Mālik and Aḥmad; this is the opinion of Imām Aḥmad and Imām Mālik. The rest of the ʿulamāʾ hold that it is najis.

Number two: using urine as a cure, as a medicine. This has been a controversial issue, and the non-believers have used it as a gate through which to attack hadith. And those who reject hadith and try to discredit al-Bukhārī and Muslim also use this hadith as a point of attack against the hadith of the Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him). The disbelievers have made a big deal of this issue of using urine as medicine. Without going into a lot of detail on this point — because it is outside the context of the sīrah — just briefly: urine has been used as medicine in many cultures around the world. And even in modern medicine, it is used as an ingredient in some drugs. For example, there is a drug called Premarin: this is the commercial name for a compound drug consisting primarily of conjugated oestrogens — this quotation is from Wikipedia — isolated from mares' urine; it is manufactured by Wyeth Pharmaceuticals and has been marketed since 1942. So from 1942 until today this drug has been widely prescribed and is still used, and it says that Premarin has been one of the most widely used drugs in the United States.

So if there are medicinal benefits in a particular ingredient in urine, modern medicine does not see any problem in using it. But because it is mentioned in al-Bukhārī and Muslim, and attributed to Muḥammad (peace be upon him), it is a big deal. Without testing the validity of the prescription, without looking into whether it is beneficial or not, they attack with preconceived notions. Now, as Muslims, we should believe in it as long as its sanad is authentic, and that is the case. We do not have to test it pharmaceutically to prove its benefit; as long as the Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him) said so, we believe it. That is the position of the Muslims. But the non-Muslims should have put this to trial and experimented with it before attacking the Muslims for it. And there are some research papers that have been done on the antiviral qualities of camel urine, and on the effect it might have on the liver; one can refer to these research papers for more details.

The thing is that the hadith says they were cured of the disease they had, and one can use the different narrations — someone with a medical background can use the different narrations to try to find leads as to what particular disease these people suffered from. One narration — in Muslim, it seems — says that they suffered from a digestive disease, while another says that their colour changed, so it could be jaundice, or hepatitis, or some problem with the liver. Anyway, one can compile all of the different narrations, try to find out what the disease was, and then experiment on the different ingredients of camel urine, to see how it healed them from the particular disease they suffered from.

The third point is the extreme punishment these men were subjected to. We never find in the sīrah of the Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him), before this event or after it, any punishment similar to the punishment these men were subjected to. So the question is: why? Why was this particularly severe punishment prescribed by the Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him)? This, too, is a point the disbelievers use against Muḥammad (peace be upon him), to try to prove the so-called violence in the Sunnah, in Islam. Well, as was said, we never find anything similar to it before or after; this is the only time such a severe punishment occurred.

Abū Qilābah, one of the narrators of the hadith in al-Bukhārī, said after mentioning the hadith: these men murdered, and stole, and disbelieved after their belief, and waged war against Allah and His Messenger. So all of these crimes combined justified that punishment, because all of these are severe crimes: murder; then stealing; then riddah; and then ḥirābah, which is armed robbery, and this carries a very severe punishment mentioned in the Qurʾān, that one hand be cut off and one foot be cut off. And in the hadith in Muslim he says that the reason their eyes were branded is that they had branded the eyes of the shepherd of the Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him), Yasār. So in Muslim it says that the reason their eyes were branded is that they branded the eyes of the shepherd; so they were treated bi-l-mithl, in like manner — qiṣāṣ, retribution.

Also, Ibn Ḥajar comments that some of the ʿulamāʾ hold that this ruling, this punishment, is abrogated. Qatādah used to say: we were told that the Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him), after that, whenever he gave a khuṭbah, would encourage people to give ṣadaqah, and would prohibit them from mutilation, from maiming. But this is not an agreed-upon opinion; it is one opinion, that this has been abrogated. Some of the ʿulamāʾ say that it is not abrogated, but that the Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him) treated them that way bi-l-mithl, in like manner, as they had treated the shepherd of the Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him). And we know that in Islam, if a hundred people gather together to kill one person, then all of them are subject to qiṣāṣ, retribution. ʿUmar ibn al-Khaṭṭāb says: if the people of Ṣanʿāʾ came together to kill one man, all of them would be executed for it. This is the ruling of the Sharīʿah in the ḥudūd. So these are some comments on this hadith in al-Bukhārī, and as Ibn Kathīr mentions, it occurred within the sixth year of the hijrah.