A Perennial Problem

SubḥānAllāh, the attempt to manipulate the words of Allah is a perennial problem: a problem throughout history, and one that is happening today.

Today, for instance, the BBC has been saying for as long as anyone can remember that Muslims fast from sunrise to sunset. There are Muslims working for them; they interview Muslims; they run Ramadan series, Ramadan diaries of Muslims. Why they persist in saying sunrise to sunset, there is no telling. It may be a genuine mistake; but to this day they have not corrected it, and nobody has pointed it out — Allah knows. Year in and year out, that is what is said.

Yet that is a light matter beside the many others. The graver issue is the constant manipulation of what the Qur'an actually says: attempts to deny, for example, the hijab; to deny the importance of prayer; to deny the importance of a great many matters that have been read in the Qur'an. People are able to manipulate it because most people are not scholars of the Qur'an. For this reason, always: aʿūdhu bi-llāhi mina al-shayṭāni al-rajīm. It matters, because all of this is shayṭānī.