Ah, the 'Rib' always reminds me of my freshman anthropology professor. He told this class of about 70 his PhD work on some tribes from the Amazon that believed that man were created from the tears of God and one day The Man woke up just to find pain in his left leg and then as he limped around the earth eventually woman was born. He presented this to class while acting the whole thing, you know limping around the class. So, obviously everyone was laughing and cracking jokes. Then he stopped, gazed at the ceiling for a minute and then said; you know it's not really different from women being created from the rib of a man. No one laughed.
As long as it is a matter of belief, one can believe anything. Believing in man to God or cow to be goddess or moon to crack up in pieces. Because faith does not need proof, just conviction.
ahmadjee, but then that's kinda why Islam is pretty cool - with some logic skills and science, you can prove that much of what is said in the Quran is true.
I've raised lots of counterarguments against this hadith, and only some have been counterargued. No one can fully prove anything with this hadith, and therefore, its somewhat absurd to take it literally.
AQ, gupguppy already mentioned that one. You still have yet to combat my most powerful argument and that's the arabic usage of the word used for "create" in the hadith.
PCG, you forget that logic is partly based on our experience. For example, if it is bright out, it is logical to believe that the sun is out unless you know about 1000 W bulbs & then the logic changes.
The people you are arguing with go by the 'logic' of treating hadiths as a science & not its contents. Their view is that as long as one can prove without doubt that the hadith is by authentic narrators, it has to be true. Literal or metaphorical isn't part of their understanding.
AQ, and others, you are yet to address how it is possible to reconcile women being like a rib and thereby hard to straighten, and women being "compositionally different" being created from bone, with the Quranic description of the creation of man and woman created with the same nature/soul.
it may be contradicting just one verse from the Quran, but all such hadeeses should be struck from the books.
actually, that’s where the whole point of disagreement lies in. You are stuck to one translation without looking at the many other translations available.
If you look at that ayah, it says: …] khalaqakum min nafsiyuN Wahidah >>>…](who) Created [Khalaqakum] you from[min] a single[waahid] Person[nafs]
then right after that part it further tells us about: wa khalaqa minhaa zaujahaa >>> and [wa] created [khalaqa] from it [minhaa] (meanining from the nafsiyuN waahidah) his mate [zaujahaa]
Now there… that’s an arabic lesson for everyone else than looking at lose translation and arguing on it…
let me know also for Shakir, Pikthal, and Yousuf Ali tend to translate it the way it was mentioned earlier but looking at literal meanings it sounds totally what I said and in fact I did find such translation too ...
Anwaar bhai, shukria! May Allah (SWT) forgive me for the mistake that I made (earlier).
Here’s what I could find in Tafsir ibn Kathir:
(And from him He created his wife) Hawwa’ (Eve), who was created from Adam’s left rib, from his back while he was sleeping. When Adam woke up and saw Hawwa’, he liked her and had affection for her, and she felt the same toward him. An authentic Hadith states,
(Woman was created from a rib. Verily, the most curved portion of the rib is its upper part, so, if you should try to straighten it, you will break it, but if you leave it as it is, it will remain crooked.) [Reference: Fath Al-Bari 6:418] Allah’s statement,
وَبَثَّ مِنْهُمَا رِجَالاً كَثِيراً وَنِسَآءً]
(And from them both He created many men and women;) means, Allah created from Adam and Hawwa’ many men and women and distributed them throughout the world in various shapes, characteristics, colors and languages. In the end, their gathering and return will be to Allah.
there’s nothing in the hadith (even if one accepts it literally) that contradicts the fact that men and women have the same souls… you are confusing the physical (outward and apparent) ingredients of creation with the indwelling soul which is an entirely different aspect of our being and make up…
your preferred translation of 4:1 as “created of like nature” isn’t true to the original Arabic… yes, you might argue that this could be what the verse ‘means’ (in other words, you are offering an ‘interpretation’, not a strict ‘translation’) but that brings us right back to square one… AQ’s earlier post gives a more accurate word for word rendition i’d say…
Anwaar, here's the translation by Pickthall, Shakir, YusufAli:
004.001 YUSUFALI: O mankind! reverence your Guardian-Lord, who created you from a single person, created, of like nature, His mate, and from them twain scattered (like seeds) countless men and women;- reverence Allah, through whom ye demand your mutual (rights), and (reverence) the wombs (That bore you): for Allah ever watches over you. PICKTHAL: O mankind! Be careful of your duty to your Lord Who created you from a single soul and from it created its mate and from them twain hath spread abroad a multitude of men and women. Be careful of your duty toward Allah in Whom ye claim (your rights) of one another, and toward the wombs (that bare you). Lo! Allah hath been a watcher over you. SHAKIR: O people! be careful of (your duty to) your Lord, Who created you from a single being and created its mate of the same (kind) and spread from these two, many men and women; and be careful of (your duty to) Allah, by Whom you demand one of another (your rights), and (to) the ties of relationship; surely Allah ever watches over you.
And a confirmation of Anwaar's word for word translation from: 'Study of the Noble Quran - Word-for-Word' (Vol. 1; Pg. 178 - By Dar-us-Salam)
[thumb=H]nisa1_trans13430_5004464.JPG[/thumb]
If the word min, means ‘from’ in all cases, then the verse 21:37/38 that states: *khaliqul insana min aajalin * should be translated as ‘Man is made from haste’. But we all know we are not created of a material called haste. The verse is generally translated as ‘Man is made of haste’ .. or in other words, man has hasty nature.
Therefore, the translation that a soul was created out of the first soul can also mean that the second soul had the same nature, not necessarily created out of it.
i've grown up in the middle east, I can understand arabic reasonably well AQ. both translations that I quoted make sense to me, and only one translation of all that have been quoted so far add "from Adam's rib" in paranthesis. every other translation, including those by Pickthal, shakir and yusufali does NOT mention any rib, even in paranthesis, or translate it the way you do. If you wish to chose the translation of one lesser known translater over multiple widely read translations, I suggest that reflects a certain biased reasoning.
the word for word rendition by AQ substitutes "person" for nafs, which isnt accurate. The literal meaining of nafs means soul or essence or nature, not person, so if you wish to translate word for word, then the meanings would be closer to the ones previously quoted by me and pcg and shakir and yusufali and pickthal instead of chosing lesser known and regarded translators like Hilali and Anwaar Qureishi.
rahi baat gupguppy ki, even if you should go with Soul which is your preferred translation, the fact that the Quran explicitly talks about the physical creation of Adam and Havva (evidenced by the fact that subsequent to that is talk about creation of offspring from the newly created Adam and Havva) and does NOT mention that Havva was created FROM Adam, but from either the same soul, or the same nature/essence as Adam, any alternate account of their creation should be discarded.
ravage: the soul in Arabic is Rooh … In the ayah I tried to translate based on my knowledge of Arabic, nafs is used with a quantity hence, it refers to material than spiritual. Nafs-e-Waahid = one person (as we use that in urdu as well :))
