I had not shaved for a few days. and my beard had become prominent. and I was going to the local store when someone said “mubarak ho”. “for what?”, I asked. " because you will be keeping a beard. and that is a sunnat-e-Rasool." I told him thanks but said that I had every intention of shaving it off as soon as i got the time. and so he had congratulated him in vain.
but after that i thought about it? why would someone congratulate about something as trivial as a beard. i mean why does this beard, of all the other sunnahs in the world, gets the attention? why is it given the special place that none of the other sunnahs get? and if sunnahs are to be followed, why do them selectively? let me emphasize on that a bit.
you see Sunnah is something that the prophet has done, and we think that we should follow his path and so we should do everything that he has done. however do things such as eating dates, opening your fasts with dates (or water or salt), or keeping should even constitute sunnah. and if those are the sunnahs then there are a lot of other things that we should also follow but we dont. for example, the Prohet’s first marriage was to a 40 years old widow. and his age was twenty five years at that time. why not all the muslim males start marrying all the widows. and to add more sawab to it, choose widows that are 40 years of age?
there is only one answer:it is not feasible. how are you going to bring so many widowed women in the first place. if everyone is looking for a widow then there will be no widows since no one will be getting married for the first time.
ok. fine. why beard then? is it because it is too easy? everyone can keep a beard, and if that gives him a ticket to the heaven so much better. but how about an alternative theory.
the alternative theory is this: that beard was something that was the custom of those times. people in teh tribal areas keep beards for a variety of reasons, amongst them environment is one of the main. the Arabs lived in a very harsh environment and they used to keep beards. just like pashtoons in the northwest frontier or in Afghanistan do. it is just part of their customs. for that very reason Abu Jehal and many others had beards.
also beard is an individual act. it will not harm or give benefit to anyone else. so why give so much importance to such a useless thing?
please come up with something logical. I dont want to look at it from the sawabi point of view. i want to see it in view of your own reasons.
Re: sunnat-e-Rasool
“Grow your beards and trim or clip the moustaches.” Prophet (SAW) ordered the muslim men to do it.
There isn't any hadith that says. " Get married to a widow aged 40 years old ".
Re: sunnat-e-Rasool
perhaps i should have mentioned earlier; i did not want to get those rote answers. where a hadith is quoted to support something without even taking into consideration whether it makes sense or not.
the validity of one or the other hadith is moot. still even if we were to take this hadith as true, it could only satisfy muslims. but what about non-muslims? say you want him to come to islam would you just quote him a hadith and tell him:" this is how we do it. do it or **** off"
that is where reason comes in. and that is what i had asked of you. I did not want you to quote me a hadith.
but now that you have quoted it i will come up with the toss up. there are several of the acts of the Prophet he wanted us to do. for example, he would not want us to lie, or cheat or steal, or not embezzle public funds etc. but there are a lot of people who would do all that but would keep a beard at the same time.
my point was this: people have a tendency to look for short cuts for everything. we have come up with our own short cut of going into heaven. and that was through following the sunnah. the difficulty was that you could not follow every action. so only those actions that could be easily be done were adopted, the rest discarded.
Re: sunnat-e-Rasool
perhaps i should have mentioned earlier; i did not want to get those rote answers. where a hadith is quoted to support something without even taking into consideration whether it makes sense or not. the validity of one or the other hadith is moot. still even if we were to take this hadith as true, it could only satisfy muslims. but what about non-muslims? say you want him to come to islam would you just quote him a hadith and tell him:" this is how we do it. do it or **** off" that is where reason comes in. and that is what i had asked of you. I did not want you to quote me a hadith.
You don't have to grow a beard to become a muslim.....though most revert brothers follow this Sunnah.
but now that you have quoted it i will come up with the toss up. there are several of the acts of the Prophet he wanted us to do. for example, he would not want us to lie, or cheat or steal, or not embezzle public funds etc. but there are a lot of people who would do all that but would keep a beard at the same time. my point was this: people have a tendency to look for short cuts for everything. we have come up with our own short cut of going into heaven. and that was through following the sunnah. the difficulty was that you could not follow every action. so only those actions that could be easily be done were adopted, the rest discarded.
We shouldn't lie, cheat, steal etc either. Beard is not an entry visa to Jannah but if someone follow this sunnah out of love and obedience of Prophet(SAW) then he'll be rewarded for it and the more rewards you earn the more chances you have to enter jannah.