Ayodhya

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Ayodhya: Shahabuddin Argument

<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->At the discussion on Ayodhya which Newstrack organised on 1 August Shahabuddin produced yet another argument.  I had just quoted a signed statement he had distributed to the press as late as 15 June 1989 in which he had said.  “But the Hindu chauvinists are totally confused about their own case……  “Whatever the Hindu chauvinist case, the Muslim community has, without any legal obligation, offered, as a moral gesture, to demolish the Babri Masjid -- if it is proved that a temple stood on the site of the Babri Masjid and it was pulled down to construct the mosque.  As the point at issue accordingly was whether there had been a temple at the site, I said, we should focus on the archaeological evidence to settle the matter.

Shahabuddin said that he stood by the statement.  His argument was that The temple just could not have been pulled down as pulling down a place of worship to construct a mosque is against the Shariat.  Incredulous, The principal correspondent of Newstrack, Manoj Raghuvanshi, later asked Shahabuddin whether in that case no temple had been demolished by Muslim rulers.  "It is not a historical fact", said Shahabuddin, “that a standing temple in peace time was demolished by any Muslim ruler".  "Assertions to the contrary", he said, "are all chauvinist propaganda”; Even with the hedging -- "standing temple", “in peace time” -- that was quite a lump to swallow.  “You mean even Sonmath was not demolished”.  Raghuvanshi asked, "Sonmath was disintegrated," said <b>Shahabuddin, and reaffirmed his thesis that temples could not have been demolished because pulling them down to build mosques was against the Shariat. </b>
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<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin--><b>Nor can Shahabuddin's claim that Shariat forbids the destruction of temples etc. in peace time be sustained in view of what the Prophet himself commanded and did.  His earliest biographers -- Ibn Ishaq and Ibn Sa’d, for instance -- record instance after instance in which idols and temples were smashed, destroyed and burnt down at his orders.  </b>The temples of al-Uzza, al-Laat, and al-Manaat -- the three goddesses who are subjects of the Satanic verses in the Quran -- the temples around Ta’if, those of Fils and Ruda in Tayys -- are all reported by them to have been destroyed on the direct orders of the Prophet.  Similarly, the biographers report the Prophet's joy when converts came and reported to him that they had destroyed this temple or that, or smashed to smithereens this idol or that.  These were not instances when during a battle an army over-ran a site which happened to be a temple.  These were instances of persons or tribes having come over to Islam, and then, as part of their new commitment, destroying the places of worship.

Nor, it must be noted, was the Prophet less stem about some refractory party setting up even a mosque.  His orders at Dhu Awan are well known.  Ibn Ishaq reports that as the Prophet approached the town, the devotees approached him saying, “We have built a mosque for the sick and needy and for nights of bad weather, and we would like you to come to us and pray for us there".  The Prophet.  Ibn Ishaq records, said that "he was on the point of travelling, and was preoccupied, or words to that effect, and that when he came back, if God willed, he would come to them and pray for them in it”.  But at Dhu Awan, upon hearing about the mosque, he summoned the followers, “and told them to go to the mosque of these evil men and destroy and burn it".  That is exactly what the followers then did.  A revelation came down from Allah and sanctified the destruction25.

I just do not see where Shahabuddin derives his cumenical rule from
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<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->As we saw, Shahabuddin’s latest argument is that no Muslim ruler could ever have destroyed a temple to build a mosque as doing so is prohibited by the Shariat. The Shariat is derived pre-eminently from what the Prophet himself did and said.  So, the question is; how does that argument fare in the light of what the Prophet himself did<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->