Q. “Non-Muslims are not allowed to enter the city limits of Makkah Mukarramah and Madinah Munawwarah. The entry of non-Muslims in the Haram limits of Makkah was banned in 9th Hijrah by a Quranic order contained in the Surah al-Bar’ah, verse 27.
Did this order apply to the Haram of Makkah only or also to the Haram of Madinah? The Qur’an does not say so.
Imam Malik and Umar bin Abdul-Aziz etc. Interpreted the verse to apply to all the masjids.
Rajab is the seventh month in the Islamic lunar calendar. This month was regarded as one of the sacred months (Al-Ashhur-al-hurum) in which battles were prohibited in the days of the Holy Prophet . It is also a prelude to the month of Ramadan, because Ramadan follows it after the intervening month of Sha’ban. Therefore, when the Holy Prophet sighted the moon of Rajab, he used to pray to Allah in the following words:
“O Allah, make the months of Rajab and Sha’ban blessed for us, and let us reach the month of Ramadan (i.e. prolong our life up to Ramadan, so that we may benefit from its merits and blessings).”
On the other hand a self-proclaimed mini superpower, a country whose stench of idolatry and racism is suffocating mankind, India, is gradually posing a grave threat to the millions of Muslimun in Bangladesh, Pakistan and Maldive Islands, is scared stiff of the Islamic Movements. In the recent past she has reactivated her dormant program of Muslim cleansing from India. Until now India has murdered forty thousand Muslimun in Kashmir and in the length and breadth of India more than eight thousand Anti-Muslim violences have been instigated. It includes those violences, in which the police drag the innocent Muslim youths from the safety of their own homes and sprayed them with bullets, their bodies were thrown into the seas and rivers. May it be Eastern Punjab or Western Bengal, Uttar Pradesh (UP) or Bihar, since the division of the sub-continent up until now, thousands of Masajid have been destroyed. Shiusina’s eunuch like chief Baalthakre has already enforced the restriction upon Muslim pilgrims leaving from Bombay to the Holy City of Makkah for the Hajj. As a result of this obnoxious restriction, for the past two years the Indian government was unable to send pilgrims to Saudi-Arabia from the ports of Bombay. Rashtarya Sevak Singhs’ (RSS), Rajju Bhayya has declared shamelessly that “there is no place for the Muslimun of India, but Pakistan or Qabrastaan (graveyard)”. Second general of Vishwahind Prishad, Ashoke Singhal, after destroying the Babari Masjid, is now openly declaring on oath, to destroy the Masajid of Kaashi and Mathra in the city of Banaras. If this year and the year before the Amaranth Yatra would not have been curtailed by the Harkat ul Ansaar, then by now these two historical Masajid might have met the same destruction as did the Babari Masjid, but as a result of this affective action of halting the Amaraath Yatra, after the destruction of the Babari Masjid, which Allah Ta`ala has bestowed upon the Harkat ul Ansaar, the ministers of the central government of India, had to travel to Kaashi and Mithra and were forced to protect these Masajid, whereas the Babari Masjid was demolished under the supervision of these same ministers.
By Khalid Baig
(Author’s Request: Please turn off your television set as you read this article.)
Television has spread like a wild fire in the world, including the Muslim world. It seems to have overcome the limitations of space and time.
Consider place. In Saudi Arabia, one can find the imprints of Hollywood only a few yards away from the Haram, the most sacred of all sanctuaries of Islam. Videocassettes are easily available at stores. A hotel attendant, at a walking distance from the Haram al-Sharif in Makkah can be found busy watching English movies on the television in his office even as the prayers are going on. At the Jeddah airport, the Umrah pilgrims can watch a European beauty contest courtesy of an Egyptian TV channel being broadcast to the airport television sets.
Muharram is the month with which the Muslims begin their lunar Hijrah Calendar. It is one of the four sanctified months about which the Holy Quran says, “The number of the months according to Allah is twelve (mentioned) in the Book of Allah on the day He created heavens and the earth. Among these (twelve months) there are four sanctified.”
These four months, according to the authentic traditions, are Dhul-Qa’dah, Dhul-Hijjah, Muharram and Rajab. All the commentators of the Holy Quran are unanimous on this point, because the Holy Prophet, Sall-Allahu alayhi wa sallam, in his sermon on the occasion of his last Hajj, declared: “One year consists of twelve months, of which four are sanctified months, three of them are in sequence; Dhul-Qa’dah, Dhul-Hijjah, Muharram, and the fourth is Rajab.”
Friends have invited me to give a talk on Madinah, describing what I saw there, and I have readily agreed. As a Persian poet has said: “To talk of the beloved is no less pleasant than to meet him.”
I do not know when I first heard of Makkah and Madinah. Like all Muslim children, I was brought up in an environment in which Hijaz (Arabia) and Makkah and Madinah were household words. I, distinctly, remember people saying Makkah, Madinah together as if these were the same. When they took the name of one of them, they, generally, mentioned that of the other as well. I, thus, came to imagine that Makkah and Madinah were not two different places, but one, and learnt to appreciate the difference only as I grew up. It, then, became clear that these were two different towns separated from each other by over 300 kilometers.
It is a fact that Makkah is a blessed city. Every inch and every rock or bit of sand is blessed. We have already mentioned those places of special blessing. Now there are a few more to which attention should be drawn.
1. Firstly there is a place where the house of Hazrat Khadija R.A. used to be; and where Hazrat Fatima Zahraa R.A. was born; and where all the children of Rasulullah Sal’am were born except Hazrat Ibrahim A.S. up to the Hijrat Rasulullah Sal’am live here. The Ulama are of the opinion that second to the Holy Masjid, this place is the most virtuous in Makkah.
Hazrat Umar R.A. said; ‘I would much rather prefer to commit seventy sins at Rukiya (outside Makkah) than to commit one sin inside Makkah. In the same way that righteous deeds are considerably increased in reward, so also sins there are tremendously multiplied. For this reason Hazrat Umar R.A. considered a sin in Makkah, seventy times more heinous than outside the Holy City. A similar saving of Hazrat Ibn Abbaas R.A. has already been quoted in chapter three. Hazrat Umar R.A. mentioned this on numerous occasions. It is for this reason that many elders of Islam did not approve of staying permanently in Makkah, because it is very difficult to give the place its rightful due in honor and respect. Hazrat Imaam Ghazali R.A. wrote that any sinful act is very strongly prohibited there and the committee of such acts can easily earn the anger of Allah. (Ithaaf)
Hazrat Anas bin Maalik R.A. reports that Rasulullah Sal’am said: ‘The salaat which a person performs in his house is one salaat; and his salaat in the local masjid is equal to 25 salaats: and his salaat in the Jaame Masjid where the people gather is rewarded to the extent of five hundred salaats; and his salaat in the mosque of Jerusalem, Masjidul Aqsaa is rewarded to the extent of fifty thousand salaats: and his salaat in my mosque-Masjidul Nabawi in the Holy Mosque of Makkah is rewarded to the extent of one hundred thousand salaats’
The fact that salaat in the Holy Mosque of Makkah is rewarded up to one hundred thousand times be borne out by many ahaadith.
Hazrat Ibn Abbas R.A. reports that the Messenger of Allah said: “One hundred and twenty mercies descend upon the Ka’ba every day and night; sixty for those performing tawaaf, forty for those performing salaah and twenty for those merely looking at Ka’ba”.
Here we are told that merely looking at the Ka’ba is a form of Ibaadah. Hazrat Saeed ibn Musayyib R.A. the well known. Tab’iee used to say that whoever merely looks at the Ka’ba with complete faith, becomes so cleansed of his sins as the day he was born.
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