Reconciling His saying (peace and blessings be upon him): “There is no contagion or bad omen” with His saying: “Flee from the leper as you would flee from a lion”
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Reconciling His saying (peace and blessings be upon him): “There is no contagion or bad omen” and His saying: “Flee from the leper as you would flee from a lion”
Your Eminence! How do we reconcile His saying (peace and blessings be upon him): “There is no contagion, no bad omen, no harm from the hama bird, and no harm from the month of Safar”,with His saying (peace and blessings be upon him): with “Flee from the leper as you would flee from a lion”?
We reconcile them as follows: The negation in His saying, "No contagion or bad omen", is a negation of what the people of the pre-Islamic age of ignorance (jahiliyyah) believed, namely that contagion has an effect in itself, independent of the decree of Allah (Mighty and Majestic). As for the command to flee from the lion, it is a command to flee from that whose evil is feared; for leprosy—may Allah grant us safety from it—is among the rapidly contagious diseases. Therefore, the command to flee from it is a command to take the protective measures, just as we say, for example: "Beware of the fire by staying away from it," even though your nearness to the fire and your distance from it are all by the divine decree and destiny of Allah. Thus, the negation is directed at what was customary or believed among them in the pre-Islamic age of ignorance (jahiliyyah), namely that contagion has an effect in itself. For this reason, when it was brought to the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) that a man's camels would be healthy, with nothing of the scab in them, and a scabby camel would mix with them and they would become scabby, this is contagion.The Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) said to him: “So which one caused the contagion?” meaning: that their being afflicted by contagion is by the decree of Allah (Mighty and Majestic), just as the presence of scab in the first camel is from Allah (Mighty and Majestic).
Your Eminence! How do we reconcile His saying (peace and blessings be upon him): “There is no contagion, no bad omen, no harm from the hama bird, and no harm from the month of Safar”,with His saying (peace and blessings be upon him): with “Flee from the leper as you would flee from a lion”?
We reconcile them as follows: The negation in His saying, "No contagion or bad omen", is a negation of what the people of the pre-Islamic age of ignorance (jahiliyyah) believed, namely that contagion has an effect in itself, independent of the decree of Allah (Mighty and Majestic). As for the command to flee from the lion, it is a command to flee from that whose evil is feared; for leprosy—may Allah grant us safety from it—is among the rapidly contagious diseases. Therefore, the command to flee from it is a command to take the protective measures, just as we say, for example: "Beware of the fire by staying away from it," even though your nearness to the fire and your distance from it are all by the divine decree and destiny of Allah. Thus, the negation is directed at what was customary or believed among them in the pre-Islamic age of ignorance (jahiliyyah), namely that contagion has an effect in itself. For this reason, when it was brought to the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) that a man's camels would be healthy, with nothing of the scab in them, and a scabby camel would mix with them and they would become scabby, this is contagion.The Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) said to him: “So which one caused the contagion?” meaning: that their being afflicted by contagion is by the decree of Allah (Mighty and Majestic), just as the presence of scab in the first camel is from Allah (Mighty and Majestic).