Some magazines wrote a headline about nurses: "Angels of Mercy Lose Their Tenderness." Is this expression permissible?
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The questioner : Your Eminence! The Riyadh newspaper, in one of the recent previous issues, wrote in a large headline: "Angels of Mercy Lose Their Tenderness," and they mean by this
The Shaykh : What? A big, big headline
The Shaykh : Yes, in a large headline: "Angels of Mercy Lose Their Tenderness," and they mean the nurses. What is your opinion on that?
The Shaykh : My opinion on this is that such an expression is forbidden. Women are not angels, except in the saying of the polytheists who made the angels daughters of Allah. Among the nurses are good and evil, just like other female and male workers. It is never permissible for us to say that nurses are angels of mercy, nor that male nurses are angels of mercy.
The angels are a hidden realm that no one knows except Allah (Blessed and Exalted is He), or those whom Allah has informed about them. But you know that journalists—may Allah guide us and them—have much ignorance. They use words whose meaning they do not know, or they overlook it. As we see in some newspapers, they say: "So-and-so was carried to his final resting place," meaning when he died. This word, in its general usage, entails denial of the resurrection, because if you make the grave the final resting place, it means there is no resting place after it. And it is well known that people will be resurrected after that and that they will return to the true final resting place, which is Paradise or the Fire. For this reason, Allah (Blessed and Exalted is He) named the graves as places of visitation, and He said, the Exalted and Majestic:
The Shaykh : What? A big, big headline
The Shaykh : Yes, in a large headline: "Angels of Mercy Lose Their Tenderness," and they mean the nurses. What is your opinion on that?
The Shaykh : My opinion on this is that such an expression is forbidden. Women are not angels, except in the saying of the polytheists who made the angels daughters of Allah. Among the nurses are good and evil, just like other female and male workers. It is never permissible for us to say that nurses are angels of mercy, nor that male nurses are angels of mercy.
The angels are a hidden realm that no one knows except Allah (Blessed and Exalted is He), or those whom Allah has informed about them. But you know that journalists—may Allah guide us and them—have much ignorance. They use words whose meaning they do not know, or they overlook it. As we see in some newspapers, they say: "So-and-so was carried to his final resting place," meaning when he died. This word, in its general usage, entails denial of the resurrection, because if you make the grave the final resting place, it means there is no resting place after it. And it is well known that people will be resurrected after that and that they will return to the true final resting place, which is Paradise or the Fire. For this reason, Allah (Blessed and Exalted is He) named the graves as places of visitation, and He said, the Exalted and Majestic: