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“Satanic verses”

30-05-2000

Question 4135

In setanic verses by salman rushdi, he talks about some ayat of Quran those were revealed in order to accept three of the most popular gods of the that time in mecca as to be superior or heavenly beings like angels or the god. Later on, those ayat were cancelled and it was said that those were not revealed through gibrail rather it was iblis(satan) who made up those ayat and the prophet(peace be upon him) at that time was not aware of it. How true is this? If there is some truth in this then please specify how much and I would appreciate a real story as to what really happened.

Answer

Praise be to Allah.

This is based on a false report. Ibn Katheer and others said:

 There is no saheeh isnaad from the Prophet (peace and blessings of Allaah be upon him) concerning this report, which says that the Prophet (peace and blessings of Allaah be upon him) “recited Soorat al-Najm to the mushrikeen until he reached the verses (interpretation of the meaning) ‘Have you then considered Al-Laat, and Al-‘Uzzaa (two idols of the pagan Arabs),And Manaat (another idol of the pagan Arabs), the other third?’ [al-Najm 53:19-20 – interpretation of the meaning]. Then the Shaytaan put words into the mouth of the Prophet (peace and blessings of Allaah be upon him) and he said: ‘they are the exalted gharaneeq, whose intercession is to be hopedfor.’ The kuffaar were pleased with this praise of their three idols, so they prostrated.”

 This report is undoubtedly false on a number of counts.

 1.Its isnaad is very weak and is not saheeh.

2.The Prophet (peace and blessings of Allaah be upon him) was infallible with regard to the conveying of his Message.

3.Even if this report was saheeh, for argument’s sake, the scholars have stated that it is to be understood as meaning that the Shaytaan caused the kuffaar to hear these words, not that he put them in the mouth of the Prophet (peace and blessings of Allaah be upon him), so they heard them from him.

 See Ibn Katheer’s refutation of this in his tafseer of Soorat al-Hajj 22:52. And Allaah knows best.

Da'eef (weak) hadiths
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