Q.1. It is said that if the construction of a house is halted for a while, then the house should not be left unlit. If it is left without lighting, it is likely to be inhabited by evil spirits. Is this correct?
Q.2. Is it permissible to perform the Umrah or pilgrimage for a Muslim of the Shia sect?
Q.3. What is the latest time for offering the Aqiqa?
Q.4. Is it permissible to offer prayers after having prayed the witr?
Q.5. It is said that if a son buys the property of his father, he is deprived of inheritance?
Q.6. What private hair should be removed and how often?
S. Akhtar, Jeddah
A.1. This is a superstition that has no basis in Islam. No evil spirit dwells in people’s houses. If the place is left lit or unlit, it is the same. In fact, to have it lit when there is no one to benefit by the light is a waste of money and resources which Islam does not approve of. The jinn have their separate world, which has nothing to do with ours. They do not affect us in the same way as we have no means of affecting their world.
A.2. It is perfectly permissible to offer the pilgrimage on behalf of a Muslim who declares his belief in God’s oneness and the message of the Prophet Muhammad and attends to his obligatory prayers. If such a person suffers from a chronic illness that prevents him from offering the pilgrimage himself and wants to send someone to offer this duty on his behalf, it is permissible for anyone to do it, provided that such a deputy has already offered his own duty pilgrimage.
A.3. Aqiqa is a celebration of the birth of a child, with a sacrifice of one or two sheep and inviting relatives and neighbors to a dinner. It is meant to give the neighborhood a chance to join in the happy event of one of its families. Therefore, it is meant to be early in the life of the new child, and it is recommended to have it on the seventh day of its birth. If the date cannot be met, then within the first two or three weeks of the birth.
A.4. Witr should be the last prayer one offers on any day. If, however, one has offered the witr and then he wants to offer some night worship, he may do so. He does not repeat the witr.
A.5. If the sale is meant seriously, not a cover-up for giving one child an exceptional share of his father’s property, it has no bearing on the inheritance. Suppose a father has a house to sell and his son buys it from him at the market price, or close to it, that is a perfectly appropriate arrangement. It certainly does not deprive the son of any rights of inheritance.
A.6. The hair we are recommended to remove is pubic hair and armpit hair. It is strongly recommended to remove it at a frequency that does not exceed 40 days.
A daughter’s inheritance disputed
Q.1. When a woman died in 1984, her property, mainly agricultural land, was inherited by her only daughter. Now, the nephew of the deceased woman, i.e. the daughter’s cousin, is claiming a share in her inheritance. He is the only son of the only brother of the deceased. The woman’s brother had predeceased her by 12 years. This nephew also has five sisters. Does he have a claim? What about his sisters?
Q.2. When I traveled to Jeddah from India, my intention was to visit my children, one of whom was ill. I did not wear my ihraam garments on the plane, although doing an Umrah was very much in my mind. Sometime after my arrival in Jeddah, and after the recovery of the ill person I went for Umrah, starting my ihraam in Jeddah. Is this correct, or do I have to make any compensation?
Abdul Rahman, Jeddah
A.1. The nephew is right, because he inherits on the basis of asabah. The Prophet says: “Give the heirs their apportioned shares. Should anything remain, it goes to the nearest male relative.” Thus, if a person dies, leaving behind a wife, mother and one son and two daughters, the first portions of his inheritance are given to his wife and mother, as they have apportioned shares: one-eighth to the wife and one-sixth to the mother.
The remainder goes to his children on the basis of asabah, which is a term signifying that people in this class take all the remainder. If they are males and females, then the property is shared out on the basis of two shares for a male and one for a female.
When a person’s children are daughters only, they have apportioned shares, which are one-half for a single daughter, and two-thirds for more than one daughter. In this case, when the woman died, if her husband was alive, he would have taken one-fourth and her one daughter takes one-half. If her husband had died, or if she was divorced, then her daughter takes one-half.
The remainder goes to the nearest male relative as asabah. As he is of the third degree, i.e a nephew, his sisters do not share in his inheritance. Thus, assuming that there were no heirs other than the one daughter, she takes one-half of the property, and the other half goes to her cousin, i.e. the deceased’s nephew. Had she had more than one nephew, they would share that one half equally among them.
A.2. What you have done is perfectly all right. Since your intention was to visit your children, and you stayed with them for a while, your starting place for ihraam purposes is Jeddah. There is no compensation to be made.
Praising people to their faces
Q. If someone is doing a lot of good for others and for the community generally, is there much harm in expressing appreciation of his good work and praising him when the occasion arises? Some people say that this is not acceptable from the Islamic point of view. If so, how do we justify the awarding of medals, certificates of merit and other tokens and prizes for good work, which is done in all Muslim countries?
G. Nabi, Madinah
A. What the Prophet has spoken against is the sort of praise that people address to others, hoping to win a position of favor with them. This sort of praise is meant either to satisfy the ego of someone of high position or get something in return. In such cases, the praise is dishonest and hypocritical.
There is a different sort of praise, which is normally confined to speaking the truth about the deeds of someone we know. If the person saying the praise does not expect any favors from the one who is being praised, and if the praise is meant to ensure that people know about the contribution of that person so that they will appreciate it, motivating him to do more, and motivating others to do like him, then that is perfectly acceptable. God says in the Qur’an: “Do not forget to act benevolently to one another.” (2: 237) This statement, in its Arabic original, also connotes that acting benevolently means to acknowledge the merits and goodness of one another. One way of doing so is to award merits and medals to those who excel in one area or another.
In short, the sort of praise Islam does not condone at all is that made for some purpose which is not entirely honest. Such praise must always be shunned. It is the type which according to a Hadith should make us throw dust in the face of the perpetrator.
Slaughter, the Islamic way
Q. Back home in Namibia people do not know that there are conditions to meet when slaughtering an animal for food. Could you explain how this should be done and what to say? Can a Muslim eat of the meat of an animal that has died by natural causes, such as sickness?
Haroon Timothy, Madinah
A. It is not permissible for a Muslim to eat carrion, or the meat of an animal that has died by natural causes, including illness, a fight with other animals, a fall from high places, strangulation, drowning, etc. This is made clear in the verse that may be rendered in translation as follows: “Forbidden to you are carrion, blood, the flesh of swine; and that over which any name other than God’s has been invoked; and the animal that has been strangled, or beaten to death, or killed by a fall, or gored to death, or savaged by a beast of prey, except that which you may have slaughtered when it is still alive; and (forbidden to you are) animals that have been slaughtered on idolatrous altars. And (forbidden also) is the division (of meat) by raffling with arrows; for all this is sinful.”(5: 3)
The verse makes it clear that what is lawful to eat is an animal that has been slaughtered when alive. Islamic slaughter requires that the animal be made comfortable and its neck is cut with a sharp knife so as to cut its jugular veins.
This ensures the minimum pain to the animal. The cut should be deep and thorough so as to ensure quick death. If one’s cut is not thorough for any reason, a second cut is acceptable, unlike what some people say.
Also, as he places his knife on the animal’s neck, the slaughterer must mention God’s name. Normally, this takes the form of Bism Allah; Allahu akbar.
