Q. A Muslim family received a proposal of marriage from a young man who is a Hindu. He said that he is willing to adopt Islam if his proposal is accepted. The girl’s father told him that he should also change his name to adopt an Islamic name, but the young man refused. Please comment.
Ahmed Najmi
A. Many people nowadays tell newcomers to Islam that they must change their names. Yet there is no such requirement in the Qur’an or the Sunnah. When people accepted Islam during the Prophet’s lifetime, the overwhelming majority of these retained their names. The Prophet did not change their names or tell them to do so. He, however, changed the names of certain people as soon as they became Muslim. Hence, it is important to look at these to determine why the Prophet changed names in these few cases.
A careful study of such changes reveals that the Prophet changed two types of names. The first type included names that are against Islam and its teachings. These were names indicating beliefs contrary to Islam, or associated with religions other than Islam. Thus, if someone named Abd Al-Uzza became a Muslim, the Prophet would immediately change his name. Al-Uzza was one of the main idols in Arabia, and Abd means “servant”, so the name means that that person is the servant of an idol worshipped by the idolaters. Needless to say, such a name is totally unacceptable and the Prophet immediately changed to Abdullah or another suitable name.
The second type of names the Prophet changed was that of names with very unpleasant meaning. The Arabs at the time did not care what name they gave to their children. Some Arabs would go out in the desert after the birth of a child and then they give the child the name of the first animal they saw. Thus, some of them had names like Thaalabah, meaning “a female fox”, and Kalb, meaning “a dog”, and Asad which meant “a lion”. Other names that had bad meaning were Hazn, Harb and Murrah, which, respectively, meant sadness, war, and hardness. The Prophet did not like Muslims to have such names and he changed them in most cases.
So, the case of this young man should be decided on the nature of his present name. If it has no strong association with Hinduism, and does not have a bad meaning, there is no harm in keeping it after he accepts Islam.
Using a Chair in Prayer
Q. I have an illness in my knees which causes me much pain when I perform the sujood, or prostration during prayer. As a result, I use a chair. When I am praying in congregation, I want to stand while the imam is standing, but this has caused a problem because if I stand in line, the chair is behind the row and this causes inconvenience to the people in the next row. Some people suggested that I should not stand, but sit during the entire prayer, but I feel this deprives me of something I can do. Please advise.
Shams
A. The rule that applies to all people who are prevented by ill health from doing any part of the prayer in the way it should be done is that they should do what they can and signal what they cannot, doing of it what they can. In your case, standing appears to be no problem.
Therefore, you must stand with the imam. You can be seated only if you cannot stand. If bowing, or ruku, presents no problem, then you should do it normally. In this case, you should do the prostration, or sujood, in the same way as you do your bowing, but making the prostration a little lower, or the bowing a little higher.
It may be that bowing also presents a problem for you, because it involves some stretching of the knees. In this case you can signal both bowing and prostration while standing, moving your head and part of your body. Your movement for prostration should always be a little more than for bowing. What I have said involves no use of a chair. If this is comfortable for you, then you should do it in this way.
If it is difficult, or if standing throughout the prayer causes you pain, while the use of a chair makes it easier, then using a chair is recommended. As I said, whatever you can do of your prayer in the normal way, you should do.
Where to place a chair? If you are standing, then you must stand in your row, shoulder to shoulder with other worshippers. In order not to cause inconvenience to others, you should take your chair to the end of the row, either to right or the left as is convenient to you and to others.
