Uswa Hasana: Difference between revisions

Modern historians tend to approach the study of particular historical periods, governments and personages from a perspective of historical and cultural relativism. So when in the course of study it comes to light that for instance Julius Caesar sold the women and children of the Gaules he defeated into slavery and paraded his enemy, the Gualish king/warlord Vercingetorix,  like an animal through Rome before executing him (likely by strangulation), although not necessarily endorsing these actions historians will tend to offer context such as explaining that such actions were not at all unusual for other people at the time. On the other hand, when a leader such as Adolf Hitler ordered his soldiers and security forces entering the Soviet Union to specifically ignore international treaties on the treatment of prisoners of war in order to brutalize and murder as many "sub-humans" as possible or to set up industrial killing camps with the objective of physically annihilating entire ethnic groups, a idea new to the entire history of mankind, historians tend to pass judgement on these actions as being worse for breaking the contemporary norms of the times these leaders lived in, exceeding even their contemporaries' expectations of human cruelty and viciousness.  

 

In contemporary discourse modern Muslims who wish to live and practice their faith in accordance with modern norms of behaviour often condemn such actions as barbaric, and often seek to invoke Muhammad's culture context to explain them. The doctrine of Uswa Hasana, howver, makes this argument exceedingly difficult, especially when the argument is between Muslims who wish to follow modern mores and traditionalist Muslims who wish to hew to the classical understanding of the canonical Islamic sources. To take one example, Muhammad himself is claimed to have said: “A man will not be asked as to why he beat his wife.”<ref>Narrated Umar ibn al-Khattab - {{Abu Dawud|11|2142}}</ref>

An often mentioned counterpoint to Uswa Hasana is that the prophet himself appears to be rebuked in surah 80 and told to repent, thus proving the Muhammad was not perfect. Muhammad is rebuked in the Qur'an for turning away from a blind man, but this has not traditionally been taken as proof against the doctrine of Uswa Hasana. In Islam, prophets are ''ma'asoom'' معصوم (infallible/sinless/innocent). They may err (''Zallat'' ظلات "slips"), but this is not the same as committing a sin. Sin in Islam has traditionally been seen as doing something against Allah's prescribed teachings. Muhammad did not sin because the incident involving the blind man occurred prior to Allah admonishing him. An act thus only becomes a sin only after Allah ordains it as such. For example, Muhammad and the early Muslims drank [[alcohol]], but this allowance was abrogated by a later Qur'anic revelation, and the scholars have not traditionally held that Muhammad committed a sin here.