Politics! What do You Know About Politics?!
 

Here we would like to point out to a statement made by Imam Sharaf ad-Din, may Allah have mercy on him. He has said, “Here we would like to attract the attention of rational people to research the reason why al-Zahra’ (A.S.) was displaced from home only because she was mourning her father (A.S.), and why she had to go out, escorted by both her sons and a group of her women, to al-Baqi` in order to mourn the Messenger of Allah (A.S.) in the shade of a lote tree there which, once cut down, was replaced by Ali (A.S.) with a house at al-Baqi` to which she used to go to mourn him called bayt al-ahzan. A ziyara used to be observed to it by the past generations of this nation.”[1]

I say that it is very possible that the tradition stating that “The deceased person is tortured by the cries of the living” was distorted from the incident involving weeping over the Jewess, to which reference has already been made above, for obvious political reasons. The ruling authority paid a particular attention to prohibiting Fatima (A.S.) from crying over her father (A.S.).

So it is obvious that such a prohibition continued till the ruling authority was settled. This is why `Omer was not concerned about `a’isha being angry with him on its account. She even prohibited him from entering her house when Abu Bakr (her father, the first caliph) died, so he hit Umm Farwah, sister of Abu Bakr. He assaulted the house of `a’isha, hitting Abu Bakr’s sister. Before then, he used to pay a special attention to `a’isha and had a lot of respect for her. He held her in high esteem, and he was the one who very highly respected (her father) Abu Bakr with whom he used to seek refuge, showing utmost respect for his household.

Yes, `Omer did all of that because people had not yet forgotten how the ruling authority prohibited Fatima (A.S.) from mourning her father (A.S.). They had not forgotten what she went through following his demise. Let us suppose that the weeping was only because of the death of her father. What a great stand it was, then, not to mention the environments of cruelty and crudeness, that a human being is prohibited from grieving for her father! What if this father is the Glorious Prophet (A.S.), the greatest, the most perfect and the very best human being who ever walked on the face of earth?

When the cause was no more, after many hears had passed since the death of the Head of the Women of the World (A.S.), and when people almost forgot this issue, the prohibition was lifted by `Omer himself and he wept over al-Nu`man ibn Muqrin who died in 21 A.H. and over another Shaikh. He permitted the weeping over Khalid ibn al-Walid who died in 21 or 22 A.H. as indicated above.

Prohibition from weeping over the dead varies in the way it was documented from one source to another. Some say there was prohibition from scratching the face, tearing clothes, self-slapping, or wailing for falsehood. All these are different from the outbursts of natural human emotions. The first does, indeed, conflict with complete submission to Allah, the most Exalted, the Sublime, and surrendering to His will, whereas the other is a requirement of the human nature and a proof of the balance of such nature, and surely the distance between them both is quite vast.

[1]Al-Masawi, Al-Nass wal Ijtihad, p. 234.