Responding to the allegation that Lady Aisha bathed in front of two men

 

Refuting the doubt about Lady Aisha
washing herself in front of two men Muslim narrated from the hadith of Abu Bakr bin Hafs, on the authority of Abu Salamah bin Abd al-Rahman, who said: I entered upon Aisha, her foster brother, and he asked her about the Prophet’s washing from major ritual impurity (janabah)? “She called for a vessel the size of a Sa’ and washed herself, with a curtain between us and her, and poured water over her head three times.” He said: “The wives of the Prophet, may God bless him and grant him peace, used to take from their heads until it was like a crown.” It ended
and it was mentioned in Al-Bukhari, the text of which is: “I heard Abu Salamah say: I and Aisha’s brother entered upon Aisha, and her brother asked her about the washing of the Prophet, may God bless him and grant him peace. So she called for a vessel about a sa’, washed herself, and poured water over her head, and between us and her was a veil.” Abu Abdullah said: Yazid bin Harun, Bahz, and Al-Jadi said, on the authority of Shu’bah, “the amount of a sa’.”
Ahmad included it in his Musnad with the wording: “I and Aisha’s foster brother entered upon Aisha, and her brother asked her about the washing of the Messenger of God, may God bless him and grant him peace. So she called for a vessel about a sa’, washed herself, and poured water over her head three times, and between us and her was a veil.”
Al-Nasa’i included it with the wording: “I entered upon Aisha, may God be pleased with her, and her foster brother, and he asked her about the washing of the Prophet, so she called for a vessel containing water about a sa’, covered herself with a veil, washed herself, and poured water over her head three times.”
These hadiths are used by some of the Rafidis, including their fanatical leader, Yasser Al-Habib - may Allah punish him for what he deserves - who claimed that Lady Aisha would allow foreign men to enter upon her, and then she would wash herself in front of them.
The response to this doubt is to say:
First: The two men mentioned in the hadith are as follows:
A - Lady Aisha's brother, and there is disagreement about his identity:
• It was reported by Al-Bukhari and others that he is her brother without restriction. Al-Dawudi went in his commentary on Al-Bukhari that he is Abd Al-Rahman bin Abi Bakr Al-Siddiq. It was said that he is her brother from her mother, and he is Al-Tufayl bin Abdullah.
Al-Hafiz said in Al-Fath: "Neither of them is authentic, because Muslim narrated from the path of Muadh, and Al-Nasa'i from the path of Khalid bin Al-Harith, and Abu 'Awana from the path of Yazid bin Harun, all of them from Shu'bah in this hadith that he is her brother from breastfeeding." End.
• It was reported by Muslim and others that he is her brother from breastfeeding. An-Nawawi and a group said that he was Abdullah bin Yazid Al-Basri, and others said that he was her foster brother Abu Saeed Katheer bin Ubaid Al-Kufi, who also narrated from her, and his hadith is in Al-Adab Al-Mufrad by Al-Bukhari and Sunan Abi Dawud through his son Saeed bin Katheer from him.
Accordingly, the first man is her brother by blood or by breastfeeding.
There is no meaning to the claim of some of them that this is just a patchwork by the jurists because the hadith of Muslim mentioned verbatim that he was her foster brother, so it is an internal evidence within the text.
B- The second man is Abu Salamah bin Abdul Rahman bin Awf.
Ibn Saad and other historians and biographers mentioned that Abu Salamah bin Abdul Rahman bin Awf died in Madinah in the year ninety-four during the caliphate of Al-Walid, and he was seventy-two years old. This means that he was born approximately in the year thirty-two after Hijra.
Some of the commentators of hadith claimed that Abu Salamah was the foster nephew of Sayyida Aisha, and that Umm Kulthum bint Abi Bakr breastfed him. Some of them claimed that he was her nephew by blood.
However, it was reported in a hadith narrated by Muslim that Abu Salamah said: “The wives of the Prophet (peace and blessings of Allaah be upon him) used to take from their heads until they were like a mane.”
This means that Abu Salamah saw the hair of the wives of the Prophet (peace and blessings of Allaah be upon him), not the hair of Sayyida Aisha in particular. If he was a mahram to Sayyida Aisha only, how would he have seen the rest of the hair of the wives of the Prophet?
The most correct thing to say is that Abu Salamah was young, under the age of twelve, when he did not enter upon Sayyida Aisha. This means that the story happened before the year 44 AH. Sayyida Aisha died in the year 58 AH.
Ibn Rajab al-Hanbali said in Fath al-Bari: “It appears that Abu Salamah was young at that time and had not reached puberty, and the other was her foster brother.” Secondly
: There is no evidence in the previous hadiths that Lady Aisha revealed anything of her body to them.
Muslim’s narration is explicit in saying: “And between us and her is a veil.” Al-Bukhari and Ahmad’s narration includes: “And between us and her is a veil.”
Al-Nasa’i’s narration includes: “She covered herself with a veil.”
The Arabic language is clear in explaining the meaning of hijab. When it is used in general terms, it is understood to mean all types of veiling. Ibn Manzur said: “Hijab: covering. He concealed something by concealing it with a veil and a veil. He concealed himself and was concealed if he was hidden behind a veil. A veiled woman: she was concealed with a veil and a veil.” It is finished,
so it is not understood from the words of Allah the Almighty: {And when you ask them for something, ask them from behind a partition. That is purer for your hearts and their hearts} [Al-Ahzab: 53] that the Mother of the Believers would be asked from behind a partition, and some of her body would be exposed? Especially since the Qur’an interpreted the reason for the veil as the purity of the hearts, so it meant the veil of sight in general.
Then the covering takes the place of the door, as evidenced by what was narrated from Anas, may Allah be pleased with him, who said: I was with the Prophet, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, and he came to the door of a woman with whom he had consummated the marriage, and there were some people with her. So he went and satisfied his need and came back and they had gone out and he entered and he had lowered a curtain between me and him. I mentioned it to Abu Talha and he said: If it is as you say, then something will be revealed about this. So the verse of the veil was revealed.
The curtain completely blocks the view. It is not transparent as some of the Rafidis try to portray.
If someone says: The narrator mentioned that he saw Sayyida Aisha’s hair, and this is evidence that she revealed some of her body, then the answer is to say: The narrator did not specify Sayyida Aisha to see her hair, but rather most of the wives of the Prophet, so he said: “And the wives of the Prophet, may God bless him and grant him peace, would take from their heads until it was like a ponytail.” This is evidence that when he was a boy he saw Sayyida Aisha’s hair and the hair of the rest of his wives, may God bless him and grant him peace, in other than this incident, and that what he said is merely an addition indicating that short hair does not need a large amount of water when washing.
Third: Sayyida Aisha’s foster brother entered upon her with Abu Salamah when he was a boy, and her brother’s question was about the Prophet’s washing, may God bless him and grant him peace, and not about how to wash, so such a matter is not absent from someone like him, and perhaps they would have dispensed with asking a man from the senior companions.The problem is about the amount of water that the Prophet used and how he distributed it during the ritual bath. They did not understand that someone could bathe completely with this amount - approximately two and a half liters - and the answer to such private matters can only come from the people closest to the Prophet, such as his pure wives, may God be pleased with them.
The evidence for what we have said is the phrase “so she called for a vessel the size of a sa’”. This is evidence that they were asking about the quantity, not about how to wash.
Al-Ayni said: “That is, this is a chapter explaining the ruling on washing with water the size of a sa’, because a sa’ is the name for a piece of wood, so washing with it cannot be imagined.”
Accordingly, the description of the method of Sayyida Aisha teaching her brother practically is as follows:
Sayyida Aisha left her clothes on her body on the part that the mahram is not permitted to look at, and she poured water on the outside of the clothes because she was not doing that for an obligatory washing, but rather for teaching.
Then she did not want to teach that the student must look at the teacher’s body, but rather to teach how to divide that sa’ on the parts of the body, on the upper and lower parts of the body.
She would take an amount of water from that Saa and each time she would mention the places where the water would overflow, from behind the cover, so she would tell him, for example, that she had covered the upper part, then she would take the amount of water that she would cover the lower part of the body and do that from behind the cover and then she would say to him, I have covered the lower part of the body with this.
And her brother in all of this would only see the decrease in water from the Saa and hear the description of the washing and nothing else.
What
indicates that he did not want to know how to wash, which can only be obtained by seeing the body of the person being washed, and that she did not want to learn how to wash the limbs by seeing the limbs stripped of clothing is that he asked her about the washing of the Prophet, and she was a woman, and he differentiated between the limbs of a man and the limbs of a woman. This indicates that he wanted to ask her about: “How was this small amount of water, which is a Saa, sufficient for the washing of the Prophet?” and “How was it distributed over the upper and lower parts of the body of the person being washed?”
Therefore, Imam Al-Bukhari titled this hadith “Chapter on washing with a Saa and the like,” and Imam Al-Nasa’i titled it “Chapter on mentioning the amount of water that is sufficient for a man.”
Then it is very likely that Tamadhar bint al-Asbagh, the mother of Abu Salamah, was with Sayyida Aisha at the time, along with some women - and there is nothing in the hadith that contradicts this - so Sayyida Aisha wanted to teach her brother from behind a curtain, and she also allowed those women to look at her and at the way the Prophet washed himself with a saa of water without Sayyida Aisha removing her clothes.
The narrations do not include that Aisha took off her clothes, as those ignorant people imagined, because the situation was a situation of teaching, which did not require removing clothes, and only a fanatic would say this.
• The doubt of the opponents’ argument based on the words of Judge Iyad and al-Qurtubi
Judge Iyad said in al-Mu’allim: “The apparent meaning of the hadith is that they saw her work on her head and the upper parts of her body, which is permissible for a mahram to look at from the mahram herself, and one of them was her foster brother, as mentioned. It was said that his name was Abdullah bin Yazid, and Abu Salamah was her foster sister’s son, and Umm Kulthum bint Abi Bakr breastfed him.”
The judge's words here should be understood to mean that the questioners were looking at her head and also the upper parts of her body while she was wearing clothes, because the ruling on a man looking at the body of his mahrams is different from the ruling on a man looking at a foreign woman. It is not permissible for him to look at anything below her face and hands without an excuse.
Judge Iyadh said that the first man was her foster brother as in the text of the hadith and that the second man was Abu Salamah, the foster son of her sister Umm Kulthum.
This is what the judge said in interpreting Abu Salamah's looking at the upper parts of Sayyida Aisha's body. And that the lower parts of her body were covered by a veil.Although this is an effort on his part to interpret the hadith, it is unlikely that Abu Salamah was the foster son of Umm Kulthum due to their close ages. Rather, it is more correct that the incident occurred when Abu Salamah was young and had not reached puberty.
Al-Qurtubi also followed him, saying: “The apparent meaning of this hadith is that they saw her doing it on her head and the upper part of her body, which is permissible for a mahram to see from among his mahrams, and Abu Salamah was her nephew by blood, and the other was her foster brother, and they ascertained by hearing how to wash what they did not see of the rest of the body, and if it were not for that, she would have been satisfied with teaching them verbally, and would not have needed that action….” End
quote. Ibn Rajab al-Hanbali said in Fath al-Bari, commenting on al-Qurtubi’s words, the following: “Abu Salamah was her nephew by blood,” an obvious mistake; Because Abu Salamah is the son of Abd al-Rahman ibn Abi Bakr, he is al-Qasim. It appears that Abu Salamah was at that time young and had not reached puberty, and the other was her foster brother. “The end.
Then the judge said: Had they not witnessed and seen that, there would have been no meaning to her calling for water and purifying herself in their presence, because if she had done all that while concealing herself from them, it would have been in vain and the situation would have returned to her description of it. Rather, she did the concealment to conceal the lower parts of her body and what is not permissible for a person in ihram to look at, and God knows best.” The end.
Here, the judge Iyad explained the statement that the narrator and her brother did not see the washing of the Mother of the Believers and their witnessing it contradicts the original story, and this is a burden and a dispute in understanding. Based on this principle, the companion’s mention of concealment and veiling was also in vain, so why did he mention it if he had not intended by it the veil of vision in the first place. Rather, Lady Aisha concealed the lower parts of her body so that when she poured water on her clothes, it would not stick to her body and the details of her body would be visible.
It can also be said that she put up the veil and was describing the way to wash the lower parts of the body for those who asked, while she enabled some of the women who were with her to look at her while she was washing in her clothes.
Otherwise, the words of the narrator who witnessed the story are clear that he and the brother of Lady Aisha did not see anything of her, so he said: “And between us and her is a veil,” and in the narration of Bukhari “a veil,” and we do not know from where they were able to specify the veil or veil for one place and not another on the body? The clear text refutes the interpretation based on conjecture.