Iqtiḍāʾ al-Ṣirāṭ al-Mustaqīm - Ibn Taimiya - (1/495)

Iqtiḍāʾ al-Ṣirāṭ al-MustaqīmIbn Taimiya

“…with the tambourine.” He said, “Fulfil your vow.” She added, “I have vowed to slaughter at such-and-such a place”—a site where the people of the Days of Ignorance used to offer sacrifices. He asked, “For an idol?” She replied, “No.” He said, “For a standing stone?” She replied, “No.” He said, “Then fulfil your vow.”(1)

The purport of the evidence is this: the person in question had vowed to slaughter some livestock—either camels or sheep, or perhaps the report concerns two separate cases—at a location he had specified. The Prophet—may Allah bless him and grant him peace—asked him, “Was there an idol from the idols of the Days of Ignorance that was worshipped there?” He answered, “No.” He asked, “Was any of their festivals ever held there?” He answered, “No.” He said, “Fulfil your vow,” and then added, “There is no fulfilling a vow that involves disobedience to Allah.”

This shows that slaughtering at the site of their festival or at the location of their idols is disobedience to Allah, for several reasons:

His statement “So fulfil your vow,”(2) places the ruling immediately after the descriptive clause by means of the particle faʾ, indicating that the description is the cause of the ruling. Thus, the command to fulfil the vow is conditioned on the vow’s being free of those two descriptions; their presence prevents(3) fulfilment. Were it not an act of disobedience, fulfilment would have been permissible.
He then said, “There is no fulfilling a vow that entails disobedience to Allah,” and had the case under discussion not been included in this general statement,(4) the two remarks would lack coherence. Although the act vowed, in itself, is not sinful, once the Prophet—peace and blessings upon him—asked about those two circumstances and found them absent, he instructed, “Fulfil your vow,” meaning: provided nothing renders slaughtering there unlawful. Hence his reply—peace be upon him—was to command fulfilment when those factors are absent and to forbid it when they are present. The basic injunction to fulfil vows is already known; he therefore clarified the situations in which a vow is not to be carried out.

(1) Sunan Abu Dawud, Book of Oaths and Vows, chapter “On fulfilling vows,” 3/606, hadith no. 3312; the chain of transmission is sound. (2) The word binadhrik (“for your vow”) is absent from Manuscript A. (3) The printed edition adds: “He said: thus the presence of both descriptors is disqualifying.” (4) Manuscript A reads: “even if by subsumption.”

بالدف "، قال: " أوفي بنذرك "، قالت: " إني نذرت أن أذبح بمكان كذا وكذا - مكان كان يذبح فيه أهل الجاهلية - " قال: " لصنم؟ " قالت: لا، قال: " لوثن؟ " قالت: لا، قال: " أوفي بنذرك» (١) . فوجه الدلالة: أن هذا الناذر كان قد نذر أن يذبح نعما: إما إبلا، وإما غنما، وإما كانت قضيتين، بمكان سماه، فسأله النبي صلى الله عليه وسلم: «هل كان بها وثن من أوثان الجاهلية يعبد؟ قال: لا، قال: " فهل كان بها عيد من أعيادهم؟ " قال: لا، قال: " أوف بنذرك " ثم قال: " لا وفاء لنذر في معصية الله» . وهذا يدل على أن الذبح بمكان عيدهم ومحل أوثانهم معصية لله، من وجوه: أحدها: أن قوله: «فأوف بنذرك» (٢) تعقيب للوصف بالحكم بحرف الفاء، وذلك يدل على أن الوصف هو سبب الحكم؛ فيكون سبب الأمر بالوفاء: وجود النذر خاليا من هذين الوصفين، فيكون الوصفان مانعين (٣) من الوفاء، ولو لم يكن معصية لجاز الوفاء به. الثاني: أنه عقب ذلك بقوله: «لا وفاء لنذر في معصية الله» ولولا (٤) اندراج الصورة المسئول عنها في هذا اللفظ العام، وإلا لم يكن في الكلام ارتباط، والمنذور في نفسه - وإن لم يكن معصية - لكن لما سأله النبي صلى الله عليه وسلم عن الصورتين قال له: «فأوف بنذرك» ، يعني: حيث ليس هناك ما يوجب تحريم الذبح هناك، فكان جوابه صلى الله عليه وسلم فيه أمرا بالوفاء عند الخلو من هذا، ونهى عنه عند وجود هذا، وأصل الوفاء بالنذر معلوم، فبين ما لا وفاء فيه.

(١) سنن أبي داود، كتاب الأيمان والنذور، باب ما يؤمر به من الوفاء بالنذر (٣ / ٦٠٦) ، الحديث رقم (٣٣١٢) وهو صحيح الإسناد. (٢) (بنذرك) : سقطت من (أ) . (٣) في المطبوعة: قال: فيكون وجود الوصفين مانعا. (٤) في (أ) : ولو اندراج.