1. According to the Sunan of Abu Dawud, the Prophet said, “I prohibit killing four creatures in this earth: ants, bees, hoopoes and sparrow-hawks.”
2. See Nora Belfedal, “Honey: the Antibiotic of the Future, part 3: Healing ‘Bee Venom.’” Islamonline, November 15, 2001.
3. See Annemarie Schimmel, And Muhammad is His Messenger: the Veneration of the Prophet is Islamic Piety (UNC Press, 1985), p. 285.
4. Ibid., p. 102-104. The latter idea is attributed to the twentieth-century Indian poet Nabibakhsh Baloch.
5. See, for example, the section on medicine in Sahih Bukhari. Among other things, the Prophet Muhammad prescribed honey for abdominal trouble.
6. See Belfedal, “Healing Bee Venom.”
1. Found in Imam Malik’s Muwatta'
and Imam Ahmad’s Musnad
1. Both these ahadith, and the quote from Imam Nawawi, are taken from Ahmad ibn Naqib al-Misr’s Reliance of the Traveller; in Arabic with facing English text, commentary and appendices edited and translated by Nuh Ha Mim Keller,
Revised edition, 1994. Beltville, Md: Amana Publications in the section on Commanding the Right and Forbidding the Wrong and the section on Holding One’s Tongue.
2. Moustafa Styer’s translation, except I have replaced his translation the technical term fuqara as poor, with the word ‘devout’, for the sake of clarity in the context of this article.
The term ‘poor’ does not denote actual financial destitution, rather, it means one who has abandoned attachments to worldly things and become rich in their attachment to Allah.
This state cannot be achieved except through sincere devotion.
See Moustafa Styer “Reflections of the Beloved”.
3. The legal rulings of Islamic law are generally
that a thing is considered obligatory,
recommended, neutral, disliked, or prohibited.
1. Consumers Union Education Series. (1995).
Captive Kids: Commercial Pressures on Kids at School.
Yonkers: Author.
1. Quoted in Keller, Nuh Ha Mim; translator and editor.
The Reliance of the Traveller:
The Classic Manual of Islamic Sacred Law cUmdat al-Salik
by Ahmad ibn Naqib al-Misri. 1994.
Beltsville, MD. Amana Publications. Page 41.