Abraham and the giving of life to dead birds —
Lesson for propagating Islam to the West
Friday
Khutba by Dr Zahid Aziz,
for Lahore
Ahmadiyya UK, 20 June 2025
|
“And when Abraham said, My Lord,
show me how You give life to the dead, He said: Do you not believe? He said:
Yes, but that my heart may be at ease. He said: Then take four birds, then
tame them to incline to you, then place on every mountain a part of them,
then call them, they will come to you flying; and know that Allah is Mighty,
Wise.” — ch. 2, Al-Baqarah, v. 260 |
وَ اِذۡ
قَالَ اِبۡرٰہٖمُ
رَبِّ
اَرِنِیۡ کَیۡفَ
تُحۡیِ الۡمَوۡتٰی
ؕ قَالَ اَوَ
لَمۡ تُؤۡمِنۡ
ؕ قَالَ بَلٰی
وَ لٰکِنۡ
لِّیَطۡمَئِنَّ
قَلۡبِیۡ ؕ
قَالَ فَخُذۡ
اَرۡبَعَۃً
مِّنَ الطَّیۡرِ
فَصُرۡہُنَّ
اِلَیۡکَ
ثُمَّ اجۡعَلۡ
عَلٰی کُلِّ
جَبَلٍ مِّنۡہُنَّ
جُزۡءًا
ثُمَّ ادۡعُہُنَّ
یَاۡتِیۡنَکَ
سَعۡیًا ؕ وَ
اعۡلَمۡ
اَنَّ اللّٰہَ
عَزِیۡزٌ
حَکِیۡمٌ ﴿۲۶۰﴾٪ |
The verse
which I have recited shows that when we believe something, in particular a
religious teaching, we should not merely accept it as a belief, but try to
satisfy our hearts that it is true. The Holy Prophet Muhammad has said: “We
have more right to express doubt than Abraham when he said: ‘My Lord, show me
how You give life to the dead’, He (Allah) said: ‘Do you not believe?’ He said:
‘Yes, but that my heart may be at ease’.” (Bukhari, hadith 4537). What the Holy
Prophet meant was that since even a man of the high, deep and unwavering faith
of Abraham, wanted his heart to be satisfied about a belief which he was being
asked by God to accept, how much more is anyone else in need of such
satisfaction. This verse and this hadith show a Muslim has the right to seek
satisfaction of heart regarding a matter of belief. Unfortunately, our
religious leaders deny this right to Muslims.
It is generally considered that what
Abraham was asking about in his question, “My Lord, show me how You give life
to the dead”, is the belief in life after death, which all prophets taught, and
which we hold as well, that a human being, after his or her death, will come to
life again to enter the next world. On the basis that this was his question,
many stories have been made up about how Allah answered it. A common story is
that, following Allah’s command about taking four birds, etc., Abraham took four
birds and after taming them, he slaughtered them, cut them into pieces, mixed
them together, and distributed parts of this mixture on the hills around him.
It is said that Abraham kept the heads of the birds in his hands. Then, as
Allah had commanded him, he called out to them, and all the pieces re-assembled
themselves into the original birds without heads. These birds then quickly flew
back to Abraham to collect their heads from him. It is further said that when
Abraham gave a head to a headless bird the bird only accepted it if it had been
his head, and not if it had been another bird’s head.
To make the Quran support this
bizarre story, traditional scholars have assumed that the verse has omitted
certain words. Many of them say that after the words “then tame them to incline
to you” and before the next words, “then place on every mountain a part of
them”, the words “then slaughter them and cut them into pieces” are to be
understood as if these were present. Others translate “tame them” as “cut
them”. I have checked various English translations of the Quran by Muslims and
find that a dozen or more of them translate this verse in this way, bringing in
cutting and slaughtering of the birds. This is under the influence of this
baseless story.
What Abraham was actually asking
Allah about, I will explain shortly. Even if we suppose that he was asking
about how humans will be raised to life after physical death in this world,
then what Allah did according to this story would not answer his question. In
this story what Allah is showing Abraham is that He can raise dead birds to
life. But Abraham already believes that Allah can do this. He is not asking
Allah to show him that He can raise the dead to life but to explain how
He does it. For example, if you were to ask a masterchef how do you cook a
certain dish, and he cooked it for you and placed it before you, you are none
the wiser about how he did it.
The question Abraham is asking is about
the mission that God entrusted to him, of giving spiritual life to members of
his community and for their reformation. His people were so bitterly opposed to
accepting his message that he could see no prospect of success. He turned to
Allah and asked Him to show him a way by which he would know that they would be
raised to spiritual life at his hands. Allah gave him the example of birds. The
Quran elsewhere compares human beings to birds and animals saying:
“And there is no animal in the earth, nor a bird that
flies on its two wings, but (they are) communities like yourselves” (6:38).
This verse works both ways. It tells
us that animals and birds too live in the form of communities. We see that
around us. But it also conveys to us that among humans, people are like animals
and birds. Those who are like animals stick to the ground and pursue only their
earthly desires, and those who are like birds aspire to fly high above these
desires. What Allah explained to Abraham was that just as birds are repelled by
anyone approaching them and fly away out of fear, this is how people to whom you
are preaching are running away from you without listening to your message.
Compare this with what Noah said to God:
“My Lord, I have called my people night and day, but
my call has only made them flee the more” (71:5–6).
The more he calls them, the more they
flee.
Allah said to Abraham that if you
tame some birds to be attracted to you, then the opposite will happen:
even if they are far from you, when you call them they will fly back to you. So
preach to people as if you are taming birds. Experts on taming birds advise
that this has to be done slowly and patiently. First you must gain the bird’s
trust by approaching it in a manner that it doesn’t find threatening. You must
talk to it in a soothing way to reduce its anxiety. You need to show
hospitality to it by offering it food. Taming of birds is gradual and takes
time. But when the atmosphere is created in which people listen to you because
they are no longer afraid, then your message will start taking root so that
when you call them they will come running. A prophet must remove people’s fears
that his message is a threat or attack upon them. He must show them that he
only has their good in his heart, and he has no other motive for spreading his
message. He is not seeking control over them.
When people perceive you and your
message as a threat they will run away from you. This gets worse if it is not
merely their perception that your message is a threat but you yourself present
it like a threat. If people see preachers of Islam issuing threats that they
will attack anyone physically who dares to criticise their religion, or they
associate Islam with followers who wield knives trying to kill people while
shouting Allahu Akbar, they will not listen any further to its message.
Allah then says to Abraham that after
taming them, which means they have listened to his message and accepted it, if
he were to place them separately on distant hills in four directions and call
out to them, they would come back flying to him. Repulsion is converted into
attraction. In another place the Quran mentions a prayer of Abraham some of
which is as follows:
“Our Lord, I have settled a part of my offspring in a
valley unproductive of fruit near Your Sacred House, our Lord, that they may
keep up prayer; so make the hearts of some people yearn towards them” (14:37).
Abraham established the pilgrimage to
the Ka‘bah and called people to it, and this later became the Hajj that Muslims
perform. In acceptance of this prayer, people’s hearts all over the world yearn
to perform the Hajj, or at least visit the Ka‘bah. They desire to go there not
because anyone is forcing them but because of this yearning in their hearts.
Abraham couldn’t see that his
preaching would be successful, so much so that he turned to God said that I do
believe your promise but I want to know how it will come about. The
fulfilment of this promise given to Abraham, of birds flying to him in response
to his call, came about through the Holy Prophet Muhammad. At his appearance,
the Arabs were a dead nation. They, like suspicious birds, remained away from
the Holy Prophet’s call. Yet by the end of the Holy Prophet’s life, delegation
upon delegation from remote parts of Arabia came to see him to accept Islam at
his hand. The year before his well-known Farewell Pilgrimage is even known as
the Year of Deputations.
The entire Arab nation, which was
regarded as wild and untameable, responded to him saying: “We hear and we
obey”. I came across a Christian’s website about the Bible which says that
according to the Bible “The children of Ishmael have proven to be wild, they
cannot be tamed by man. It is only God that can tame the children of Ishmael…”
(https://kjvbibletruth.com/2015/11/17/ishmael-prophecy/) He is quite right, although he
doesn’t realize or doesn’t know that these children of Ishmael were in fact
tamed by the Holy Prophet Muhammad, and he only tamed them because he was sent
by God to do so. This is the giving life to the dead.
The Founder of the Ahmadiyya
Movement, Hazrat Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, has referred to his mission in terms of
catching birds. In my last Khutba I mentioned that he interpreted the
saying of the Holy Prophet Muhammad that the sun will rise in the west as
follows:
“but what has been shown to me in a vision is this —
that the rising of the sun from the West signifies that the Western world which
has been involved of old in the darkness of unbelief and error shall be made to
shine with the sun of Truth, and those people shall have their share of Islam.”
He follows this by describing his
vision. He writes:
“I saw that I was standing on a pulpit in the city of
London and explaining the truth of Islam in a well-reasoned speech in the
English language; and, after this, I caught a large number of birds that were
sitting on small trees, and in colour they were white, and their size was
probably the size of a partridge. I interpreted this dream as meaning that,
though I may not personally go there, yet my writings would spread among those
people and many righteous Englishmen would accept the truth.” (Izalah Auham,
p. 515–516)
To tame birds you have to convince
them that you are not a threat to them, and they are secure in your presence.
This is why Hazrat Mirza Ghulam Ahmad again and again stressed to non-Muslims
that Islam, as presented by his Movement, teaches Muslims to live as peaceful,
law-abiding and loyal citizens of any non-Muslim majority country which grants
them freedom to practice and preach Islam. Islam does not pose a threat to
their governments. He also vigorously countered the idea that Islam teaches
Muslims to conduct a Jihad to kill non-Muslims or that Islam spreads by the
force of any army or a state. How can people listen to your message if they are
feeling threatened by you and are trying to protect themselves from you?
So may Allah enable us to present the
message of Islam with patience and in a gentle, soft-spoken way, and to
communicate with people with love, in a rational manner, affectionately with no
hatred in our hearts nor using hurtful words.
— ameen.
Website: www.aaiil.uk