Murder in the Name of Allah — Page 90
Murder in the Name of Allah strongly censured Ikramah for his unreliability in general and has gone to the extent of calling him a kadhab, 20 that is to say an extreme liar of the first order. . Abdullah b. Al-Harith quotes a very interesting incident which he witnessed himself when he visited Ali b. Abdullah b. Abbas. He was deeply shocked and dismayed to find Ikramah bound to a post outside the door of Ali b. Abdullah b. Abbas. He expresseed his shock at this cruelty by asking Ali b. Abdullah b. Abbas if he had no fear of God in him. What he obviously meant was that Ikramah, with all his renown of piety and so on, did not deserve such a base and cruel treatment at the hands of his late master's own son. In response to this, Ali b. Abdullah b. Abbas justified his act by pointing out that Ikramah had the audacity to attribute false things to his late father, Ibn Abbas. 21 What better judge of the character of Ikramah could there be than Ali b. Abdullah b. Abbas? No wonder, therefore, that Imam Malik b. Anas (95-179 AH), the pioneer compiler of hadith and an Imam of jurisprudence held in the highest repute throughout the Muslim world, held that the traditions narrated by. Ikramah were unreliable. 22. The following scholars of great repute have declared that Ikramah had a strong disposition towards exaggeration: Imam Yayha b. Saeed AlAnsari, Ali b. Abdullah b. Abbas and Ata b. Abi Rabae. ² 23. This, then, is the man who we are dealing with and on whose sole authority the matter of the lives of all those people who change their faith is left hanging till the end of time. . Ibn Abbas. Whenever the name of Ibn Abbas24 appears at the head of a chain of narrators, the vast majority of Muslim scholars is overawed. They forget the fact that because of his name and reputation concocters of false traditions tended to trace their fabricated chain of narrators back to him. . Therefore, all traditions beginning with the name of Ibn Abbas must be properly judged and examined. . Moreover, even if Ibn Abbas is honestly reported by a narrator, the possiblity of human error on Ikramah's part regarding what Ibn Abbas might have said cannot be ruled out. The following would be a good illustration of the case in point:. Ibn Abbas says that Umar used to say that the Holy Prophets said that crying over the dead brought chastisement to the dead. Ibn Abbas further said that after Umar died, he related this tradition to Ayesha who said, 90