Message #1750

[Heba E. Husseyn]

Well done rose.  Well analyzed.  Of course, there's hardly any aspect worthwhile that's emphasized by hadith, but I particularly find this beard issue discrepant.  Imagine, writing pages and pages on websites about the importance of beard.  How can the human mind which is supposed to be the superior most of all living beings turn so shallow?  They say that since beard is 'fitrah' (nature) so it should be left to grow.  But that is no good reason to make it holy.  If one looks at it that way, there are so many things in the human body that are fitrah.  Then why cut the hair on the head?  That too is fitrah.

Actually, this culture of growing beard has been borrowed from the Jews & Christians and also to a great extent from people of non-Divine faiths e.g. sikhs and hindus.  Sikhs never cut the beard or hair on the head for similar reasons calling it a part of nature.  Then, if you look at hindu fundamentalists, they have exactly the same outward appearance as the fundamentalist so-called Muslims of today - long unkempt beard and similar untidy general appearance e.g. many of those hardline Talibans look just like hindu fundamentalists who attacked the Babri Mosque.  As for the Christian and Jewish clergy, they have always had long untrimmed beards, particularly in the middle ages.  And also wearing of long robes by Muslim clerics is a similar copy-cat practice from the catholic priests.  These type of things have no importance in the Quran.  Quran gives lot of importance on being neat and tidy, and with a long beard it's very difficult to keep neat particularly in hot humid summer.