Academic Illuminations III: A Grammatical Oxymoron

The Problem

A hal, according to Hans Wehr's definition, is a circumstantial expression or phrase, like the word, "running" in the expression, "I saw Zaid running." It explains the state of Zaid at the time you saw him, and usually indicates that this state existed before your act of seeing him. The problematic issue is the existence of an intrinsic (Ar. lazimeh) hal in Arabic grammar. How can something that is circumstantial be intrinsic? Even a friend who is fairly advanced in grammar, and teaches it professionally, found the issue problematic. He said that the intrinsic hal seemed to be very close in meaning to an attribute (Ar. na't). Attributes are, after all, intrinsic to an entity while a hal is circumstantial. Yet the hal, whether intrinsic or not, is not inflected in the same way as an attribute. Furthermore, it is unlikely that grammarians would identify it as a circumstantial expression if it was, in fact, an attribute.

The Illumination

According to Abbas Hassan's Al-Nahw Al-Wafi, the intrinsic hal is limited to three cases:

1. The affirmative hal (Ar. hal mu'akkideh), which takes three forms:
1. When the sentence consists of two, non-derived nouns and the hal is an affirmation of the sentence's upshot, such as if one says: أنا حاتم جوادا, meaning, "I am Hatim, being generous." "Generous" is an affirmative hal since it merely affirms the upshot of the sentence, for saying, "I am Hatim" implies one is generous.
2. When the hal is an affirmation of the very action that it is the circumstance of (i.e. it affirms the verb that renders it accusative), such as the statement of Jesus (peace be upon him): ويوم أبعث حيا, meaning, "And the day I am resurrected alive." "Alive" affims the ressurrection.
3. When the hal is an affirmation of of the noun it describes, such as, جاء كلهم جميعا, meaning, "All of them came, altogether." "Altogether" affirms, "all of them."
   
2. The renewed intrinsic hal, such as خلق الله الزرافة يداها أطول من رجليها, meaning, "Allah created the giraffe with its front legs longer than its hind legs." The hal here is describing each giraffe at the point of it being created.
3. The most difficult (and hence most interesting) case, is when the instrinsic hal is limited to cases that have appeared in the canon of Classical Arabic, and cannot be expanded upon. (That Abbas Hassan says they cannot be expanded upon is indeed significant, for he often criticizes the Basrans -- who interdicted post-classical usage of certain classical idioms -- for trapping themselves in their own grammatical prescriptions.) An example of this is:
   
   شهد الله أنه لا إله إلا هو والملائكة وأولوا العلم قائما بالقسط
   
   meaning, "Allah, while maintaining justice, the angels, and those of knowledge bear witness that there is no god but Him."

The affirmative hal doesn't fit the usual definition of a hal at all, as it does not expose the circumstances surrounding x when y occurred, but rather, reiterates them. The renewed intrinsic hal is intrinsic with relation to the class of things it is describing but circumstantial relative to each individual instance.

As for the the final case, Allah's maintenance of justice is intrinsic. However, this is not affirmed by the sentence nor is there any renewal. Rather, the intrinsic nature is known through external factors that are not directly mentioned in this passage. So in what sense can such an intrinsic factor be considered the circumstance of an event? The point here is that Allah is bearing witness that He is One while maintaining justice, and it is specifically because of this that we must accept His testimony. It is like someone who is always truthful saying, "Now listen to me, because I'm telling you the truth." The truthfulness of the said person may be intrinsic, but it is also the circumstance relating to his admonition, and the reason for attending to it carefully.

Another example of the third case is:

قل بل ملة إبراهيم حنثفا

meaning, "Say, [we follow] the path of Abraham as he turned away [from idolatry]." We know from external factors that Abraham's turning away from idolatry (peace be upon him) was an intrinsic state. However, it is this state that we bring to mind when following him.

These are cases where Qur'anic exegetes concur that the hal is intrinsic. However, it is also useful to examine a case which they reject as being a hal:

فالله خير حافظا

meaning, "Allah is the Best in terms of preservation." Exegetes explicitly reject that it is a hal, which would render the meaning closer to, "Allah is the Best while preserving." That the exegetes reject the suggestion that this is a hal -- because it would limit the "bestness" of Allah to the case when He is preserving His creation -- shows that the hal, even if intrinsic, is indeed tied to the circumstances of sentence it exists in.

And Allah knows best.

Academic Illuminations II: Menstruation During Pregnancy

The Problem

The Shafi'i school states that a pregnant woman can menstruate. (This is relevant to Islamic law because menstruating women have special rulings associated with prayer and fasting.) Medically, menstruation is the shedding of the uterine lining, which would negate pregnancy. Initially, I thought I had found a solution to this puzzle, and that is to distinguish between legal menstruation and medical menstruation. The distinction is real: the minimum age for menstruation in the Shafi'i school is approximately nine lunar years of age. If a girl were to precociously menstruate before this age (and there are documented cases of this happening), it would not be considered legal menstruation, and the Islamic rulings related to menstruating women would not apply to her. Legal menstruation, according the Shafi'i school, is any blood that appears in a girl of age that: lasts for 24 hours or more when combined; lasts no more than 15 days; and is preceded by at least 15 days of purity. Thus, the bloody show that pregnant women experience in late pregnancy might very well be considered legal menstruation if it fulfills these conditions, or so I thought.

Two problems emerge with the above approach. First of all, the definition of menstruation in legal texts usually indicates that it is damu jibillah, or "naturally occuring blood"; i.e. not due to illness or some other external factor. Secondly, Shafi'i jurists have issued the fatwa that, if a reliable doctor tells a woman her bleeding is not due to menstruation, then the rules of menstruation do not apply to her. Given then that the distinction between legal and medical menstruation doesn't seem to go beyond the minimal legal age for menstruation, the puzzle remained.

The Illumination

As almost everyone with some background in Islamic Law knows, Islamic legal texts do not only attempt to answer common, day-to-day questions, but also the rare, and even theoretical. We are truly indebted to them for doing so, for what was theoretical during their time (such as a person being able to traverse large areas of the earth in an instant) is looking very likely during our time. The scenario of a pregnant woman menstruating becomes a realistic possibility when you consider that some women have the rare condition of two uteruses. It is therefore possible for a woman to menstruate through one while being pregnant in another. Beyond this, it is also possible for an anatomically normal woman very early in her pregnancy to experience a regular menstrual cycle, such as when a woman becomes pregnant close to the start of her menstrual cycle. (Don't believe me? See this and this.)

Academic Illuminations I: Intention in Divorce

On occasion, there is an issue that I ponder over for years, and, despite how many people I seem to ask, no one seems to have a very good answer. This continues until one day, someone does more than merely wave their hands and gives a truly convincing answer. When the illumination finally does come, it feels like being reunited with a long lost beloved. I am usually elated for days and subject the usual victims (who will stay listening long enough to hear me through) to the excitement. Over the past year, I have had at least two major illuminations, and a couple minor ones as well, alhamdulillah.

The Problem

The Shafi'i (and probably every other major) school of Islamic Law says that if a man divorces his wife with an explicit expression (e.g. "You're divorced", or "I divorce you"), there is no need for an intention. Thus, even if he did not intend divorce, his wife is actually divorced. There were a number of scenarios that just didn't seem to fit. The clearest of these is as follows: a man divorces his wife, and, during her `iddah, she calls him up and starts to bother him. He tells her, "You are divorced, so why don't you leave me alone?", meaning by this that there is no longer a relationship between them such that she should continue to nag him. Scholars concur that this does not count as a second divorce since he was merely informing her that he had divorced her, and not initiating a new divorce. However, if his intention were different, then the very same statement could indeed mean the initiation of a new divorce. There is no getting around it: intention matters. A number of students of knowledge tried waving their hands around the issue, but the problem remained with me.

The Illumination

Finally, Sheikh Amjad Rasheed visited from Hadramaut and clarified the issue. The Shafi'is say that, with regards to divorce, intention is of three types: intending to utter the words of divorce, intending their meaning, and intending their effectiveness. Of these, only the third is irrelevant. Thus, if a man mistakenly utters an explicit pronouncement of divorce, or utters it explicitly, but intends some other meaning that can be borne out lexically or semantically, then the divorce is not effective. However, if a man intentionally utters an explicitly pronouncement of divorce and does not intend any other meaning, yet does not intend the divorce to actually be effective, because, for example, he was just joking, then this is irrelevant, and his wife is divorced from him. All of this is the moral ruling (Ar. al-hukm diyanatan). If the issue is raised to an Islamic judge, he looks for diverting evidence (Ar. sarif) to support the man's claim that the utterance or meaning of the statement did not entail the initiation of a divorce.