Ibn Kathir and Rashad's Whale of a Problem
Is the earth built on top of a giant whale? The hadith says our planet is on top of the this gigantic sea creature, at least according to Rashad Khalifa. Dr. Rashad Khalifa alleged there is a hadith in ibn Kathir in which the world is indeed sitting on a big whale. This hadith is cited as evidence to belittle absurdity of all hadith. But how exactly do traditionists understand and evaluate the hadith? Our purpose is to examine how Dr. Khalifa makes his assertions and the factual basis of his claims.
Dr. Rashad Khalifa makes his claim infamous statement about the earth on a whale in his Appendix 33 to the Qur’an. Appendix 33 of the Authorized English translation of Quran by Rashad Khalifa, Ph.D. | Submission.org - Your best source for Submission (Islam) The appendix is titled “Why does God send a messenger now?” Dr. Khalifa attempts to show how corrupt Islam is and how there is a need for Dr. Khalifa to “fix” islam. At the bottom of the page there is a compare/contrast chart with the Quran on one side and “hadith and sunnah” on the other side. In the last bullet point Dr. Khalifa writes, “Ridiculing Islam by accepting statements by the scholars that the earth is built on top of a giant whale!! (79:30; Ibn Kathir, 1200 AD & Ben Baz, 1975 AD).” This claim is contrasted with “Not in the Quran” on the other side of the chart.
What exackly are the sources of the earth on the whale claim? Dr. Khalifa quotes Ibn Kathir and Ben Baz as the source of this claim. Ibn Kathir wrote a famous 13th century tafsir. The ibn Kathir quote is based on Surah 79:30. Bin Baz was a 20th century hadith scholar of repute in Saudi Arabia. We will look for the hadith in both these sources and attempt to analyze the whale problem momentarily.
Our alert readers may have discovered an issue so far. The first problem is that Dr. Khalifa does not give a source for any of his claims. One can surmise that because 79:30 is quoted than the source must be tafsir of the 13th century scholar. But Ibn Kathir wrote more than one book. We will assume that Khalifa has ibn kathir’s tafsir in mind for simplicity’s sake. But nothing is cited about what ibn Baz wrote about the hadith. Why would Dr. Khalifa even quote ibn Baz? The later was certainly know for his studies of hadith but he did not write an accessible like ibn Kathir did. Dr. Khalifa has the obligation to cite the source. The idea that Bin Baz believed the earth was on a whale is absurd. Dr. Khalifa allaged bin Baz believed the world was flat but this is untrue (we will address elsewhere.) It is doubtful one would be able to find a Bin Baz source authenticating the whale hadith.
But then we run into a second problem when we turn to Ibn Kathir’s commentary. We checked 79:30 and did not find the hadith of the earth on the whale anywhere in the tafsir on this verse. This is Rashad’s translation: [79:30] He made the earth egg-shaped.*
Ibn Kathir cites a couple of hadiths on the creation of the world under 79:30. But no where in this passage does Ibn Kathir cite the famed hadith about the whale. Well Dr. Khalifa, we have a whale of a problem! If one has been following my other critiques you would see that Dr. Khalifa has a real problem with basic scholarship. I would expect a high school student to make this error but Dr. Khalifa is a PHD Doctor and the Messenger of God!
If Dr. Khalifa did his homework he would have found the hadith in Surah 68:1. [68:1] NuN,* the pen, and what they (the people) write.
"As The Imam Abu Ja'afar ibn Jareer told said (so) told user ibn Bashaar, so told us Yahya so told us Sufyaan ِAl-Thawri so told use Sulimaan who is the sticky-eyed(al-a'mash) from Abi Zabyaan from ibn 'Abbaas who said "The first thing that Allah created is the pen, it said "What do I write" Allah said "write the fate of existence all that will happen from this day until the day of judgement, then Allah created the "Nun" and raised the mist of the water and rent it from the sky and spread the earth on the back of the Nun. The Nun was disturbed and the earth was extended and earth was fixed in place with the mountains, verily they are the pride (of Allah) upon the earth." (ibn Kathir)
The notion that the world sits on a whale was believed by early Muslims but it was not something necessarily based in Orthodox aqidah. In fact Orthodoxy has largely dismissed the hadith and it is not seriously discussed by scholars academically. The only people who try to make an issue that I am aware of is the wiki-islam website which tries to argue for a traditional basis to the notion that the earth is on a whale.
What is the Orthodox view of the authenticity of the hadith? It is not found in Bukhari or Muslim but the hadith is considered to be authentic according to the same methods that the two hadith giants used. But the ‘alim at the Islam QandA website do not believe it is an obligation to believe in this hadith. The reason why the ‘alim do not use the hadith is because it is not considered a “hadith” in the strict sense of the term. Hadiths are words attributed to the Prophet. But the hadith by Ibn Abas does not cite the Prophet. The hadith is limited to a statement of Ibn Abbas, so at best it his opinion and it does not carry weight in Islamic jurisprudence. This is classified as a mawqoof hadith. So the hadith is most likely authentic but yet not authoritative.
The wiki Islam site does try to argue to the contrary by citing a fatwa on mawqoof hadiths must be believed if the belief is widespread and there is “consensus by silence.” These fatwas are assumingly based on maintaining traditional customs. But how wide spread is the belief in the whale mythology? No Muslim today believes this. There were certainly many sources for the claim in Sunni as well as Shia books but it is debatable whether we can call it a custom. Moreover, the people arguing against the hadith’s authority belong to the Salafi school of thought. (They cannot be dismissed as modernists, liberals ect.) These are the same people that place many hadith in the same category as divine revelation and still believe hadiths which contradict the Qur’an, home reason and etc. So if a salafi dismisses this hadith it is most likely because it does not meet their academic criteria for hadith evaluation. We would not expect Bin Baz to say anything different. Regardless of the hadith’s value, it is not a “hadith” in the sense that it came from the Prophet.
Ibn Kathir apparently does not believe the weight of the Ibn Abbas hadith of the whale either. He places it in his al-Bidaayah wa’n-Nihaayah that it is of Jewish origin and thus not meant for Muslims to believe. Wiki Islam tries to attack the factual basis to this argument by stating there is no evidence of the earth being on a whale in Jewish sources such as the Talmud or midrash. But that is a mute point. Traditional authorities compare this hadith to several others provided by Ka’ab Ahbaar, a jewish convert known for fantastical legends. Whether or not Ka’ab Ahbaar said something that was found in rabbinic literature does not matter for Muslim authorities. What matters is if something is so strange that it fits a category of other things that belong Israelite sources.
The Wiki Islam site is correct in identifying the basis of the belief in a primordial whale however. Wiki Islam points to numerous tafsirs that state the “Nun” of Surah 68 is a whale. Dr. Khalifa thus cannot dismiss the Whale theory as “non-Quranic.” Whoever came up with, or attributed an Islamic origin to the myth, studied the Qur’an and gave it that interpretation. For the tafsirs, quoted by Wiki Islam, the scholars cited believed that the whale mythology was based in the Qur’an, not the hadith as Dr. Khalifa thinks!
Soemone today could reject the way people thought of the world in the past and yet write a commentary acceptable to Dr. Khalifa proponents. However the science and reasoning may turn out wrong for what the commentaries state. So Dr. Khalifa could dismiss the whale theory as silly but he has no write to attack the scholars of tafsir who were only doing the same thing he did in his own life time.
The tafsir traditions on Surah 68:1 are interesting read beyond our scope. Some of the Islamic philosophers identified the Qalam as well as the whale as being metaphors for the universal intellects from the language of Neo-platonic metaphysics. Dr. Khalifa himself does not offer much to say about the “Nun”, other than his silly obsessions with pseudo-mathematics.
How wide spread was the myth that the earth is on a whale? I found an interesting verse in the Guru Granth Sahib where the world is said to be on the back of a bull. (page 2. Guru Granth Sahib.) The verse does not appear to be making a factual point but merely pointing out a religious lesson. The tafsir traditions on Surah 68:1 are interesting read beyond our scope.
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