Prophet Muhammad (s.a.w.) in the US Supreme Court

بِسۡمِ ٱللهِ ٱلرَّحۡمَـٰنِ ٱلرَّحِيمِ

Not many people know, but there is a marble image of Prophet Muhammad (s.a.w.) perched above the press seating area inside the U.S. Supreme Court chamber.  The statue is sculpted in a frieze.  It depicts the Prophet (s.a.w.) carrying a sword and the Qur’an and stands in the company of more than a dozen other great lawgivers of history.  They range from Moses (a.s.) to Confucius to Napoleon to John Marshall. 

At one time, it was a controversy among Muslim groups, with the Council on American-Islamic Relations and other Muslim groups writing to the court to urge that the statue’s face be sandblasted.  Fortunately, then-Chief Justice William Rehnquist refused, issuing a letter that said it would be “unlawful to remove or in any way injure an architectural feature in the Supreme Court building.” 

Shaykh Thaha ibn Jabir al-Alwani (r.a.), the noted Shafi’i jurist and exegete of the Qur’an, and founder of the Fiqh Council of North America, issued a fatwa and concluded, “What I have seen in the Supreme Courtroom deserves nothing but appreciation and gratitude from American Muslims.  This is a positive gesture toward Islam made by the architect and other architectural decision-makers of the highest Court in America.  God willing, it will help ameliorate some of the unfortunate misinformation that has surrounded Islam and Muslims in this country.”






Comments

Popular posts from this blog

The Du’a of the Blind Man

The Benefits of the Verse of 1,000 Dananir

A Brief Biography of Shaykh Ibrahim ibn ‘Abdullah Niyas al-Kawlakhi (q.s.)