How Do We Understand the Hadith on the Gender of a Baby? – Ask Shaykh YQ #224

We have brother Muammar from Moscow, Moscow, Russia, emailing, saying that he has there's a hadith that he's come across that he doesn't understand. And he's asking, how do we understand this hadith is a very troubling Hadith for him. He says that the Hadith in Sahih Bukhari Sahih Muslim it states that the gender of the baby is decided based upon whether the man discharges first or the woman that according to what he says that the Heidi says that if the man discharges first it will be a boy. And if the woman discharges first it will be a girl. And he says, How can we understand this Hadeeth in light of our modern knowledge of genetics 107

COVID EEG in Reja learn No Hey lay him first.

Lake Erie

Well, first and foremost, brother Muhammad, it is heartwarming to know that people in Russia are Mashallah watching the show. Actually, many of our viewers are not aware. But there is a large concentration of Muslims in Russia. And the history of Islam in Russia goes back many, many centuries. The guitars are of course the largest ethnicity within the Russian mainland, and perhaps up to maybe even 10% of the Russian population is Muslim. Compare this to America 1% is Muslim in America, Russia, at least seven maybe even 10 maybe even more percent is Muslim and I have never been but I have heard that every city has massages and halal restaurants and you find Muslims in

every major city in Russia. So I'm happy to know that people are watching of course the language barrier is difficult there because most of the people there do not speak English but brother one but apparently does. So he's watching our show. So hamdulillah Nice to have you listening in. Now he asks a very, very specific question. And he references a hadith. I'll narrate the whole Hadith it is a hadith narrated by a Muslim, from filburn, the freed slave of the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam that he says that I was standing in front of the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam, when a Jewish rabbi came and said a salam alayka er Mohammed, peace be unto Yama hammer. So said, I'm so so

bad said that. I put my hand on his chest and said to him, say Rasulullah, not Muhammad Sallallahu I said them. And the rabbi says, I am only calling him by the name his father called him meaning. I mean, that's his name. I don't consider him to be Rasulullah. And so the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam said, Yes, he's right. That is the name. My father named me. In other words, so van got irritated that you should not address him by his name. And that's true for the Muslims. We don't address him in his lifetime or after his death directly. Yeah, Mohammed says, No, no, we say Jada sued a lot. But the rabbi is not a Muslim. And so the rabbi says, I'm gonna call him by the name his

father gave him and the Prophet system said that he is right. My father did call me this name. And so he has the right to call me this name. And so the rabbi said, I want to ask you some questions. The prophet SAW said, I'm said, Is there any benefit in me answering Are you really going to benefit? And the rabbi says that I'm gonna listen, I'm not guaranteeing anything. I'm gonna listen. And this shows you by the way, the process of ziani frankness, like look, is there any fire than me talking to you? Are you really interested in Islam? Or you just want to, you know, test or play games or whatever. And so the rabbi says, No, I'm gonna listen, let's see what you have to say. So

it's a long Hadith he asks a series of questions. One of the questions he asks, so for example, he says, What is the first food of the people of Jenna so the profitsystem said, The deliver of a whale This is a well known Hadith I talked about this when I talked about the Hadith of the, the science of the day of judgment and also the concept of judgment of the concept of heaven and hell and the realities of, of heaven in the Quran and Sunnah. So, he then asks him that I'm going to ask you now a question that where does the the child come from? Okay. The Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam said, that, the water of the man is whitish in color and the water of the woman or the fluid of the

woman is yellowish in color. So once they come together, then if the money or if the sperm of the man overcomes that, the the fluid of the lady, then that fluid becomes male by the permission of Allah. And if the fluid of the lady overcomes that of demand, then that fluid becomes female by the permission of Allah subhanahu wa Tada. And then the Jewish person goes on as other questions and then the professors and finishes when he leaves, he says to

So when he asked me all of these questions, and I did not know any of these answers, until a large soldier told me their answers and answered him on the spot now, this head isn't Sahih Muslim. And it seems to suggest that the gender of the child is something that both fluids are responsible for. And in one version if the man discharges first and in this version if the man's fluid overcomes that of the woman of the ones for the overcomes that of the man. And of course, we now know that the baby's gender is determined at the moment of conception by the male sperm, that's the female egg simply has the x sex chromosome, and then the male sperm has either the X or the y. And so if the sperm that

fertilizes the egg has an X chromosome, then you get x x, and that is the girl. And if it has a Y chromosome, then it is x, y, and that is a boy. And so modern genetics, modern biology now knows for a fact this is Emily of pain, that the woman plays no role Absolutely. In determining the gender. The woman's egg plays no role whatsoever in determining the gender. So our brother Muammar is emailing and he is saying that this hadith seems to seems to conflict with what we know of biology. Now, such a hadith that seem to conflict with facts that we know, these Hadith have become very common knowledge by many Muslims of our times, because they are used as ammunition by those who wish

to cast doubt on all of the ahaadeeth. And they love to quote these types of traditions that might seem to conflict with modern science or our knowledge. And then they say that this demonstrates that the ahaadeeth are not preserved, that we don't know what the prophet sallallahu alayhi wasallam said, and there are many movements and many thinkers across the world in the outlands. In India, Pakistan, here in the western lungs as well. There's always there's always been a strand within our oma in the old times, they will call them Morteza and others, there's always been a strand that has been highly skeptical of the Hadeeth preservation. And of course, yeah, you're asking me, and we

are, I'm assuming all of us are coming from the Sunni paradigm. We are not from that paradigm. The reason why we're called Sunni 100 sooner is that we believe in the Sunnah. And if we believe in this sooner than we believe that Hadith overall has preserved the concept of the Sunni, by the way, Hadith is lifeless. Let's just say for our talk, a hadith is an individual chain with an actual statement or action of the profits supply, sell them that preserves his turn. So the sooner that's called it the theory, the sooner is what the profits and some came with Hadeeth is how the sooner is preserved. We have the books of Hadith, okay, and obviously, sometimes they're interchangeable. You

can also say books of sooner, but for our purposes, right now, let's talk about Hadith and Sunnah. Now, the point the point is that this Hadith, which is in Sahih, Muslim, seems to suggest something that contradicts everything we know about genetics and about biology. So what do we do? When this clash occurs, we have to first and foremost check the authenticity of the Hadith examine his chain, see if it's an actual authentic hadith or not, a lot of times, some of these people, quote, a hadith that are not really authentic in the first place. And so we don't have to worry about those. In this particular case, the Hadees of Philbin actually is authentic. It is in Sahih Muslim as well, and its

chain is it's flawless. It is an authentic chain. And so we would grade the Hadith as being authentic. However, we now get to the next stage. And this is what the scholars have had these two and I have to say here, that those trends that try to reject or diminish the authenticity of Hadith.

Generally speaking, they haven't studied the sciences of Hadeeth. And they tend to dismiss the efforts of great scholars like him and body and like great aroma of the scholars of Hadith, who have spent so many, you know, decades and many lifetimes, developing an entire science and somebody comes along, opens up some volume in some obscure book of headache, find something that he thinks is doesn't make sense. And he goes, look, this is what the books had to say. And he rejects all of the books of Hadith. And this clearly demonstrates that this person hasn't really studied the sciences, the methodology, there is an entire discipline that scholars specialize in that hamdulillah I was

blessed in my undergraduate years to study in the College of Hadeeth. It was a speciality. You know, there were five different colleges. You had *tier you had Quranic sciences. You had the College of Tao, you had the College of Arabic language, you study Arabic language and literature and poetry. So I chose the College of heavy that was an entire speciality. And if I wanted to, I could have done a Master's and PhD just in had the thesis

Separate speciality, then somebody comes along without studying any of this. And he goes, Oh, it's all you know, fairytales. No, it doesn't work that way. This Hadeeth is a good case study. And that's why I'm spending some time doing it. We checked the it's not it is authentic stage two. Once the it's not as authentic, let us double check the variations of wordings of the same Hadeeth because and this is a very key factor that many people don't understand. One of the fundamental differences between the Quran and between the Hadith is that the Quran has been narrated by mutawatir by by too many people to count, and its wordings are preserved. Unlike the Hadith Hadees

has been narrated by meaning and not by wording. What do I mean by this? And by the way, there's this is no, everybody knows this. There's no controversy here. The scholars have headed this the Sahaba and tabula with their earlier narrators, it was something well known that they're not memorizing every word, and they can convey the meaning the gist of the meaning. And that's fine for pretty much most rulings and concepts. But sometimes, sometimes, some narrator will convey the gist of the meaning using a word that might have implications that are not what the prophet system intended. And so we gather the other versions of the head the other versions of the incident. So in

this hadith and Hadith of thauvin, it's seems to suggest that the gender is decided by both fluids of the man and the woman that is quite clear that in the hadith of Toba, and that, frankly, is somewhat problematic, because the gender is not decided by both the fluids of the man and the woman. But you go and you compile and you gather, and you discover that this incident occurred in front of a number of people, and Philbin was one of them. And another eyewitness was another evany Malik and unassuming Malik has a much more detailed version of this incident. And he mentions the name of the rabbi, and he mentions the story that occurred, and he mentions a totally different wording. not

totally, totally, but still enough that we can actually discover a whole different meaning here. And so what we discover is that the hadith of Oban was narrated by meaning and the concept was conveyed but one of these wordings proved to be problematic. And the hadith of honest diplomatic which I'm going to narrate now, was also conveyed by meaning, but it was closer to the original. So the hadith of unassisted nomadic is in Sahih Bukhari and Sahih Muslim and by the way, Bukhari and Muslim are obviously books that we respect the most after the Koran, and they are considered to be the best efforts ever made in the history of our religion for preserving Hadith. But behati is head and

shoulders above Muslim Buhari is unique in the history of the oma and I speak as somebody who has studied these books in detail and has a jaza or, you know, license to teach these books that Sahil Bahati the meticulous care that he mama Buhari undertook, it was super human like honestly, the more you study, the more you understand this person was blessed with the memory of a supercomputer type like literally what a man would body did, no other scholar have had even came close to and this is not the time to, to to go into that reality. But the point being that Sahil Buhari is way above any other book and that includes Sahih Muslim, and Imam Al Bukhari did not choose the version of

autobahn he chose the version of unasyn pneumatic and this is very interesting. What is the version on a cinematic honestly the medic said that Abdullah ibn Salaam, the Chief Rabbi of Medina.

So he mentions the name, Abdullah bin Salaam herd heard that the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam had come to Medina. And so he visited him. So now anessa Malik is giving us the name, and he's giving us a time early in the hedgerow after the Hydra. And

he said, I'm going to ask you three things that no one knows about other than a prophet. I'm going to ask you three things that no one knows about other than a prophet. And he asked him what is going to be you know the food of the people of Jenna, etc, etc. And then he said that and tell me where does the similarity of the child come from? Sometimes the child goes after the father and sometimes the child goes after the mother site. Notice here in this Hadeeth it's not the gender that is being asked. It is the similarity the record shaba looks where does the looks of the child come? Sometimes the child looks like the Father and the Father side. Sometimes the child looks like the mother on

the mother's side.

And the prophets of Allah Almighty Who was sending them said that, as for the Shabbat as for the looks of the child, then when the man has conjugal relations with his woman, if his fluid subaqua the fluid, I'll translate. Now subaqua means to win the race or it can mean soccer needs to be to be first, it is fluid, subaqua her fluid, then the child will look like him. But if her fluid subaqua his fluid, then the child looks like her, the child looks like her. Now, the word subaqua, it is true that some translators translated as the one who released first. And that's not an incorrect translation a sub o'clock can mean to be first. But the word subaqua also means to overpower the

word subaqua also means to be dominant, to be the first. And so you can easily translate this as saying that if the man's fluid overpowers the fluid of the woman, if the man's fluid is dominant over the fluid of the woman, then the child will go on him. And if the woman's fluid is dominant over that of the man, the child will go on her. Now, this translation fits in absolutely perfectly with the modern concept of genetics, because whichever of the genes overpowers the other, the child will be looking like that person. And in fact, even in modern biology, ask any student of genetics what is the word that is used dominant genes, this is subaqua, this is what it is dominant genes.

And dominant refers to the relationship between two versions of a gene like every single person, every one of us, every child, it receives two versions of each gene, no one has illegals from each parent. So if the ideals of the gene are different one earlier will be expressed, and that's the dominant one, and the effect of the other eliel will be suppressed, and that is recessive. And so every single parent will supply two versions of the same gene. And each of those genes, one of them will be the dominant and the other will be the recessive or the mast and SubhanAllah. This is exactly how we can understand the Hadith. If the man's dominant gene, if the man's gene dominates

over the woman is going to look like the man, if the woman's gene dominates over the man, it will look like the woman. So the point being that this Hadith, actually, far from being problematic, one could say there's an element of speaking about, you know, elemental hype that was not known at the time of the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wasallam. And by the way, this notion of preferencing the hadith of body over that of Muslim it actually goes back to many earlier scholars who didn't know anything about genetics and they are not problematizing the Hadid because of genetics, even though I am writes that

the that his teacher even taymiyah was asked about this hadith about you know, the gender and about the, the Shabbat or the relationship and the looks, and even taymiyah said that he felt that the wording that was more preserved better preserved was that of Annecy, demotic and additive owners in Makati, and the wording of filburn in Sahih Muslim was not that preserved, it was not it wasn't done properly. This is even taymiyah writing 800 years ago, for reasons have nothing to do with genetics has nothing to do with science. He's simply looking at it from a purely IDT standpoint, and he is saying that the hadith of Oban talks about gender. And I don't think this is what the process said.

Actually, the question was about Shebaa was about looks, and that's what the professor said. And that's what we also say over here that in fact, the Hadeeth Yes, you are correct. One version of it mentions gender. And that is there. And we say that this is not is authentic. But just because an is not has an outer sense of authenticity, there's something else that we look at. And that is that the version of the Hadith is not contradict something that is stronger than it. We look at the other narrations, we look at the stronger narrations. And we then try to find out that which wording would be the more precise and in this case, in this case, it is very obvious that what the profitsystem

was asked was, how does the child get the resemblance of the parent and the process and responded essentially, the dominant genes which one he didn't use the wording and in all likelihood, these wordings were not even known or but this is the miracle. And I have to point out here, this is not quite related to this talk here. But I do have to point out to you that this is the time to mention another fact and maybe in another q&a.

I'll go into more detail but I might my philosophy when it comes to

This whole notion of scientific miracles in the Quran and Sunnah is that we have to be super, super careful. And we should not read too much science into our sacred texts. And that is because the Quran and the Hadith of the Prophet sallallahu sallam, they are meant for our guidance, our ethics, our morality, our laws, our spirituality, our theology, the reason why Allah revealed the Quran is to tell us our purpose of life, to inform us of who he is, and what's going to happen to us after we die. That's the ultimate purpose of the Quran. The Quran was not revealed to be a book of biology or of medicine, or engineering or of architecture. And you know, in the 80s, there was this trend of

scientific miracles in the Quran, and I grew up in that era, and all of us who are above the age of 30, you know, we grew up hearing talks and reading books and whatnot, and we loved it. Let's be honest here, it increased our emaan we loved it. But you know, as we grew older, we began talking to people outside our faith and they began challenging our interpretations, many of us began to realize that you know, what we were reading in too much into these verses of verse might be ambiguous and vague. We read in way too much science, and it wasn't meant at all. So I mean, I remember growing up listening to this

speaker say, the Oran has predicted space travel, and I was a child, I was 11 years old, Mashallah the Oran predicted space travel. And what is the verse that is mentioned, so yamashiro, genuine ncns so I thought it went on for photo minocqua semi Well, it would be fun for the latter photo to elaborate upon so soltana here is the verse in, in sort of the Rockman, that all groups of gin and and and, and men, if you can pass through the boundaries of the heavens enter then pass through, you shall not pass through except for soul bond. And our speaker I was your child at the time I forgot his name. Even the speaker said, the soul bond here it is Rocket Power, that Allah is referencing

Rocket Power, that when you have the Rocket Power, you will go up to the moon Subhanallah Yanni honestly, we make a mockery of ourselves in front of people of other faiths when we read in that, you know, Allah predicted space travel, this verse has nothing to do with space travel, it has to do with the day of judgment and the jinn overhearing and what not. It's nothing to do with the space travel. And also, when we read in too much science, we actually open the door for people to then challenge us and say, well, you don't believe in that scientific theory, you say that your book is a book of science, but how about the theory of evolution, which by and large, and, you know, we'll

talk about that I'm doing my series of the profits and inshallah, one of the lectures I'll summarize, you know, the notion of of the theory of evolution, obviously, I don't believe that Adam, it has said I'm had a precedence in other species that I believe Allah created Adam, and Allah sent Adam down. But no scientist is going to say that every scientist by and large says, that is the revolution, then he's going to say, your book clearly then goes against science. And you're going to say, ah, but this and that. So here's the point, brothers and sisters, what are you very clear here, our eemaan in the Koran is not linked to science. Our eemaan in the Koran is not linked to its

conformity with modern theories, or classical theories. Science is our interpretation of the world, and much of it is right, and much of it is hypotheses. So when it's right, and the origin is in conformity Alhamdulillah when it's, there's a clash, then we look what is the meaning of the Quran, and what is the definitive notion of science, and we then have different ways to work. Beyond this, there can never be an actual clash, as I said many many times, there can be a perception of classes, so we are clashes. So we have to be clear here that in case there is a perceived conflict, it should not shake our belief in the Koran or sooner simply because the Quran and Sunnah did not come to tell

us about science. Rather, there are words in the Quran that describe nature. And those wordings are very precise for their timeframes the way Allah describes the embryo, the way Allah describes the cycle of the water, for example, right, that a lot talks about the rain coming down and being sent back up and whatnot. So the way Allah talks about the winds, you know, helping the clouds form, okay, yeah, fair enough. The the way that the Quran describes natural events, there is no question that they are ahead of their time that somebody who's an illiterate person in Arabia would not describe those phenomenon, the way that the Quran does. So we can say, the language of the Quran, it

conforms with the facts that we know yes, no problem. But to say that it predicted those facts to say that the Quran came to tell us about the Big Bang and to tell us, no, all of this is reading in too much. And we then open up a Pandora's box that I think it is unwise to do. So, bottom line, the brother asks a very good question and it is a question that methodologically we have to think about many other hadith of this nature as well. But generally

Broadly speaking, when we approach the tradition with an open mind, and we approach the with the knowledge of the sciences of Hades, that almost inevitably we discover that there's not necessarily a clash and that rather rather this was a perceived clash in our minds. And this is one case over here, the Hadeeth is not talking about gender, or else honestly perhaps then there might be an issue because the gender is not related to both fluids. Rather The idea is talking about resemblance and because of this, there is really absolutely no clash whatsoever. If anything, it is in conformity with what we know and Allah subhanho wa Taala knows best

he can