Pre-islamic Age of Ignorance: In the pre-islamic age of ignorance, when a girl child was born to a person, he felt ashamed of her and felt the need to stay away from people. Some of them would kill these daughters by burying them alive in the ground. The reason for this was that they were afraid that their daughters would be kidnapped and raped, or they were worried that their population would increase and they would become poor. When one of them was given the good news that he had a daughter, his face would turn black with sorrow. He avoids appearing to his acquaintances because of the bad news he has received. He ponders whether he should keep her or bury her in the ground, enduring the humiliation. Look, what a bad judgement they make![482] The verse indicates the ugly customs of the polytheists and draws attention to how bad their judgement is.[483]

If a person had made up his mind to kill her, he would not touch her until she was six inches tall, and when she reached that height, he would say to her mother, “Decorate the child and dress her in beautiful clothes. I will take her to her relatives.” But for this child, he was blowing a pit in the desert. So when he brought the child to the pit, he would say to the child, “Look there,” and then he would push the child behind him and throw earth into the pit until it was level with the ground. The following has also been suggested: When a pregnant woman was about to give birth, she would dig a hole. Then she would feel the labour pains of that pit. If it was a girl, she would throw her into the pit, and if it was a boy, she would hold him and protect him…[484]

There were two customs among the Arabs which obliged the husband to remain in his wife’s house and in her marriage, even though he had abandoned marital relations with her. One of them was adultery. The husband would say to his wife, “You are like my mother’s back to me”. Thus, the woman would not leave the marriage, but would remain in the marriage. According to the opinions of the commentators and the narrators, they used to do this out of anger when his wife gave birth to a girl. When she gave birth to a girl, they would order her to bury her child. If she did not, they would say, “You are like my mother’s back to me (you are my sister in this world and the next).” [485]

In a narration from Qatadah, the reason why the men of that tribe buried their daughters alive and killed them is given as “the fear that if the daughters were left alive and grew up, they would be captured and their honour would be trampled underfoot and they would be poor”; and it is recorded that in order to avoid this situation, they killed their daughters when they were young and kept dogs instead of them. [486]

İSLAM: The news of this behaviour, which shows that the people of pre-islamic age of ignorance had departed from nature, and the answers to their own justifications are reported as follows:

News: If good tidings were given to one of them of a daughter whom they attributed to Allah, the Most Merciful, he would be filled with anger and his face would turn black. [487]

Fear for sustenance: Do not kill your children for fear of poverty. It is We who provide for them and for you. Killing them is a grave offence.[488]

Who created you as females: He it is Who has given you the form He wills in the fertiliser beds. There is no god but Him. He is the All-willed and the All-wise.”[489] To Allah belongs the dominion of the heavens and the earth. He creates whom He wills and gives whom He wills a girl child and whom He wills a boy child. Or He gives both a boy and a girl. And He makes whom He wills barren. He is all-knowing, all-powerful.[490]

Question: When asked by what offence the girl buried alive was killed. [491]

Foolishness: Those who foolishly kill their children without any knowledge and slander Allah and forbid themselves the sustenance which He has given them, they are indeed losers. They have certainly gone astray and will not be guided.[492]

Nowadays: This is probably the most disgraceful situation that the one-world life has brought people away from their nature… Of course, the most enlightened level that has been reached as a result of people determining their own rules… In a Qur’anic verse, it is mentioned as follows about the corruption of the nature due to these baseless fabrications and the corruption of people’s own religions.

Allah (swt) says:

Just like this, these false partners have made it attractive to most of the polytheists to kill their own children, so that they may corrupt their nature and corrupt their religion. If Allah had willed, they could not have done so. So leave them to their baseless fabrications.[493]

How foolish the human being becomes when he uses his brain only to be sensitive to the pursuit of instinctive actions. So, you will make unlimited and incalculable use of those who are mothers at the moment, but you will kill the expectant mothers of the next generation because they are your own descendants, because “they will be involved in prostitution or we will have a shortage of sustenance”! Isn’t that fair? This idea contains two mindsets in it. The first one is the mentality of “Let me do it, but don’t let it be done to me”, and this is the understanding of justice of living without Islam. The second is the goal of living an unquestioning and unaccountable life with the aim of being strong by saying “Life consists of what I see”, which is the way of life of the materialist and capitalist mentality that continues to exist ideologically. Aren’t these already the areas of struggle of Islam? Nafs and one-worldly life… When people with such a mentality rule a society, the result would be disastrous. Fortunately, we do not live in the time of ignorance. Or are we?

The burial of the dead in China and India today is a good answer to this question. In a seminar held at Delhi University in India, Renuka Chowdhury, Minister of Women and Child Development, said that in the last 20 years some 10 million girls in her country have been killed by their parents either before birth or immediately after birth. Chowdhury reported that the way these newborn girls were killed was by putting tobacco in their mouths or in their mouths.

Should we assume that there is no abandonment to death in our time because there is no one around us who takes a girl child to a dug pit, pushes her into it and then covers her with earth, or should we say that death takes place in the formation, mentality, life and use of individuals? Does the how or the why of this lead us to the correct information we need? If the how is taken as a basis, since these people were in the desert, the killing of the girls was carried out by burying them in the ground. If the why is to be taken as a basis, it is one of the actions that emerged as a result of the acceptance of the society. Since actions are caused by causes, we believe that analysing the causes of the deaths will lead to a different truth.

Pre-islamic Age of Ignorance, they buried their daughters in the ground, but this was due to poverty and the fear that they would become prostitutes or slaves. And what about today! Are there not young girls today who live their lives as slaves for these reasons, sons who are sold out of fear for their livelihood, young girls who are turned to prostitution because they are poor? No girl says, “I will be a prostitute when I grow up”. Life brings them here. As we have already discussed, some people never have the opportunity to determine their destiny. Because there are other uncertainties that determine their destiny. A typical example of this can be seen in this example, namely the fact that young girls are deprived of their right to life even before they reach the age of reason. In this sense, they are buried alive because they regard themselves as living dead. Even more painful, they exist as a dead person who has been abandoned without being buried.

The author of the Qur’anic Commentary of Asr says the following on this subject: “Similar incidents in our time are caused by the same things and many evils are committed in the different atmosphere of the age of ignorance. For example:

a) Matter is taken as the basis and sacred values are pushed aside.

b) Women are used for commercial purposes in the name of equality and civilisation and their bodies are exposed and used as a means of advertisement.

c) Girls are separated from their families and wander in secluded places with unmarried men.

d) Under the name of beauty contests, the hips, legs and other organs of women and girls are evaluated according to certain measurements and offered to the lustful[494].

e) Under the name of dancing and chanteuse[495] on the stages, all kinds of immoral behaviours and words are used.

f) Entertainment nights are organised to dance with other people’s girls, women or men and to satisfy themselves, and all this is labelled “civilised life”. Those who oppose it are labelled as reactionary and bigoted and all hell breaks loose.

g) Under the name of so-called sects and spirituality, in the name of religion, women are promised paradises in the name of religion and inculcated that many evils are permissible in this world. By explaining that there is no need for prayers and similar worships, a new fabricated religion, disconnected from the divine religions, is put forward and sometimes labelled as “sect”, sometimes as “Islam”, and sometimes as “psychicism”. “[496]

Has Allah favoured daughters over sons?

What are you being?

What kind of judgement are you making?

Do you not think at all?

Or do you have clear proofs?

Bring your Book, if you are truthful.[497]

[482] Verses 57-59 in Surah Nahl

[483] Abu Ja’far Muhammad b. Jarir al-Tabari, Tabari Tafsir, Hisar Publishing House: 5/211.

[484] Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzi, Tafsir al-Kebir Mefātihu’l-ghayb, Akçag Publications: 22/527-528

[485] İzzet Derveze, The life of the Prophet Muhammad according to the Qur’an, yöneliş publications. C. 1, p. 130

[486] Bedreddin Çetiner, Esbab-ı nüzul, çağrı publications: 1/385-386

[Surat al-Zuhruf, Verse 17

[488] Surah Isra, Verse 31

[Surah Ali Imran, Verse 6

[490] Surat al-Shu’ra, Verses 49-50

[491] Surat al-Takvir, Verses 8-9

[492] Surat al-An’am, Verse 140

[493] Surat al-An’am, Verse 137

[494] The one who is excessively fond of lust and sexual desires

[495] Female singer

[496] Celal Yıldırım, The Qur’anic Commentary of Asr in the light of science, Anadolu Publications: 7/3336

[Surah Saffat, Verses 153-157