وَ رَہۡبَانِیَّۃَۨ ابۡتَدَعُوۡہَا مَا کَتَبۡنٰہَا عَلَیۡہِمۡ اِلَّا ابۡتِغَآءَ رِضۡوَانِ اللّٰہِ فَمَا رَعَوۡہَا حَقَّ رِعَایَتِہَا ۚ فَاٰتَیۡنَا الَّذِیۡنَ اٰمَنُوۡا مِنۡہُمۡ اَجۡرَہُمۡ ۚ وَ کَثِیۡرٌ مِّنۡہُمۡ فٰسِقُوۡنَ ﴿۲۷
Quranic Verse (57:27):
“And monasticism — they invented it themselves; We had not prescribed it for them — only seeking Allah’s pleasure, yet they did not observe it as it ought to have been observed.⁵³ As for those among them who believed, We gave them their reward, but most of them are transgressors.“⁵⁴
Surah Al-Hadid — Footnotes 52, 53, and 54
(Translation from Tafheem ul-Quran by Sayyid Abul Ala Mawdudi)
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Footnote 52
- This word is pronounced both as Rahbāniyyat and Rahbāniyyat. Its root is rahb, which means fear. Rahbāniyyat (with fatha on ra) means “the doctrine of those seized by fear,” while rahbāniyyat (with kasra on ra) means “the doctrine of the fear-stricken.” Technically, the term refers to a person who — out of fear (whether fear of someone’s oppression or fear of the weaknesses of his own self) — abandons the world entirely, flees from worldly life, and takes refuge in forests and mountains, or withdraws into corners of seclusion.
Footnote 53
- The original Arabic phrase is illā-btigha’a riḍwāni’llāh (“only in seeking the pleasure of Allah”). This can be interpreted in two ways:
∙ First interpretation: We had not prescribed monasticism upon them; rather, what We had prescribed was that they seek to attain Allah’s pleasure.
∙ Second interpretation: This monasticism was not something We had ordained; rather, they imposed it upon themselves in their own pursuit of Allah’s pleasure.
In either case, the verse clearly establishes that monasticism is something alien to Islam and has never been part of the true religion. This is precisely what the Prophet ﷺ declared: “Lā rahbāniyyata fi’l-Islām” — “There is no monasticism in Islam” (Musnad Ahmad).
In another hadith, the Prophet ﷺ said: “Rahbāniyyatu hādhihi’l-ummati’l-jihādu fī sabīli’llāh” — “The monasticism of this Ummah is jihad in the way of Allah” (Musnad Ahmad; Musnad Abi Ya’la). That is to say, the path of spiritual elevation for this Ummah is not renunciation of the world but striving in the way of Allah; and this Ummah does not flee in fear of trials into forests and mountains, but confronts them through jihad in the path of God.
A well-known agreed-upon narration in Bukhari and Muslim records that certain Companions made the following resolutions: one said he would pray the entire night without fail, another said he would fast every day without ever breaking it, and a third said he would never marry and would have nothing to do with women. When the Messenger of Allah ﷺ heard this, he said:
“By Allah, I am the most fearful of Allah among you and the most God-conscious of you — yet my way is that I fast and I break the fast, I pray at night and I also sleep, and I marry women. Whoever turns away from my Sunnah has nothing to do with me.”
Anas (may Allah be pleased with him) reports that the Messenger of Allah ﷺ used to say:
“Do not impose hardship upon yourselves, lest Allah impose hardship upon you. A people once imposed hardship upon themselves, and so Allah imposed hardship upon them in turn — and what remains of them are those remnants in monasteries and churches.” (Abu Dawud)
Footnote 54
- That is, they fell into a double error:
∙ The first error: They imposed upon themselves restrictions that Allah had never commanded.
∙ The second error: Even those restrictions which they had self-imposed — believing them to be a means of attaining Allah’s pleasure — they did not honour as they should have been honoured, and they committed acts that brought upon them, instead of Allah’s pleasure, His very wrath.
To fully understand this passage, it is worth casting a glance at the history of Christian monasticism.
A Historical Overview of Christian Monasticism
For two hundred years after the time of Jesus (peace be upon him), the Christian Church was entirely unfamiliar with monasticism. Yet from the very beginning, the seeds and notions that give birth to it were latent within Christianity. The elevation of renunciation and asceticism as the moral ideal, and the view that the celibate life is superior to marriage and worldly engagement — these are the very foundations of monasticism, and both were present in Christianity from its earliest period.
In particular, celibacy was equated with sanctity, so it became increasingly distasteful to regard those engaged in religious service as fit to marry, raise children, or concern themselves with domestic matters. By the third century, this tendency had developed into a serious problem, and monasticism began spreading through Christianity like an epidemic.
Historically, there were three principal causes:
First: In the ancient pagan society, licentiousness, moral corruption, and worldliness had spread with such intensity that Christian scholars, rather than charting a moderate course to counter it, took the path of extremism. They emphasized chastity to such a degree that the relationship between man and woman — even within the bounds of marriage — came to be regarded as inherently impure. They condemned worldliness with such vehemence that ultimately, any form of property ownership became a sin for a religious person, and the moral ideal became to be utterly destitute and world-renouncing in every respect. Likewise, in reaction to the hedonism of pagan society, they went to the opposite extreme: the annihilation of the self, the mortification of the soul, and the extinguishing of all desires became the very purpose of morality — and inflicting physical torture on one’s body through various austerities came to be seen as the pinnacle and proof of spiritual attainment.
Second: When Christianity entered its era of success and began spreading among the general populace, the Church, in its zeal to expand the faith, absorbed into its fold every form of corruption that was popular among the masses. Saint worship replaced the old pagan deities. Statues of Horus and Isis gave way to the veneration of Christ and Mary. The Saturnalia festival was replaced by Christmas. Ancient amulets, spells, divination, the dispelling of spirits — all of these were adopted by Christian dervishes. Similarly, since the common people associated holiness with filth, nakedness, and dwelling in caves or dens, the Christian Church came to accept this very model of sainthood, and hagiographic literature became filled with accounts of such figures and their miracles.
Third: Christians possessed no detailed divine law and no clear prophetic precedent by which to define the boundaries of their religion. They had abandoned the Mosaic Law, and the Gospels alone contained no comprehensive code of guidance. Consequently, Christian scholars — influenced partly by foreign philosophies and practices, and partly by their own inclinations — introduced one innovation after another into the faith. Monasticism was one such innovation. The scholars and leaders of the Christian religion derived its philosophy and methodology from Buddhist monks, Hindu yogis and ascetics, ancient Egyptian anchorites, Persian Manichaeans, and the Neo-Platonic followers of Plotinus — and declared this very system to be the method of spiritual purification, the path to spiritual elevation, and the means of drawing near to God.
Those who committed this error were no ordinary people. From the third century to the seventh century CE — the era of Quranic revelation — virtually every man regarded as a great scholar, revered leader, or Imam of Christianity in the East and West — Saint Athanasius, Saint Basil, Saint Gregory of Nazianzus, Saint Chrysostom, Saint Ambrose, Saint Jerome, Saint Augustine, Saint Benedict, Gregory the Great — all were themselves monks and zealous champions of monasticism. It was through their efforts that monasticism became established in the Church.
The Origins and Spread of Monasticism
History shows that monasticism among Christians began in Egypt. Its founder was Saint Anthony (b. 250 CE, d. 350 CE), considered the first Christian monk. He established the first monastery at Pispir in the region of Fayyum (now known as Deir al-Maymun), and later a second on the shores of the Red Sea, now called Deir Mar Antonios. The foundational rules of Christian monasticism are derived from his writings and teachings.
Following this beginning, the movement spread through Egypt like a flood, with monasteries for monks and nuns established everywhere, some housing as many as three thousand monks at a time. In 325 CE, another Christian holy man, Pachomius, appeared within Egypt and founded ten large monasteries for monks and nuns. The movement then spread to Syria, Palestine, and various regions of Africa and Europe.
The Church’s institutional structure initially faced serious difficulty with monasticism, because while it regarded renunciation, celibacy, and poverty as the spiritual ideal, it could not formally declare marriage, procreation, and property ownership to be sinful. Eventually, through the influence of figures such as Saint Athanasius (d. 373 CE), Saint Basil (d. 379 CE), Saint Augustine (d. 430 CE), and Gregory the Great (d. 609 CE), many rules of monasticism were formally incorporated into the Church’s system.
Characteristics of This Monastic Innovation
(1) Bodily Torture Through Severe Austerities
Every monk competed with others to outdo them in this regard. The “virtues” recorded in Christian hagiographies include the following:
∙ Saint Macarius of Alexandria carried eighty pounds of weight on his body at all times. For six months, he slept in a swamp while poisonous flies bit his naked body. His disciple, Saint Eusebius, exceeded even his master: he carried 150 pounds and spent three years inside a dry well.
∙ Saint Sabinus ate only corn that had been soaking in water for a month until it became putrid.
∙ Saint Bessarion spent forty days lying in thorny thickets and for forty years never lay his back upon the ground.
∙ Saint Pachomius spent fifteen years — by one account, fifty years — without ever laying his back on the earth.
∙ One saint, John, stood in worship for three years, never sitting or lying down, resting only against a rock; his sole nourishment was the Eucharist brought to him every Sunday.
∙ Saint Simeon Stylites (390–449 CE), counted among the greatest Christian saints, fasted the entire forty days before every Easter. Once he stood on one foot for a full year. Eventually, he constructed a sixty-foot column near the fortress of Simaan in northern Syria, the top of which was only three feet in circumference with a railing. On this column he spent thirty full years, exposed to sun, rain, cold, and heat, never descending. His disciples climbed a ladder to bring him food and to clean his filth. He then tied himself to the column with a rope until the rope embedded itself in his flesh, the flesh began to rot, and worms infested it. Whenever a worm fell from his sores, he would pick it up and place it back, saying: “Eat what God has given you.” Christian people came from far and wide to visit him, and when he died, the verdict of the Christian community was that he was the finest example of a Christian saint.
The hagiographies of that era are filled with such accounts: one saint was silent for thirty years and was never seen to speak; another chained himself to a rock; another roamed forests subsisting on grass and herbs; another always carried a heavy load; another kept his limbs bound in iron rings; some lived in animal dens, dry wells, or old graves; others remained naked at all times, covering themselves only with their long hair, crawling on the ground.
After their deaths, their bones were preserved in monasteries. The author notes that he personally witnessed at the Monastery of Saint Catherine at the foot of Mount Sinai a veritable “library” of such bones — shelves of skulls arranged neatly, shelves of foot-bones, shelves of hand-bones, and one saint whose complete skeleton was kept behind glass.
(2) Filth and Extreme Aversion to Cleanliness
Bathing or allowing water to touch the body was considered contrary to piety. Saint Athanasius praises Saint Anthony with great reverence, noting that he never washed his feet until the day he died. Saint Abraham, upon converting to Christianity, went five full years without washing his face or feet. A celebrated nun named Silvia never allowed water to touch any part of her body except her fingers. Of 130 nuns in one convent, it is written that they never washed their feet, and the very mention of bathing made them shudder.
(3) The Practical Abolition of Married Life
All religious writings of the fourth and fifth centuries are saturated with the view that celibacy is the highest moral value, and that chastity means complete abstention from sexual relations — even between husband and wife. The mortification of bodily desire was considered essential because, in their view, pleasure and sin were synonymous; even joy was seen as tantamount to forgetting God. Saint Basil even prohibited laughing and smiling.
For a monk, it was mandatory not merely to avoid marriage but to avoid even seeing the face of a woman; if already married, he was to leave his wife and depart. Women were similarly taught that if they wished to enter the heavenly kingdom, they must remain virgins; if already married, they must separate from their husbands.
Saint Jerome — one of the most prominent Christian scholars — declared that a woman who remained a lifelong virgin for Christ’s sake was Christ’s bride, and her mother thereby held the honour of being God’s mother-in-law. He also wrote: “The first task of the spiritual wayfarer is to chop down the tree of marital relations with the axe of chastity.”
The effects were immediate: when a man or woman was seized by religious fervour, one of its first consequences was the permanent end of a happy married life. Since Christianity barred divorce and separation, husband and wife would simply live apart while remaining formally married.
∙ Saint Nilus, a father of two, was seized by the monastic impulse and left his weeping wife behind.
∙ Saint Ammon, on his wedding night, preached to his bride about the impurity of marital relations, and both agreed to live apart for life.
∙ Saint Abraham fled from his wife on their wedding night. Saint Alexis did the same.
The Church’s institutional structure resisted these extreme views for about three centuries. Eventually, the Synod of Rome in 386 CE advised all clergy to withdraw from marital relations, and the following year Pope Siricius decreed that any clergyman who married — or who maintained relations with an existing wife — was to be deposed. Saints Jerome, Ambrose, and Augustine strongly supported this ruling, and after brief resistance it was enforced with full severity throughout the Western Church.
(4) The Severing of Bonds with Parents, Siblings, and Children
In the eyes of Christian saints, love for one’s parents, love for siblings, and love for one’s own children were all deemed sinful. Spiritual elevation, they believed, required the complete severing of all such bonds. The hagiographies contain heart-rending accounts:
∙ A monk named Evagrius, deep in desert austerities, received letters from his yearning parents. Fearing that reading them might awaken human love in his heart, he burned them unopened.
∙ Saint Theodore’s mother and sister arrived at his monastery with letters of intercession from numerous clergy, begging for only a single glimpse of him. He refused to appear before them.
∙ Saint Marcus’s mother travelled to his monastery and begged the abbot to command him to face her. He complied only by disguising himself and closing his eyes — neither mother nor son recognized the other.
∙ Saint Poemen and his six brothers were in a desert monastery in Egypt. After many years, their aged mother learned their whereabouts and came to see them. At the sight of their mother from afar, the brothers fled to their cells and bolted the doors. The mother sat outside weeping and cried out: “I walked all this distance in my old age only to see your faces. What harm would it do you to let me see you? Am I not your mother?” The saints did not open the door, and told her: “We shall meet you in the presence of God.”
∙ The most sorrowful account is that of Saint Simeon Stylites, who abandoned his parents and remained missing for twenty-seven years. His father died of grief. His mother, upon learning that he was alive and had become celebrated, travelled to his monastery. No woman was permitted to enter. She pleaded endlessly for her son to either admit her or step outside to show her his face. The “man of God” flatly refused. For three days and three nights she lay at the gate of the monastery, and there she died. Only then did the saint emerge — he wept over her corpse and prayed for her forgiveness.
Such was the treatment meted out to sisters and children as well. The hagiography of a man named Mutius recounts: he was a man of means who, suddenly overwhelmed by religious fervour, went to a monastery with his eight-year-old only son. The abbot required him, for the sake of his spiritual development, to purge his heart of all paternal love. The child was separated from him. For a prolonged period, the boy was subjected to various cruelties before his very eyes. Finally, the abbot commanded him to carry the child and throw him into the river with his own hands. He was on the verge of doing so when the monks intervened and saved the child. It was then declared that he had truly attained the rank of sainthood.
Saint Jerome expressed this philosophy thus: “Though your nephew cling to your neck with his arms, though your mother invoke her milk to hold you back, though your father lie down before you to block your path — still leave them all, trample your father’s body underfoot, and without shedding a single tear, hasten toward the banner of the Cross. In this matter, cruelty is itself piety.”
Saint Gregory records: “A young monk could not banish the love of his parents from his heart and one night secretly slipped away to visit them. God punished this transgression by causing him to die the moment he returned to the monastery. When his body was placed in the ground, the earth refused to accept it — repeatedly buried, it was cast out again and again — until Saint Benedict placed a relic upon his chest, whereupon the grave accepted him.”
A certain monk was said to have suffered torment for three days after death because she could not root out love for her mother from her heart. And one holy man was praised on the grounds that “he was never harsh to anyone except his own relatives.”
(5) Sectarian Violence as a Consequence of Deadened Human Feeling
The practice of hardheartedness toward one’s nearest kin caused all human feeling to atrophy in these individuals. The inevitable result was that toward those with whom they had religious disagreements, they perpetrated extreme cruelty and oppression. By the fourth century, Christianity had produced eighty to ninety sects. Saint Augustine counted eighty-eight sects in his own time. These sects harboured intense mutual hatred — and it was monks who both stoked the flames and led the charge to destroy opposing groups.
Alexandria was a principal arena of sectarian conflict. The bishop of the Arian faction attacked the party of Athanasius: virgin nuns were dragged from monasteries, stripped naked, beaten with thorny branches, and branded with hot irons to compel them to recant. When the Catholic faction gained the upper hand in Egypt, it did the same to the Arians — and it is widely believed that Arius himself was poisoned to death.
On another occasion, the monk-followers of Saint Cyril in Alexandria rioted, seized a nun of the opposing sect, brought her to their church, killed her, tore her body limb from limb, and burned her remains. Rome was no different: upon the death of Pope Liberius in 366 CE, two factions put forward rival candidates for the papacy, resulting in bloody conflict in which 137 corpses were removed from a single church in one day.
(6) Worldly Accumulation Alongside Outward Renunciation
Despite their professions of renunciation, the accumulation of worldly wealth proceeded unchecked. By the beginning of the fifth century, the Bishop of Rome dwelt in palaces and rode in processions whose pomp rivalled that of the emperor. Saint Jerome in the late fourth century complained that many bishops hosted banquets that put those of governors to shame.
The flow of wealth toward monasteries and churches reached flood-proportions by the seventh century — the era of Quranic revelation. The masses were taught that the only way to obtain forgiveness for a grave sin was to offer donations at the shrine of a saint or to make gifts to a monastery or church. The very world that monks had sworn to flee thus came pouring at their feet. This decline was further hastened by the fact that once the extraordinary austerities of monks generated popular reverence for them, many worldly-minded individuals donned monastic garb and joined their ranks — conducting a most lucrative business of acquiring worldly goods under the guise of world-renunciation, outstripping even the most ambitious worldlings.
(7) Moral Collapse as the Inevitable Result of War Against Human Nature
Monasticism’s war against human nature repeatedly ended in defeat — and when it fell, it fell badly. Some monastic exercises involved monks and nuns living together in the same place, and at times sharing the same bed in what was described as an advanced exercise in self-mastery. Saint Evagrius praises certain Palestinian monks for having, as he claims, gained such control over their passions that they could bathe together with women and be untouched by feelings for them, even through bodily contact and embrace. Bathing, though deeply frowned upon in monasticism, was apparently permitted in such forms for the purpose of practising self-mortification.
The result was inevitable. Saint Gregory of Nyssa (d. 396 CE) writes that Palestine had become a den of immorality. Human nature never fails to take its revenge on those who declare war on it. The story of moral collapse into which monasticism ultimately plunged — from the eighth to the eleventh century — is the most disgraceful chapter in religious history. A tenth-century Italian bishop wrote: “If the laws against the immorality of the clergy were actually enforced, no one would escape punishment except boys — and if illegitimate children were also excluded from church service, perhaps not even a single boy would remain among its servants.”
The writings of medieval authors are filled with complaints: that convents of nuns had become dens of immorality; that within their walls newborn children were being killed; that clergy were engaged in unlawful relations even with forbidden relatives; that monasteries had seen the spread of crimes against nature; and that the practice of confession in churches had itself become an instrument of corruption.
From these detailed accounts, one can properly grasp what the Quran is pointing to here — by mentioning the innovation of monasticism and the failure to honour even that — regarding the corruption that had overtaken Christianity.
Confirmed by cloud the accuracy of the references given in the tafseer
“Conclusion: Mawdudi’s historical scholarship in this footnote is remarkably accurate and well-sourced for a mid-20th century Islamic scholar writing without modern digital databases. The core claims are all verifiable from independent Western historical sources, including primary sources like Ammianus Marcellinus. The minor errors are insignificant relative to the overall reliability of the account.”
Messages from Quran 