# Can a pregnancy last for years, as was said of Imam Malik's birth? *A pregnancy of three years? Phantom pregnancies and the science of the age* - URL: https://muftiabulayth.org/r/vhqvm47pns0/s/2/ - Date: 2023-03-10 · Kind: lesson · Transcript tier: machine · Recording: The Legendary Imam Malik Ibn Anas | Mufti Abu Layth (5:36–12:43) - Status: latest answer on its topic; general teaching - Watch from the start of the segment: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VhqVM47pNS0&t=336s - Recording page: https://muftiabulayth.org/r/vhqvm47pns0/ **Topics:** Imam Malik; Medical questions; Science, the universe and big questions **Summary (not a quotation; machine-made, unchecked):** No: reports of years-long pregnancies are best explained by phantom pregnancies followed by real conception, not dismissed as lies or taken literally. **Checked position (checked by two independent reviews, not by the channel):** Mufti Abu Layth says the old reports of pregnancies lasting years, as with Imam Malik's, can be explained by phantom pregnancies. **Evidence, his words at 6:53:** “so research in recent times has shown and several Muslim researchers and medical researchers have found have researched what they call Phantom pregnancies” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VhqVM47pNS0&t=413s) ## Longer summary Mufti Abu Layth says many report Malik saying his elders told him his mother carried him for three or four years. He says we neither accept this dogmatically nor call those people liars, since they gained nothing by it and knew what a year was, and turns to research by Muslim and medical researchers, including a Saudi researcher's ethnographic work among bedouin-like settlements, on phantom pregnancies. He explains how a woman may develop the symptoms of pregnancy and a bloated abdomen for months or years, then later conceive, so that people count the pregnancy from the start of the phantom one. He says scholars then went by the science of their age, citing Imam Malik telling people asking about postnatal bleeding and menstruation to ask the women of their region. ## Sources and names cited - Imam Malik - phantom pregnancy (pseudocyesis) - Matt Walsh - nifas (postnatal bleeding) ## Transcript (machine tier, 5:36–12:43) [4:58] lineage that we're dealing with that you've got wow these people have played such a role in Islam and Imam Malik's father anas he they say Imam Malik does transmit Hadith from him so he may have had some small presence in the Islamic tradition but not much his brother so Imam Malik's Uncle Abu Sohail is known for transmitting Hadith and Imam Malik does transmit from his uncle about swahil so this is the family his father Anis [5:36] his wife Imam Malik's mother is Alia um she gives birth to right so his birth as well has some miraculous story to it as many superheroes do so many people transmit from Imam Malik him saying that oh they told me obviously like he says my you know my relatives and Elders told me that my mother was pregnant for three or four years with me now this is an interesting point because it goes back to once again this [6:14] discussion we'd had before about how do we approach Islam and science so Imam Malik he says well look this is what people said so you wouldn't really know any different because you would just know that look most people have a baby within let's say eight to nine months in the in this this is how you you would know the average maybe some people have a you know they well to survive given their environment now okay many women claimed to be pregnant for [6:53] several years the gestation period now how do we explain this because we know that's impossible so once again we don't take this um see we don't take a dogmatic View well because these people said it must be true but at the same time we're not saying these people were lying because that's not what they you know they don't get anything out of lying about this and it's not that they were ignorant about time they don't understand what one year is or three years are so research in recent times [7:33] has shown and several Muslim researchers and medical researchers have found have researched what they call Phantom pregnancies and there's a great um Saudi medical research who's done a lot of work on this and he's done multiple conferences and he's been to these uh um remote uh almost bedouin-like settlements of Arabs and spoken to them where they still have these myths that they where some people feel that such and such woman has been pregnant for two years or and it's interesting [8:13] the kind of ethnographic studies that have now been conducted and they shed light so in a phantom pregnancy what happens is a woman and this might come into Matt Walsh's what is a woman but a woman takes on the symptoms of pregnancy so she feels some sickness uh with irregularities of discharge and um a cessation or a lack of menstrual [8:51] cycles she develops a bloating a bloated a bloating in in that in the lower abdomen region and not just yeah the kind of lower gut around what would be the womb it gets bloated now the signs are that she's pregnant so people especially given an absence of uh pregnancy test checks and stuff like this so the women in the village or in the the nomadic settlement would say oh well she's pregnant you know she's throwing up she hasn't had her period she's late therefore she's pregnant [9:30] and what would happen is this is not a pregnancy now whatever it is there's an abnormality that has resulted in a bloat thickness of around the the womb region which is tied in with why she's not having any menstruation and this has also resulted in an internal hormonal physiological uh presence which has made her sick has made her hormonal has made her so she thinks she's going through a pregnancy but it doesn't continue to it just has some bloating that it is perceptible but [10:08] it doesn't seem to grow beyond that it doesn't grow into like a full you know fetus pregnancy so people assume she is pregnant and she just stays like that for months and months and sometimes a year sometimes two years now given modern medicine and and technology and we would clearly know this woman is not pregnant and if she was to resort to medical assistance she would be given the aid that would then restore her to her the homeostasis that she should should be at [10:45] but now minus that and the social narrative that she is pregnant she assumes she is pregnant and what happens during this time sometimes some of these women actually become pregnant so now the pregnancy does start to develop so let's say in the second year or in the third year it now starts to grow more and more and more and then she has a baby so people around her don't count the pregnancy from the accounting from the beginning of the phantom pregnancy and they say well um they say that [11:25] um these I was just reading women actually give positive pregnancy tests hormonal issue or shukran so this is where you get in the past in some of the the books where people the scholars don't know in that long ago they're just going by science of the age it's like when Imam Malik is asked about uh postnatal bleedings or asked about menstrual cycles and asked about he just says look you just asked the women of your region because you would be an extension of them [12:04] ethnically and so on and you'd be similar to them so because they don't know they what are they going to say is it you know some people say 60 days it's 40 days it's this he just says look just ask the women what is it and they'll give you an average so you just go with that so yeah so this was the birth of uh Imam Malik as a young child he um was born and raised in Medina his family were religious but they had some freedoms as they did they weren't um ## Cite Mufti Abu Layth Archive, segment VhqVM47pNS0/s/2. https://muftiabulayth.org/r/vhqvm47pns0/s/2/ Not a fatwa: these answers were given to specific people at specific times. Ask a qualified scholar about your own situation.