7. SUNNA & HADITH
The Sources of Islam
are, in order of importance:- (1) Allah, (2) Quran,
(3) Hadith, (4) Aql (Intelligence or the use of the
faculties, for observation, reasoning and questioning. A distinction can be
made between Tafsir, Qias,
Ijma, Istihsaan, Istislaah). (5) Urf and Adat (Practices and Customs).
It is supposed by most Muslims
that the Quran is the first source of Islam. But this can be refuted on the
following grounds:-
(a) We accept the Quran
only because it is a revelation from Allah.
(b) The Quran tells us
that no one can accept or understand the Quran except when guided by Allah.
10:101
(c) The Quran says:- ”Lo! The
guidance of Allah Himself is sufficient guidance.” 2:120
(d) Muslims must accept
that Allah has sent scriptures other than the Quran, specially the Torah and
the Gospel.
(e) Islam is continuous
with the religion sent through Abraham, Jacob, Moses, Jesus and many other
prophets sent throughout the world. All true religion is Islam. The word Muslim
is applied to all who submit to Allah whatever Prophet they follow. 2:213, 3:84
5:48 5:69, 10:48 22:78
(f) No distinction is
to be made between the different Prophets and between them and Allah because
they all submit to Allah, though some excel over others. 2:253, 285, 4:150-151,
3:81
There is no dispute
among Muslims that the Quran is a fundamental source of Islam. Some go as far
as saying that it is the only acceptable source. But in view of the above this
cannot be accepted. But, though caution is required, it is also unacceptable
owing to the following:-
The Hadith are the
third source of Islam after the Quran. These are books containing the
traditions (Sunna), reports by third parties of the sayings and doings of the
Prophet Muhammad and his companions. They are equivalent to the Christian
Gospels. There are several compilations of these traditions in two sets - those
honoured by the Sunnis and those honoured by the Shiahs. The Sunnis have six
Authentic Books by Bukhari, Muslim, AbuDaud, Ibn Maja, Tirmidhi and
al-Nasa‘i. The Shiahs have four, by al-Kulaini, ibn Babuwayh, al-Murtada
and Jafar Muhammad al-Tusi.
In order to assess the
importance of the Hadith the following facts should be noted:-
(1) The Sunna is
justified as follows:-
(a) Most people have no
experience of God. It is a Prophet who receives revelation from Allah and tells
us about Allah. There can be no religion without a Prophet. He is the bridge
between Allah and mankind.
(b) The Quran tells us:-
"Verily in the
Messenger of Allah ye have a good example for him who looks unto Allah and the
Last Day, and Remembers Allah much." 33:21
"Say (O Muhammad
unto mankind: If ye love Allah, follow me; Allah will love you and forgive you
your sins. Allah is Forgiving, Merciful." 3:31
"But nay, by thy
Lord, they will not believe in truth until they make thee (Muhammad) judge of
what is in dispute between them and find within themselves no dislike of that
which you decide and submit with full submission....whoso obeys Allah AND the
Messenger, they are those unto whom Allah hath shown favour, of the Prophets
and the saints and the martyrs and the righteous. The best of company are
they." 4:65, 69
(c) There have been
other Prophets, but though Muslims are required to make no distinction between
the Prophets, it is obvious that each succeeding Prophet brings something that
is suitable for his times and the coming age, and he brings something new and
adds to the religion. Thus religion is completed through the Prophet Muhammad
(saw) and it the Quran which he brought which tells us that all the Prophets
are to be accepted. Muslims are now distinct from other religions by the fact
that they follow the perfected Islam which comes through Muhammad (saw) and not
a previous one. However, it is important to realise that this religion is not called
Mohammedanism, but Islam. It is Universal.
(d) The following verse
has been used not only to establish the authority of the Prophet but also of
others, particularly some of the descendants of the Prophet as Imams.
"O
ye who believe! Obey
Allah and obey the Messenger and those of you who are in authority; and if ye
have a dispute concerning any matter, refer it to Allah and the Messenger if ye
are in truth believers in Allah and the Last Day. That is better and more
seemly in the end.2 4:59
This verse does not, in
fact, require us to submit a disagreement to this third kind of authority and
does not establish the authority of Imams in general or any Imam in particular.
This third type of authority may consist of those whom the Prophet or the
Caliphs had appointed over a community to fulfil some kind of administrative
function. It could apply today to government officials. An authority could be
anyone who has achieved excellence as a result of piety, research and knowledge
or ability. An expert or teacher is an authority for the pupil or non-expert.
Asking Allah could be done through prayer, studying the scriptures,
exploration, investigating or scientific research. While the Prophet was alive people could ask him, but now that he has departed one
could consult his Sunna.
"Lo! We reveal
unto thee the Scripture with the Truth, that you may judge between mankind by
that which Allah shows you..." 4:105
See also 2:104, 6:46,
20:2-4, 33:6, 21, 36:2 68:4, 72:15-16
(2) The main objections
to the Hadith and the Sunna as sources of Islam are that this involves
idolatry. Allah has no partners and Islam requires exclusive submission to
Allah. The Quran asks us to judge all things by the Quran. It is the criterion.
2:213, 3:55, 6:45, 25:1, 86:13 54:6 6:154
Christians idolised
their Prophet so much that they elevated him to the status of God, and then in
order to retain Unity had to invent the doctrine of the Trinity. Apart from the
Quran, the Prophet (saw) himself insisted that he and all Prophets were human
beings who had submitted to Allah and is reported to have told his followers
not to idolise him as the Christians had done with Jesus.
According to one Hadith
the Prophet is reported to have said:-
"I leave behind
me two things for your guidance, the Quran and my Sunna."
But this argument gets
us into a vicious circle. If we reject the Sunna then we must also reject this
report. We must, of course, then also reject the report forbidding us to
idolise him. On the other hand if we reject the Sunna, then we disobey the
Quran which requires us to obey the Messenger. Some Muslims reject Hadith on
the grounds that they not the Sunna of the Prophet but reports by others and
collections by third parties. But that is like saying the Quran is not the Word
of God but reports by others collected under the instructions of the Caliph
Uthman. The rejection of Hadith as a whole cannot, therefore, be justified.
However, there is no
question of making the Hadith equal to the Quran. The Quran contains that which
was directly revealed to the Prophet and the Hadith contain reports of what he
said and did as a leader of the Umma. They are not revelations but
interpretations and applications of the revelations. We do not reject the text
books on science, engineering, history, law or any other subject. We need not,
therefore, reject the Hadith either.
(3) The word Hadith
means news, story or message and the word Sunna means law, custom, behaviour or
system. The Prophet was said to be the Quran in action. As a person who had Surrendered to Allah the Prophet lived his life according to
the Quran. It is, therefore, argued that there is no separate Sunna of the
Prophet. In the Quran, the words Hadith and Sunna are used as follows:-
"And of mankind
is he who upholds vain hadith in order to mislead others from the path of Allah
without knowledge, and to make it a mockery. For such there is a shameful
doom." 31:6
"Allah hath now
revealed the fairest of hadith, a scripture self-consistent..." 39:23
"These are the
signs of Allah which We recite unto thee (Muhammad)
with truth. Then which hadith besides the revelation of Allah will they
believe?" 45:6
It is obvious,
therefore, that we ought to make no distinction between the Quran and the words
and actions of the Prophet. This also follows from the verse which tells us
that we must make no distinction between the Prophets and Allah (4:150-151) and
that obeying the Prophet is obeying Allah (4:80).
The Sunna is judged by
the Quran, not the other way round. There cannot be a contradiction between the
Sunna and the Quran. There may, however, be errors in reporting or
understanding those reports. The Quran must take priority. However, the Sunna
may be regarded as interpretations or application of the Quran for particular
situations.
(4)
The Hadith were not written down during the life time of the Prophet Muhammad,
nor during the lives of the first four Righteous Caliphs. The Prophet forbade the writing down of
his words other than the Quran, which was direct revelation, because he did not
want his words to be mixed up with the Quran. The Four Righteous Caliphs did
likewise. The Hadith were, therefore, an oral tradition until they were
collected and written down between 210 and 410 years after the Prophet‘s
death. There may well be errors in it, due to lapses of memory and distortions
in the transmission.
(5) After the death of
the Prophet, the tribalism and rivalry which had divided the Arabs before the Prophet
again began to raise its head. In particular there was rivalry between the
supporters of Abu Bakr and Ali and later between the supporters of Ali and
those who supported the Caliphs Omar and Uthman. In support of this political
struggle a great number of Hadith were invented by either side. There are said
to be 300,000 hadith.
Later, a Science of
Hadith was developed in order to sort out the genuine from the spurious hadith.
There are five degrees of certitude from maximum to minimum according to degree
of witnessing, the veracity of the witnesses, the chain of reporters (asnad) and the report (matn) itself.
The highest degree of certainty is to be given to the literal report when the
message comes through several transmitters with the same words. It becomes
hypothetical when there are different words, additions or omissions. Time is
also important - earlier reports are abrogated by later ones. The greater the
number of transmitters the greater the certainty, provided they are independent
and no possibility of collusion or a common original source exists. There must
be homogeneity of expression over time and there must be a consistency of the
report with sensory evidence, reason, other hadith and the Quran, and with the
laws of nature so as to prevent superstitions from creeping in. Unilateral
reports require that the reporter is just, sincere, objective, intelligent,
with good hearing, memory and speech so that he can be trusted to have
transmitted hadith accurately.
No such criteria as have
been applied to the Hadith were originally applied to the New Testament, though
Christian and other scholars have recently applied some of these criteria to
Bible criticism.
(6) It is also
necessary to add a few more criteria:-
Most of these reports
are like snapshots rather than systematic expositions on a subject. This may be
because the words were overheard by someone who did not know what was being
discussed. He did not know the context, and we all know that meanings change
when the context changes. It is possible to say one thing to one person and it’s
opposite to another and still create the same effect.
You can, for instance, tell a person to use less force if he is using too much
or tell another to use more force because he is using too little. You can tell
someone something in a metaphorical manner if he understands that metaphor, but
speak literally to someone else or use a different set of metaphors. Change in
circumstances may lead to change in instructions. It is also necessary to know
whether something was an instruction and whether it applied to a particular
person only or to a particular circumstance, or whether it was a
recommendation, or a statement of fact, or an observation or opinion, whether
it was said seriously, or light heartedly or in jest or as a test.
Some Hadith may be
regarded as weak because there has been only one transmitter or because the
chain of transmission cannot be verified. But the Hadith may be valuable,
nevertheless, because it is consistent with and illuminates a verse or a number
of verses in the Quran. Some of the Hadith are comments by close companions of
the Prophet, those who were taught more intimately and thoroughly than others.
(7) The Prophet was an
Arab. His language, dress, manners and behaviour were, therefore, conditioned
by his culture, place and times. Had he been born in another culture and
another time and place these things would have been different. It is necessary
to differentiate between what is accidental and what is essential to the
religion he taught. Some of his behaviour and actions were governed by the
circumstances and the nature of the people he was surrounded with. Given a
different kinds of people the same goals can be gained by a different set of
actions. The need for the readiness for battle, for instance, is reduced when
one is not surrounded by hostiles ready to fight.
Whereas the Quran
contains mostly that which is Universal and can, therefore, be applied to a
variety of different cases, the Hadith contain specific applications of the
Quran to the particular circumstances which arose in the times and place in
which the Prophet found himself. If this is not understood we get extreme
rigidity and mal-adaptation because of the tendency to imitate these specific
actions when the circumstances have changed. It is not difficult to see that
the study and application of the Quran leads to flexibility, adaptability and
the use of the God given human faculties. But the rigid adherence to the Hadith
leads to stagnation and unintelligence. However, it is still possible to learn from
the Hadith how to interpret, adapt and apply the Quran.
(7) Political struggles,
we have seen, led to the proliferation of invented hadith. This had several
consequences:-
(a) The hadith were
compiled into several different books. This led to sectarianism, something
which the Quran would have made impossible since this is a single book the
whole of which has to be accepted by the believer. It is, of course, still
possible for different believers to concentrate their attention on different
sets of verses in the Quran or to interpret some of the verses differently,
thus creating sects. But it is much easier to do so when one can choose
different books.
(b) One consequence of
this is that in order to maintain sectarianism it is necessary to elevate the
importance of the differences. This implies that the Hadith are used to replace
the Quran. It becomes practically the first source. Indeed, the Quran itself
complains that this was beginning to happen. (23:71)
The result of this
sectarianism is mental fixation on certain distinguishing doctrines. These have
to be clung to without understanding and all progress in knowledge comes to a
dead stop. The Quran itself is constantly pointing to nature, history and man
himself, encouraging him to seek knowledge and apply the faculties given to him
by Allah and to develop. 32:9, 17:36-37, 6:107 13:19. 91:7-10, 90:8-17. Islam
requires that everyone strives and that those who possess more knowledge and
understanding help those who have less and those who have less learn from those
who have more. Inevitably this upward motion implies that people will be on
different rungs of the ladder. There will be differences of opinion because of
differences in experiences and circumstances, differences in quantity and
quality of knowledge, different degrees of integration and application. Each
will then differentiate between truth and his own opinions, suspend his
judgements or hold his opinions tentatively being willing to replace lesser
truth with the greater. But this cannot happen when fixations are created. We
get dogmatism, stagnation as well as conflicts between the sects.
(c) Another consequence
is that religion requires experts and specialists to deal with all these
Hadith. The majority of people being busy with the affairs of their lives
relinquish their responsibilities to seek religious knowledge and leave it to a the few who now constitute a self-appointed priesthood.
They gain control over the people and become concerned mainly with the
protection and enhancement of their privileges, prestige and power. These
people being specialist in religion seldom have any knowledge of the
developments in science, history, political and economic or anything else which
also affects changes in language. They cannot keep up with modern trends. They
tend to adhere to the letter of the hadith and Quran rather than their meaning
and significance, the forms rather than the spirit, the vessel rather than the
contents. They bring the use of Aql, intelligence to
a stop. The greater their maladjustment to the real changing situation, the
greater becomes their frustration and passion. This often leads them to
incitement of violence against variation which is regarded as a threat.
(d) Based on Hadith and
Quran a great number of other works have been produced by Muslims over the
centuries. They are meant to explain and elaborate, but each tends to select a
different set of verses from the Quran and Hadith. Some of these works have
themselves become the main focus of attention and the source of Islam
displacing both the Quran and Hadith. This has increased sectarianism and
schisms. As the number of ideas increase and life becomes more complex owing to
the cumulative effects of human activity, then owing to the limited capacity of
each individual they can only absorb small portions of the totality. This
inevitably means an increase in diversity. The danger of misunderstanding and
conflict increases unless some method of retaining unity also develops. The
usual solution adopted by most nations is (i) the
establishment of an authority which can develop and use methods of compulsion.
(ii) Mental conditioning or brain washing. This can be done through propaganda,
regimentation, methods of training the mind, learning by rote etc. (iii) The method of exchange of ideas and discussions. This does
not include debate since this is merely a verbal form of competition and
warfare in which each defends his own position while attempting to demolish
that of the other. Discussion requires an open mind desiring to learn.
Thus thinkers arose in
Islam who decided to codify the law using the Quran and Hadith. There arose
four Schools of Law, the Madhabs.
The consequence of this was that it formalised and fossilised the law as in a
dead machine, and reduced flexibility, diversity and adaptability. There was an
end to Ijtihad and the use of Aql.
In order to rectify this situation other thinkers and reformers arose
periodically. But owing to the rigidity of mind which had overtaken the people,
they only managed to get a small section of the people as followers. These
followers unfortunately formed attachment to their leaders and converted their
teachings into dogmas without understanding and increased the sectarianism.
This is the situation which continues to this day; except for the few, though an
increasing number, who are awakening.
However, it is evident
that if these people had the right to interpret and apply the Quran and Hadith,
then this right must still exist. There has been no new revelation abrogating
this right. Allah has given us faculties to be used as Vicegerents (2:30-31)
and the Quran is constantly telling us to use them. But it also warns about the
corrupting influence of subjective factors such as prejudices, habits,
addictions, obsessions, superstitions and rationalisation of personal desires,
ambitions and wishful thinking. These can only be overcome through inner
vigilance and the religious discipline.
It is only upon this
fact that the revival of Islam and its future can be built.
Consider what the Quran
tells us:-
"He fashioned him
(man) and breathed into him of His own spirit and appointed for you hearing and
sight and hearts. Small thanks give ye." 32:9
"Follow that
which is inspired in thee from thy Lord; there is no god save Him; and turn
away from the idolaters." 6:107
"O man, follow
not that of which you have no knowledge. Lo! the
hearing and the sight and the hearts - of each of these it will be asked (to
give an account). And walk not in the earth arrogant." 17:36-37
"Most of them
follow naught but conjecture. Assuredly conjecture can by no means take the
place of Truth." 10:37
"Those who put
away false gods lest they should worship them and turn to Allah in repentance,
for them there are glad tidings. Therefore give good tidings (Muhammad) to my
bondmen who hear advise and follow the best of them.
Such are those whom Allah guides, and such are men of understanding."
39:17-18
"O ye who
believe! Ye have charge of your own souls. he who errs
cannot injure you if you are rightly guided. Unto Allah will you all return and
then He will inform you of what you used to do." 5:105
However, human powers
of perception, reason and consciousness have limits, even apart from the proneness
to fantasies, prejudices, superstitions, habits, illusions, rationalisations
based on greed, pride, lust, fear, anger etc. Hence the need for education by
those who know, a discipline and the acceptance of guidelines and revelations.
As for Traditions we
are told:-
"And when it is
said unto them: Follow that which Allah hath revealed, they say: we follow that
wherein we found our fathers. What! Even though their fathers were wholly
unintelligent and had no guidance?" 2:170
"These are the
people which have passed away. Theirs is that which they earned, and yours is
that which you have earned. And ye will not be asked of what they used to
do." 2:134
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