Bid'ah - Good & Bad (merged)

[gupguppy]

Re: Bid’ah - Good & Bad (merged)

apologies for the delay… been away… so hope this reply suffices

@bob_chasm

From a submitter website…

interesting choice

I dont know if these are authentic…

okay, so not really “evidence” then (not yet at least), just some unconfirmed reports you chanced across… also, isn’t it bordering on the absurd to cite hadith (which themselves were obviously recorded) as proof that hadith weren’t written or meant to be written?

According to Muslim and ibn Hanbal:

Abi Said al Khudri reported that the Prophet said, “Do not write down anything from me except the Quran. Whoever writes down anything other than the Quran must erase it.”

according to al Bukhari and al Khatib al Baghdadi (d. 463H) these are in fact the words of Abu Said al Khudri himself, mistakenly ascribed to the Prophet (saw)… in other words it is a directive of Abu Said al Khudri’s to his students/companions to only record the Qur’an from him… al Khatib al Baghdadi wrote: “It is said, the preserved narrative of this hadith is from Abu Said al Khudri as his saying without being traced back to the Prophet (saw).” (Taqyid al Ilm, p.32)

those scholars who accept it as authentic interpret it to mean:

– an order of the Prophet (saw) from Islam’s early days but annulled later… we know that later the Prophet (saw) allowed one of his sermons to be written at Abu Shah’s request (Sahih al Bukhari) and there is specific permission in Sunan Abu Dawud: “Write, for by Him in Whose hand is my soul, nothing comes out of it (my mouth) except the truth.”

– an order not to write hadith and Qur’an together on the same material in case they were mixed up

remember, even if for the sake of argument there was an initial prohibition on recording hadith, this of course is not the same as and does not amount to a prohibition on transmitting hadith… the contrary is in fact the case: "May Allah make joyful a person who heard my saying and preserved it, then transmitted it from me … " (Sunan Ibn Majah)… so there’s no real problem

the rare few scholars who seem against writing are merely emphasising the importance of memorisation… none of them were absolutely against writing… this is also the case with Abu Said al Khudri since other reports confirm that he preferred memorisation to writing (Cf. Ibn Abd al Barr, Jami Bayan al Ilm, 1:339)

report of Ibn Hanbal:

"Zayd ibn Thabit (the Prophet’s personal aide and scribe) was visiting the house of Muawiya and was narrating to the Caliph a story about the Prophet. The Caliph, who became much impressed with the story, immediately asked his scribe to record the story. Zayd then cautioned the Caliph, The holy prophet has forbidden us from writing down anything from his hadith.’ "

its chain is broken between Abd al Muttalib ibn Abd Allah and Zayd ibn Thabit… it also contains Kathir ibn Zayd about whom Ibn Hajr (d. 852H) concluded, “Truthful, makes mistakes [in reporting]” (Taqrib, 5611)

There is also the story regarding the first caliph Abu Bakr who could not lay his head down to sleep upon finding out that there were some written records of the Prophet’s sayings in the house of his daughter Aisha, who was the Prophet’s wife. Not until he had personally burnt the written records was he able to sleep peacefully again.

a story about which Hafiz al Dhahabi (d. 748H) said: “It is not authentic, and Allah knows best.” (Tadhkira al Huffaz, 1/p.10)… i recall that Ibn Kathir (d. 774H) pointed out at least one problem narrator in its chain

The famous book, “Ulum Al-Hadith” by Ibn Al-Salah, reports a hadith by Abu Hurayra in which Abu Hurayra said the messenger of God came out to us while we were writing his hadiths and said; “What are you writing?” We said, “Hadiths that we hear from you, messenger of God.” He said, “A book other than the book of God ?!” We said, “Should we talk about you?” He said, Talk about me, that would be fine, but those who will lie will go to Hell. Abu Hurayra said, we collected what we wrote of Hadiths and burned them in fire.

its chain contains Abd al Rahman ibn Zayd ibn Aslam about whom al Bukhari said “His hadith are not authentic” (Tarikh al Kabir, 1:618) and declared a “weak” narrator by Ibn Hajr, Taqrib, 3865

In the famous book, “Taq-yeed Al-Ilm”, Abu Hurayra said, the messenger of God was informed that some people are writing his hadiths. He took to the pulpit of the mosque and said, "What are these books that I heard you wrote? I am just a human being. Anyone who has any of these writings should bring it here. Abu Hurayra said we collected all these and burned them in fire.

contains the same Abd al Rahman ibn Zayd ibn Aslam

Again, in the book “Taq-yeed Al-Ilm”, Abu Saeed Al-Khudry said, " I asked the messenger of God permission to write his hadiths, but he refused to give me a permission."

it is also in Sunan al Tirmidhi… see earlier comments on Abu Said al Khudri’s report first cited… this is on top of the fact that its transmission is shaky since its narrator Sufyan ibn Uyanah (whose “memory faded” according to Ibn Hajr, Taqrib, 2451) reports it once from “Zayd ibn Aslam” but on another occasion said “Ibn Zayd ibn Aslam”… the latter being the same Abd al Rahman ibn Zayd ibn Aslam mentioned earlier