I sometime think that they have a valid point. Imam Bukhari started compiling his famous collection of ahaadees, 200 years after the death of Prophet. That is like me asking you to go and collect day to day sayings and doings of your great-great-great-great grandfather by only talking to those people who are still alive.
If you compile a book 200 years A.H, can it be used as a pillar of shariyat (Quran, Fiqh, Ijethad being other) ? Sunni and even Ahle Hadees do that exactly.
Your thoughts?
Re: Munkar-e-Hadees
Did they compile just by interviewing people who lived and had heard something from their forefathers? The issue is complicated and there are various other standard to label a hadees as 'sahee' and 'ghair sahee'. The main point that I remember is it should not contrast teachings of Quran. Hadees is secondary to Quran and can be objected unlike a verse from Quran.
Re: Munkar-e-Hadees
If I know correctly, in order to add to his compilation, Imam Bukhari's rule was to hear it directly from the source and chain of narration has to be stated. That is why he used to travel to different cities to hear it in person. Its not that he found a hadees in another book and added to his collection.
No one?
Re: Munkir-e-Hadees
There is a great deal of knowledge in ahadees. Many things which are not explained in detail in Quran are covered in Ahadees. To categorically reject ahadees just because they were compiled 200+ years later is wrong because Imam Bukhari and others who compiled ahadees took great measures to verify the authenticity of ahadees. Only a fraction of ahadees that was collected made it into the books. A vast volume of ahadees was rejected if there was a gap in the chain of narrators or if any one of the narrators was known to have lied in his/her past.
Having said that, a hadees is always to be interpreted in the light of Quran, and if there is a conflict, preference always goes to Quran.
I agree with you. I am a big believer of all the six books. I am just being the devil's advocate here (no pun intended). I mean the mind could argue that if you are compiling hadees two hundred years later, and you are only going for the one that were memorized and narrated, what are the chances that things remained authentic to the core?
Even if everything remained authentic, can it be used to form shariah?
Re: Munkir-e-Hadees
^^^ As you asked ... let me phrase hadith as I see it. :)
Word Munkir-e-hadith is concocted word used by deviant or misguided people for those who do not agree with them. Else, no Muslim can be Munkir-e-hadith.
Reason is simple, that is, if anyone is really Munkir-e-hadith than that person cannot be Muslim … as Quran itself is hadith … or Quran is words of Prophet (SAW) that Prophet (SAW) claimed are words of Allah that he (SAW) received through jabreal (AS) … so, a person who rejects words of Prophet (SAW) would be rejecting Quran too, and thus could not be Muslim.
So, what is the problem?
People who reject particular hadith, they reject it by saying (and believing) that particular hadith is concocted and is not words of Prophet (SAW). Now, it is obvious that if a person rejects any particular hadith because that person do not believe it to be words of Prophet (SAW) but concocted, regardless of the source of hadith, that person is not rejecting hadith of Prophet (SAW), but rejecting concocted words (as far as he is concerned).
It is just like … suppose in a place there are millions of fake or counterfeit dollar notes. So, even though one accepts dollar notes as valid currency... if he believes that the dollar note given to him is fake or counterfeit than obviously he would reject that note. No one can say that a person who rejects dollar note considering (or believing) it a fake or counterfeit, do not accept dollar note.
Problem arose because 10s of thousand hadith got concocted after death of Prophet (SAW) and many started quoting them (since day one), and many of those hadiths even got it places in most eminent books.
Later, some people claiming to be Muslim made religion their business and started forcefully making others accepts what they believed (as Islam), using various hadith as excuse. Many rejected their views of Islam and claimed that hadith they quote are concocted (fabricated).
To counter that, these people whose views got rejected, started calling those who rejected their views based on hadith they believed, as Munkir-e-hadith.
Funny thing is that, those who started calling other Munkir-e-hadith themselves reject many hadith that opposes their views (or school of thought). :)
As far as I am concerned: I normally reject hadith that are contrary to Quran … or are immoral, illogical, unjust, absurd or obviously untrue … and the reason is that, I do not think such could be said by Prophet (SAW), ever. I believe that is necessary, as considering such hadith as wrods of Prophet (SAW) means one is showing own belief that Prophet (SAW) nauzobillah could say things that are contrary to Quran, or could say something immoral, illogical, unjust, absurd or obviously untrue … and I believe any person having such belief deserves hell.
I am going to stop you right there. You are using the same argument that has been used wrongfully before to compare Quran when Hadith.
Yes Quran is also hadith, but Quran got compiled within first fifteen years of prophet’s death. There was no chain of narration, but complied based on first hand sources. Also, it was not complied based on memories only, but sahaba had written pages. Also Quran compilation was not work of an individual, but a committee.
In contrast, hadith was complied by individuals, 200 years later, used chain of narration, and were only compiled using method of memory. Bukhari, in order to keep the silsila, traveled near and far to listen to the hadees in person.
It’s a very unfair argument to say that Quran is also hadith and if you doubt hadith then you are doubting Quran.
Re: Munkir-e-Hadees
^^^ No one is denying what you wrote.
What I wrote is that, no Muslim can be Munkir-e-hadith as only 100 percent certain hadith is ‘Quran being words of Allah’, and no Muslim denies that, have objection to that, reject that, doubt that or even question Quran.
I used example of Quran because there is clear difference between Quran and hadith. One is certain words of prophet (SAW) that Prophet (SAW) told us that it is words of Allah … and other is claimed by people as words of prophet (SAW).
By comparing the difference, it becomes clear that no one denies or reject words of Prophet (SAW) ... if they are certain that it is words of Prophet (SAW).
Muslims only dare to deny or reject what they honestly believe are not words of Prophet (SAW), regardless of their collection, compilation and getting claimed as words of Prophet (SAW) by different scholars however eminent they maybe.
Actually, there is no way anyone could have accurately collected and compiled hadiths years after 'wisal' of prophet (SAW), so denying what are collected and compiled then claimed as hadith is not denying what Prophet (SAW) said, but denying or rejecting what people collected, compiled and considered hadith, denying or rejecting narrators in chain of hadith (Asnad) that exists between compiler's time and prophet (SAW), and also denying or rejecting hadith that they may believe are fabricated over time (for whatever reasons) then got associated with different eminent personalities as hadith narrators by fabricators.
Also denying or rejecting hadiths claimed to be words of Prophet (SAW) but from matan (content) a person believes that the hadith cannot be words of Prophet (SAW) as those hadith that maybe contrary to Quran … or are immoral, illogical, unjust, absurd or obviously untrue.
[Please read my earlier post carefully, and I believe all would be clear]
Re: Munkir-e-Hadees
I think this book have your answers brother TLK
Page 39 onwards is directly related to your query.
Re: Munkir-e-Hadees
Just like the Qur'an was memorised so were ahadith ... a Muhaddith is a scholar of hadeeth and specifically a person who has memorised the ahadith and its chain of narration. The tradition of passing on information from who said what has been going on since the beginning just like the Qur'an.
It is true that hadith were written down later - but it is a bit out of sync to suggest Imam Bukhari was the first one to write down ahadith. In fact if we study Imam Bukhari (RA) he used the Muwatta of Malik (RA) as a basis to work from ... so it was not just going around talking to people as OP is suggesting.
RasoolAllah (SAW) passed away in 11 AH and the works of Imam Malik started in 163 AH ... That gives around 150 years of ground to cover. He was around 70 years of age himself.
Imam Malik was himself a muhaddith so many hadith he had already heard and learnt and committed to memory so that takes his connection well back to about 40 years to about when he is around 30 years old. It is a safe assumption that most of the ahadith he knew he would have heard by the age of 30 years noting there were other muhaddith in his time too who he could corroborate with ... That means we have a void of about 110 years to fill.
Imam Malik (RA) was a student and contemporary of Imam Abu Hanifah (RA) both of them learnt under Imam Ja'far (RA) - who learnt under Zain-ul-'Abideen (RA) [Ali ibn Hussain] - who learnt directly from Sayyiduna Ali (RA). Imam Ja'far also learnt from his eminent father Muhammad al-Baqir (RA). Meanwhile going back to Imam Malik another chain of his tutelage goes back to Abu Suhail an-Nafi (RA) who was given ijaza by Abdullah ibn Umar (RA) the son of Sayyiduna Umar (RA). Abdullah ibn Umar (RA) was contemporary to Abdullah ibn Abbas (RA) who together are considered the experts even of their own time of ahadith ... they were both advisors to Imam Hussain (RA). Sayyiduna Ibn Abbas (RA) was only 13 when RasoolAllah (SAW) passed away so, the young companion spent his growing years learning and confirming ahadith from the Sahabah who were alive and hence the methodology of ilm-ul-hadith had begun ...
These people form the Golden Chain of the Sunnah ... and they had not just memorised Qur'an and many parts tafsir but also were like walking encyclopedias of the knowledge of Sunnah. They were amazing people. We have savants today - they were like them without the baggage.
If you go to each person mentioned here on Wiki you will see that each of them are credited for being scholars of the Sunnah/hadith ...
Munkar-e-hadith don't realise the mental capacity of these people ... To give an explanation of what the great scholars knew ... we can cite Imam Shafi' (RA) who considered no one worthy of being mujtahid (a person who does ijtihad) or mujjadid (I forgot which) until he has memorised at least 100,000 ahadith together with their chains of narration. This indicates he himself would know more ... there are people alive today who qualify under this criterion ... yes, there are huffaz in this world of Qur'an ... but there are also huffaz of ahadith ... Imam An-Nawawi (RA) compiled the 40 hadith collection and most school children would be required to memorise them ... These days a lot of adults are unable to recall 5 ahadith correctly so it is no wonder that this relatively new phenomenon question the hadith ... it is because they cannot simply understand the great minds in the past and humanity as a whole has forgotten how to live up to our humanly possible capacity ... one that earns the rank of being Ashraf Al Makhluqat.
Re: Munkir-e-Hadees
There are less problems with original hadith works but more with the interpretation of concept of hadith.
people have little idea about place value of hadith therefore their use of hadith is in question.
1)People do not realise the fact that according to the quran the ruler of this universe is Allah alone.
2)The program, the constitution and the law is sole right of Allah to dictate for all things in this universe including mankind.
3)In case of mankind, they have been created as special creatures because they have been given ability to learn all by themselves and judge things by themselves.
4) All mankind are subjects of Allah and no man is slave or master of any other man ie humanity is not a crowd of masters and slaves but a brotherhood of people as far as Allah is concerned.
5)Mankind have not accepted these facts because they have not yet realised them and they have not realised them because they have been created ignorant but with ability to learn things at their own pace according to their own circumstances and situations. Proof, observe growth of a human baby. Humanity like birth of a bay grew out of cradle for many generations before it got to the stage where at it looked for guidance and was revealed by Allah.
It is because we have not accepted evolution of mankind out of tree of life hence we have turned the teaching of the quran upside down by turning Allah into a human who makes each toy by his own hand sort of thing. This is why we have problem understanding the story of adam, iblees and malaaikah and jinn etc.
The day we have learned enough to understand the quranic text properly in its own context in light of real world realities and provable facts all this confusion will be gone.
We have not yet realised that the Quran simply put is just an explanation about real world realities. The realities where at we got stuck because they were beyond our direct learning approach. For example, no matter how long we research and explore things using our brains, senses and bodies we cannot know our origin, the way we work as biological machines, what we have been created and how can we serve that purpose for which we have been created.
All these like questions need answers from some external source because humanity cannot find out such answers all by itself.
Before any human could reach that stage of realisation one has to become self aware. A human baby is not self aware when he is born rather he becomes self aware gradually by learning from his experiences which is stimulated by external realities and which he catches through his senses.
Likewise with time people become aware of their own environments as deeply and widely as they wish. Once people rise to a higher level of thinking only then they question about things and themselves. This is where divine revelation can help because such people then look for external information.
This is how when mankind rose out of animals and above thinking level of animals that they felt they needed guidance and that is how they were given guidance by Allah. This guidance has all the answers that people will ever need but only those kinds of answers that people need from their creator and sustainer and only to that degree where there own ability to learn all by themselves is not effected as independent minded beings. This is because Allah has created mankind for his own reasons so he set them goals to achieve and gave them guidelines to achieve those goals within.
6)We have not bothered to find out from the quran what those goals and guidelines are so we have not bothered to find out how they can be fulfilled. The main reason is that as we went through evolution under the laws of nature we developed the idea that when it comes to survival of the fittest we must undermine each other and dominate each other in order to survive. At this stage we are just animals but as our struggle for survival helps us move up scale of thinking then we realise that this is not the way to go because we are victimising each other to an unacceptable degree. This is how we gradually became morally aware and that is why man began to look for external guidance.
If one reads story of adam this is the bloodshed malaaikah are talking about and these malaaikah are not some supernatural beings but people who are chiefs of various tribes in the jungles at the time. By fighting each other they come to realise that this is not the way of life they should carry on with. There has to be a way to stop this bloodshed so Allah chose one of those men we call adam the prophet. When it came to living as a united human community no longer fighting each other, there could only be a way of life that gave people foundation to build their human society upon. This was very first attempt of this nature among human beings. However one man called iblees did not like this idea of living as a self organised and self regulated human society because he was used to living the natural way on basis of survival of the fittest. It was only because he was the dominate individual at the time but the rest joined together and supported adam so iblees failed to gain control over rest of human community. However he did not give up and kept arguing with others in the society to break down the society that decided to live by this way of life. Ultimately he was able to succeed by misleading some members of that society however adam was able to re-establish that society.
So one can see that originally all mankind were living on basis of survival of the fittest and then moral awareness came about and since then another way of life has been the goal to achieve for mankind and continues even today.
Many divine messenger were sent to keep re-establishing an exemplary kingdom based upon divine guidance but each time something went wrong and heavenly guidance based kingdom fell apart and the very same thing happened when Allah sent the final messenger. The kingdom based upon divine guidance which was established by the final messenger also fell apart with in a few generations. The main reason was mishandling of the kingdom affairs by muslims at the time ie they spread the message of islam too far and too many people came to join the kingdom and they could not cope with this influx of people and then bad elements from within who were looking for opportunities got their chances and so thing fell apart.
7) This is when malukiyat began among muslims and that malukiyat employed mullaism and created a supporting team of business people and muslim society went back to old days having money lenders back in business within muslim community.
8)This explains a lot of things which mullahs have buried for us under tonnes of false hadith and misinterpretations of the quran and possibly true hadith.
9)Many ulema of deen were put to the sword (and the rest went underground who began secret movement called tareeqat) and that is how they were replaced by mullahs to turn deen into mazhab and that is what we have today.
This is why we have ended up with three separate interpretations of the quran and hadith ie one based upon idea of islam as a program, constitution and law and the other based upon make beliefs and ritualism and yet other that accommodate both these ideas and that is why today ummah is in utter confusion about what Islam really is.
The main reason is because kings and mullahs and money lenders tried their best to keep muslim masses ignorant because that was the only way they could secure their own position of power in muslim society. The consequence became obvious because as time passed on the muslim population became more and more useless and when it became far too useless and got involved in internal struggles to no end then other nations that were better equipped over powered muslims and since then state of ummah is before all of us to consider.
Our ignorant molvi thinks he is thekedaar of deen despite having no real knowledge of the quran and hadith and our ruler thinks he has right to rule us like animals and our money lender thinks it is islamic to deal with each other on basis of business for profit.
10) time is coming when people with knowledge are going to rediscover the actual message of the quran and then act on it and bring back the kingdom based upon divine guidance. A kingdom where ruler is none other than Allah and ummah sits together as a brotherhood and works out all details necessary as to how they should live as a self organised and self regulated proper human community. This detail then will be distributed to each and every individual of responsible age and then all should do what they are required to do by Allah as understood by the highly educated community and as they will do that rights of all will become secured.
11)Each of us wake up in morning and do everything that we think we should do till night without needing any person forcing us out of realisation that if we did not do our assigned duty then rights of others that we are supposed to fulfil will remain unfulfilled.
The result of not learning and living by this way of life are obvious throughout the world ie billions of people throughout the world are sleeping hungry at night despite doing whatever they can as individuals. It is because that is natural way of living that is based upon survival of the fittest. If you do not have what it takes to live that way then you are left on your own to suffer and perish.
11)rulers, mullahs and money lenders have done a lot of hard work in order to derail and mask divine message and so far they have succeeded because masses have not yet woken up to what is being done to them throughout the world by some people having put this way of life in place.
Re: Munkir-e-Hadees
Mughal1 .... You gave us a long discussion on evolution and then you bashed the molvis again ... Your only relevant answer was the first sentence ... And I agree with you in that sentence, but most of the post is fluff like always and I am sorry to say ...
Re: Munkir-e-Hadees
I am going to stop you right there. You are using the same argument that has been used wrongfully before to compare Quran when Hadith.
Yes Quran is also hadith, but Quran got compiled within first fifteen years of prophet's death. There was no chain of narration, but complied based on first hand sources. Also, it was not complied based on memories only, but sahaba had written pages. Also Quran compilation was not work of an individual, but a committee.
In contrast, hadith was complied by individuals, 200 years later, used chain of narration, and were only compiled using method of memory. Bukhari, in order to keep the silsila, traveled near and far to listen to the hadees in person.
It's a very unfair argument to say that Quran is also hadith and if you doubt hadith then you are doubting Quran.
You are correct in what you said. But i'll address your original question first.
The reason we believe hadith is because there is zero percent chance that anyone can understand the Quran without the hadith of the prophet. Moreover, this whole thing of narrated chains is partially correct. Like the quran that was written on leafs and small parchments, there are some hadiths that were written down as well (most have been perserved and are in museums in Jordan/Syria).
Now about this whole 200 years after thing. This is a huge misconception as most people look to Imam Bukarhi as the first compiler of hadith. He was not the first but had the biggest collection, there were people who started to compile hadith during the time of the prophet and i'm sure you can find first hand accounts in there. Moreover, Yes, chains of narrations were included but a hadith is not a hadith until it has been verified by multiple accounts, making it extremely hard to contest or even challenge.
Re: Munkir-e-Hadees
Thanks Saleem, Psyah, Mughal, and Cakerpot. I am already in submission to the books of ahaadees, I am jjst trying to raise counter arguments (and I am not finbished yet. I will read all the posts and reply with my thoughts).
Bao, thanks for the link, I will start reading the book tonight.
Re: Munkir-e-Hadees
Cackerot becomes Cakerpot … LOL
You’re welcome TLK bro
And why are you encouraging Mughal1 … I hope you don’t read his post … it’s full of the usual … In his French exams he probably wrote … “Comment tu ta evolution is the reality and molvis are malle et desole”
I’m in a funny mood brother Mughal1 … :halo:
Re: Munkir-e-Hadees