The Standard of Hadith Criticisms Edited by Zafar Khan from the Book, The life
of Muhammad- Haykal. Despite the great care and
precision of the hadith scholars, much of what they regarded as true was later
proved to be spurious.. In his commentary on the collection of Muslim, al
Nawawi wrote: “A number of scholars discovered many hadith’s in the
collections of Muslim and Bukhari which do not fulfill the conditions of
verification assumed by these men.” The collectors attach a greater weight
to the trustworthiness of the narrators. Their criterion was certainly
valuable, but it was not sufficient. In our opinion the criterion for hadith
criticism’s as well as standard for materials concerning the prophet life, is
the one which prophet himself gave. He said: “After I am gone differences
will arise among you. Compare whatever is reported to be mine with the book of
God; that which agrees therewith you may accept as having come from me; that
which disagrees you will reject as fabrication.” The great men of Islam
right from the very beginning observe this valid standard. It continues to be
the standard of thinkers today. Ibn Khaldun wrote: “I do not believe any
hadith or report of a companion of the prophet to be true which differs from
the common sense meaning of the Quran, no matter how trustworthy the narrators
may have been. It is not impossible that a narrator appears to be trustworthy
though he may be moved by ulterior motive. If hadith’s were criticized for
their textual contents as they were for the narrators who transmitted them, a
great number would have been rejected. It is a recognized principle that a
hadith could be declared spurious if it departs from the common sense meaning
of the Quran from the recognized principles of Shariah, the rules of Logic, the
evidence of sense, or any other self-evident truth.” This criterion given
by prophet as well as ibn Khaldun, perfectly accords with modern scientific
criticsm. True, after Muhammad’s death
the Muslims differed, and they fabricated thousands of hadith’s and
reports to support their various causes. From the day Abu Lu’lu’ah, the servant
of Mughirah, killed ‘Umar ibn al Khattab’ and ‘Uthman ibn Affan’ assumed
caliphate, the old pre-Islamic enmity of Banu-Hashim and Banu-Ummayah
reappeared. When, upon the murder of Uthman, civil war broke out between the
Muslims, Aishah fought against Ali and Ali’s supporters consolidated themselves
into a party, the fabrication of Hadith’s spread to a point where “Ali ibn Abu
Talib himself had to reject the practice and warn against it. He reportedly
said: “We have no book and no writing to read except the Quran and this
sheet which I have received from the Prophet of God in which he specified the
duties prescribed by charity.” Apparently, this exhortation did not stop
the hadith narrators from fabricating their stories either in support of a
cause they advocated, or of a virtue or practice to which they exhorted the
Muslims and which they thought would have more appeal if vested with prophetic
authority. When Banu Ummayah firmly established themselves in power, their
protagonists among their hadith narrators deprecated the prophetic traditions
reported by the party of ‘Ali ibn Abu talib’ and the later defended these
traditions and propagated them with all the means at their disposal.
Undoubtedly thy also deprecated the traditions reported by ‘Aishah’, “Mother of
the Faithful.” A humorous piece of
reportage was given to us by ibn Asakir who wrote: “Abu Sa’d Isma’il ibn al
Muthanna al Istrabadhi was giving a sermon one dy in Damascus when a man stood
up and asked him what he thought about the hadith of the prophet: “I
am the city of knowledge and Ali is its gate.” Abu Sa’s pondered th
question for a while and then replied: “Indeed! No one knows of this hadith
except those who lived in the first century of Islam. What the Prophet had said
was rather, I am the city of knowledge; Abu Bakr its foundation; Umar its
walls; Uthman its ceiling; and Ali its Gate.” The audience was quite
pleased with his reply and asked him to furnish them with the chain of
narrators. Abu Sa’d could not furnish them with the chain of narrators and was
embarrassed.” Thus hadith’s were fabricated for political and other
purposes. This wanton multiplication alarmed the Muslims because many ran
counter to the book of God. The attempts to stop this wave of fabrication under
the Umawis did not succeed. When the Abbasids took over, and al Mamun assumed
the caliphate almost two centuries after the death of the Prophet, the
fabricated hadiths numbered in thousands and Hundred of thousands and
contained an unimaginable account of contradiction and variety. It was then
that the collectors applied themselves to the task of putting the hadiths
together and biographers of the prophet wrote his Biography. Al Waqidi, ibn
Hisham and Al mada’ini lived and wrote their books in the days of al Ma’mun.
They could not afford to contradict the caliphate and hence could not apply
with the precesion due to Prophet’s criterion that his traditions ought to be
checked against the Quran and accepted only if they accorded therewith. Had this criterion, which
does not differ from the modern and scientific criticism, been applied with
precision, the ancient masters would have altered much of their writing.
Circumstances of history imposed upon them the application of it to some of
their writings and not to others. The later generation inherited their method
of treating the biography of the prophet without questioning it. Had they been
true to history they would have applied this criterion in general as well as in
detail. No reported events disagreeing with the Quran would have been spared,
and none would have been confirmed but those that agreed with the book of the
God as well as the laws of nature. Even so, these hadiths would have subject to
strict analysis and established with valid proofs and incontestable evidence.
This stand was taken by the great Muslim scholars of the Past as well as of the
present. The grand shaykh of Al Azhar, Muhammad Mustafa al Maraghi, wrote in
his foreword to the book, The life of Muhammad by Haykal: “Muhammad- may
God’s peace and blessing be on him – had only one irresistible miracle – the
Quran. But it is not irrational. How eloquent is the verse of al Busayri: ‘God
did not try us with anything irrational. Thus, we fell under neither doubt nor
illusion.’” In his book, Al Islam wa al
Nasraniyah, Muhammad Abduh, the great scholar and leader wrote: “Islam,
therefore, and its demand for faith in God and his unity, depend only on the
rational proof and common sense human thinking. Islam does not overwhelm the
mind with the supernatural, confuse the understanding with the extraordinary,
impose acquiescent silence by resorting to heavenly intervention, nor does it
impede the movement of thought by any sudden cry of divinity. All the Muslims
are agreed, except those hose opinions are insignificant, that faith in God is
prior to faith in prophethood and that it is not possible to believe in the
prophet except after one has come to believe in God. It is unreasonable to
demand faith in God on the ground that the prophets or the revealed books has
said so, for it is unreasonable to believe that any book has been revealed by
God unless one already believed that God exists and that it is possible for him
to reveal a Book and send a messenger.” I am inclined to think that those who wrote Biographies of the Prophet agreed with this view. The earlier generation of them could not apply to it because of the historical circumstances in which they lived. The later generation of them suspended the principle deliberately on account of their belief that the more miraculous their portrayal of Prophet, the more faith this would engender among their audience. They assumed, quite naively, that the inclusion of these extraneous matters into his biography achieved a good purpose. Had they lived our day and seen how enemies of Islam had taken their arguments against Islam and its people, they would have followed the Quran more closely and agreed with al Ghazzali, Muhammad Abduh al Maraghi, and all other objective scholars. And had they livd our day and age, and witnessed how their stories have alienated many Muslim minds and hearts instead of confirming their faith, they would have satisfied with the indubitable profs and arguments of the Book of God. |