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HADITHS JUDGED BY HADITHS We have already seen in Chapter 4 the very existence of hadith books of the Sunni and Shiite sects that contradict the Prophet’s prohibiting of copying his sayings. COPYING OF HADITHS WAS PROHIBITED BY THE PROPHETThose who adopted the hadiths as a source of Islam mentioned this fact. If you are aware of this, why insist on writing hadith books? Do you think that you are wiser than the Prophet and that you are more concerned with religion than he? The argument, that the Prophet’s prohibition was due to his concern about the risk that the word of man might be taken for the word of the God, but now that the Quran is there, there is no risk at all, is not a valid argument. O you who base your religion on hadiths! You must burn all hadiths and destroy them, those hadiths that brought along concepts of lawful and unlawful which do not exist in the Quran.Now we shall tackle some other type of hadiths: According to these hadiths there are no unlawful things other than those stated in the Quran. If that is so, according to the hadiths, how can you prohibit shaking hands with women, listening to music and drawing pictures, unless you have recourse to hadiths? According to these hadiths the Prophet announced nothing unlawful other than those mentioned in the Quran. In other words, according to these hadiths, the hadiths you claim to have originated from the Prophet are actually not his own words. According to the widely acclaimed hadith book, the Prophet is suspicious of the future, i.e. after the lapse of 30 years. As a matter of fact, the first Four Caliphs’ reign lasted 30 years (Abu Bakr, Omar, Othman, Ali). During the said period no sect had been established, nor a book written to supplement the Quran (see Chapter 11). Why not live up to the Islam of that period during which the Quran was the unique book? But,we believe that the partisans of Ali, hostile to the Omayyads, invented the above hadith. However, anyone who refutes a single hadith transmitted by Bukhari will be considered a heathen. Under the circumstances one should destroy, just like during the reign of the Four Caliphs, and burn the hadith books. Why should credit be given to the sects and the hadith books written under the supervision of the kings succeeding the Four Caliphs? THE UNIQUE SOURCE OF ISLAM: THE QURANAccording to some hadiths, the Prophet had had certain failures in spheres outside the religious framework. It is wrong to make additions to the Quran related to the acts of the Prophet other than those revealed in the Quran. For they concern solely the Prophet’s private life. The hadith runs as follows:According to the judgment of the hadiths so far: 1- No source exists that contains references to things lawful and unlawful in religious terms outside the Quran; 2- No hadith books should be created and those already existing should be destroyed; 3- To the acts of the Prophet no religious connotation should be ascribed. We learn the perfection and wholeness of the Quran from the Quran itself and the fact that there is no need for any supplementary source for Islam. What we want to derive is the fact that the transmitters of hadiths, which they themselves created, are marred with paradoxes. THE HADITHS SHOULD BE DESTROYED ACCORDING TO THE HADITHS THEMSELVESWe have given above instances of hadiths that prohibited the copying of hadiths that announced what was lawful and what was not, that sanctified the Prophet’s acts and actions. We witnessed the existence of hadiths that corroborated the Quran and the hadiths that said that the hadiths should be destroyed altogether. It is interesting to note the existence of a good many hadiths that negate themselves. While a hadith speaks of the Prophet’s banning the sight of one’s calves, another negates it. While there is a hadith that prohibits the consumption of mussels and shrimp,,another negates it. There is a hadith that makes unlawful the wearing of silk or gold by men, there are hadiths that say that the companions of the Prophet did wear silk, and that even the Prophet had once worn a golden ring. There are hadiths which are in favor of the segregation of men and women, while there are also hadiths stating that men and women used to perform ablutions in the same place and that they freely conversed.The thing to do then should be to consider the Quran a self-sufficient book and avoid all contrived and fabricated explanations. There are hadiths that speak of acts that the Prophet could not possibly be the author of or that he could not have spoken. Yet, by introducing the quotation with the formula ‘The Prophet said,’ the words assume the garb of sanctity. Another point is giving a religious connotation to the areas that God has left to the discretion of man. For example, the Quran has not commanded people to wear a particular uniform but left it to the discretion of man, so a man is free to wear a suit, or a woman a t-shirt. It is quite possible that the Prophet used to wear, according to the customs and fashion of the time, a robe with full sleeves and a long skirt. Yet, the pagans and enemies of the Prophet also wore such robes. This means that his attire had no religious connotation whatsoever, but was something that God had left to the choice of man. The fabricated hadith that described the attire of the Prophet was actually not a hadith but an interpretation of this custom. The following hadith provides an example to illustrate how a fabricated hadith should be corrected based on the Quran. All the hadiths are but conjectures. According to the Quran, religion cannot be based on suppositions. There is no doubt that any hadith that contradicts the Quran and dares supplement it is most certainly an erroneous supposition. On the other hand, even those that do not clash with the verses of the Quran are still doubtful. So even assuming that they are in perfect conformity with the Quran, they cannot be considered to be one hundred percent the sayings of the Prophet. The reasons behind this were many, like the efforts to make the religion seem attractive to people, the unintentional errors that must have occurred in the chain of transmission, and the mixing of the words of the Prophet and his companions. There is so much evidence that even the best hadith book written two hundred years after the death of the Prophet is but conjecture. Our intention here has been to judge the hadiths of transmitters by their own hadiths. We have no intention to write a new book of hadiths. Islam is equivalent to the Quran. Nothing less, nothing more. The rest is but conjecture and the truths and the untruths have been inextricably mixed. |