The concluding part of Kassim Ahmad's introduction to Hadith: A Re-evaluation answers expected charges that upholding the Quran alone creates a new sect or rejects the Prophet's role, and sets out a Quranic method for judging hadith. Abdullah Arik shows that the practices of Submission, including the contact prayers, came through Abraham, not Muhammad. A reader in West Africa asks to keep receiving the newsletter.
Majority follows only conjecture, and conjecture is no
substitute for the truth... But the Quran
can never be invented by other than God. It confirms all previous scripture
and consummates them.
There is absolutely no doubt that it comes from the Lord of the universe.
(10:36-37)
Those who divide their religion into sects do not belong
with you. Their judgment rests with God,
and He will inform them of everything they did. (6:159)
Page 1
[Editor’s note: This article
is the last part of the introduction of the book “Hadith: A Re-evaluation”
authored by Kassim Ahmad of Malaysia. We are in the process of publishing
this book. God willing, it will soon be available for general distribution.]
Avoiding Misunderstanding
Raising such a fundamental issue as this, it is difficult to avoid misunderstanding
from both sides. The secular side, being more open-minded and tolerant,
will simply dismiss this call to the Quran as antiquated, outmoded and
irrelevant. Many secularists will simply not consider it. On the other
hand, the traditionalist side, being close-minded and intolerant of dissenting
views on matters regarded as their preserves, will raise a hue and cry
and throw slanderous accusations into the debate.
One cannot be discouraged by the prospect.
It is part of the social struggle to expose falsehood and confirm the
truth. The secularists will be worthy opponents since they will be prepared
to fight it out in open battles. Open debate is part of their secular
tradition. The traditionalists are a different breed. Open debate is not
part of their tradition. In fact, they came into being in Muslim society
by killing open debate. Authoritarianism is their culture. Thus, slander,
threats and falsehood will be their methods.
It will be claimed that the writer is trying to cause confusion and further
divide Muslim society. This is far from the truth. The Muslims cannot
be further confused and divided than they already have been for a long
time. What worse confusion and division can there be than when Muslims
fight and kill one another?
My aim is to try to establish the truth. My
personal history bears testimony to this tendency. Like other Malays,
I was born and brought up in an ordinary orthodox Malay Muslim family.
However, my early interest in social philosophy took me on a long spiritual
quest, over a period of thirty years, spanning liberal nationalism, Islamic
liberalism and socialism, every single one of which each time sat uneasily
over traditional Islam. The failure became obvious to me when the coherent
integrated social philosophy that I was seeking eluded me. It was in the
Islam of the Quran, scientifically understood, that I discovered the framework
of such a philosophy.
Looking back, this is only logical, since the Quran contains the sure
truth from God, while most of human teachings, as
Continued on page 2
Hadith
Page 2
Continued from page 1
the Quran points out, are mere conjecture (10:36-37). But at that
time, the Quran was, so to speak, covered up for me by the fog of
hadith.
It will be claimed that calling the people back to the Quran alone
will create a new sect, in addition to the sects that already exist.
This is standing the argument on its head. Since the Quran is, in
the first place, anti-sectarian (6:159), not only will it not create
a new sect, but it will, on the contrary, eliminate all existing
sects and reunite all Muslims. This is precisely what we want to
do. History proves that under Muhammad the young Muslim society
was completely united and there was no sect whatever. It is ironic
that the Ahl'ul-Hadith who talk so much about following
the example of the Prophet have completely abandoned this finest
of his examples!
It will also be claimed that in rejecting the hadith as a source
of law, we shall be rejecting the role of the Prophet. It will further
be claimed that this is the first step to the ultimate rejection
of the Quran! As for the first part of the claim, it is obvious
to anyone that it was only through Muhammad that mankind received
the Quran from God Almighty. That was his primary role—God’s
messenger—indeed his only role, as the Quran stressed several
times. Was not this role great enough for Prophet Muhammad? Surely,
it was.
As for the second part, it is too ridiculous to even think of it.
But since the die-hard traditionalists would stop at nothing to
slander their opponents, one would lose nothing to spend a few lines
exposing them. How can anyone, after calling the people back to
the Quran, then reject the Quran? Even if he does, and this means
reverting to disbelief after belief, how can that benefit him? He
would lose everything, while the people, on the contrary, would
benefit greatly by going back to the Quran.
The Muslims must re-possess critical consciousness and discard
prejudice and group fanaticism. We must avoid throwing slanderous
accusations at what we may not like at first. God Himself has
taught us to verify things before we
accept or reject them. No less an intelligent man than Sayyed Hossein
Nasr who has said the following about those who deny the authority
of the hadith:
It is against this basic aspect of the whole structure
of Islam that a severe attack has been made in recent years by an
influential school of Western Orientalists. No more of a vicious
and insidious attack could be made against Islam than this one,
which undercuts its very foundations and whose effect is more dangerous
than if a physical attack were made against Islam.
How can this scholar, who has quoted a blasphemous hadith in the
same book, spout this slander? (This scholar cited an unattributed
hadith which goes:
“I am Ahmad without the mim [that
is, ahad meaning Unity]; I am Arab without the `ain
[that is rabb meaning Lord]. Who hath seen me hath seen
the Truth.” He went on to say: “What do such sayings
mean but the inward union of the Prophet with God?”
This last sentence has a name: it is pantheism, which Islam rejects
absolutely.) Why should we Muslims, in possession of an invincible
scripture from God Almighty, be afraid of the criticisms and even
attacks of Orientalists? Such fear, in fact, reflects our own weakness.
It shows that we are not sure of our own selves. The Quranic methodology
should be a lesson for us. The Quran incessantly reproduces the
false arguments of idol-worshippers and hypocrites and rebuts them
with proofs and with better arguments. We should do the same to
expose falsehoods and confirm the truth. The methods of suppression
and slander are alien to the methods of truth.
Rejecting the authority of the hadith does not mean denying its
existence. Some true reports of what the Prophet said and did outside
the Quran as leader of his community and as an ordinary man must
have been preserved. Such reports deserve to be treated as any other
historical account whose authenticity must be judged against other
historical accounts, against the higher authority of the Quran,
and against rational criteria. While Quranic pronouncements are
divine and are eternally binding on believers, those of Muhammad
in his capacity as leader must be treated in accordance with the
Quranic injunction regarding
politico-social authority (4:49), i.e.
that they are only conditionally binding. The conditions are that
they do not contradict the Quran, they are binding only for the
community of that time, and that for other communities of other
times they only constitute as precedents to be followed or bypassed
as and when deemed useful.
It should also be well understood that this re-evaluation of the
hadith is in no way a slur upon our classical scholars. They understood
and reacted to their problems as best they could. We who come after
them are not bound by their solutions. As Muhammad Abduh has well
said, “They are human and we are human. We learn from them
but we do not [blindly] follow them.” No doubt our re-examination
constitutes a criticism. But this is normal scientific procedure.
It has been done by all our great philosophers and scholars from
the beginning, by Ibn Sina, al-Ghazzali, Ibn Rush, Ibn Taimiya,
Shah Waliyullah, Muhammad Abduh and scores of others. We owe it
to them and to ourselves to constantly practice this method. For
how else can knowledge develop and society progress unless they
continually be purged of errors. This accounts for the very important
Quranic directive, repeated many times, to believers:
Let there be a community among you who preach goodness,
advocate righteousness and forbid evil. These are the winners (3:104).
It must also be pointed out that this criticism and re-evaluation
of the hadith that we are making is nothing new. Imam Shafi`i, who
first stipulated that the hadith should be accepted as a source
of law had opponents that he himself described in his book. In recent
times there were such proponents in Egypt, India and Indonesia.
It may be that our treatment, thanks to recent developments in Quranic
and hadith studies, is more systematic than previous efforts.
In this study we have adopted what may be termed as Islamic scientific
methodology. It is unfortunate that today we associate scientific
methodology to the Western empirical and rational methods,
Continued on page 3
Hadith
Page 3
Continued from page 3
when, in fact, it was Islam that introduced this methodology to
the West. The words of the English historian Robert Briffault deserve
to be quoted in full:
“... It was under their successors at the Oxford
school that Roger Bacon learned Arabic and Arabic science. Neither
Roger Bacon nor his later namesake has any title to be credited
with having introduced the experimental method. Roger Bacon was
no more than one of the apostles of Muslim science and method to
Christian Europe; and he never wearied of declaring that knowledge
of Arabic and Arabic science was for his contemporaries the only
way to true knowledge. Discussions as to who was the originator
of the experimental method... are part of the colossal misrepresentation
of the origins of European civilization. The experimental method
of [the] Arabs
was by Bacon's time widespread
and eagerly cultivated throughout Europe...”(The Making of
Humanity, pp. 200-01).
However, the scientific methodology of Europe sought to bar supra-rational
and supra-sensory knowledge from science..It is now admitted that
this is inadequate to conform to the truly Islamic scientific methodology
of combining sensory, rational and supra-rational knowledge to produce
true integrated knowledge. Using this methodology, we take the Quran
as our basis and starting point and subject all the evidence of
the hadith, i.e. the hadith itself, the major classical writings
on them and modern European and Muslim criticisms, to Quranic and
rational judgments. We may, of course, take ten years to do this
and produce five volumes that few will have the time and the stamina
to read. Our purpose is different. Ours is to write a readable book
for the general reader with
enough matter for him to think and draw
conclusions.
It is hardly necessary to state that this is a view offered to
the reader for his consideration. God Almighty Himself has ordered
us to read in His name, for doing that we cannot fail to develop
our mind and increase our knowledge. A good book will do that positively;
a bad one, negatively. Reading in His name, therefore, cannot but
produce good results. Yet, the Muslims today are very bad readers.
Centuries of subservience to bigoted religious authorities have
shackled their minds. This subservience plus their deplorable ignorance
of the contents of the Quran combine to make what they are today?a
weak, backward and humiliated people. The time has come for us to
break out of this prison. It is for this purpose that this study
is undertaken.
Kassim Ahmad
A Reader’s View From West Africa
Dear Sir/Madam
I thank the Almighty Allah for giving me health and strength to
correspond with you. I and my family were receiving the Islamic
perspective but now it seems not to be coming any more. I am therefore
pleading with you to send us a copy of the Submitters Perspective
every month as you had been doing sometime ago. The Submitters Perspective
always puts me in good condition when I’m lonely, unhappy
or sad. It makes me remember Almighty Allah and His attributes.
In fact, I really do like it. Please, I repeat, please send us
a copy every month for I ask for the sake of Allah, our only God.
I wish you start sending us copies.
May Allah grant you the opportunity to be publishing this and sharing
it to Muslims all around the world. This is really a great work
you’re doing. Keep it up. May Allah help you.
Religion of Islam (Submission):
Truth vs Conjecture
Page 4
One of the prevalent myths in the western
world is that Muhammad was the founder of Islam. Even the majority of
people who call themselves Muslims think that the prophet Muhammad instituted
the practices of Islam. They thus show their ignorance of the Quran. It
is a fact that Islam is called the “religion of Abraham” (Millat
Ibrahim) throughout the Quran (2:130, 135; 3:95; 4:125 etc.) Furthermore,
God informs us in the Quran that all religious practices of Islam were
established with Abraham, long before the Quran’s revelation (2:128,
21:73, 22:78). These practices included the Contact prayers (Salat), the
obligatory charity (Zakat), the fasting of Ramadan, and the Hajj pilgrimage.
For example, God made a covenant with the Children of Israel that He
would be with them so long as they observe the Contact prayers and the
obligatory charity (5:12). Luqman advised his son to observe the Contact
prayers (31:17). Moses and Aaron (and the Children of Israel) were asked
to turn their homes in Egypt into synagogues, and to maintain the Contact
prayers until God delivers them from the tyranny of Pharaoh
(10:87). Thus all the messengers who came
after Abraham observed the practices given to him by God. This included
the prophet Muhammad who was also enjoined to follow Abraham (16:123).
Another proof of divine preservation of the Islamic practices given to
Abraham is the universal acceptance of such practices. There is no dispute
concerning the number of units (Rak`ahs) in all five daily Contact prayers
assigned by God. The Quran’s mathematical code confirms the number
of units in the five prayers 2, 4, 4, 3 and 4, respectively. The number
24434 is a multiple of 19.
The Quran deals only with practices that were distorted. For example,
the ablution must be in four steps (5:6). The tone of voice during contact
prayers should be in a moderate tone (17:110).
We learn from the Quran that Islam is not simply the name of a religion.
It is a description. It is the total submission and devotion to God alone
(16:52). It is the only religion approved by God (3:19). One does not
become a Muslim automatically if his or her birth certificate indicates
so. A person’s
name, his parents’ religious background,
his race or language is no guarantee for him to be a Muslim acceptable
to God either. Being a Muslim is a matter between the person and God the
Almighty who knows our innermost thoughts and intentions. It is a matter
of how a person accepts God as the only deity, submits to His will, and
lives a righteous life accordingly.
Unfortunately, the majority of Muslims today have distorted the teachings
of Muhammad, just like the Jews and Christians distorted the teachings
of Moses and Jesus, respectively. Instead of following the guidance of
the Quran, they insist on following the innovations and corrupted practices
attributed to Muhammad. On the day of Judgment the messenger will say
that his people have deserted the Quran (25:30). Jesus will disown his
wrongful followers who idolized him. Our aim should be to purge these
innovations by upholding the Quran alone, and not falling into idolizing
anybody or anything beside God. This is the only way to present the true
religion of Submission to the world.
Abdullah Arik
About this work
Kind
Document
Author
International Community of Submitters
Publisher
International Community of Submitters / Masjid Tucson