The believer without a book

Bismillah,

Community has brought up the most pivotal hadith, which is recorded as sahih.  Someone else can get the details, but I know I read it in the sahih. 

A companion goes to a leader of the Muslims and quotes the prophet, pbuh.  The leader liked it so much that he told his scribe to write it down.  The companion said:  The prophet Muhammad, pbuh, forbade the writing down of his sayings.

Assalamu'alaikum,

Brother Ali Zaki,

May i correct you a little. The term Ijtihad which you have frequently used - is not really "science of hadith"...

Ijtihad according to one of its definitions is:

"Exerting the sum total of one's ability attempting to uncover Allah's rulings on issues from their sources (Qur'an, Sunnah, Ijma', etc.). Sometimes divided into complete ijtihad (the ability of one to independently arrive at Allah's rulings in all areas of fiqh) and partial ijtihad (the ability of one to do so only in certain areas of fiqh in which they have exerted such efforts)."

Science of Hadith (Ulum-ul-Hadith) is ideed much more complex than what Community assumes it to be. His argument is rational, the Companions would not have confused Qur'aan with ahadeeth. However, as Islam was quickly spreading to places beyond Mecca and Medina, the new believers could have confused the scrolls of Qur'aanic verses with the ones featuring ahadeeth. Taking into consideration that literate people were not frequently found during those days. Which is one of the main reasons why the ahadeeth were not to be written down in parallel to the verses of the Qur'aan that were being revealed... At a later stage, when Qur'aan was compiled into Mushaf as we have it today, all other duplicate scrolls with selected verses were also odered to be destroyed.

Here is a link to a comprehensive introduction to the Sciences of Hadith.

http://www.usc.edu/dept/MSA/fundamentals/hadithsunnah/scienc eofhadith/atit.html

Jazzak Allahu Khair.

MOCKBA wrote: Community, do you know why Iblis fell rejected? Because he did not agree... his arrogance blinded his rationality. Because he quesitoned too much... because enflamed with fire he thought that he had attained the ultimate. Let's not be too eager to re-interpret the Qur'aan and mess around with the methodology of recording of the ahadeeth.

Why Iblis got cast out was because he thought himself better then what Allah created out of clay, so the arrogance was that he rejected the truth when it came to him and thought what he had was better then what was given to Adam.

When the jews say that a great rabbi centuries ago said something and that he was a righteous man and that they follow his words because they have to follow their rabbis teachings because they are the vicegerants of Moses, in other words follow their methodology, we muslims think:"what foolishness, they are misguided  how can they know that that rabbi was a righteous man and how can they know that "he" actually said such, just because they say someone said something and just because they claim he was righteous does not mean that he was." Or when the christians say they do a certain thing because the holy spirit came down on a righteous man some hunderds of years ago and he was made to write it down by the holy spirit, and that they do it because it is a command from God, we think:"what? this is wrong what they do, how can they be so gullible into believing the words of others without question?" So why judge christians and jews this way, but when it comes to muslims we do not, are we not human beings just like the jews and christians are human beings? prone to make mistakes and even lie and deceive? Did not the prophet say that this ummah will make the same mistakes as those before us i.e the jews and christians? We forgot who our prophet was :The Unlettered Prophet, He did not write or read but spoke what was sent down upon him, and the believers who heard it believed in it, and recited it to others, He did not object when the koran was written down, because the koran is a book, but when he heard that his words were written down, he ordered them to be burned. Had those who started writing down his words after his death obeyed him, the situation would have been that the koran would remain as a book and in the mind of thousands later millions, also his words that people kept alive by telling them to others would remain. Some of the prophet's words would be forgotten(by the will of Allah) this would be a natural process since they are not preserved in books, somethings that applied for one period of time would not apply anymore for another period and would gradually disapear and words that were not from the prophet would disapear completely. Lies do not last, EVEN if written down, [See truth is what remains and Allah is The Truth, The Everlasting, The Eternal and falsehood is by nature a vanishing thing, these are teachings from The koran and everyone will come to know it is the truth.]

One More Thing....

Also, in fact, The Bible and The Talmud are collections of hadith (from previous prophets and others) without any method of authenticaion of their contents. As a result, the Jews and Christians are forced to either accept it all, or reject is all and they come up with all kinds of mental gymnastics to justify why it is "Holy" or "Inspired".

In contrast, the whole purpose of the science of Hadith is to classify hadith based on various criteria so that we can determine (with some degree of certainty) how reliable the hadith is. No Muslim (that I know of) has ever claimed that all of the 10's of thousands of hadith are actually from the Prophet. In fact, noone could since many hadith contradict eachother. However, this does not mean that we do not know, with a high degree of certainty, that some of the hadith that are transmitted through many lines of narration are, in fact, true and reliable.

Of course, the Quran is the ultimate firquon (criteria), which has been protected by Allah (s.w.a.) from error or corruption, therefore, if any hadith contradicts the Holy Quran it is rejected by all Muslims.

Salam