Quran and the Hadith Intertwined

Studies in Modern Hadith Literature By Kaukab Siddique, Ph.D.
G.A. Pervez's ATTACK ON HADITH: OUR REBUTTAL. PART I

Part of the Euro-American war against Islam is the systematic assault on the credibility and authenticity of the Hadith. Anti-Islam scholars see Hadith as a promising target because they believe that a certain segment of Muslims is vulnerable to an attack on Hadith. One of the developments of neo-colonialism was the emergence of westernized elites in each Muslim country who were well versed in western poetry, drama, fiction, admired the scientific developments in the West and despised the religious populists among their own people whom they labeled broadly as mullahs.

There was some justification in the reaction to the mullahs. A conventional type of religious preacher/teacher had become commonplace who was not well-grounded in Islamic studies and often used weak or out-of-context hadith narrations to arrive at broad generalizations. These preachers were also sectarian in their approach to religion and created a picture of hadith related Islam which repulsed even those westernized elites who wanted to return to their Islamic roots.

Owing to the proliferation of these shallow preachers, the elites did not see (or could not see) that authentic Islamic scholars were also coming forth to lead the nation, among them people like Abul Ala Maudoodi, Syed Qutb, Imam Khomeini and Shaikh Omar Abdel Rahman.

PLOY NUMBER ONE:

Attack on the Hadith is carried out under the slogan of Quran only. Thus the attack can resonate among Muslims who though westernized have considerable loyalty to Islam. It is often not seen as an attack on Islam at all but rather as an attempt to purify Islam.
The beginning point is usually to claim that Imam Bukhari himself, the foremost among compilers of hadith selected only a couple thousand hadith from among the 600,000 or so which he found.

Here is a typical comment on Hadith from G. A. Pervez . With reference to the collectors of Hadith , he says:

They found hundreds of thousands of Hadith but there were very few among them which they (the collectors) declared sahih (correct or authentic) and recorded them in their compilations. By the way, notice how many hadith these persons found and how many hadith they selected for inclusion in their compilations:
1. Imam Bukhari. Out of 600,000, leaving out repeats, he took only 2762.
2. Imam Muslim. Out of 300,000, only 4348.. and so on he goes on with the remaining six books of Hadith.
He concludes thus:
Obviously when the acceptance and rejection of hadith depends on the compilers perception, who can say that out of this dump of hundreds of thousands which these persons rejected, how many authentic hadith might have also been wasted. As for the many hadith among those which these persons chose, which can in no way be considered the words and actions of the Prophet (pbuh), will be clarified further on in this book. (Matalib al-Quran volume 4 by G. A. Pervez, pages 352 and 353).

This quote is important because it has become the staple of anti-Hadith polemic during the more recent war against Islam. Notice the attempt to speculate and cause doubt who can say.
The date of publication is important: 1981.
The publisher is the Perwezi sects organization called Idara-e-Tolu-Islam.

This could have been just an individuals misunderstanding of Hadith. However, the publishers present Pervez as Mufak-kir-e-Quran [The Quranic Thinker]. Important here is Pervezs dishonesty. He did not admit an important fact that these objections against Hadith have been brought by ALL THE FAMOUS CHRISTIAN MISSIONARY WRITERS. In a translation of The Life and Message of Muhammad (pbuh) by Allama Saiyid Sulaimam Nadwi by Mohiuddin Ahmad (published in 1977, four years before Perwezs book), we are given precise information on the Christian missionary charge against Hadith relating to the SPECIFIC ISSUE of the few hadith selected out of 600,000 etc by Bukhari and others.

The following FAMOUS Christian writers contended on the basis of Bukharis selection from 600,000 and Ibn Hanbals; out of 7,500,000 that hadith was all a mass of forgeries and dubious reports. These charges occur in a variety of forms in:
1. Muir, LIFE OF MAHOMET, London, 1894, vol.1, page xxxvii
2. H.A. R. Gibbs, MOHAMMDANISM, London, 1964, page. 79.
3. R. A. Nicholson, A LITERARY HISTORY OF THE ARABS, Cambridge, page 1962
4. A. Guillaume, ISLAM, p. 91

Pervez is not a scholar of Hadith (as we shall show in a continuation of this series) and he cleverly concealed the probable source of his attack on Hadith:
Christian missionary polemicists.
Pervez was not a scholar of Hadith. He did not know even its basics. Unfortunately he made a virtue of his ignorance. In simplified form, here are a few points which will help readers understand why there were so many hadith and Bukhari only selected a couple thousand:
1. If a hadith is narrated by a hundred students of the companions of the Prophet Muhammad (pbuh), it is counted in hadith narration as ONE HUNDRED HADITH. Thus the text is only ONE, but the chains of narration come from many narrators. Take the first hadith in Bukharis Sahih: IT IS NARRATED by way of many chains of narration. The Prophet said (pbuh):
ACTIONS SHALL BE JUDGED BY INTENTIONS. If 70 students of the Prophets companions heard this hadith from hazrat Umar (r.a.), one of his companions, that would start 70 chains of narration. The students student would have his own student and school of learning, etc.

IMAM BUKHARI would look at the 70 chains of narration (or 70 hadith) and SELECT THE ONE HE CONSIDERED the MOST RELIABLE OR COMPLETE.
The process goes on with all the hadith he selected.
He is not leaving out any fabrications. [He would not even consider fabrications.] He is leaving out chains of narrations which are not the best. [For numerous specific examples, see Azmis STUDIES IN EARLY HADITH LITERATURE, 1968 and Mustafa Sibais AL-SUNNAH Wa MAKANATUHA FI AL ISLAM, 1961.]

The full title of Bukharis compilation contains the word Al-MUKHTASAR which indicates clearly that he was trying trying to collect ALL the correct Hadith but a selection of authentic hadith.

[For our Urdu readers, if a person selects some of Iqbals poetry, and compiles a selection of what he considers the best, that does not mean that the poetry he does not select is FABRICATED and does not belong to Iqbal.]

This is only one of the proofs that Pervez was a charlatan and a liar deliberately publishing false stories against Hadith to spread distrust and suspicion against the second sacred source of Islam, the Hadith of the Prophet Muhammad (pbuh).

People like Perevez, the ENEMY WITHIN, are the northern alliance of today, helping the Jews to mislead Muslim elites about the authenticity of Islamic texts.
Today attacks on hadith have become a worldwide industry, nourished by the Jews and their brainwashed Muslim followers.
(To be continued)
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2002-07-15 Mon 20:12ct