REFORMER SAYYID QUTB'S ATTACK ON HADITHS

60 - When religion reformers want to annihilate a command of Islam, they attack hadiths as a last resort. They say that the hadith which that command depends upon is mawdu'. Upon finding out that they cannot make believe, they say, "It is a daif hadith, if not mawdu'; a daif hadith cannot be depended upon for a judgement." For example, it is haram for men to wear gold rings. Religion reformers say that the hadith telling this is daif and gold ring is not haram. Their words contradict themselves, for, since a daif hadith cannot be depended upon for a judgement, the hadith from which the judgement, "Gold ring is haram," was derived must be sahih, which is the truth of the matter. The Ahl as-Sunnat scholars studied the hadiths hair-splittingly and sifted out all mawdu' hadiths. They derive the fard, halal and haram only from sahih and mashhur hadiths. In the commentary of the book Manar, Ibn Malak states this fact clearly: "A daif hadith cannot necessitate or make wajib. A religious deed cannot be performed according to a hadith which cannot be understood whether it is sahih or not." In the section on wudu' in Radd al-mukhtar, is commentary to Durr al-mukhtar, Ibn 'Abidin says, "It is not necessary for the muqallid to search for the proofs, documents of the decisions which the mujtahids have made."

The person who attacks the Ahl as-Sunnat scholars and who is irreverent towards fiqh books belongs to none of the four madhhabs. 'Abdullah ibn 'Isa Sanani, in his book Saif al-Hindi fi ibanati tariqati 'sh-shaikhi 'n-Najdi (ed. 1218 A.H./1803), proves with documents that those who say "mawdu' " for sahih hadiths are of no madhhab and that they strive to demolish Ahl as-Sunnat. Mudarris Sayyid 'Abdullah Effendi, in his book Irsal al-makal, answers those who speak ill of hadiths by saying that they are daif or mawdu', and he refutes Ibn Taymiyya and as-Shawkani, the leaders of this mischief.

There is a separate branch of knowledge called usul al-hadith, in which 'mawdu hadith' does not mean 'made-up hadith'. Today, those who know nothing of this knowledge think of its lexical meaning and suppose that it means 'made-up hadith.' [For more detailed information on this knowledge and on mawdu hadiths, see the fifth chapter in the book Endless Bliss, II.]

The book Usul al-hadith by the great scholar Imam Muhammad al-Birghiwi is very valuable. Dawud al-Karsi wrote a commentary to this book in 1251 A.H. (1835) which was commented again by Yusuf Effendi of Harput in 1292 (1875) and was printed in Istanbul a year later. The following passage is translated from this Arabic work:

"All the hadiths reported by a person who was known to have lied when reporting any hadith are called mawdu' or muftari hadiths, for there was the probability that all the hadiths he reported were made-up, slanderous. As it is seen, in usul al-hadith, a hadith called mawdu' does not have to be made-up, for, even if the person who was caught in his lying with one hadith repented and became pious, all the hadiths he reported would still be said to be mawdu'. The book Tadrib by Imam as-Suyuti and also many of the hadith scholars say that this is so. The heretical groups, in order to lead Muslims out of the right path, and apostates, in order to trick Muslims, invented hadiths. And some tekke shaikhs invented hadiths in order to encourage in worship and to frighten against sinning. It is haram to invent hadith with such good intentions, and it is kufr if it is intended to trick Muslims. The hadiths praising the suras in the tafsir books of as-Salabi, al-Wahidi, az-Zamakhshari, al-Baidawi and Abu 's-Su'ud are claimed to be mawdu' by some ignorant people. It is obvious that the hadiths that praise the suras al-Fatiha, al-Anam, al-Kahf, Ya Seen, ad-Dukhan al-Mulk, az-Zilzal, an-Nasr, al-Kafirun al-Ikhlas, al-Falaq and an-Nas are sahih. The writers of these books quoted in their books the hadiths that were claimed to be mawdu' because they considered them as sahih, hasan or at least daif, or because they had conveyed them just as they were from the hadith scholars whom they depended on, or because they would not admit that they were mawdu'. With the help of the fairly certain presumption, it can be decided if a hadith is sahih; it cannot be known for certain. There are many hadith which the majority of hadith scholars said to be sahih but which other scholars of this branch did not say so. Many others were not able to understand whether they were sahih or not, for it was very difficult to understand if a hadith was sahih. It could be understood only with presumption; it could not be understood certainly. In order to make sure that a hadith is made-up, one of its narrators had to say, "I invented this"; or it should have been known for certain that the person who, he said, had told it to him had died before he was born; or the saying which was said to be a hadith should have been incompatible with Islam, with reason, with calculation or with experience, and it could not have been explained away differently. Only the hadith scholars can understand all these. These profound scholars also may be mistaken in understanding them. It is for this reason that there have been scholars who said 'sahih', 'hasan' or 'daif' about many of the hadiths for which Abu 'l-faraj ibn al-Jawzi said 'mawdu' in his book Mawduat. Imam az-Zahabi said that the majority of the hadiths written in that book were dependable and beautiful hadiths. We have derived what we have written up to here from the books Taqrib by Imam an-Nawawi, Tadrib by as-Suyuti and Nukhba by Shaikh al-Islam Ibn Hajar al-Askalani." [Imam Muhammad al-Birghiwi, Usul al-hadith, p.91.]

It is of great disrespect, unscrupulousness and unreasonableness to suppose that the greatest scholars like al-Baidawi, Imam al-Ghazali, Jalal ad-din as-Suyuti, Sadr ad-din al-Qonawi and Sana'ullah PaniPuti were too ignorant to distinguish a sahih hadith from a made-up hadith, or to suppose that they were as irreligious as not to protect their religion or not to feel pangs of conscience in recording made-up hadiths as sahih hadiths. We have told at length in the seventh and eighth paragraphs of our book how strictly Islamic scholars studied hadiths. An intelligent and reasonable person who reads those writings will certainly realize that a religion reformer, who shows so much effrontery as to say that there are made-up hadiths in the books of such a great scholar as Imam al-Ghazali, is worth cutting his tongue and burning his books. To say that those exalted scholars could not understand the hadiths while their successor Ibn Taymiyya could is not a word which anyone besides the enemies of the Ahl as-Sunnat scholars can say. Those who cannot comprehend the greatness of Islamic scholars suppose that those exalted leaders also wrote with their short reasons and aberrant thoughts, like they do. They use so base words as to say, "Al-Ghazali's discernment remained under the bad influence of social ideas." They cannot comprehend that each of his writings is an explanation of ayats and hadiths. If a person who praises al-Imam ar-Rabbani is sincere in his word and if he likes that exalted leader's writings, he should follow these writings and love the Ahl as-Sunnat scholars, whom al-Imam ar-Rabbani praises highly, and he should not be disrespectful towards them. A scholar only can appreciate the value of a scholar. Not to realize the value of the Ahl as-Sunnat scholars, or to strive to blemish, to criticize those blessed persons, causes one to depart from al-firqat an-najiyya (the group of Salvation), and he who departs from Ahl as-Sunnat becomes either a heretic or an unbeliever. [Mawlana Hamd-Allah ad-Dajwi, Al-basa'ir li-munkirit-tawassuli bi-ahl al-maqabir, Pashawar, Pakistan, 1385, p. 52.] As it is written on page 65 of the book Hidayat al-muwaffiqin by Abu Muhammad Viltori, one of the 'ulama' of India, 'Allama Ahmad Sawi al-Maliki said on the ayat "Idha nasita" of the surat al-Kahf in the marginalia of Jalalain's tafsir: "It is not permissible to follow a madhhab other than the four madhhabs. One who does not follow one of the four madhhabs is in heresy (dalala) and also leads others to heresy. Some of such people become kafir, because, one of the things that cause kufr is to attempt to drive rules from ayats and hadiths."