If you study hadith books, you will find the smoke and fire of early discussions about the trend to reverting back the old days of ignorance. There were many monotheists who stood against the creation of Hadith and Sunnah as a secondary source. For instance, one of the very revealing smokes comes from the chimney of the so-called authentic hadith books of Sunnies where Caliph Omar does not allow Muhammad to write anything that would "guide people besides the Quran" by saying "Hasbuna Kitabulllah" (God's book is sufficient for us), which was reportedly acquiesced by other prominent scholars.
I would like to share wit you two excerpts on this issue. The first one is form the Manifesto for Islamic Reform, published in the appendix of Quran: a Reformist Translation, and the second one is from my discussion with Ali Sina, a propaganda stooge of modern Crusaders and bloody imperialists.
Here is the excerpt from the Manifesto for Islamic Reform:Under a very cruel theocratic state terror, many men mobilized to participate in the creation that we rightly call Hislam. They did not have much chance to add or subtract to what was considered The Quran, but there was a lot of room for innovations, superstitions, additions and distortions through fabricating hadith. When a man from Bukhara started collecting hearsay more than two hundred years after the departure of the prophet Muhammad, the landscape and social demographics were fertile for all kinds of theological concoctions and mutations. Those people and their parents had participated in numerous sectarian wars and atrocities. Many educated Gentiles, Christians and Jews were converted to Islam for dubious reasons. Most of these converts had never experienced a paradigm change; they just found it convenient to integrate their culture and most of their previous religious ideas with the new one. To justify and promote their version of religion, the elite started packaging and introducing their religious, cultural, and political ideas and practices under the brand names of hadith, sunna, commentaries, and fatwas. Additionally, they fabricated numerous stories called "asbab ul-nuzul" (the reasons for revelation) about why each verse was revealed, thereby distorting the meaning or limiting the scope of many Quranic verses. There was a great effort and competition to distort the meaning of words, taking them out of context to promote the agenda of a certain religion, culture, tribe, sect, cult, or king. Male chauvinists, hermits, misogynists too took advantage of this deformation movement. Hearsay statements attributing words and deeds to Muhammad and his idolized comrades became the most powerful tool or Trojan horse, for the promotion of diverse political propaganda, cultural assimilation, and even commercial advertisement. As a result, the Quran was deserted and its message was heavily distorted.
Soon after Muhammad's death, thousands of hadiths (words attributed to Muhammad) were fabricated and two centuries later collected, and centuries later compiled and written in the so-called "authentic" hadith books:
to support the teaching of a particular sect against another (such as, what nullifies ablution; which sea food is prohibited);
to flatter or justify the authority and practice of a particular king against dissidents (such as, Mahdy and Dajjal);
to promote the interest of a particular tribe or family (such as, favoring the Quraysh tribe or Muhammad's family);
to justify sexual abuse and misogyny (such as, Aisha's age; barring women from leading Sala prayers);
to justify violence, oppression and tyranny (such as, torturing members of Urayna and Uqayla tribes; massacring the Jewish population in Medina; assassinating a female poet for her critical poems);
to exhort more rituals and righteousness (such as, nawafil prayers);
to validate superstitions (such as, magic; worshiping the black stone near the Kaba);
to prohibit certain things and actions (such as, prohibiting drawing animal and human figures; playing musical instruments; chess);
to import Jewish and Christian beliefs and practices (such as, death by stoning; circumcision; head scarf; hermitism; rosary);
to resurrect pre-Islamic beliefs and practices common among Meccans (such as, intercession; slavery; tribalism; misogyny);
to please crowds with stories (such as the story of Miraj (ascension to heaven) and bargaining for prayers);
to idolize Muhammad and claim his superiority to other messengers (such as, numerous miracles, including splitting the moon);
to defend hadith fabrications against monotheists (such as, condemning those who find the Quran alone sufficient); and even
to advertise products of a particular farm (such as, the benefits of dates grown in a town called Ajwa).
In addition to the above mentioned reasons, many hadith were fabricated to explain the meaning of the "difficult" Quranic words or phrases, or to distort the meaning of verses that contradicted the fabricated hadith, or to provide trivial information not mentioned in the Quran (such as, Saqar, 2:187; 8:35
).
As for my debate with Ali Sina, an enemy of Islam who is very found of Hadith:That is how I see you and all other hadith deniers. You do not like what you see in the hadith. They embarrass you. You find Muhammad torturing his victims, beheading them, gauging their eyes, raping them and doing all sorts of despicable acts and all that hurts. So instead of being honest and admit that you were wrong and the man whom you worship is a psychopath criminal, you try to dismiss all the hadiths. You think if you put your head in the sand and pretend you do not see; the problem will go away. The despicable lawyers of O.J. Simpson did that and they won. But does that mean that Mr. Simpson is innocent? Even if you win this case based on discrediting the evidence and technicalities, can you still live with your conscience?
Once I was a believer and defender of hadith. However, when I studied the history of hadith, its collection, procedures of its collection, and problems with their authenticity and the profound difference between hadith and the Quran, yes I witnessed this, I gave up from following hadith and sunnah.
I understand why you want me to drag to a source that I have come to refute at the cost of my life. You want me to revert back to my old days and start believing those sources that are mere hearsay. Here is my answer:
I WILL NOT ACCEPT YOUR INVITATION TO DIG INTO A LITERARY GARBAGE AND CHOOSE AND PICK WHATEVER WE LIKE AMONG THE THOUSANDS Of CONTRADICTORY AND OCCASIONALLY RIDICULOUS NARRATION.
It appears that you are not able to criticize the Quran without the help of adding some garbage from collections of hearsay. Muslims and non-Muslims, all agree that the historical authenticity of the Quran is far beyond the authenticity of hadith. Thus, your insistence to rely on hadith, by a biased criterion of "if it says something good about prophet we will reject it but if it says bad things about him we jump over and accept it." is unacceptable. It is unfair; it is dishonest.
How can you rely on Bukhari who came from Bukhara to the scene 200 years after Muhammad and started collecting anything he heard and liked?
How can you rely on Bukhari who in the beginning of his collection is not even ashamed of insulting MONKEYS by reporting that a companion of the prophet saw monkeys stoning an adulterous monkey to death? According to your suggested criterion of sifting the garbage, we should accept this report since it does not praise Muhammad! Or you have another criterion that you forgot to communicate to me? You may end up with hundreds of arbitrary criteria to be able to justify your picks and rejects!
How can you invite me to speculate on Bukhari who confesses of collecting 700,000 hadith and accepting only about 7000; rejecting 99 percent of them? Don't you see the exaggeration? Had Muhammad talked every minute of his life after claiming messengership, his words could have hardly added up to 700,000 hadiths.
How can you take Bukhari serious who justifies the abrogation of a Quranic verse after Muhammad's departure by none other than a holy goat that ate the skin where the alleged verses issuing the stoning-to-death for adulterers written? Should we accept that report? In order to add another insult to Islam you would like to have it. But you cannot have it both ways. You have to also believe the "holy goat"
Bukhari had a very different idea of islam than Muhammad. Bukhari was an ignorant idol worshiper and had no respect to the Quran. Besides, he sided with the oppressive rulers. For instance, he found Marwan, the drunk and murderer governor. to be a credible person by narrating "sahih" hadiths from him, while he declined accepting any hadith from a brave student of the Quran, Abu Hanifah who suffered in the jails of Umayyad and Abbasid dynasties for rejecting to sell his soul! Bukhari was not an objective hadith collector, he was on the side of murderers and agressors.
We can write volumes of books listing the contradiction between the teaching of Bukhari and the Quran, the only book delivered by Muhammad. Then, how can a sound person claim Bukhari to be a friend of Muhammad? To me, he was a real enemy of Muhammad (6:112-116), like St. Paul was the real enemy of Jesus, since he distorted his message beyond recognition.
Let me little side track here. For instance, Jesus never silenced women and put them down with xenophobic teachings but St. Paul asked women to submit to men and hush: (1Ti 2:7-15; 1 Corinthians 14:34-35; 1 Peter 3:7). Jesus never asked for money for preaching but St. Paul asked for money shamelessly and likened his audience to flock of sheep to be milked by the holy sheperd! (Who goeth a warfare any time at his own charges? who planteth a vineyard, and eateth not of the fruit thereof? or who feedeth a flock, and eateth not of the milk of the flock? 1Co 9:7). He was a successful Machiavellian (before Machiavelli was born!) as opposed to Jesus who did not twist the truth to gain people: "To the weak became I as weak, that I might gain the weak: I am made all things to all men, that I might by all means save some." (1 Corinthians 9:22).
How can you trust Bukhari who narrates the LAST HADITH while prophet Muhammad in his death bed, rejecting the recording of any hadith through a decleration from the mouth of Omar Bin Khattap and the acquiescence of all prominent muslims that "Hasbuna kitabullah" (God's word is enough for us)? Will your suggested criterion to sift through the garbage help us to decide the authenticity of this hadith and reject all the rest? Which one do you believe? Was the Quran deemed sufficient by early muslims or they too needed hearsay reports to understand the Quran? What is the meaning of protecting the Quran from tempering while making it needy of volumes of dubious and fabricated stories?
How can you trust hadith books that report THE MOST WITNESSED HADITH, or THE MOST AUTHENTIC HADITH and manage to confuse the most crucial words, THE LAST WORDS in that hadith? The hadith about the last sermon, which was claimed to be witnessed by more than hundred thousand believers, has three different endings: (1). Follow the Quran. (2). Follow the Quran and my Sunnah. (3). Follow the Quran and my family. Should we pick and choose! Throw dice? How will your criterion help us to pick the accurate version?
How can you invite me to take Bukhari a serious source of history while in its LONGEST HADITH it narrates the story of Miraj in which poor Muhammad goes up and down between 6th and 7th heavens trying to reduce the number of daily prayers? In that hadith, Muhammad is like an innumerate and gullible union leader bargaining for some break time on behalf of his people against a merciless boss (hasha God!) who tries to require 50 prayers a day, that is, a prayer for every 28 minutes, day and night! In that narration Moses is the wise guy and he coaches Muhammad in this hard task of negotiation with God! According to your suggested criterion we should accept this hadith because Muhammad is depicted as an idiot who cannot even calculate, without the help of Moses who resides just one heaven below God, the impossibility of performing 50 prayers (not unit) a day? Even if one tried at that time they could not have divided the day to 50 periods of 28-minutes! Since, this hadith insults the intelligence of Prophet Muhammad according to your garbage-sifting criterion, should we believe this story?!
How can you trust the account of hadith books, which unanimously claim that Muhammad was an illiterate man? Based on your criterion, we should swallow this lie because it does not praise Muhammad, since it depicts him an illiterate man who was not capable of learning 26 letters while dictating a book for 23 years! Or should we reject it because while insulting Muhammad it praises the literary excellence of the Quran?
Idiot friends can harm a person more than wise enemies. Hadith and siyar books are products of ignorant friends who insulted and defamed the men they were trying to worship. Besides, we should not ignore the possibility of some converts with agenda to distort the message. For instance, many Jewish stories and practices were imported to "islam" via "convert" Jewish and Christian scholars, such as belief Mahdi and practice of circumcision, etc. Kab bin al Ahbar is one of those influential converts. The story of Muhammad massacring Bani Qurayza Jews is another fabricated story by Jewish converts; unfortunately they were able to insert such lies into hadith and siyar books, which provided every fabricator access to a holy mass propaganda.
Hadith books contain almost anything you want. You may find an extremely kind and nice Muhammad besides a cruel torturer one. You may find Muhammad to be a person with great morals and on the other page you will see him a pedophile. You will find Muhammad pointing at the moon and splitting it into two pieces letting one piece falling into Ali's backyard, and on the other page you will find Muhammad incapable of reading a simple letter. Now, you want us to enter this Muhammad-in-the-wonderland and separate truth from falsehood. And without looking in my eyes you are suggesting me to pick the bad and reject the good ones. You cannot be serious!
Can we use these hadiths in an actual court of law to incriminate Muhammad? I think we can. You may argue that they are circumstantial and try to discredit them. But they are so many of them that any sane jury will find it difficult to dismiss them. Muhammad is guilty as charged.
It is evident that you have no knowledge of modern rules of evidence in justice system. I challenge you to find a single judge in America that would find those hearsay reports credible for character assassination. If you find one, I promise that I will petition to the bar to take away his license by using similar hearsay to depict him as a drunk child molester! Yes, go find a single judge in a secular country accepting the garbage you are inviting me to.
However, our goal is not to take legal action against Muhammad. He is dead. We want to find out the truth. We may never be able to find the truth one hundred percent. But we can get a fairly good idea of it. What you have now is absolute lie.
As I gave a few examples out of many, it is not possible to get a fair and objective idea by using hadith and siyra books. But, your insistence on this issue gives away your weakness. You are not able to discuss Islam based on the most reliable historic document, the Quran. You had perhaps had very good time in constructing arguments against Sunni or Shiite Muslims who are mislead by those sources. As you know, I follow the Quran alone, like Muhammad himself did. There are now, thank God, tens of thousands of Muslims all around the world reaching the same conclusion.
This is just to show the weakness of the position of the Quran only Muslims. Apart from the fact that this is a fallacious way of thinking, it leaves Islam indecipherable.
Interesting. How in the world you can construe our rejection of hearsay and silly reports as weakness? The real weakness is in your argument, since you mix garbage in your arguments. I did not come here to speculate on books that NEITHER OF US TRUST. Bukhari could not survive five minutes in the witness stand and he would be rejected by every decent court of justice. But, your hatred against Muhammad or Islam, as it seems, has made you care less about truth and justice.
Peace,
Edip
