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- Original Message -
From: Mohammed A
To: eGroup For Muslims Around The World
Sent: Saturday, December 15, 2007 8:09 AM
Subject: Bismillah [IslamCity] God's Preservation of the Sunnah (part 7 of
7): (Summary)
God's Preservation of the Sunnah (part 7 of 7):
Summary
The above has been a very brief description of some of the important means by
which Allah has preserved the ever-important Sunnah of the Prophet Muhammad,
may God praise him. One of the important aspects to note is that these
safeguards started going into effect virtually during the time of the Prophet
himself. There was no time lag, leaving the door open to a massive loss of
information or to distortion.
In the following statement, M. Z. Siddiqi has done an excellent job of
summing up the protection of the sunnah in the early years:
The Hadeeth in the sense of the reports of the sayings and doings of Muhammad
has been a subject of keen pursuit and constant study by the Muslims throughout
the Muslim world since the very beginning of the history of Islam up to the
present times. During the life-time of Muhammad many of the companions tried
to learn by heart whatever he said, and observed keenly whatever he did; and
they reported these things to one another. Some of them wrote down what he
said in Saheefahs (scrolls) which were later on read by them to their students,
and which were preserved in their families and also by the Followers. After
the death of Muhammad, when his companions spread in various countries, some of
them as well as their followers undertook long arduous journeys, courted
poverty and penury in order to collect them together. Their remarkable activity
with regard to the preservation and propagation of hadeeth is unique in the
literary history of the world. [And the excellence of their sciences remains]
unparalleled in the literary history of the world even to-day.[1]
It was these processes that ultimately culminated in the fine-tuned sciences
of hadeeth and the detail grading of the reports traced back to the Prophet.
In general, the scholars would not accept a report as an authentic hadeeth
unless that report can be verified with a complete chain made up of only sound
and trustworthy narrators all the way back to the Prophet. Anything short of
that would be rejected as a weak hadeeth.
The more one goes on to study the sciences of hadeeth, the more he/she will
feel comfortable with the feeling that the teachings of the Prophet Muhammad
has been minutely preserved, just as Allah had promised in the Quran. When the
scholars of hadeeth-who are the specialists in that field and who have spent
their lifetime in mastering that discipline-agree upon the authenticity of a
hadeeth, there should be no need for debate or question. The only thing left
to do is to believe in it and do one's best to apply the meaning of that
hadeeth in one's life.
Comparison with Other Scriptures
When referring to the hadeeth of the Prophet, it is commonplace for some
Westerners to use the word tradition. This immediately brings forth the
impression of a very haphazard and unscholarly report. The reality, as alluded
to above, is completely different. The use, therefore, of this word
tradition may be nothing more than a smokescreen to give the impression that
the hadeeth were not preserved. Another common description that appears is a
reference to the preservation of the hadeeth as being similar to that of the
Gospels.
This is also a rather clever phrase that definitely has negative connotations
to it for many. In fact, many converts have studied the Gospels and know how
unreliable they are-this being one of the reasons why they began to search for
a religion other than Christianity. Therefore, such a statement will quickly
shake their faith in hadeeth.
The stark reality is that no honest comparison can be made between the minute
and scientific preservation of the hadeeth of the Prophet and the preservation
of the earlier scriptures. A few brief descriptions of the preservation-or
lack thereof-of the earlier scriptures should suffice to contrast them with the
preservation of the hadeeth.
After a lengthy discussion of the history of the Torah, Dirks concludes:
The received Torah is not a single, unitary document. It is a cut-and-paste
compilation. with additional layering. While
