• home
• about
• shop
• archive
• tumblr
• photos
• contact

Personal Hadith

by HijabMan :: posted 13 December 04

At around the age of 15, I made the decision to not follow Hadith. At the time, I made this decision for 2 reasons. First, the Islamic school I attended from ages 11-13 rarely mentioned the Qur’an and concentrated on Hadith, and from the Hadith they used, I had a pretty messed up vision of what Islam was. The Hadith they used sounded like fairy tales to me.Things about a one-eyed monster on the Day of Judgement and so on and so forth added to my frustration with religion, and my questions were left unanswered. Granted, I didn’t exactly take the classes seriously, but what 11-13 year old would take a class about monsters and signs of the Day of Judgement taught by a 16 year old girl seriously?

After a combination of wanting to leave, causing a bit of a ruckus in the mosque, and them just not wanting to deal with me, I left. I began to read the Qur’an (translated in English) bit by bit on my own. At around the age of 16, I had read enough of it to know what it contained and what it did not contain. I also read an English translation of Sahih al-Bukhari Volume 7. At 16 I was on the internet and already having a multitude of religious conversations, and I noticed that a lot of average Muslims confuse the Qur’an and Hadith, and the most quoted hadith, and the loudest of people were those who rattled off the most ridiculous hadith.

This turned me off.

Until about the age of 18 I pretty much rejected all Hadith, citing information like how the Prophet forbade the writing of Hadith during his lifetime, because he was afraid of it being confused with the Qur’an. I asserted that his fear had come true (and I still believe it has). In addition, I cited various verses from the [English Translations] of the Qur’an, stating that it [the Qur’an) was clear, and complete, and preserved. I believed (and still to a large degree believe) it didn’t need any sort of explanation, unlike a lot of Muslims would say.

At the age of 18 and 19, after reading some books and an encounter with a woman I’ll call H., I conceded and understood that different people remember God in different ways (this was in my rhetoric all along since the age of 14, but I didn’t really walk the walk, I just talked the talk, if you know what I mean), and that yes, there were many paths to God, and to this day, I believe that the “Right Path” encompasses several paths. I used Hadith sparingly, never taking them as divine, or as a religious duty, but just to get an idea of the context of certain Qur’anic verses, and to get an idea of Hijazi society at the time of the Prophet.

At 20, a friend of mine said something that was in the back of my mind all along, but I was never able to articulate. She spoke about information, and that Hadith, was just another source of information, why close the door on information? I agreed. My very nature is to seek knowledge. The Qur’an’s command is “Read!” is it not? I understand that there are pieces of wisdom in the hadith collections. I understand that there is some good in the hadith collections, but I also know that the hadith are not revelation. They are the product of humankind, those with political, social, and economic agendas- people with biases.

The so-called authentic hadith collections of Bukhari and Muslim do contain inauthentic and out-of-context hadith. A little while ago, I had a chance to sit with Shaykh Abdullah Adhami and Amina Assilmi¹, and I asked them if there was any effort to rid the authentic hadith collections of weak and out-of-context hadith. Adhami’s short answer was “No.” He was playing with his son at the time, so I didn’t pry further. Amina Assilmi said something that troubled me. She said, that “as an average, or lay person” she didn’t think she would want the hadith collections to be rid of those hadith, because she could still learn from those that were weak. Ultimately, the feeling I got from her was that the problem was with people, and not the texts themselves.

That didn’t make sense to me. It sounded like she wanted to keep people dumb. Granted, she may have not meant it that way. In either case, Adhami is the only person to have made a convincing [to me] argument that hadith actually serve to help women, rather than to deny them of their rights. I see one problem, however, at the level of the average person.

At the levels of scholarly discourses, it is quite clear what the traditions say about women. However, when the average person comes across, for instance, four separate narrations of a tradition where Muhammad, the Prophet of God (pbuh) is quoted as saying something like “evil omen is in three things, the house, the horse and the woman,”¹ that person is misled. She doesn’t know that the person who heard that walked into that conversation half way through. The Prophet was actually saying, “The people before you were cursed because they used to say that evil omen was in the house the horse and the woman.” At least that is what Adhami claimed, and quoted some texts to prove his case. This is just one example, and there exist countless others.

When people quote hadith, they almost never mention all of the narrators, never speak of context. So what does this all mean? It means, in my humble opinion, that the authentic hadith collections, aren’t a reliable source of religious guidance for the las people, because they aren’t able to pick out what is authentic and what isn’t. Scholars like Sh. Abdullah Adhami, however, seem to be able to weed through various texts and can create a reliable history with their knowledge.

As always, I try to exemplify all of the Prophets as best as I can, knowing that they were humble, patient, good-hearted servants of God.

And God knows best.—-

¹They are found in Volume 7, Book 62, Numbers 30-33 of Sahih Bukhari

| share on delicious | digg | reddit | facebook | stumbleupon |

Related Articles
Potty Humor Daw'ah, Part II
Do Muslims Never Get to Have an Idea of Their Own? Reinterpretating Islam In Turkey
Mailbag: Just throwing in a starfish
Little Mosque On The Prairie: Butt Pinches.
For Meredith. Wherever The Heck You Are.