Adinant Adulyasat's Library tagged content →  View Popular

The Sunnah is not Based on the Ahadith  

    The Sunnah has not been founded
on Ahadith,
which have an inherent prospect of either being right or wrong, as we have
seen in the foregoing pages. On the contrary, it is based on the perpetual
adherence of the Ummah to it. Just as the veracity of the Qur’an
is proved by perpetuity in verbal adherence, likewise the veracity of Sunnah
is equally proved by the Ummah's perpetuity in practical adherence
to it. For instance, we have not adopted the prayers, pilgrimage etc, in
all their details because a few narrators explained them to us, but we
act in a particular manner because the Prophet (sws) acted accordingly.
Thereafter, through him learnt the Companions, and through them learnt
the followers of the Companions, and then the successors thereof learnt
through the followers. In this manner, the later generations continued
to learn through their earlier predecessors. In case, the narrative records
also testify to this effect, it should be taken as additional testimony.
However, if the narrations are found to vary in any manner, preference
shall, in any case, go to the perpetual adherence to practice. If it is
observed that in a certain case the Akhbar-i-Ahad differ from the Sunnah, reasons for variation shall be investigated.
However, if the variation cannot be explained, we shall be obliged to give
up the narrations, since in any case the latter are presumptive, whereas
in comparison the Sunnah is a categorical reality.  

    The creed of the Malki
School of Fiqh whereby they prefer the practice of the people of Madina to Akhbar-i-Ahad,
is based on this very principle. They regard the practice of the people
of Madina as a conclusive evidence
and say `among us the Sunnah is like this'. The Hanafites, likewise,
do not attach any importance to Akhbar-i-Ahad on problems which relate to `Umum-i-Balwah,
and do so with the same principle in view.  

    We must bear in mind the fact that
the perpetual adherence to practical issues by the Ummah means the
practice of the Prophet (sws), that of the Rightly Guided Caliphs, and
of the Companions of the Prophet (may Allah's blessings be upon them all).
Says the Holy Prophet (sws):  

Acting upon my Sunnah and the Sunnah of
my Rightly Guided Caliphs is obligatory for you. (Ibn Majah, Ch 6)  

    This is the group which is, in fact, the
mainstream of the Muslim Ummah. In our times, a very large section
of the people have adopted practices which are evidently contrary to the
Qur’an and Sunnah. They
are all in the category of heretics. And with regard to heresy the Prophet
(sws) has said that heresy is deviation, and this deviation leads to Hell-fire.  

Misconceptions
about Qadar

Many Muslims believe
that what they are going to do is caused by what has already been
written in Al-Lauhulmahfudz - they confuse 'causation' with 'association'.
In truth what we have is association, not causation. What we do is not
caused by what is written by Allah. Allah with His ultimate knowledge
knew what we are going to do. He could easily have put the good-doers
into Jannah and the evil-doers into the Hellfire. But Allah is Adil (Just)
so He created us in this life as to test us which way to go. What we are
going to do will match what has already been written but it's not a matter
of causation - what we do is out of our own willingness and ability and
we do have full responsibility on whatever choice we make.

Looking at guidance
and misguidance, guidance (hidayah) is a gift (rahmah) from
Allah. It is Allah who created us and gave us the mind so we can distinguish
between right and wrong to a certain capacity. It is Allah who equipped
us with fitrah to like the truth and good and to dislike
the wrong and evil It is Allah who gave us the ability and power to do
things and it is Allah who sent the Messenger with the Message to guide
us in things, which are beyond the reach of our conception. So when it
comes to guidance it is a bounty from Allah.

But when it comes
to misguidance, it has to do with us. When we do bad deeds, it is from
our own willingness and ability.

Those who turn away
from guidance do so because they want to turn away, i.e. they choose not
to be guided. They have been misguided because they are arrogant - they
refuse to listen.

And so when they
swerved from the right way, Allah let their hearts swerve from the truth.

[Surah As-Saff
(61): ayat 5]

Nevertheless there
are people who have not received the Message of Islam/guidance at all
or the Message has not reached them in the clearest form, i.e. it is incomplete
or distorted. These people are called Ahlul Fatrah and will be excused
and not be punished, even though there are misguided.

Killing the pig: This means that the eating of pork
will be abolished⁹.
It is interesting to note that Isaiah 66:17 suggests that those who
eat pork will come to an end and will not share in the kingdom of
God.

Since prohibition of eating pork is the most important and constant
element in the dietary laws of the Old Testament, restoration of
this prohibition will deal a death blow to Paul’s claim that the Law
was nailed to the cross. This claim was in complete violation of the
teachings of Jesus and the understanding of that teaching by his
eyewitness disciples. Evidence from the Acts and Paul’s own letters
show that James the brother of Jesus and other leading disciples of
Jesus such as Peter continued to follow the Law of Moses, as they
knew it, long after the departure of Jesus who himself was faithful
to that Law, although he interpreted it very liberally. Some sayings
in the Gospels also state clearly that he taught his followers to
respect the Law (Matt 23:2, Luke 11:42).

The Prophet said, "None of you should say that I am better than
Yunus (i.e. Jonah)." (Bukhari, Volume 4, Book 55, Number
624)

The choice of Jonah here is significant. Jonah is a relatively minor
prophet who is known to have made a terrible mistake. The idea
probably is that Muhammad is not to be raised even above
Jonah.

A person came to God's Messenger and said: “O, the best of
creation”; thereupon God’s Messenger said: “He is Ibrahim.”
(Muslim, Book 030, Number 5841.)

In another tradition, a Jew swears “by him who gave Moses
superiority over all human beings!" A Muslim slaps him, whereupon
the Jew goes to the Prophet and complains. The Prophet was angry
with the Muslim and said:

“Don't give superiority to any prophet amongst God’s prophets,
for when the trumpet will be blown, everyone on the earth and in
the heavens will become unconscious except those whom God will
exempt. The trumpet will be blown for the second time and I will
be the first to be resurrected to see Moses holding God’s
Throne. I will not know whether the unconsciousness which Moses
received on the Day of Tur has been sufficient for him, or he
has got up before me.” [This may give the impression that Moses
is superior to all the other prophets. In order to counter this
impression, in some versions the Prophet adds:] “And I do not
say that there is anybody who is better than Yunus bin Matta.”
Bukhari, Volume 4, Book 55, Number 626, Muslim Book
030, Number 5853).

But those same things that make it attractive make it attractive to many who are NOT really qualified or prepared to become business owners. The salient characteristics of MLM make it attractive to people who:



• have not done well in their business or profession and have little money saved up to invest
• have no previous experience owning or running a business
• have no previous experience in sales
• have little or no experience developing business relationships other than that of employer/employee/co-worker
• are not satisfied with their current level of income
• have unrealistic expectations of the amount of work involved compared to the revenue realized

As a result, many network marketers end up:



• over-selling the opportunity
• inappropriately discussing business in social situations
• coming across as desperate
• over-focused on new recruits and neglecting existing customers as a result
• being either inaccurate or deceptive when talking about their business

'Ayesha also
had a very strong memory. It is reported that she could recite poems of
up to 100 verses at a stretch.

The teachings
of Islam that 'Ayesha learnt from the Prophet with her strong memory and
keen intelligence were delivered to her students with great eloquence.
Tirmidhi reports Musa ibn talha as saying that he did not find anyone more
eloquent than 'Ayesha.

What is Islamic tasawwuf (Sufi Islam) and why does it look so mysterious? Genuine Islamic tasawwuf is the very heart and soul of Islam itself. Like everything else, Islam has two sides: an outside (zahir) and an inside (batin). The outside of Islam consists of statements of beliefs that Muslims must profess as well as laws and principles that must govern their personal and collective lives. The inside of Islam is faith and love, light and a life of contact with the Unseen. The outside of Islam is the main concern of such Islamic sciences as kalam (theology), fiqh (jurisprudence) and Shari'ah (law). The inside of Islam is the main source of Islamic tasawwuf. The Qur'an al-kareem says that the purpose of the coming of the Prophet of Islam was, among other things, to bring men from darkness to light, give them gifts of faith and divine love in a way that gives them a new spiritual life:

"It is He who sends down from on high clear signs unto His servant (Muhammad) in order to lead you from darkness into light: for, verily, God is most kind to you and full of grace." ( 57 : 9 )

The purpose of Islamic tasawwuf is to make true faith and its various fruits a reality in the lives of Muslims (and interested non-Muslims). Islamic tasawwuf thus breaths life into the body and structure of Islam. Unlike kalam, fiqh and Shari'ah, tasawwuf is not a science. It does not aim to study faith and love, light and a life of contact with the Unseen. It aims to experience them and then transmit the experience. As a Muslim saint has written:

"Tasawwuf is not a way of doing things nor a system of thought but a set of qualities and a way of being." (Abu al-Hasan) 

This way of being may be summed up as "freedom from slavery of desires, courage in confronting falsehood, a charitable nature and leaving this world to others with happiness." In conclusion, why does tasawwuf look so mysterious? Because the batin (or the Inner) with which it deals is mysterious. And the batin has to be mysterious because otherwise it would not be batin but be zahir.

Moreover, the Holy Qur'an makes it clear
that while there are many favors of God that He bestows on His
creatures in different measures, there is only one favor which
determines the superiority of one member of the human species over
another and that is taqwa or God consciousness. Thus wealth,
strength, health, intelligence, position, education, etc. are all
favors of God but we cannot say that a wealthier person is superior
to a poorer person, a stronger person is superior is superior to a
physically feeble person and so on. we can say only that a more
muttaqi person is superior to a less muttaqi person. In
the words of the Holy Qur'an:

"The nobler among you in the sight
of God is the more muttaqi (righteous) among you."
(49:13)

Taqwa (righteousness, God consciousness)
is that divine favor of God on which the right use of all other
favors of God depends. The more of this quality of taqwa a person
has the more the other favors of God benefit him.

Thus the fact that man has been favored
in some ways more than woman does not automatically make him
superior to her. It is only when his taqwa is more than hers that he
can from the Qur'anic point of view be considered superior to her.
And when a person's taqwa increases to a worthwhile level the
question of his superiority does not interest him, for he or she
realizes that all praises are due to God.

Thus love of the Prophet, on the
one hand puts us on the road to perfection by making us cherish it dearly
and on the other hand it helps us accept our imperfect humanity and in
this way to live in peace with ourselves as repentant servants of God hopeful
of His mercy. This is why love for the Prophet is a condition of iman,
for what is iman if it is not to acknowledge and repent for
one's imperfections and weaknesses and to cherish and strive for - even
as an unachievable ideal - the perfection of which man is potentially capable?

There are two closely interconnected
sides of iman. One is divine and consists of recognizing
God and being at peace with Him. The other is recognizing one's own self
and being at peace with oneself. The two sides are like two sides of a
coin, none of which can exist without the other. This is shown by numerous
verses in the Qur'an and ahadith of the Prophet. For example, the Prophet
is reported to have said that he who recognized his own self recognized
his Lord. Approaching the same principle from the other direction, the
Qur'an says:

"that those
who forget God are made to forget their own selves" (59:19).

The word Islam means being at peace
with God and this is linked in the Qur'an with being a self at peace with
itself.

The love of
the Prophet represents the human side of faith. as man the Prophet
represents a believers own true self. His love for the Prophet means that
he has recognized his own true self and is at peace with himself which
in turn means that he has recognized his Lord and made peace with Him by
surrendering to Him.

Al-Ghazali’s Views on
Cause-Effect Relation and Free Will 

One reason al-Ghazali is put squarely against rationality is
Hoodbhoy’s understanding of the term. Following Nietzshe,
Hoodbhoy defines “rationality” as “a matrix of connections which
assigns cause to effect”. In this form, the definition can
hardly exclude any one from rationality, since almost every
human being, from the primitive man living in jungles to the
most sophisticated researcher, in some way accepts the validity
of cause and effect relationship. Even animals must at some
level have a notion of this relationship, for otherwise they
could not function as living organisms. The difference lies in
the degree to which the relationship is viewed as deterministic
or necessary. Hoodbhoy often seems to assume -- and make part of
rationality -- a strictly deterministic connection, that is,
every event (with the possible exception of the big bang?) can
be assigned a set of causes that uniquely determine that event.
The problem with this view of rationality is that it has
identified rationality with a particular position on the
cause-effect relationship. A satisfactory definition of
rationality, however, should leave room for questioning all
positions including a position on the cause-effect relationship.
The irreducible minimum of such a definition should consist only
of: a) a belief in the general intelligibility of the universal
order, b) some rules of logic, and c) use of observations and
experiments in validating all models of the universe. 

If one must connect rationality and the acceptance of a cause
and effect relation, the connection should be expressed in
probabilistic terms. One could, for example, say: Rationality
assigns probabilities to possible effects resulting from a given
set of causes, consistent with whatever observations we do
possess and whatever analysis of those observations we are able
to conduct. We become irrational when we assign probabilities
(including 0 and 1) to effects without regard to available
observations. 

To get back to our author, Hoodbhoy condemns al-Ghazali for
denying that the cause-effect relationship is sufficient for
explaining events in the universe and for accepting the belief
in predestination. What Hoodbhoy fails to realize is that even
if these positions are wrong, they are not irrational or against
science, since logic and science cannot prove them false.
Al-Ghazali said that “the conjunction (al-‘iqtiran)
between what is conceived by way of habit (fi al-‘adah)
as cause and effect is not necessary (laysa daruriyyan).” 
Many centuries later the philosopher David Hume will argue a
similar position. This position can also be justifiably derived
from modern quantum physics, which admits the possibility that a
given state of the universe may lead in any future moment of
time one of several possible states. If so, then just as
al-Ghazali said, cause-effect relationship is not necessary.