Ram Swarup - Understanding Islam Through Hadis: Religious Faith or Fanaticism?

Ram Swarup

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INTRODUCTION

Islam is not merely a theology, or a statement about Allah and his relationship with His creatures. Besides containing doctrinal and creedal material, it deals with social, penal, commercial, ritualistic, and ceremonial matters. It enters into everything, even into such private areas as ones dress, marrying, and mating. In the language of the Muslim theologians, Islam is a complete and completed religion.

It is equally political and military. It has much to do with statecraft, and it has a very specific view of the world peopled by infidels. Since most of the world is still infidel, it is very important for those who are not Muslims to understand Islam.

The sources of Islam are two: the Quran and the Hadis (Sayings or Traditions), usually called the Sunnah (customs), both having their center in Muhammad. The Quran contains the Prophets revelations (wahy); the Hadis, all that he did or said, or enjoined, forbade or did not forbid, approved or disapproved. The word Hadis, singular in form (pi. ahadis), is also used collectively for all the traditions taken together, for the whole sacred tradition.

Muslim theologians make no distinction between the Quran and the Hadis. To them both are works of revelation or inspiration. The quality and degree of the revelation in both works is the same; only the mode of expression is different. To them, the Hadis is the Quran in action, revelation made concrete in the life of the Prophet. In the Quran, Allah speaks through Muhammad; in the Sunnah, He acts through him. Thus Muhammads life is a visible expression of Allah's utterances in the Quran. God provides the divine principle, Muhammad the living pattern. No wonder, then, that Muslim theologians regard the Quran and the Hadis as being supplementary or even interchangeable. To them, the Hadis is wahy ghair matlu (unread revelation, that is, not read from the Heavenly Book like the Quran but inspired all the same); and the Quran is hadis mutwatir, that is, the Tradition considered authentic and genuine by all Muslims from the beginning.

Thus the Quran and the Hadis provide equal guidance. Allah with the help of His Prophet has provided for every situation. Whether a believer is going to a mosque or to his bedroom or to the toilet, whether he is making love or war, there is a command and a pattern to follow. And according to the Quran, when Allah and His Apostle have decided a matter, the believer does not have his or her own choice in the matter (33:36).

And yet situations do arise when the guidance is lacking. It is said of Imam ibn Hanbal (b. A. H. 164, d. A. H. 241 = A. D. 780-855) that he never ate watermelons, even though he knew that the Prophet had done so, because he did not know his manner of eating them. The same story is related even of Bayazid Bistan, a great Sufi, whose mystical teachings

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went against orthodox Quranic theology.

Though the non-Muslim world is not as familiar with the Sunnah, or Hadis, as with the Quran, the former even more than the latter is the most important single source of Islamic laws, precepts, and practices. Ever since the lifetime of the Prophet, millions of Muslims have tried to imitate him in their dress, diet, hair-style, sartorial fashions, toilet mores, and sexual and marital habits. Whether one visits Arabia or Central Asia, India or Malaysia, one meets certain conformities, such as the veil, polygamy, ablution, and istinja (abstersion of the private parts). These derive from the Sunnah, reinforced by the Quran. All are accepted not as changing social usages but as divinely ordained forms, as categorical moral imperatives.

The subjects that the Hadis treats are multiple and diverse. It gives the Prophets views of Allah, of the here and the hereafter, of hell and heaven, of the Last Day of Judgment, of iman (faith), salat (prayer), zakat (poor tax), sawm (fast), and hajj (pilgrimage), popularly known as religious subjects; but it also includes his pronouncements on jihad (holy war), al-anfal (war booty), and khums (the holy fifth); as well as on crime and punishment, on food, drink, clothing, and personal decoration, on hunting and sacrifices, on poets and soothsayers, on women and slaves, on gifts, inheritances, and dowries, on toilet, ablution, and bathing; on dreams, christianing, and medicine, on vows and oaths and testaments, on images and pictures, on dogs, lizards, and ants.

The Hadis constitutes a voluminous literature. It gives even insignificant details of the Prophets life. Every word from his lips, every nod or shake of his head, every one of his gestures and mannerisms was important to his followers. These are remembered by them as best as they could and passed on from generation to generation. Naturally those who came into greater contact with the Prophet had the most to tell about him. Aisha, his wife, Abu Bakr and Umar, his aristocratic followers, Anas b. Malik, his servant for ten years, who died at the ripe age of 103 in A. H. 93, and Abdullah b. Abbas, his cousin, were fertile sources of many ahadis. But another most prolific source was Abu Huraira, who is the authority for 3,500 traditions. He was no relation of the Prophet, but he had no particular work to do except that he specialized in collecting traditions from other Companions. Similarly, 1,540 traditions derive from the authority of Jabir, who was not even a Quraish but belonged to the Khazraj tribe of Medina, which was allied to Muhammad.

Every hadis has a text (matn) and a chain of transmission (isnad). The same text may have several chains, but every text must be traced back to a Companion (as-hab), a man who came into personal contact with the Prophet. The Companions related their stories to their successors (tabiun), who passed them on to the next generation.

At first the traditions were orally transmitted, though some of the earliest narrators must have also kept written notes of some kind. But as the Companions and the Successors and their descendants died, a need was felt to commit them to writing. There were two

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other reasons. The Quranic injunctions were probably sufficient for the uncomplicated life of the early Arabs, but as the power of the Muslims grew and they became the masters of an extended empire, they had to seek a supplementary source of authority to take into account new situations and new customs. This was found in the Sunnah, in the practice of the Prophet, already very high in the estimation of the early Muslims.