Hopefully over the coming months/years I will be able to explain in finer detail some of the conclusions I've drawn about hadith.
It's such a massive topic and because it is so central to a Muslim's life, especially if you are a traditional Sunni, it's something the takes time and can't simply be unpicked in one blog post.
Hadith and the Last Revealed Religion
I have many issues with hadith as a result of looking into it all. For one, I never ever questioned how on earth hadith had become such an integral part of the religion when in fact it has no legal basis in the religion. The Quran doesn't say that the lives of all mankind for the rest of eternity should be guided by the sayings of the Prophet, well especially not in the form of hadith literature we have now.
The whole idea of shariah law and therefore how Muslims live their lives and believe what they believe has essentially been decided by some Arab despots over 1,000 years ago who decided they needed to standardise what had become "Islam" in the face of existential threats, i.e. the Shia, Christians, etc.
Basically, Muslims have been hoodwinked into believing that we have to follow the hadith - well, that's bullshit frankly. The Prophet himself it is said even said his sayings should not be written down. But they were...which technically means Muslims were being very naughty...but that's OK because they're good Muslims, doing what's best for us all.
Hadith - Who Controls Them?
Another massive issue I have with hadith now, which I never thought about as a Muslim, is that you are told that unless you know Arabic, have studied Islamic sciences and received permission from a scholar ("ijaza") then you can't approach the hadith - basically, you are not clever enough to read a hadith and know its full meaning(s).
I used to think this made sense because it stops people such as Wahhabis and more literal Muslims taking a hadith and attributing their own meanings to it. But now looking at, basically hadith and the approach to hadith is protected as is any profession in the world and as is any sort of academic science. It's its own little bubble - hadith is untouchable in Islam. It's controlled.
This all makes no sense when you look at Islam at the last revealed religion for all mankind - how is someone speaking Khmer in Cambodia supposed to follow this religion? Well, basically the only way is to believe what someone else has said and how someone else interprets a hadith, which may or may not be the truth.
And this brings me nicely to the topic of this blog and hadith. It is all based on what someone else said.
Hadith - Sayings of the Prophet? or of others?
Let me give you some context - as a Muslim when you are told a hadith it either goes, "The Prophet said...." or "A hadith of the Prophet states....".
Once you start to know a bit more then people may start to use the names of the companion of the Prophet who remembered and conveyed the hadith. For example, "Abu Hurairah narrated that the Prophet said that..."
Basically, it stops there. So when you are learning about Islam, most of the time people either quote the Quran or a hadith. The hadith is always read in the manner I mentioned, which makes you believe that the Prophet actually said those words. My God - you're amazed at the time - amazed at how these words have been preserved for 1,400 years.
If you learn more about Islam and hadith, you start to learn about the chains of narration or "Isnad". These chains are basically said to give a hadith its credentials - the idea being that the people who recall the hadith are all upright, practising Muslims with zero ego or personal intentions in mind.
Once I started to read the hadith about dogs I started to look more into these chains...and what I found really perplexed me. It wasn't what I had imagined and it seemed really quite weak.
The Isnad - Reliable Chains of Transmission
So, let's explore some of these chains to see what I mean. I've simply picked 2 hadith from Sunnah.com's Bukhari collection about "dogs" to illustrate my point.
حَدَّثَنَا أَبُو طَاهِرٍ،
حَدَّثَنَا ابْنُ وَهْبٍ، أَخْبَرَنِي يُونُسُ، عَنِ ابْنِ شِهَابٍ، عَنْ
سَالِمٍ، عَنْ أَبِيهِ، قَالَ سَمِعْتُ رَسُولَ اللَّهِ ـ صلى الله عليه
وسلم ـ رَافِعًا صَوْتَهُ يَأْمُرُ بِقَتْلِ الْكِلاَبِ وَكَانَتِ
الْكِلاَبُ تُقْتَلُ إِلاَّ كَلْبَ صَيْدٍ أَوْ مَاشِيَةٍ .
In this hadith in the English version you simply get:
It was
narrated from Salim that his father said:
“I heard the
Messenger of
Allah (ﷺ) raising his voice and commanding that dogs be
killed, and
dogs were killed, except for hunting dogs or dogs kept for
herding
livestock.”
But actually, this is NOT the hadith. This is the end of the hadith. The actual hadith says:
Abu Taher related, that Ibn Wahab related that he heard from Yusuf, who got it from Ibn Shihab, who got it from Salim, who heard his father say, “I heard the Messenger of Allah (ﷺ) raising his voice and commanding that dogs be killed, and dogs were killed, except for hunting dogs or dogs kept for herding livestock.”
حَدَّثَنَا إِبْرَاهِيمُ بْنُ
مُوسَى الرَّازِيُّ، ح وَحَدَّثَنَا الرَّبِيعُ بْنُ نَافِعٍ أَبُو
تَوْبَةَ، وَعَلِيُّ بْنُ بَحْرٍ، قَالاَ حَدَّثَنَا عِيسَى، وَقَالَ،
إِبْرَاهِيمُ أَخْبَرَنَا عَنِ الأَعْمَشِ، عَنْ أَبِي سُفْيَانَ، عَنْ
جَابِرِ بْنِ عَبْدِ اللَّهِ، أَنَّ النَّبِيَّ صلى الله عليه وسلم نَهَى
عَنْ ثَمَنِ الْكَلْبِ وَالسِّنَّوْرِ .
Again the English is shown as....
Narrated Jabir ibn Abdullah:
The Prophet (ﷺ) forbade payment for dog and cat.
However, the hadith actually says:
Ibrahim bin Musa ar-Razi related he heard Rabi'i bin Nafi Abu Tusa and Ali bin Bahr say they heard Isa say he heard from Ibrahim say he heard from Al-ams, who from Abu Sufyan heard from Jabir bin Abdullah that the Prophet forbade payment for dog and cat.
Actually, hadith are technically not the words of the Prophet Muhammad - they are the words of whoever the first person in the chain of transmission is - the rest we have to totally put down to faith. You have to trust each and every person in that chain and you have to trust this across thousands of hadith.
Now you need to remember that these hadith were supposedly collected by Bukhari himself. A Persian who became a scholar and then travelled the Arab world to collect hadith and then to sort out the false (some 700,000 apparently) from the true (now the basis of much of Sunni Islam).
So, when you read the hadith above you need to recognise that Bukhari was basically being told a story - in the first hadith by someone called Abu Taher, and in the second by Ibrahim bun Musa ar-Razi. They both then would have told Bukhari what he recorded, i.e. "I heard from so and so that he heard from so and so that he heard that so and so that he heard so and so say that....."
Every single hadith follows this very same pattern. Now it was this that really opened my mind and started the very slow process of unraveling Islam.
There are lots of topics that relate to hadith that really need to be covered in any sort of objective analysis. For one, historical context is for me perhaps THE most crucial of all. Muslims really need to pick up history books to see what was going on at the time in the world at the time of Bukhari.
Fake hadith were rife. On top of that those in power used Islam and especially hadith for their own purposes - i.e. to stay in power with an air of legitimacy. If you believe Bukhari was in some sort of bubble, happily roaming the Arab world collecting hadith with no interference then frankly you need to sit down and re-evaluate yourself. One only needs to look now at how "those who know" such as researchers, scientists and theologians are bought by those with power and an agenda - you seriously think the world was any different 1200 years ago?
Bukhari was on someone's payroll and no matter how pious he may have been, I can not reconcile how this foreigner essentially came to create what has become the second most important book to Muslims - one that controls almost everything they do, say, think or believe.
[Check out Sherif Gaber's video on Bukhari - I don't agree with all he says but I do agree with the vast majority of the conclusions he comes to.]
Anyway, back to the main point of this particular blog - the isnad. As a Muslim I just accepted what I was taught - Bukhari did all the hard work by checking the chains to make sure all was in order. "OK," I thought, "well, they are all Muslims so none of them would lie and surely this is a protected religion so this must be God's way of protecting Islam by keeping it word of mouth and personal."
Now I realise I was being more than a little naive. Again, history really helped me look at the isnad a bit differently.
In short, the whole concept of a reliable chain of transmission is based on the premise that those in the chain are reliable. Well, as a student of history I can safely state that Muslims have, are and will always have among them that lie, cheat, steal and rob from others (as all religions have). Muslims are not some holy tribe of righteous people - it's the same then as it is now and if you believe otherwise, then you have not read any Islamic history and you have also not read the Quran.
Why does the Quran on many occassions warn about those who say they believe yet do not believe??? Why does it specifically warn the Prophet about those around him - i.e. his companions - and not to trust all of them? So if you believe in the Quran, you must also believe that some of the Prophet's companions were liars and cheats.
And they were - you do no have to look far for such stories. There are many companions who although they embraced Islam were never really in it for real - they were not afraid to abuse anything about it, whether it be a hadith or anything else.
After the death of the Prophet it is known that Ali would not give allegiance to Abu Bakr. Abu Bakr (the 1st Caliph) ordered Umar (who became the 2nd Caliph) to go to Ali's house and demand allegiance from his household. Umar threatened to burn the house down with Fatima (the Prophet's daughter) in it. Fatima actually miscarried as a result of this incident.
So, how on earth is this demonstrating any sense of holiness among the companions of the Prophet? It makes the idea sound stupid!
Years later the companions were killing each other. Uthman was murdered by Muslims fed up with his reign which then along with lots of other reasons led to the Battle of the Camel and then shortly after at the Battle of Siffin - both of which saw Companions killing Companions.
This idea of a golden age of Islam during the time of the companions is a complete myth - a fabricated story with no resemblance to reality. It's fake - it serves a purpose - the [Sunni] state.
How can we rely on hadith then if we know, for sure, that even the first generation of Muslims disagreed, fought and killed each other over what the Prophet said? How then can we possibly trust all those that come after them in the chain of transmission - the isnad?
Well, we can't. If the companions could not be relied on, we can't rely on anyone. Although some hadith very well may be true, and some may be a little bit true, we can't escape the fact that the whole lot it essentially unreliable because they are all based on unreliable people - unreliable people who we have very little knowledge of other than what is recorded in state sanctioned books on hadith science, etc.
Mix the fallible nature of mankind, with the needs of state, power and politics and you have a totally useless basis for any religion. It's full of forgeries, ridiculous stories, half-baked anecdotes and plenty of lies. And to think that much of the Sunni world looks to this for guidance!
Hadith were collected at the time they were collected because of what was happening at that time. Whether it was a way of the state controlling what orthodoxy meant, or whether it was a way of mimicking Christian's sayings of Jesus to prove Islam superior, or whatever else - it was shaped by the time and the environment.
If you're Muslim and reading this, ask yourself why hadith collections only appear 200 years after the Prophet - 200 years. Do you have any idea what happened in 1818? I bet you can't name one historical incident yet you are relying on a Persian sitting down in front of over 100,000 people memorising Arabic hadith with their chains of narration and then sorting right from wrong 200 years after they were said?
However, the hadith actually says:
Ibrahim bin Musa ar-Razi related he heard Rabi'i bin Nafi Abu Tusa and Ali bin Bahr say they heard Isa say he heard from Ibrahim say he heard from Al-ams, who from Abu Sufyan heard from Jabir bin Abdullah that the Prophet forbade payment for dog and cat.
Hadith are not the words of the Prophet.
Actually, hadith are technically not the words of the Prophet Muhammad - they are the words of whoever the first person in the chain of transmission is - the rest we have to totally put down to faith. You have to trust each and every person in that chain and you have to trust this across thousands of hadith.
Now you need to remember that these hadith were supposedly collected by Bukhari himself. A Persian who became a scholar and then travelled the Arab world to collect hadith and then to sort out the false (some 700,000 apparently) from the true (now the basis of much of Sunni Islam).
So, when you read the hadith above you need to recognise that Bukhari was basically being told a story - in the first hadith by someone called Abu Taher, and in the second by Ibrahim bun Musa ar-Razi. They both then would have told Bukhari what he recorded, i.e. "I heard from so and so that he heard from so and so that he heard that so and so that he heard so and so say that....."
Every single hadith follows this very same pattern. Now it was this that really opened my mind and started the very slow process of unraveling Islam.
Historical Context of Bukhari
There are lots of topics that relate to hadith that really need to be covered in any sort of objective analysis. For one, historical context is for me perhaps THE most crucial of all. Muslims really need to pick up history books to see what was going on at the time in the world at the time of Bukhari.
Fake hadith were rife. On top of that those in power used Islam and especially hadith for their own purposes - i.e. to stay in power with an air of legitimacy. If you believe Bukhari was in some sort of bubble, happily roaming the Arab world collecting hadith with no interference then frankly you need to sit down and re-evaluate yourself. One only needs to look now at how "those who know" such as researchers, scientists and theologians are bought by those with power and an agenda - you seriously think the world was any different 1200 years ago?
Bukhari was on someone's payroll and no matter how pious he may have been, I can not reconcile how this foreigner essentially came to create what has become the second most important book to Muslims - one that controls almost everything they do, say, think or believe.
[Check out Sherif Gaber's video on Bukhari - I don't agree with all he says but I do agree with the vast majority of the conclusions he comes to.]
The Isnad - Protecting the Words of the Prophet?
Anyway, back to the main point of this particular blog - the isnad. As a Muslim I just accepted what I was taught - Bukhari did all the hard work by checking the chains to make sure all was in order. "OK," I thought, "well, they are all Muslims so none of them would lie and surely this is a protected religion so this must be God's way of protecting Islam by keeping it word of mouth and personal."
Now I realise I was being more than a little naive. Again, history really helped me look at the isnad a bit differently.
In short, the whole concept of a reliable chain of transmission is based on the premise that those in the chain are reliable. Well, as a student of history I can safely state that Muslims have, are and will always have among them that lie, cheat, steal and rob from others (as all religions have). Muslims are not some holy tribe of righteous people - it's the same then as it is now and if you believe otherwise, then you have not read any Islamic history and you have also not read the Quran.
Why does the Quran on many occassions warn about those who say they believe yet do not believe??? Why does it specifically warn the Prophet about those around him - i.e. his companions - and not to trust all of them? So if you believe in the Quran, you must also believe that some of the Prophet's companions were liars and cheats.
And they were - you do no have to look far for such stories. There are many companions who although they embraced Islam were never really in it for real - they were not afraid to abuse anything about it, whether it be a hadith or anything else.
Islamic History - Fighting Companions of the Prophet
Some very basic examples from Islamic history should spell out to anyone with an objective intention that Muslims were not some lovey-dovey commune of brothers looking out for one another. They hated each other and they fought each other.
After the death of the Prophet it is known that Ali would not give allegiance to Abu Bakr. Abu Bakr (the 1st Caliph) ordered Umar (who became the 2nd Caliph) to go to Ali's house and demand allegiance from his household. Umar threatened to burn the house down with Fatima (the Prophet's daughter) in it. Fatima actually miscarried as a result of this incident.
So, how on earth is this demonstrating any sense of holiness among the companions of the Prophet? It makes the idea sound stupid!
Years later the companions were killing each other. Uthman was murdered by Muslims fed up with his reign which then along with lots of other reasons led to the Battle of the Camel and then shortly after at the Battle of Siffin - both of which saw Companions killing Companions.
This idea of a golden age of Islam during the time of the companions is a complete myth - a fabricated story with no resemblance to reality. It's fake - it serves a purpose - the [Sunni] state.
How can we rely on hadith then if we know, for sure, that even the first generation of Muslims disagreed, fought and killed each other over what the Prophet said? How then can we possibly trust all those that come after them in the chain of transmission - the isnad?
Well, we can't. If the companions could not be relied on, we can't rely on anyone. Although some hadith very well may be true, and some may be a little bit true, we can't escape the fact that the whole lot it essentially unreliable because they are all based on unreliable people - unreliable people who we have very little knowledge of other than what is recorded in state sanctioned books on hadith science, etc.
Mix the fallible nature of mankind, with the needs of state, power and politics and you have a totally useless basis for any religion. It's full of forgeries, ridiculous stories, half-baked anecdotes and plenty of lies. And to think that much of the Sunni world looks to this for guidance!
Why then?
Hadith were collected at the time they were collected because of what was happening at that time. Whether it was a way of the state controlling what orthodoxy meant, or whether it was a way of mimicking Christian's sayings of Jesus to prove Islam superior, or whatever else - it was shaped by the time and the environment.
If you're Muslim and reading this, ask yourself why hadith collections only appear 200 years after the Prophet - 200 years. Do you have any idea what happened in 1818? I bet you can't name one historical incident yet you are relying on a Persian sitting down in front of over 100,000 people memorising Arabic hadith with their chains of narration and then sorting right from wrong 200 years after they were said?
It is these isnads, their agendas and their fake stories that have robbed Muslims across generations from having dogs. They have deprived adherents of a religion (which is supposedly one that is organic, natural and in touch with creation) from one of the very best experiences of being a human being - that of sharing an describable bond with another creation of God.
How can Islam teach that dogs are bad? Well it simply doesn't. Islam essentially tied itself to hadith, making them fundamental to understanding what God wants from us. And when the hadith are basically saying that dogs are bad, Islam has nowhere to go as it would undermine almost all of Islam.
You just need to read some of the hadith about dogs to realise someone somewhere made this shit up for a purpose. Whether it was an anti-Persian/anti-Zoroastrian thing after that part of the world was conquered (they loved dogs) or whether some Caliph at one point needed an excuse to round up and kill all the local wild dogs - who knows? What we do know is that they are fake - no Prophet gets sent to all mankind to tell them not to keep dogs. Why the hell did God create them then?
Basically the hadith on dogs make no sense - they add nothing to life and they contradict life.
Dogs are not the problem - hadith are. Hadith killed the message of the Prophet - that's my conclusion.
