Proper understanding of Hadith in Islam

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abu_hurriya

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Hello everybody.

I have a question regarding the Hadith. I'm going to assume that most (if not all of you) are Sunni, so I feel your response will be uniform.

What is the role of the Hadith in Islam? Are they to be taken as 100% authoritative, literal, and binding? Or are there some that are just Mohammed speaking, and not God?

Also, where does the Quran indicate that they are authoritative?

Thank you so much.
 
Peace brother,

I'd like to know this too. I find some very speculative and odd narrations about Muhammad (PBUH) in hadith which I can't really comprehend as being authentic. Also, the fact that there were over a half-million hadiths and the hadith books only contain a fraction of them leads me to think that there is a great margin of error in their compilation, especially since they were compiled many years after Muhammad's (PBUH) death.

I do believe in some hadith but I am also skeptical on many others so I hope some light can be shone on this matter.
 
:sl:
yes hadith does have a very important status in islam infact its the second important source of islam after the quran.
the revelation is of 2 types apparent (jaly) and less apparent (khafy) the first type are the direct words and meanings from Allah and the second is only the meaning from Allah and the words r from the prophet peace be upon him.

So the first type is the quran and the second is hadith.
Another diff. between the 2 sources is that the transmission of both.....i.e the transmission is of 2 types (from the time of the prophet when it was revealed to today) :
1.mutawatir
2.not mutawatir
(mutawatir= transmitted thru many many ppl from generation to generation which makes it impossible to be a lie..)

Now the whole of the quran is of the 1st type and the hadith is of the first and second.
So that means the qurans transmittion has no faults and so we need not to research into it coz its so popular.
however the hadith's transmission is not the same and has different levels of transmission.....which inturn requires us to do a critical analysis of the transmitters!!!
u probably asking how hadith is transmitted??
well its easy .....for example imagine a teacher told A something then A told B and B told C ( sorry for choosing those letters u can use anythin u like!)
now there r 3 transmitters or narrators of the words of the teacher....so its like this: teacher ->A->B->C

now u might say well this is like 'chinese whisper' ? well it does look that way....but no its not....to stop the words of the prophet (teacher) from being lost or confused or mixed up etc...the scholars of hadith would memorise the names of the narrators of the hadith when reciting the hadith ...so that why when u read books of hadith like bukhari ull see before the hadith is mentiond the names of chains of narrators...
then the scholars of hadith created a method by which they would categorize the narrators this was based on 2 things:
1. piety (adalah)
2. memory (hifth)

according to these two main factors the narrators were put in categories.....
but ure probably gonna say well how do they know the piety and memory of someone i mean did they record their 'life story'......well the answer is yes they basically did each narrators life is recorded from birth date to death date everything that would be required to find out the reliabilty of the narrator....this is known as the Art of Men (fan arijal / alm arijal)....there were also women amongst the narrators dont get confused by the name....
and the names of an amazing 500 000 narrators have been recorded.

Then this was continued upto the compiler of hadith like bukhari muslim tirmithi etc etc... and these compilations or books are of many types i.e. some of these books contain hadith in a jurisprudrent format some in order of names of narrators some on certain topics and so on...

thats a basic idea of hadith and trust me this is a very very short description.... u can read up books on hadith and the history of hadith for more info...

questions:

1. What is the role of the Hadith in Islam?
ans. second source after the quran and also and explanation for many principles in the quran e.g. the quran mentions salah ( pray) and the hadith explains how it is performed...

2. Are they to be taken as 100% authoritative, literal, and binding?ans. depending on the status of the narrators and strengthen of the hadith it is accpeted...but not always thats why at the end of many hadith the strength of the hadith is mentioned like sahih, hasan, dae'f.....and many books have been complied on hadith which are fabricated and not infact words of the prophet....

3. Or are there some that are just Mohammed speaking, and not God?
ans. muslims must obey Allah and muhammad peace be upon him.
Allah says: "You shall obey God and His messenger, that you may obtain mercy". [The Family of Imran, 132]

4. where does the Quran indicate that they are authoritative?
ans. Allah says: “Whatever the Messenger gives you take it, and whatever he forbids you abstain from it.” [Sûrah al-Hashr: 7]

(sorry for mistakes i made especially in english)
Hope this is of help ...Allah knows best.
 
Hadith like these are touted among non-Muslims to highlight the supposed abusridty of Islam and the Prophet Mohammed in particular. These are a great stumbling block for me, and I cannot wrap my mind around how these should be viewed. Please give me your feedback as to the validity and interpretation of these hadith.

Narrated 'Amr bin Maimun: During the pre-lslamic period of ignorance I saw a she-monkey surrounded by a number of monkeys. They were all stoning it, because it had committed illegal sexual intercourse. I too, stoned it along with them.

Sahih Bukhari 5:58:188

Abu Huraira reported: The Apostle of Allah (may peace be upon him) said. When any one of you awakes up from sleep and performs ablution, he must clean his nose three times, for the devil spends the night in the interior of his nose.

Sahih Muslim 2:462

Narrated Abu Huraira: The Prophet said, "Allah loves sneezing but dislikes yawning; so if anyone of you sneezes and then praises Allah, every Muslim who hears him (praising Allah) has to say Tashmit to him. But as regards yawning, it is from Satan, so if one of you yawns, he should try his best to stop it, for when anyone of you yawns, Satan laughs at him."

Sahih Bukhari 8:73:245

There are many others.
 
I've seen crazier ones than those. People keep saying that only scholars can interpret hadith but how can anyone interpret these absurd hadiths to make it look like something good? What upsets me more is that islamophobes use such hadiths to slander and insult the Prophet (PBUH) and it makes me very mad!
 
There is a collection of Hadith at this website. I can honestly say that this website is a reason I am led away from Islam.

[anti islamic link removed]

Because there is such a huge volume of material, I suppose I'm looking for the way in which Muslims view the Hadith (esp. Imam Bukhari) rather than a specific refutation of each hadith (although this would be extremely helpful). Perhaps my western way of thought is not condusive to their interpretation?
 
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:sl:
Wikiislam is a load of bs created by some 15 year old crapsters from FF (can't write down full address since we've blocked it...and for good reason too!) who have little understanding and a lot of ignorance. If I saw those people ''preaching'' in real life, I'd beat the crap out of them and plead guilty to the courts. That's how bad their ignorance is.

Note that his comment is coming from one of the most rational and calm-minded folk of this forum...and of this world!
 
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abu_hurriya said:
Hadith like these are touted among non-Muslims to highlight the supposed abusridty of Islam and the Prophet Mohammed in particular. These are a great stumbling block for me, and I cannot wrap my mind around how these should be viewed. Please give me your feedback as to the validity and interpretation of these hadith.
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Some ahadith are weak, others authentic. Depending on the chain of narrators, if they were trustworthy - then the hadith can be relied upon. If the narrators are weak however, maybe due to them having a weak intellect, or because they made many mistakes, or even if they were known to be fabricators - then the narration is likely to be weak, or fabricated. So this means that we do not accept every narration, however - there are certain hadith collections which are known for having trustworthy authentic ahadith. So we accept them.



Narrated 'Amr bin Maimun: During the pre-lslamic period of ignorance I saw a she-monkey surrounded by a number of monkeys. They were all stoning it, because it had committed illegal sexual intercourse. I too, stoned it along with them.

Sahih Bukhari 5:58:188
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Question: I read in Sahîh al-Bukhârî that some monkeys stoned another one for adultery. Does this mean that adultery is sinful for animals? This sounds really silly to me. Can you explain this?

Answered by the Fatwa Department Research Committee - chaired by Sheikh `Abd al-Wahhâb al-Turayrî


The account in question is narrated from `Amr b. Maymûn – a Companion – in Sahîh al-Bukhârî (3849):
I had seen in the days of ignorance before Islam, some monkeys who surrounded a she-monkey who had committed unlawful sexual intercourse and they stoned it, so I stoned it along with them.

​
In Fath al-Bârî, Ibn Hajar al-`Asqalânî gives a more detailed narration of this event from `Amr b. Maymûn:
I was in Yemen tending the sheep of my people up upon an elevation. A male monkey came with a female and laid his head on her hand. Then a smaller monkey came and beckoned towards her, so she gently slipped her hand out from under the cheek of the first monkey and followed him. He mated with her while I looked on. Then she returned and gently tried to slip her hand back under the cheek of the first monkey, but he woke up suddenly, smelled her, and cried out.

Then the monkeys gathered round and he began screaming while pointing towards her with his hand. The monkeys went all about and came back with that monkey that I recognized. They dug a pit for the two of them and stoned them both. So I had witnessed stoning being carried out by other than Adam’s descendants.

​
This is not a hadîth of the Prophet (peace be upon him). It is not even something that `Amr claims he told to the Prophet (peace be upon him). It is just `Amr’s personal account of some things `Amr b. Maymûn saw some animals doing. It is merely his interpretation that those monkeys were stoning the other one as a punishment for adultery. There is no way that he could have known their true motives.

There is no Islamic teaching to be gleaned from this account.

Ibn Hajar writes inFath al-Bârî :
It is not necessary that an event that looks like adultery and stoning was really a case of adultery and capital punishment. He merely described it that way because it looked like these things. It does not mean that legal accountability was being applied to animals.

​
And Allah knows best.​
Abu Huraira reported: The Apostle of Allah (may peace be upon him) said. When any one of you awakes up from sleep and performs ablution, he must clean his nose three times, for the devil spends the night in the interior of his nose.

Sahih Muslim 2:462

Narrated Abu Huraira: The Prophet said, "Allah loves sneezing but dislikes yawning; so if anyone of you sneezes and then praises Allah, every Muslim who hears him (praising Allah) has to say Tashmit to him. But as regards yawning, it is from Satan, so if one of you yawns, he should try his best to stop it, for when anyone of you yawns, Satan laughs at him."

Sahih Bukhari 8:73:245
Click to expand...


These matters are in regard to the unseen, if Allaah has said that the angels look in a certain way, i.e. if it is in the revelation that angels do really have wings, we believe in it even if we cannot see it. This is part of the believers faith, and since the major core aspects of our beliefs make perfect sense to us, the other issues which we can't comprehend - we should believe in them too. The same way we believe that hell and paradise exist, although we cannot comprehend them - it is part of our faith that we accept it.


There are many others.
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Yes, they may be. If people expect to get their medical degree off a science teacher, then they should go to the people who have the correct and true understanding of that field to clear up their misconceptions and doubts.

Don't expect to know chemical engineering if you haven't even sat with the teachers of that study, because if you don't study it with them - you're going to cause more confusion and maybe even harm than benefit. That's because you need to know the foundations in order to move forward and understand. Just because something isn't understandable at a novice level, it does not mean that it isn't correct. And even if it is correct, you still won't be able to understand unless you place that specific piece of knowledge within its context.


Try pondering over that.






Peace.
 
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^ Jazak Allah :w:

abu_hurriya said:
There is a collection of Hadith at this website. I can honestly say that this website is a reason I am led away from Islam.

[anti islamic link removed]

Because there is such a huge volume of material, I suppose I'm looking for the way in which Muslims view the Hadith (esp. Imam Bukhari) rather than a specific refutation of each hadith (although this would be extremely helpful). Perhaps my western way of thought is not condusive to their interpretation?
Click to expand...

I suggest you refer to prominent scholars in Islam for Islamic knowledge and not an Anti-Islamic one. I do not see the Logic in going to such websites if one wants to learn about Islam, It's like going to an Infant to get medical advice instead of your GP...
 
I suggest you refer to prominent scholars in Islam for Islamic knowledge and not an Anti-Islamic one. I do not see the Logic in going to such websites if one wants to learn about Islam, It's like going to an Infant to get medical advice instead of your GP...
Click to expand...

That website wasnt fabrications. He (they?) put together authentic Hadith and merely displayed them, attempting to highlight their supposed absurdity.

As for the quote about the monkeys, why was it preserved if it is meaningless?
 
abu_hurriya said:
That website wasnt fabrications. He (they?) put together authentic Hadith and merely displayed them, attempting to highlight their supposed absurdity.
Click to expand...

Fabrications or Not, you have no knowledge of how to interpret these hadiths or its context. A person reaches the status of Faqih (One who can give rulings based on hadiths) after studying the Hadiths and their context for several years before having the right to give rulings based on them. You think a Layman who is not a Muslim has knows better? Reffering to such sites is like reffering to Infants for medical advice instead of a doctor (Yes I like to repeat myself, something I find my self doing very often on this site LOL :D)

regards moity
 
Then could you direct me to someone who is able to interpret such hadith? Does Islam have an official body that regulates the meanings of these hadiths?
 
You can refer to the scholars from this site also;

http://islamtoday.com/show_sub_section.cfm?main_cat_id=11&sub_cat_id=0



They don't merely show their opinion, but the explanation of ahadith are given through other narrations [ahadith], which put the hadith into context. Then the commentaries are given by scholars who are qualified in that field to clarify the matter more. Since one paragraph of a certain narration does not mean that we know what it totally means, but the other narrations support that explanation - some which we may be unaware of.




Regards.
 
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