by Imad-ad-Dean Ahmad, Minaret of Freedom Institute, www.minaret.org
Omar Sacirbey’s article “Did Muhammad Really Say That?†in the Washington Post hits the nail on the head as to the biggest image problem facing Muslims. When the Islam bashers want to paint a distorted picture of Islam, they can only rely on the Qur’an to the degree to which they are willing to take quotes out of context, rely on mistranslations, or put contextual spin on the quotes (or simply make stuff up). The sayings attributed to the Prophet of Islam by the oral traditions (called hadith) on the other hand actually contain very fertile ground for “the devil citing scripture†to suit his purpose. This is not because the hadith, overall, are so bad, (actually most of them are quite inspiring) but because they, like the Gospels and the Old Testament, were originally oral traditions and therefore a human project, a fallibly transmitted human project at that.
Muslims like to distinguish the hadith from the Christian and Jewish traditions by emphasizing that they were not canonized by a Church authority, but were scientifically analyzed and classified by scholars who made painstaking efforts to determine the validity of the traditions they compiled, carefully citing the transmitters and going to great lengths to authenticate the identities, histories and reliability of the members of the chain of transmission. Of this there is no doubt, and yet this in itself attests to the humanity, and thus fallibility, of the project.
I have always marveled at the readiness with Muslims will accept hadith that contradict the text of the Qur’an. (Sacirbey notes the authorization of the death penalty for adultery in contradiction to the Qur’anic injunction of corporal punishment combined with a prohibition of marriage to a chaste believer for the miscreant.) Worse yet are Muslims who attribute injunctions in the hadith to the Qur’an.
The thing that is most significant perhaps is that the hadith contradict each other. Therefore a moderate Muslim will adhere to one while an extremist favors another. The Islam-bashers of course always go for the most unpalatable they can find. Muslim hypocrites, naturally, will gladly adopt both variations, applying the liberal and merciful ones to themselves and the harsh and unforgiving ones to their opponents. (Or as is so often the case, engaging in discrimination against women exemplified by the character of Sayyid Ahmad in Naguib Mahfouz’ Sugar Street trilogy, excusing his own philandering with the proclamation that “God is merciful†while imposing a harsh punishment of his wife for simply going out in public.)
The fact is that it would be much harder for Islam-bashers to get away with this kind of smear-campaign were it not for those Muslims who engage in what is effectively the same practice. Villains need show no originality, but need only to quote or copy from ignorant Muslims. Only a diligent intellectual review of the hadith, intent not only on evaluating them for the authenticity of their sources, but also with their compatibility with the Qur’an and with the most rigorous understanding of nature, including human nature, will solve this problem. A rebirth of Islamic legal scholarship will require the adoption of the scientist’s passionate search for truth (“I think the law is this, and here is why”) rather than the legislator’s authoritarian edict (“This is the law because I said so.”) In the process Muslims must be prepared to question their most cherished cultural preconceptions and to adopt the humility and tolerance that was the marker of the classical scholars who would inevitably conclude their legal opinions with the humble recognition that “Allahu a`lam,†God knows best.
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