In the Name
of Allah, the Gracious, the Merciful
Hadeeth
Extract from Chapter 7 of QUR’AANIC STUDIES – A Modern Tafsir:
185. Awalam yanthuroo fee malakooti alssamawati
waal-ardi wama khalaqa Allahu min shay-in waan AAasa
an yakoona qadi iqtaraba ajaluhum fabi-ayyi hadeethin baAAdahu yu/minoona
185. Do they not ponder over the kingdom of the heavens
and the earth and whatever things Allah has created, and over the likelihood of
their own death being near? What hadeeth74
would they then believe in after this?
74. This Arabic word has been used in
the Qur’aan variously in the meanings of (i) story, (ii) discourse, (iii) speech,
or (iv) the Qur’aan itself. In the context of the preceding sentence, in this
very Verse, the word here could connote the broad statement as under:
The orderly behaviour of
the entire universe gives enough proof of the existence of a super-intelligent Being
faultlessly governing it. When that Being can so control such a gigantic thing,
He can obviously do the far less complex task of managing and controlling,
inter alia, every human life. It is this Being – Whom we call Allah – that is
guiding mankind in the proper conduct of their lives, through this Qur’aan.
Every human being should grasp this Reality before it is too late. No one knows
when death would come. It may be just around the corner.
But the word hadeeth came to acquire another meaning
after the completion of the revelation of the Qur’aan, and the departure of the
Prophet from this world. Centuries after the death of the Prophet, his orally
reported sayings, and those of his companions, came to be recorded in writing.
And these recorded sayings came to be known as ahaadeeth (plural of hadeeth).
Allah Almighty knows all about the future. And at the time of the revelation of
this Verse, He was aware of this future meaning of the term hadeeth. He (Allah), in that sense, is
disapprovingly hinting here at future generations of the Muslim Ummah believing in such man-influenced,
error-prone ahaadeeth in preference
to the well-explained teachings in the Qur’aan, which can also be taken as
referred to by the pronoun hu in baAAdahu of the Arabic text. The Verse is
thus telling us categorically that the Qur’aan is the best hadeeth; one need not go after other ahaadeeth.
Friday,
the 4th of May 2018.
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