Thursday, 24 October 2019

Obeying the Messenger


In the Name of Allah, the Gracious, the Merciful

31. Qul in kuntum tuhibboona Allaha faittabiAAoonee yuhbibkumu Allahu wayaghfir lakum thunoobakum waAllahu ghafoorun raheemun

3:31. Say, "If you do love Allah, obey me. Allah will then love you and forgive you your sins.35 to 37 And Allah is Forgiving, Merciful."

35. Allah loving us and forgiving our sins is apparently made conditional to our obeying His Messenger (peace upon him). At the time when the Messenger was living among mankind here in this world, this divine directive obviously meant that all directions of the Messenger, whether in matters of religion or of administration, were to be obeyed scrupulously. But what should the position be now when the Messenger is no longer living among mankind? Many Muslims believe that obeying the Messenger means following his Sunnah as described in authentic ahaadeeth. But who decides whether any hadeeth is authentic or not?
36. Allah has guaranteed the protection of the Qur'aan (Verse 15:9). There is, however, no such divine protection guaranteed for the ahaadeeth. And the ahaadeeth were floating from mouth to mouth for generations till some of them were recorded in writing, for the first time, at least 150 years after the death the Prophet (peace be upon him). There is likelihood, therefore, of the ahaadeeth having been contaminated and interpolated with the personal opinions and words of the narrators. The Allah-perfected Religion of Islam could not therefore be based on such an unreliable source. It is based solely on the Qur'aan now. This does not mean that the ahaadeeth are to be completely discarded. They are invaluable in the sense that they give us the historical perspective of the era in which our Prophet lived. But any hadeeth, that is basically contradictory to the teachings of the Qur'aan, must be rejected outright. The Qur'aan is, and ought to be, the criterion.
37. Obeying the Messenger ought now, therefore, to mean following the Qur'aan.

Friday, the 25th of October 2019.

No comments:

Post a Comment