Some Rebuttals of views Held by Disbelievers of Hadith (Munkareen e Hadith) (7).

  Munkareen e Hadith  do not want to accept Hadith as a part of Deen though some of them  accept some Sunnah (which has been transferred from collectivity to collectivity) as part of Deen.

 Munkareen e Hadith say Sunnah is what has been transferred from collectivity to collectivity. But they ignore the fact such Sunnah is of only cllective nature: but ‘Deen’ deals with matters of collective as well as individual nature. The matters of individual nature are dealt with by Hadith. You cannot deny Hadith as part of Deen.

Actually grammatically Sunnah means act/deed/ ‘amal’. Human deeds consist of two types: those relating to sayings; and those relating to acts undertaken. Both sayings and acts of a person constitute his/her deeds. Both acts and sayings of a person are punished or rewarded for. If saying is not included in the deeds of a person, why should he compensated for his/ her sayings? In other words all sayings of our Nabi ﷺ are as much part of his deeds as are his acts. It means both sayings and acts of our Nabi ﷺ are actually Sunnah of our Nabi ﷺ.  The differenciation made by ‘Munkareen e Hadith’ between SAYINGS and  Sunnah is not correct. Actually sayings of Nabi ﷺ  are his Sunnah and his Sunnah is his sayings. This is what is believed to be so by all previous Islamic scholars; Munkareen e Hadith are changing this accepted fact because they do not want to accept Hadith as a part of Deen though some of them  accept some Sunnah (which has been transferred from collectivity to collectivity) as part of Deen. Hadith may be divided into two parts; those which are relating to collective matters and those which are relating to individual matters. Munkareen e Hadith accept some of those Hadith which are relating to collective matters but deny such Hadith which are relating to individual matters. Deen is combination of both individual and collective matters. How individual aspect of deen may be ignored?

Islam gives practical, not theoretical framework of guidance. Hence Islamic guidance is based on actual life of Nabi ﷺ. Denying Hadith is denying practicability of Islam and reducing Islam into theoretical notions.

Munkareen object that Hadith may not be authenticated with certainty so it cannot be followed as part of Deen. But they ignore the fact that existence of truth does not mean the truth will come to us automatically: we have to put in human efforts to unearth the truth. Similarly we have to make efforts to know what is wahi and its implications: we have to make efforts to know what hadith is rightly assigned to our Nabi ﷺ. It may be appreciated Quran is also not accepted by Muslims blindly; before accepting Quran, we get satisfaction that all verses contained in Quran are rightly attributed to our Nabi ﷺ.  That is why we reject any verse wrongly inducted in Quran. These are human efforts put up generations after generations, which enable us today to be satisfied  that Quran which is in our hands today is rightly attributed to our Nabi ﷺ.  

Nabuwwah is relating to wahi which is act of Allah. Deen is human act to follow wahi. Allah's Act does not have same imperatives/ implications which belong to human act. Thus Nabuwwah which is Allah's Act does not have same implications which belong to Deen which is human act. Thus regarding Nabuwwah human authentication is not required: but regarding Deen human authentication is required for the people who were/are not in direct contact with our Nabi ﷺ.

Similarly Ijtihad is human effort to unearth what are implications of Quran and how Quranic principles may be applied to present day issues. Ijtihad is not to invent new principles of Quran; rather Ijtihad is to discover Quranic principles already contained in Quran; Ijtihad is to discover implications of Quranic principles and apply them to present day issues.

Similarly Hadith is not an account of principles different from Quran; actually Hadith is interpretation/ meanings of Quran. Hadith describes what principles are contained in Quran impliedly, if not explicitly. Hadith also describes detailed manifestations of Nabi's ﷺ Sunnah about all fields of life including political, economic, moral, and socia-o-cultural matters. There is no Sunnah without Hadith. Quran gives  principles: Hadith gives elaborations.

Muslims from the day one believe that Hadith are wahi or based on wahi. Munkareen denying wahi status of Hadith are actually saying Hadith are contradictory to wahi.

Munkareen say if Hadith is wahi, it means Nabi ﷺ conscious was suspended during Wahi. In other words Nabi ﷺ did not perform consciously acts/sayings contained in Hadith. This objection is not correct.  Nabi's ﷺ conscious was never suspended in acting according to wahi ‘ghair matlu’. It is main difference between a Nabi and an angel. Angel is forced to act according to Allah's Wahi, but Nabi is not forced rather he ﷺ acts according to Wahi with his free will. Actually Wahi was revealed so that  humans could mould their thinking according to Wahi, because it is not in accordance with divine trial system to command humans in each and every matter at the time of occurrence of matter, nor all life incidents to be faced by every human are described in  Quran. Hence humans are directed to mould their thinking according to Wahi, so that every human matter may be disposed of according to Wahi. There is no use of Wahi, if human thinking is not used and moulded according to wahi.

Hadith is such a framework of guidance in which implications of every Quranic verse are explained in so many different ways. Hence a person is able to avail Quranic guidance contained in each and every verse, even if he does not have access to all ahadith relating to a particular verse. So one should not  worry , if some ahadith relating to a particular verse cannot be accessed or accepted by him/ her as rightly attributed to our Nabi ﷺ.

It may be appreciated that Nabi ﷺ deeds (acts and sayings) are exactly Wahi (Quranic or Wahi Ghair Matlu) or are based on Wahi (Quranic or Wahi Ghair Matlu). It may be appreciated our Nabi ﷺ has not made it clear (except in few instances) that what his ﷺ act/saying is exactly Wahi Ghair Matlu (these are matters which were directed to be undertaken at the time of arising the matter) and what is based on Wahi Ghair Matlu (these were the matters which were performed in the light of Wahi Ghair Matlu already revealed). This fact implies that such a distinction was not important.  That is why Quran has ordered people to follow Nabi ﷺ in many verses without distinguishing what was exact Wahi and what was based on Wahi. Hadith is not personal understanding of Quran by our Nabi ﷺ: Hadith is divine understanding adopted by our Nabi ﷺ with his free will. The difference between divine and personal understanding of Quran is that in case of personal understanding, the person can understand Quran using his own intellect but in case of divine understanding, Nabi ﷺ understood exactly what was delivered through Wahi; though Nabi ﷺ adopted such understanding with his ﷺ  own free will.

It may be appreciated existence of Ummah and Deen is similtaneous. There was no Deen, when there was no Muslim. And there was no Muslim, when there was no Deen.
It implies there is no Deen without acts of Ummah. Ijmah e Ummah is part of Deen. It may be appreciated human thinking in Islam is not independent. Human thinking in Islam is to be used always subject to Wahi; it means it always prove Wahi and does not disprove Wahi.

It does not mean Wahi does not allow us to use our choice in matters of Deen. We can use our choice only in such matters in which Allah permits. One form of such permission is that our Nabiﷺ acted in more than one ways pertaining to the same issue. It implies we can also use our choices in such issues keeping in view imperatives of the situation but not contradictory to explicit principles of Wahi i.e. Quran and Hadith. It permission also implies all other issues have been provided for in Deen already explicitly or impliedly and we need to know about those provisions and act accordingly. If we start acting on our choices in all issues we do not find explicitly in Wahi, it would lead to a situation where people would be acting upon their choices relating to almost whole Wahi because every person's level of knowledge would be different to ascertain what has been explicitly provided for in Wahi. It may be appreciated  ‘Tafseer’ is not meant for making up deficiencies (which are nowhere) in Quran, using his own choice: ‘Tafseer’ is a tool to appl Quranic principles. Tafseer does not make good any deficiencies (which are nowhere) in Quran; tafseer makes good deficiency of human understanding of Quran (continued).