Restatement of the History of Islam and Muslims [Electronic resources] نسخه متنی

(hypocrite).

It is true that Abdullah bin Ubayy was a hypocrite.
But his hypocrisy was not a secret from anyone in Medina. Everyone knew that he was a
hypocrite. On the eve of the battle of Uhud, he withdrew his contingent of 300 warriors
from the army on the ostensible pretext that the Muslims had not accepted his plan of the
battle.

In that battle, the Muslims were defeated. But they
were defeated not because of Ibn Ubayy's defection but because of their own greed and
indiscipline. The withdrawal of Ibn Ubayy's troops did not affect the fortunes of war in
any way.

Since Ibn Ubayy played a divisive role in a crisis,
the Muslims were alert at all times for what he might do. He could, therefore, never catch
them off-guard. He was a known and an "open" hypocrite.

Far more dangerous to Islam were the hypocrites who
were "hidden" from the sight of the Muslims. The true believers considered them
to be sincere Muslims and trusted them. This trust of the Muslims in them made the Muslim
society and the State of Medina much more vulnerable to sabotage by them. Al-Qur’an
al-Majid is a witness to the presence in Medina, in large numbers, of these hypocrites,
and has castigated them repeatedly. It were they – the hidden hypocrites – and
not Abdullah ibn Ubayy and his supporters – who were the real source of danger to the
security of Islam.

Abdullah ibn Ubayy's son was a true believer. He
volunteered to kill him (his father). But Muhammad, the bringer of mercy, did not let him.
And when Ibn Ubayy died, he (Muhammad) condoned all his transgressions, most of which, he
knew, were products of frustration. Before the Prophet's arrival from Makkah, he (Ibn
Ubayy) had hoped to become the king of Medina.

To forgive and to forget was characteristic of
Muhammad's magnanimity. Earlier, he had shown the same magnanimity toward the idolaters of
Makkah when he conquered that city, and granted amnesty to them all. It was, therefore,
entirely, "in character" for him to conduct the funeral services for Ibn Ubayy,
to see that he was given a proper burial, to pray for his soul, and to offer condolences
to his son, notwithstanding Umar's remonstrance.

In late 630, Muhammad, the Messenger of God,
sustained a personal loss. His son, Ibrahim, from his Egyptian wife, Maria the Copt, died
when he was 11 months old (some say 16 months). Muhammad was very much attached to him. He
was deeply aggrieved at his death, and could not withhold his tears. Umar took it upon
himself to call his (Muhammad's) attention to the "impropriety" of shedding
tears at the death of his son.

If Umar was right in his attempts to prevent the
Apostle of God from commiserating with the bereaved members of the family of Abdullah ibn
Ubayy, and in invoking God's mercy upon his (Ibn Ubayy's) soul; or if he was right in
trying to prevent him from crying at the death of his own son, then it must be said that
Islam is a highly "dehumanized" religion which denies Muslims even the
"right" to forgive their enemies, and withholds from them the freedom of
expression of such innocuous feelings as sympathy and sorrow. But such is not the case.
Islam is not "dehumanized." It is, in fact, the most humane of all religions,
and urges its followers to be forgiving, kind, courteous and considerate to others; and
commands them never to be vindictive. Vindictiveness was considered a pagan
characteristic. Islam also commands Muslims, in the following verses of Al-Qur’an
al-Majid, to return good for evil:

And turn off evil with good. (Chapter 13; verse 22)

Repel evil with that which is best. (Chapter 23:
verse 96)

Nor can goodness and evil be equal. Repel (evil)
with what is better: then will he between whom and thee was hatred, become as it were thy
friend and intimate. (Chapter 41: verse 34)

Muhammad Mustafa, the Interpreter of Al-Qur’an
al-Majid, gave a demonstration of the application of these commandments of Heaven at the
death of Abdullah ibn Ubayy.

In the summer of A.D. 632, Muhammad, the Messenger
of God, lay on his deathbed in his house in Medina. His last wish was to comply with the
commandment in the Book of God to write his will and testament. But Umar did not
countenance this idea. In his opinion, writing a will was not the right thing for the
Prophet of Islam to do. At Hudaybiyya, he had opposed the Prophet but had failed in his
opposition; this time, however, he had no intention of failing. He opposed the dying
Prophet, and he scored a brilliant success in his opposition. The will the Prophet wished
to write, was never written.

If Umar was right in his attempts to inhibit the
freedom of action of Muhammad, the Messenger of God, then it means that the latter was
"wrong." And if he (Muhammad) was "wrong," then it means that
Al-Qur’an al-Majid was also "wrong" because it claimed that:

Nor does he (Muhammad) say (anything) of (his own)
desire. It is no less than inspiration sent down to him. (Chapter 53; verses 3 and 4)

If Umar was right, then Muhammad and Qur’an
were "wrong." This is the only conclusion to which such a line of argument can
lead. It is now for the Muslims to decide if this is the "logic" which appeals
to them, and therefore, is acceptable to them.

When Muhammad Mustafa died in A.D. 632, his
successors - Abu Bakr and Umar - lost no time in seizing the estate of Fadak from his
daughter. Umar was a conscientious man, and he was presumably prompted by his moral
courage to "rectify" the "error" which Muhammad had made in giving the
estate of Fadak to his daughter in A.D. 628.

Umar had, to all intents and purposes, appointed
himself a "censor" of the words and deeds of Muhammad while the latter was still
alive. If he countermanded his (Muhammad's) orders after his death vis--vis his
succession or the estate of Fadak, there is nothing odd about it. If he had any
inhibitions in this matter, he threw them overboard as soon as Muhammad died.

Muhammad, the Apostle of God, had expressed the
wish, on his deathbed, to write his will, and as noted before, Umar had thwarted him by
shouting that the Book of God was sufficient for the Muslim umma, and that it did not need
any other writing from him.

Umar, it appears, actually believed in what he said,
viz., a will or any other writing of the Prophet was redundant since Qur’an had the
ultimate answers to all the questions. And if any doubts still lingered in anyone's mind
on this point, he removed them when he became khalifa.

Muhammad lived in the hearts of his companions and
friends. After his death, they wished to preserve all their recollections of his life.
These recollections were of two kinds - his words and his deeds. The two together formed
his Sunnah (the trodden path). Anything he said, and was quoted by a companion, is called
a hadith or ‘tradition.'

But Umar did not want the companions to preserve any
recollection of the words and the deeds of the Prophet. He, apparently, had many
reservations regarding the usefulness, to the Muslim umma, of these recollections. He,
therefore, forbade the companions to quote the sayings of the Prophet in speech or in
writing. In other words, he placed the Hadith of the Prophet under a proscription.

Following is the testimony of two modern Sunni
historians on Umar's ban on Hadith:

Muhammad Husayn Haykal

Umar ibn al-Khattab once tried to deal with the
problem of committing the Hadith to writing. The companions of the Prophet whom he
consulted, encouraged him, but he was not quite sure whether he should proceed. One day,
moved by God's inspiration, he made up his mind and announced: "I wanted to have the
traditions of the Prophet written down, but I fear that the Book of God might be
encroached upon. Hence I shall not permit this to happen." He, therefore, changed his
mind and instructed the Muslims throughout the provinces: "Whoever has a document
bearing a prophetic tradition, shall destroy it." The Hadith, therefore, continued to
be transmitted orally and was not collected and written down until the period of al-Mamun.
(The Life of Muhammad, Cairo, 1935)

Dr. Mohammad Hamidullah

Abu-Dhahabi reports: The Caliph Abu-Bakr compiled a
work, in which there were 500 traditions of the Prophet, and handed it over to his
daughter 'Aishah. The next morning, he took it back from her and destroyed it, saying:
"I wrote what I understood; it is possible however that there should be certain
things in it which did not correspond textually with what the Prophet had uttered."

As to Umar, we learn on the authority of Ma'mar ibn
Rashid, that during his caliphate, Umar once consulted the companions of the Prophet on
the subject of codifying the Hadith. Everybody seconded the idea. Yet Umar continued to
hesitate and pray to God for a whole month for guidance and enlightenment. Ultimately, he
decided not to undertake the task, and said: "Former peoples neglected the Divine
Books and concentrated only on the conduct of the prophets; I do not want to set up the
possibility of confusion between the Divine Qur’an and the Prophet's Hadith."
(Introduction to Islam, Kuwait, pp. 34-35, 1977)

One of the companions whom the Sunni Muslims
consider one of the greatest authorities on Hadith, was Abu Hurayra. He was ever ready to
quote a Hadith. There was never an occasion when recollection did not come to him of
something he had heard the Prophet saying or something he had seen him doing. Once Umar
asked him:

"O Abu Hurayra! Tell me this. Did the Messenger
of God have nothing in the world to do except to whisper Hadith in your ears?"

Umar then ordered Abu Hurayra not to narrate any
more Hadith.

Abu Hurayra was a very gregarious and a garrulous
man. When Umar gagged him, he felt bottled up. But he was a patient man, and quietly
awaited the time when he would be unmuzzled. His opportunity came when Umar died, and he
returned, with a vengeance, to the business of relating Hadith. Today, the books of
Hadith, compiled by Sunni collectors, are brimming with traditions narrated by him.

It is perhaps interesting to speculate on Umar's
decision in placing the traditions of the Prophet under proscription. Did he believe that
the proscription would outlast his own caliphate? There is no way of knowing the answer to
this question. But he could not have meant the proscription to be effective only during
his own lifetime; he could only have meant it to be everlasting. If so, then did he want
to deprive the Muslims of the record of the precepts and precedents of their Prophet
forever?

Muhammad Husayn Haykal says in the passage quoted
above from his book that Umar was "moved by God's inspiration" to place the
Hadith of the Apostle of God under proscription. This means that Umar's authority to order
the suppression of Hadith, was implicit in the "inspiration" of which he was the
recipient, and he didn't hesitate to exercise it. In exercising his "inspired"
authority, he overrode even the consensus of the companions. Consensus, incidentally, is a
very important principle in Sunni jurisprudence. But Umar was right in overriding it.
After all the consensus of fallible, earth-bound mortals could never supersede the
authority of Umar's "inspiration."

But Umar's ordinance suppressing Hadith leaves one
vital question unanswered, viz., is it possible to understand and to practice Islam at
all, and to obey the commandments of God embodied in Al-Qur’an al-Majid, without the
knowledge and understanding of the sermons, statements, speeches, commands, prohibitions,
precedents, examples and explanations of Muhammad Mustafa? Was it, for example, possible
for the companions to know, merely by reading Qur’an, how to say the five canonical
prayers if Muhammad himself had not taught them? Or, would they have known how much Zakat
(poor-tax) to pay, when to pay and whom to pay if they had not seen the Apostle himself
paying it?

Without Hadith, Muslims could never understand the
ideology of Islam nor could they grasp its practicability. In this regard, the
contemporary, Austrian-born scholar, translator and commentator of Qur’an, Muhammad
Asad, writes in his book, Islam At The Crossroads, as follows:

The Sunnah of the Prophet Muhammad is, (therefore)
next to Qur’an, the second source of Islamic law of social and personal behavior. In
fact we must regard the Sunnah as the only valid explanation of the Qur’anic
teachings and the only means to avoid dissension concerning their interpretation and
adaptation to practical use. Many verses of the Qur’an have allegorical meaning and
could be understood in different ways unless there was some definite system of
interpretation. And there are, furthermore, many items of practical importance not
explicitly dealt with by the Qur’an. The spirit prevailing in the Holy Book is, to be
sure, uniform throughout; but to deduce from it the practical attitude which we have to
adopt is not, in every case, an easy matter. So long as we believe that this Book is the
word of God, perfect in form and purpose, the only logical conclusion is that it never was
intended to be used independently of the personal guidance of the Prophet which is
embodied in the system of Sunnah. (pp. 117-118)

The Apostle's statements and his actions were a
detailed interpretation and application of the principles of the Book of God. That Book
has repeatedly and emphatically called upon the Muslims to obey him and to follow him, as
per the following verses:

Say: if ye do love God, follow me: God will love you
and forgive your sins; for God is oft-forgiving, most Merciful. (Chapter 3; verse 31)

God did confer a great favor on the believers when
He sent among them an Apostle from among themselves, rehearsing unto them the signs of
God, sanctifying them, and instructing them in Scripture and Wisdom, while before that
they had been in Manifest Error. (Chapter 3: verse 164)

Those are limits set by God: those who obey God and
His Apostle, will be admitted to the Gardens with Rivers flowing beneath, to abide therein
(forever) and that will be the supreme achievement. (Chapter 4: verse 13)

O ye who believe! Obey God, and obey His Apostle,
and those charged with authority among you. if ye differ in anything among yourselves,
refer it to Allah and his apostle... (Chapter4: verse 59)

We sent an Apostle but to be obeyed, in accordance
with the will of God. (Chapter 4: verse 64)

But no, by thy Lord, they can have no (real) faith,
until they make thee judge in all disputes between them, and find in their souls no
resistance against thy decisions, but accept them with the fullest conviction. (Chapter 4:
verse 65)

He who obeys the Apostle, obeys God. (Chapter4:
verse 80)

Obey God and His Apostle, if ye do believe. (Chapter
8: verse 1)

It is such as obey God and His Apostle, and fear God
and do right, that will win (in the end). (Chapter 24: verse 52)

Ye have indeed in the Apostle of God a beautiful
pattern of conduct for everyone whose hope is in God and the final day, and who engages
much in remembering God. (Chapter 33: verse 21)

O ye who believe! Obey God, and obey the Apostle,
and make not vain your deeds. (Chapter 47: verse 33)

Whatever the Messenger assigns to you, take it, and
deny yourselves that which he withholds from you, and fear God. (Chapter 59: verse 7)

From the foregoing verses, it is clear that Umar's
ban on Hadith was in a head-on collision course with the commandments of Al-Qur’an
al-Majid. Quran as the explicit Word of God, and Hadith as the explicit word of His Last
Messenger, form one integral whole, each elucidating, amplifying and illuminating the
other. Sunni jurists perhaps did not want to set themselves at odds with Umar but they
also realized that there was no way for them to dispense with Hadith, and still call
themselves Muslims, and that his ban (on Hadith) could not coexist with Islam. They,
therefore, discreetly tiptoed around the issue. "Let the Hadith of our Prophet be
free of bans," was their tacit consensus even if such a reorientation of thought was
painful to some of them, and they decided to address themselves to the most vital task of
collecting, collating, and preserving, for themselves and for posterity the record of the
sayings and the deeds of Muhammad Mustafa, their Guide and Leader in this world and in the
world to come.