Special Aversion To Hadeeth Seems Illogical

A friend of mine made it easy for me. What I was not able to convey in paragraphs after paragraphs he put it cogently in just a few words. Referring to many among our friends he says that they “will study everything under the sun, but develop a special aversion to Hadeeth”. I cannot understand the aversion to Hadeeth and ever willingness to share one’s own ideas, interpretations, inferences and footnotes – and doing so in all possible and available modes of communication. These very people will continue to use all future channels and means of communication which we cannot even imagine of currently.

Referring to a specific Hadeeth and trusting it 100% authentic (only to reject the remaining ones) while objecting to its delayed recording, is worth pondering upon. I am not able to fathom the logicality in this standpoint. Why shouldn’t the Ahaadeeth be taken into consideration if they were recorded much later and we should listen to the arguments against it even further later in time? Why the period of time is not applicable in the latter case? Why is it a factor only for the special aversion to Ahaadeeth and not for any other thing?

The special aversion seems a kind of escapism to me. Because then one doesn’t need to take the trouble of verifying and evaluating (applying the rigorous principles of Hadeeth criticism) – leave alone relating and applying it with today. In other words, there is no need for Ijtihaad – an extremely difficult task. Now we can sit back and relax. A question, however, springs to mind, namely, where are we investing this saved time, energy and resources and what have been the results? It will be enlightening to know this.

We have many more illogicalities. A respected gentleman argues – without any qualifying [restricting] observations – that “Yes, Muslims are supposed to scare the enemies of Allah” – referring to Soorah al-Anfaal, 8: 60. This gentleman quotes a single verse out of thousands. He doesn’t think that it is necessary to go back and see the context. He doesn’t notice that he is excluding a sizeable part of the world from the purview of hidaayah, the foremost objective of Qur’anic verses. But Qur’an is serving the purpose of justifying the position of one individual or the other in an arbitrarily selective manner and Hadeeth is being quoted in the same manner to negate Hadeeth!

These are all the consequences of the lack of coherence in our thought patterns. We end up supporting and opposing the same thing. This is because we haven’t popularized the fact that truth is free from self-contradiction. We don’t clearly see the incoherence of dividing knowledge into ‘secular’ and ‘religious’ and the disjointedness of many other aspects of our collective life. The popularization of critical and scientific thinking – together with the search for the whole picture – will put everything in order. It will bring about real (and not artificial) unification in our ranks. It will put all the different pieces of the jigsaw puzzle in order:

sab ke dil mei(n) hai jagah teri jo too raazi huwaa

mujh pe goyaa ik zamaana mehrbaa(n) ho jaa’ega