Some Ideas on Popular Myths about Islam

Some Ideas on Popular Myths about Islam

Note : Written in response to Nadeem F. Paracha’s blog on DAWN titled The backwards forward dated 1st October 2009. Also added unedited in comments section…mere spelling mistakes corrected here.
Repetition of Western ideas and lashing at Islam is a common weapon used by liberals, old Communists, and many others.
Intellectualism is a fashion in Pakistan and the writer is doing wonderful service by whipping at the religious frenzy and ignorance in our culture and times.
He is commenting on a theme which he has no primary or deep knowledge , except quotations and quotations and cherry picking.
Yes, Nasim Hijazi’s historical parabolic, Sherer’s novels and romanticized versions of history are our food in Pakistan……a sad and potent reality of our cultural and social landscape.
But mere speaking against the ignorance without depth leads to confusion and anarchy! The ideas presented in the article that Hadith was compiled after at least 150 years ……. a wonderful idea indeed! But if he has time to read Khutbat-e Bahawalpur by late Dr. Hamid Ullah translated as Emergence of Islam in English published by International Islamic University Press Islamabad. Then he will come to know that he is confusing Seerah Studies with Hadith Literature and Hadith were being compiled and the first known Book was Sahifa Hammmam mere decades after departure of Holy Prophet peace be upon him. This is oldest available text and many more were there… about 54 hadith books including many parts are available on this topic of Hadith. Due to modern conservative trends mere Sihah e Sitta are popular in our region and perhaps in Islamic world also.
Mere not reading certain books does not mean that those books don’t exist. Ignorance can not be denial of knowledge! Although our modern critics of Islam always excel in this art!
As to using memory as source of writing Hadith literature, then what about Quran, it was also written from memories of many people. Then logical conclusion will be that it is also mythical? At least I understand that the tenor of this logical conclusion reaches to this . Then yes it is an important question and we need to use all our ideas and intellect to know whether Quran and Hadith also is a mythical subject and mere past worshipping. For Quran I leave aside the logical speculation as writer should make it clear that his extrapolation also includes this idea or not.
But about Hadith his ideas are pretty clear and he considers them to be myths and compiled and written at least 100 years after departure fo Holy Prophet peace be upon him. This is the most ill informed , factually incorrect and repeated propaganda tool used by our liberal intellectuals.
If we see and critically check the Hadith Literature and then taking one example only that Sahih Bukhari ’s compiler took 6000 hadith from over a 600000 . This shows the vast literature available and also shows the difference of methodology and techniques.
The Hadith Literature has a vast ancillary fields where rigorous methods of criticism, and establishing its veracity are developed and in that writer is true that in modern time there has never been any exhaustive study as to comparing hadith one by one with Quranic texts. That is done is parts and not as a whole exercise. But the method adopted to preserve them was same as applied for Quran, and he is wrong in quoting or understanding that hadith is equated with infallibility. In Asul-e fiqh of Imam Shafi RA , the rigorous standards of Hadith criticism are laid down and they never gave the same status to Hadith as to Quran and the final and 100 % correct and exact words are of Quran…modern textual research has proven this, the comparison of Quran in Turkey ( Hazrat Uthman RA’s Quran while he was martyred he was reading that copy)has shown that there is not a single word different than that copy.
Hadith had never been give status as equal to Quran and it is a source of legal and other methods and it is a supportive issue. It is now static and considered a sin to challenge and think in different ways, but this rot is not inherent in Islamic tradition, I will simply like to quote Shah wali Ullah thta whosoever accepts Islamic law without reason and acts as a slave on it is a JAHIL…ignorant! See first page of Hujjat Al Balagha.
Islamic legal system has its limits and perhaps right it is the most abused and inert field.. but this rot did not begin in initial or present times… this lethargy is flaw of its practitioners not of law itself. Hadith supports Quran and if any Hadith is explicitly against Quran then despite its all correct chains it is not considered as law. Writer should note this point.

“Interestingly, Islamic reformists too continued to draw their legislative, political and historical conclusions from eighth- and ninth-century hearsay accounts as if modern society was still responding to medieval impulses.”
It is sum of the liberal tirade against Islamic ideas and it is true depiction of the mullah ridden interpretation of Islam and its popular appeal in present times. writer can not be more than true to the false ideology of obscurantist, jahil Taliban dominant thoughts in our times. But there is another side of these centuries. Spain and Bagdad were also in those centuries and they were the leaders of those times and they also faced such narrow minded religious bigots …this is curse of zealots everywhere. But this does not mean that a narrow and wrong understanding of an issue should blind us to the real and true message and context of an issue.
Islamic history is most pitiable as it has not ( alas!) got unbiased and objective history writing although there are some works but they are not popular or exhaustive as they should have been . this has nothing to do with lack of scholarship , it is overall social attitude in our society towards knowledge and in matters of Islamic history it is always seen with false, colored and tainted glasses. One is of its admirers , who thinks at as ideal and free of any fault and a Golden Period and another as a vendetta and bloodshed and hearsay narrative……..these both are extremes truth lies somewhere in between.
Dr. Fawad Seisgen of Turkey, Khalifa Abdul Hakim Pakistan, Syed Amir Ali, Iqbal, and many more are just recent examples of understanding the history of Islam. As to west’s historical tradition about Islam , it is a tool of regenerating identities from personalized tainted glasses instead of understanding its true perspective and narratives. If the religious experience of West is tumultuous then it does not mean that all other world religions have the same fate.
Over religiosity is the greatest curse for humanity and it has always been whether in ancient times or modern times……..whenever religious ideas are mixed and made tools of state there has been repression and oppression and murder of innocent human beings…… recent examples being Swat frenzy on name of religion, Inquisition of 500 years ago, Gujarat massacre of Muslims and recent mob killings of Christians in Pakistan. Frenzy of religiosity is a demon and this demon was rightly denounced by Holy Prophet peace upon him on occasion of his last Hajj, when he said that avoid GHULLU……the extremism in religion and alas this extremism has become norm and extremes rule the roost in present age. Polarization and extremism is the gift of this absurd age, where desires are turned into law and where greed is named as principal!
search for inquiry should not turn into demonizing any particular idea or mere misrepresenting any idea.
I will finish this on saying of Ibne Khaldun that while looking for historical facts and truth , we should not try to understand past with glasses of present! we should understand zeitgeist of that age and then we will learn more and see truth clearly!
To label Islam as an imperialistic force is same idea that fails to understand the context and true place of any idea and then juxtaposing wishes with personal biases and this is a fashion for our age of information technology , where Wiki and Google have made raw information infinitely abundant , but

devoid of wisdom or truth…………….historical criticism should not blind us to material and cultural facts of the era ! Writer and jahil mullahs make the same mistake of equating creative time as static!
We need to seek truth and light……and reason and use of mind is the first steps towards that direction……let us keep on searching!