welcome to a pathway of understanding
through the gates of wisdom and peace
Abdul raheim green many people claim
that what they have is from God but the
question is can they prove
it if you are looking for certainty in
an uncertain
world or maybe you're just curious why
do Muslims believe what they believe
to find out more do not miss our
fascinating and challenging series the
proof that Islam is the
truth join Abdul rahee Green in the
proof that Islam is the truth next on
peace TV
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all praise is due to Allah we praise him
we seek his help and we ask for his
forgiveness we take refuge with Allah
from the evil of ourselves and from the
evil consequence of our evil actions I'm
abdurahim green and you're joining me
for the proof that Islam is the truth
now today we're going to be talking
about the preservation of the Hadith and
the sayings of the Prophet muhammmad
sallallah alaihi wasallam may God's
peace and blessings be upon him and in
the last episode we talked about the
remarkable oral transmission and
memorization of the Quran how children
as young as 7 years old even younger
than that have memorized the entire
Quran and by the way some of them don't
even speak Arabic there's no book in the
world like that but the Quran is not the
only source of guidance for Muslims we
also need the Sunnah and the living
example of the Prophet Muhammad in order
to fully comprehend and understand the
religion of Islam and we're going to
examine today how the scholars of Islam
have pained
mistakenly preserved and authenticated
the sayings of the Prophet
Muhammad so that's our task today to
talk about
that just to remind ourselves about the
ancient times when the prophet Muhammad
sallallah alai wasallam and his
companions were living as Michael Welter
he notes that in ancient times when
writing was scarcely used memory and
oral transmission was exercised and
strengthened to a degree now almost
known it was very common in those days
for people to
memorize and to transmit the sayings of
their ancestors in an oral form much
more so than in a written form and
therefore the ability to memorize
accurately was much more strongly formed
than it is today many people today don't
really fully comprehend because we are
not really used to that method of
retaining information and therefore in
terms of memory and training our memory
it tends to be very weak we prefer to
record things on our hard disk for
example or on Bits of Paper but in those
days people tended to memorize things in
their minds now first of
all sometimes we find that people have
not fully comprehended the
importance of the Sunnah of the Prophet
what is this Sunnah of the Prophet what
do we mean by Sunnah well the word
Sunnah in Arabic means way it's the
prophetic way the way that the prophet
Muhammad s. wasam may God's peace and
blessings be upon him the things that he
said the things that he did and the
things that he approved of all of this
is called the Sunnah and the Sunnah is
preserved in what is called the Hadith
Hadith means literally
Story the Quran is also referred to as a
Hadith in fact it is the best Hadith the
best story the best narration but
generally in Islamic law the sayings of
the Prophet Muhammad the Sunnah of the
Prophet Muhammad is recorded in the
Hadith so the Hadith is the term for
those things or those writings in which
the actions the sayings the approvals of
the Prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam
The Prophet Muhammad may God's peace and
blessings be upon him were recorded now
there are numerous books of of Hadith
because of course there are so many
things that the prophet muhammmad may
God's peace and blessings be upon him
said and so many things he did we have
to remember that the message the
messengership and the prophethood of
Muhammad may God's peace and blessings
be upon Him lasted a period of 23 years
so that's a lot of stuff 23 years of
what the prophet did what he said what
he approved of so there are of course so
many narrations so many Hadith of the
Prophet Muhammad and the whole issue of
the Hadith is compounded by the fact
that many
people after the death of the Prophet
Muhammad may God's peace and blessings
be upon Him began to
fabricate and began to invent lies about
the prophet and they began to say that
that the prophet Muhammad may God's
peace and blessings be upon him who said
this and the prophet Muhammad said that
you can imagine every person who sold
rice for example realized that well you
know a good way to sell more rice is by
saying the prophet said eat rice rice is
good for you so if everyone thinks that
rice is good for you and that the
prophet said that then more and more
people are going to buy rice so also
rulers try to justify their actions
sometimes their wrong actions by
invented hadiths and sayings of the
Prophet Muhammad so what developed in
the Muslim world and we're going to talk
about that is a science a very amazing
science through which and by which we
could
distinguish what are the true and what
are the
false sayings of the Prophet Muhammad
and all of this gives us added
conviction that when we talk about the
religion of Islam we're talking about
something verifiable we're talking about
something authentic we're talking about
something about which we have a
scientific verifiable process through
which and by which we can know what the
prophet Muhammad said and what he didn't
say by the
way people were able to do this
with the Hadith or the sayings of the
Prophet Muhammad in a way that they were
never able to do with the
Quran first of all the Quran was
memorized in its
entirety by thousands of Muslims from
the earliest days of
Islam also in terms of its text as we
have already mentioned it was compiled
and collected and collated from the
earliest days of
Islam so if anyone wanted to make a
different
interpretation of Islam if any deviant
sect or group or ruler or individual
wanted to justify something by the Quran
they were never able to invent a new
verse or introduce a new Ayah or verse
of the Quran it was imp possible to do
that because the text of the Quran had
been established from the very earliest
days of Muslim history and it was agreed
upon unanimously by
everybody this was not the case with the
Hadith or the sayings of the prophet and
we can say actually it is true until
today we still have numerous books of
the Hadith of the prophet and we do not
have any single book where all of the
authentic Hadith of the Prophet have
been compiled in one place we do have a
collection of Hadith that is rigorously
and highly authenticated and it is
considered to be the most authentic
textual reference in the religion of
Islam after the Quran and that is known
asah
alar sah means good sound
authentic and Al bukari is the name of
the Imam or the scholar who collected
these various traditions and sayings of
the Prophet Muhammad may God's peace and
blessings be upon
him the next most authentic collection
of prophetic Traditions after
Sahari is sah Muslim again that means
the authentic and sound collection but
this time it was a collection that was
compiled by Imam Muslim he was also a
very great scholar the Quran says many
times which means all you who believe
obey Allah and obey the messenger and
we're going to talk a little bit more
about that after the break so don't go
away join us for the preservation of the
sayings of the prophet in our series the
proof that Islam is the truth assalam
alaykum May the peace and blessings of
Allah be upon all of you welcome back to
the proof that Islam is the truth and
today we're talking about the
preservation of the Hadith or the
sayings of the Prophet Muhammad and we
were talking about how important the
Sunnah and the example of the Prophet
Muhammad is in understanding the
religion of Islam it's really essential
to it in fact we find that many of the
most important and essential basic acts
of worship in Islam would not be fully
defined just by reference to the Quran
for example let's take the five daily
prayers if you wanted to know how to
pray five times every day what are the
times of the prayers how should we say
the prayers how many units are there for
each particular prayer what do we say in
each position in the prayer what are the
positions what are the orders of the
positions in the prayer these things are
not mentioned in the
Quran the only way that we know about
these things is through the preservation
of the example of the Prophet Muhammad
May Allah's peace and blessings be upon
him him so the prophet Muhammad may
God's peace and blessings be upon him
said pray as you have seen me pray so
Muslims therefore are trying to emulate
and follow the example of the Prophet
the Quran
says establish the ritual prayer but the
details of it it is not given in the
Quran similarly there are many things in
the Quran that we would not be able to
understand it
unless the life story the life history
of the Prophet Muhammad may God's peace
and blessings be upon him had been
preserved for example the 80th Surah of
the Quran in the very first Ayah it
says which means he frowned and turned
away who frowned who turned away from
who what is this talking about unless we
know the S and the life history of the
Prophet Muhammad may God's peace and
blessings be upon him we will be
clueless about what this is actually
referring to and I'm only giving one of
many many examples in the Quran in fact
the Quran itself stresses the importance
of referring to the prophet Muhammad may
God's peace and blessings be upon Him
many many times indeed in one particular
verse
Allah swears by
himself nay no by Allah they can have no
faith their faith is not true it's not
real unless they make you Muhammad a
judge in all disputes between them and
find no resistance in their hearts and
submit with the fullest submission in
this verse Allah is making it very clear
that if a person is truly a believer
in Allah and a believer in the last day
they will make the prophet Muhammad may
God's peace and blessings be upon him a
judge in their disputes and they will be
happy with his decisions also Allah
subhana wa ta'ala tells us in the Quran
that whatever the prophet gives you you
must take it whatever the prophet orders
you to leave you must leave it the Quran
tells us that the Prophet Muhammad may
God's peace and blessings be upon him
did not speak from his own desires it is
nothing except a revelation that has
been revealed so these references in the
Quran make it absolutely clear that the
Sunnah the example of the Prophet
Muhammad is an intrinsic part of
understanding the religion of Islam now
let's look at some of the ways in which
the Sunnah of the Prophet Muhammad
has been preserved first of all the
Sunnah or the example of the Prophet is
a very practical thing let's remember
this for
Muslims the prophet Muhammad is the best
example of how to be as a human being in
fact the Quran references that in the
33rd chapter of the Quran in the 2 Ayah
the Quran tells us the meaning of which
is verily most certainly in the
messenger of God is a most excellent
example for anyone who believes in God
and the last day so the Quran is telling
us that in the example in the life in
the pattern of the Prophet Muhammad may
God's peace and blessings be upon Him is
a good
example a way to follow for anyone who
believes in God in the last day so
Muslims of course they believe in Allah
and they believe in the last day the day
of judgment the accountability the
Hellfire the paradise they believe in
that so therefore they will try their
best to emulate the example the manners
the behavior of the Blessed prophet
Muhammed
s. wasam so the Sunnah the example of
the Prophet was applied in people's
lives it was not only memorized in the
sense that I heard the prophet say this
I saw the prophet do that they
themselves applied it practically for
example the prophet Muhammad may God's
peace and blessings be upon him said if
it wasn't a burden if it wasn't going to
be such a difficult thing for my nation
I would have made the use of the tooth
stick brushing the teeth and
obligation upon the Muslim nation and
the prophet himself used to frequently
use the tooth stick he used to use it in
the morning in the evening before he
came out of the house before he prayed
and his companions practically followed
that example and that practical example
was followed by their children and that
was followed by their children and so
they would say well we saw the prophet
Muhammad do this and we saw the prophet
Muhammad sallallah alai wasallam do this
and this is what what he told us to do
so it is not remember it is not merely
memorizing some academic thing it's an
actual practical application in one's
everyday life so this is one of the ways
in which the Sunnah of the Prophet was
preserved and just in reference to this
I remember that my dad always taught me
aay my dad Gavin Green he taught me a
saying that his dad taught him and
probably dad taught him and that was a
little phrase he uses R Au u r is an
acronym for return after use meaning
when you have used something make sure
you put it back where you found it in
the first place return after use so
actually what we find is is here is a
chain of
transmission I learned from my father
Gavin Green who learned from his father
so actually this chain stretches back
over a 100 years if you count my
father's 86 and you count it back to his
dad that is really nearly you know 70 80
years that's quite a long time and if I
inculcate my children with the same
thing and then they narrate it to their
children this is what we call a chain of
transmission
this has a special
term in Islamic terminology it's called
the isnad and the isnad is a very very
important thing in the preservation of
the sayings of the Prophet Muhammad
because people began to invent things
and they began to invent sayings about
the prophet so some of the companions
they said okay we will not accept
anymore anyone coming along and saying I
heard the prophet say this I heard the
prophet said that no we we want to know
which companion of the Prophet Muhammad
did you hear this from and then they
would go and check from this companion
did you say this did you hear the
prophet Muhammad sallallah alaihi
wasallam say that and if they discovered
that the person was a liar and they had
invented a lie they would tell everybody
they would make it known publicly this
man lied against the prophet don't
believe him he's a liar he's a kadab
he's a an invent
of Hadith of the prophet and one of the
most strong Hadith of the Prophet that
is through a M Transmission and we
mentioned what m is previously is that
whoever lies about me intentionally let
them put their seat in the Hellfire
whoever intentionally invents a lie
against the prophet they are going to be
destined to be burned in hell it's a
very very severe thing so nobody should
go around in inventing things and saying
the prophet Muhammad sallallah alaihi
wasallam said this and the prophet
Muhammad said that well some people did
start doing that even to the extent that
Aisha was commenting about this fake
coins that she called the fake coins
were not real fake coins they were the
Hadith of the Prophet that people were
inventing so the companions they said no
we want to know who said it where did
you learn it from give us the isnad and
this is where the chain of narrators
develop and from that the scholars
started to study did this person meet
that person was he truthful was he
honest did he have a good memory was he
a Pious person they began to check the
character and the personality of every
single person in this chain of narrators
and they did this in order to
authenticate and make sure that every
person in this chain was trustworthy
that even these people people in the
chain had met each other and had learned
this Hadith from each other and they did
all of this to ensure that there was a
process in place through which and by
which we could determine who and what
were the things that the prophet
Muhammad may God's peace and blessings
be upon him what did he really say and
what are the things that we have some
doubts about whether he said it or not
and what things that you know have been
invented and
lies attributed to the prophet Muhammad
sallallah alaihi wasallam of course this
is really a very huge and extensive
subject it's really a science it's
something that people have dedicated
their whole lives to is to studying the
science of the transmission and the
accurate and authentic transmission of
the sayings of the Prophet Muhammad but
of course there have been Scholars
throughout the ages Muslim Scholars who
have dedicated their lives to this
science and they have compiled books
authentic books like those I have
already mentioned like sahkari and sah
Muslim and the sun of Abu da and the sun
of n there are anyway a number of
collections of books when I say
collections but they they are books
where the Hadith of the Prophet have
been collected and they have been
authenticated by the scholars of the
Hadith so like I say it is a very
extensive subject but all of this is to
assure us that when we say a Hadith of
the Prophet is authentic it's you can be
sure that is something the prophet
Muhammad really did say or he really did
do that's it for this episode The
preservation of the Hadith of the
Prophet I hope you're going to join us
next time for our proof that Islam is
the truth
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