Refuting malicious allegations on the recording of Hadeeths, Seerah and History

2-4-2013 | IslamWeb

Question:

What is the truth regarding those who claim that Islamic history and the Sunnah of the Messenger of Allaah, sallallaahu ‘alayhi wa sallam, was fabricated or that they include some hidden facts and that the Shiites recorded history and the Sunnah in a better way than the Ahlus-Sunnah? They also claim that they do not belong to the Shiite sect and that they hate them.
Additionally, we have to take note that those people do not take Al-Bukhaari and Ibn Katheer as a reference, claiming that the basic six Hadeeth resources are compiled by non Arabs, as if they want to accuse them of disloyalty or incompetence to do such a task. Please advise.

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Answer:

All perfect praise be to Allaah, The Lord of the Worlds. I testify that there is none worthy of worship except Allaah, and that Muhammad, sallallaahu ‘alayhi wa sallam, is His Slave and Messenger.

As for recording Hadeeth and its narrators, many well-versed scholars have paid much attention to the honorable prophetic Hatdeeths for it is considered the second source of Islamic legislation.

The Companions focused on memorizing Hadeeths, in addition to memorizing the Noble Quran, and they preserved it in their hearts until they conveyed it to the Taabi‘oon who came after them. This was the case until the prophetic Hatdeeths were recorded along with their chain of transmission in books whose compliers paid great attention in collecting and recording them. Scholars have played an important role in identifying weak, fabricated and authentic Hadeeths, and this in turn brought about some compilations that are totally free from any weak Hadeeths such as Saheeh Al-Bukhari and Saheeh Muslim.

Some other compilations contained the Saheeh, Hasan and Dha‘eef Hadeeths such as the rest of the six basic books of Hadeeth, excluding Saheeh Al-Bukhari and Saheeh Muslim and the other books such as Saheeh Ibn Khuzaymah and Saheeh Ibn Hibbaan. All such compilations were accepted and became widespread throughout the Ummah. Hence, every Hadeeth has been a subject of keen pursuit and constant study to verify the authenticity of the narration through testing the, trustworthiness, proficiency and accuracy of the narrators of Hadeeths, and knowing their dates of death and the like. Such investigation of narrators led to the development of the most fascinating and unique science of Al-jarh wa At-Ta‘deel (criticism and accreditation of Hadeeth narrators).

There is no doubt that those who want to cast doubt on the authenticity of such books or the loyalty of their compilers mainly aim at destroying our religion and defaming the scholars of our nation whose trustworthiness and uprightness are well-known throughout history. In this way, they also accuse our Ummah of foolishness because of accepting the narrations of those people without investigating and evaluating them.

As for recording the books of history and biographies, no one can be perfectly sure that all the events are true. So, some of them are authenticated while others are doubtful. In spite of this fact, there are some books whose compilers really did remarkable work to record the materials of these books very accurately. Thus, this made the writers gain the trust of people for their well-established academic qualifications and trustworthiness as well as their unique experience in this field. The most prominent of such scholars are At-Tabari and Ibn Katheer .

Allaah Knows best.