Hadith Denier, a propaganda against being critical of the reporters

Linguistically the word hadith in Arabic has multiple meanings and usages, such as “quotation”, “narrative”, “story”, “incidence”, “experience”, or “tradition”. In the Islamic terminology, the word hadith indicates quotations of the Exalted Messenger Mohammad, our salutes on him. There are numerous books containing 100s and 1000s of ahadith or quotations that have been assigned to the Holy Prophet. According to a famous Islamic scholar, Abdul Haq Muhaddis Dehlawi, the number of recognized books of ahadith is more than fifty, which embrace more than one million quotations. But even the most authentic books are not free from narratives that have been wrongly attributed to the Holy Prophet.
An Important Principle
It must be born in mind that the following two situations are as different as black and white:
1) 1) “Quotation of the Holy Prophet” will mean something the Prophet actually said
and
2) 2) “A quotation attributed to the Holy Prophet”
It is easy to understand that no true Muslim can disagree with the first situation. Anyone questioning or being skeptical about situation number two will not be denying the Holy Messenger’s word. What he is saying is that Mohammad, our salutes on him, would not have said this and the narrator is in error. Such a person cannot be accused of being a denier of hadith. He is being critical of the reporters.
Another Important Point
Even non-Muslim scholars such as Bernard Shaw, Sir William Muir and Thomas Carlysle agree that the Holy Qur’an is the Word of God and that it was committed to writing during the life of the Exalted Messenger. The Qur’an bears internal evidence to that effect when it begins, “This is a book in which there is no doubt.” (And it removes all doubt.) On the other hand, the collections of ahadith were compiled after Mohammad (SA) passed on and in most cases, the interval encompasses centuries.
How Do We Check the Authenticity of Ahadith?
All ahadith have been written through chains of narrators. These chains comprise of several links of reporters, in many instances, more than ten. When our scholars sit down to check on a reported hadith, their research begins and ends at one point. That is whether the narrator is reliable or not. People named in a particular hadith, were they real or fictitious, when were they born, why were they born, where did a particular storyteller live, when did he die, what was his temperament, how good was his memory, was his beard long enough, was he the son of a bondwoman, or his mother was divorced. One was caught listening to music. Another one was seen drinking date-wine. He was seen drinking water with his left hand, and another was conducting ablution with the right hand, etc.
Dr. Henry Springer of Austria, and Dr.John Gibbs of Britain, the great orientalists, noted this massive chaos among Muslim scholarship. They comment that Muslim scholars proudly claim that they have preserved the names of 500,000 narrators. The dilemma is that the same narrator who is perfectly reliable in the eyes of two scholars is totally unreliable and curseworthy according to ten others. Muslim scholars, for centuries, have been going through this mental punishment. They might well have invented 500,000 gods.
Sectarianism in Islam
A simple observation of books written by our historians and muhadditheen makes it plain that these are the people behind sectarian divisions in Islam. The narrators of one sect are called fabricators by another. To view the picture at a large scale, just one example will be enough: while Sunnis consider Bukhari and Muslim ahadith as the most authentic books, Shias reject that notion and consider Nehjul Balagha and Al-Kafi as the most trustworthy sources.
Criteria of Authenticity
Let us briefly examine what criteria scholars have used to examine the massive body of ahadith:
1) 1) The most common practice has been a review and critique of the narrators. I prefer to call it post-mortem scholastic exam. The impossibility of the success of this approach has already been discussed briefly.
2) 2) Many Sufis try to authenticate or dismiss history and tradition based upon clairvoyance or kashf and ilham. The best example of this phenomenon is provided by Shah Waliullah, who in the 18th century compiled forty ahadith stating that the Holy Prophet came to him and said this and did that. He took one step further when he tried to portray his meeting with the Holy Prophet as a physical experience. He claims to have retained some hair from the Holy Prophet during these imaginary visits. What is more amazing is that hundreds of Islamic scholars have promoted these experiences of Waliullah with reverence. Even a title has been given to these supposed forty encounters: “The 40 Pearls”.
3) 3) Evaluation of a hadith could not escape the mysterious “Ilmul Manam”, which means the “Knowledge of Dreams”. Many Mullas and Sufis claimed to have seen the Prophet and his companions in their dreams and received their guidance. They also ventured to interpret their own dreams and kashf to help sort and sift various ahadith. The Andalusi (Moorish Spain) school under the leadership of Sheikh Moinuddin Ibne Arabi, played in this field according to their own rules.
4) 4) Another criterion was projected by claimants to prophethood. This is well illustrated by Mirza Ghulam Ahmad of Qadian. He claimed visits from angels of revelation during the last 19 years of his life. He presented his “revelations” as equally authentic and authoritative as the Holy Qur’an and called the whole body of ahadith a “magician’s bag”. He said, “Anything can be taken out or thrown away from this magician’s bag.”
5) 5) The knowledge of asma arrajal. In the first few centuries, numerous Muslim and non-Muslim scholars tried to devise scientific means of analyzing the one million ahadith. Many modern scholars believe that they completely failed in their pursuit. Without going into much detail it is enough to realize that Imam Bukhari, considered the greatest muhaddith of all-time, reportedly came across 600,000 Prophetic sayings and using his own judgement, kept 2,800, and discarded the rest. The Imam Kallini collection, Al-Kafi, out of a similar number chose 16,000 but the book itself claims that only 5,000 of these can be considered trustworthy. No one has had the courage to venture into naming those 5,000. In short, the science of asma arrajal is not a science at all. It is mere conjecture. All it deals with is whether a particular hadith has one narrator or
multiple, does the chain have any weak links, do any of the reporters believe in a different school of thought, and so on.
6) 6) The most popular Mulla of the 20th century, Maudoodi, came out with his own branded principle. He claimed that the only rightful scholar who can research a hadith would be the one who would inherently be mizaj shenase Rasul, someone who understands the mindset of the Holy Prophet. In other words, any hadith that Maudoodi would feel authentic should be considered as such.
7) 7) The end result of the above criteria used so far is that they have failed to bring up unanimity and agreement between scholars and sects of Islam. Therefore, different scholars and sects and even the masses tend to accept only those ahadith that fit into their dogmas and reject those that are otherwise.

Feminisation of faith

THE lady cooking a new version of chicken curry is wearing a mint green hijab.
In the midst of adding spices and emptying out bowls of beaten yoghurt and thinly chopped ginger, she pauses to narrate a hadith.
Within the hour, viewers have been provided with an endearing combination: a new recipe with which to dazzle the family’s palate and religious instruction. The act of cooking, a dull chore that can be trying for the most creative of domestic divas, is thus given greater significance, providing sustenance for the stomach and solace for the soul.
This coalition of faith and food preparation is more than just an inventive way to boost the ratings of Pakistan’s television channels. In it are the visible clues of transformations that have taken place in the public sphere over the past several decades.
Over three decades ago, when Islamisation first appeared in Pakistan, it came via a combustible mix of militarism and dictatorship. A bastion of laws labelled Islamic and presented as Sharia made their appearance on the law books of a mangled Pakistan still coming to terms with its disturbed democracy. The Zina and Hudood Ordinances of 1979, followed by the Qisas and Diyat Ordinance and the Qanoon-i-Shahadat made the project complete with an injunction requiring all women appearing on the then single television channel to cover their hair.
Those laws were not digested whole. Groups like the Women’s Action Forum agitated against them through campaigns in the media and marches that defied military injunctions. Their struggle continued through dictatorship and on to democracy and through not one but two tenures of a female prime minister. But the laws remained and with age came the legitimacy that eluded them at their inception.
Wave after wave of secular, male and purportedly liberal male politicians tolerated their presence, eager to sideline the gripes of women insisting on their rights and unwilling to take on the censure of religious groups. But while legal Islamisation provided a focus for campaigns against dubiously ‘Islamic’ laws not ratified by a duly elected legislature or affirmed by Islamic scholars, cultural fronts were largely ignored by secular women’s civil society groups.
Drawing largely from upper middle-class and elite cadres, the organisational arrangements of these groups failed to penetrate the grassroots or seep into existing cultural arrangements, focusing less on the world women inhabited and more on the egalitarian, empowered society.
At the same time, religious groups often the offshoots of religious parties, pursued a contrasting strategy. Instead of public marches, they targeted the private spheres best known to females, sending gaggles of women, duly veiled, to the homes of their neighbours and friends and inviting them to tafseer sessions and prayer meetings.
In urban environments, with weakening extended family structures and the close proximity of teeming slums and apartment buildings, they filled a social vacuum with faith.
In contrast to secular women’s groups, religious revival movements focused on emphasising and highlighting women’s traditional work as central to society and as the integral building block of faith. Adhering to their precepts did not require abandoning what women were already doing — raising children and caring for the home — for some remote vision of empowerment or a march down a public street.
Instead of positioning empowerment and progress as an abandonment of femininity as understood by the ordinary housewife, it allowed the housewife to see significance in her actions that went beyond the limited meaning of laying out an adequate spread on the family dinner table.
Being ‘modern’ as they imagined it meant a rejection of these roles and of all that was familiar. It was tainted with the influences of the hated West that subjugated men and women through its imperialist policies. Conversely, religious revivalism, embodied in the mechanics of faith-based groups both evangelical and political, insisted that a willful embrace of the household under the umbrella of religiously defined duties and obligations possessed both ethical and spiritual significance.
The transformation of Pakistani culture did not end there. While the Islamisation of Pakistani femininity may have initially prodded housewives to attend tafseer meetings or pray and fast regularly, its next generation suggests far more than a benign avowal of cooking and cleaning.
Women leaving the home to participate in faith-based activities discovered, by experience and example, that faith could provide a compelling argument for leaving the home for reasons such as further education and employment. Duly veiled and covered, they had an argument for entering the public sphere without the moral aspersions that a patriarchal culture cast on women leaving the home.
The overtures of Islamist groups to Pakistani women began as a project to Islamise Pakistani culture and to thwart ‘modern’ ideas by a revival of faith; and as a celebration and heightening of the existing roles of femininity.
However, to the extent that such revivalism has been successful, it has also produced a congruent and possibly unexpected feminisation of Islamist movements, with all of these focusing more and more on women within their cadres.
If women were initially attracted to local Islamist rhetoric by the affirmation provided to their existing roles within the family, their persistent presence in many Islamist groups has produced a feminisation of an Islamist revival that is just as marked as the cultural transformation.
Perhaps the question of who conquered who — faith or feminists — is not the right one. Maybe the muddying of boundaries between feminism and faith, the language of choice mixed with the language of submission, is the recipe that will deliver the change that has so far eluded Pakistani women.
A cooking show with a hijab-clad woman offering creative recipes and religious wisdom may not seem like much. But within its parameters is a growing ease with the idea that women can define and perhaps even reform what they believe in.
The writer is an attorney teaching political philosophy and constitutional law.

Jahil offline (Exposing the Truth)

act No. 1: On August 24, 2002 Dr Aamir presented his foreign degrees to the Registrar of Karachi and got his provisional approval on the same day. See Registrar’s letter The letter talks of “foreign degrees” so it is clear that Dr Aamir presented more than one foreign degree to get its equivalence. In fact he presented all the three degrees he had purchased from Trinity College, that of BA, MA and PhD.

Fact No 2: Dr Aamir admits in his Dawn interview: “True, I attached my honorary PhD degrees along with my other medical degree when I filed my nomination papers, but I ask, what’s wrong in that.” He had bought only one PhD degree from Trinity College which was authenticated by the Karachi University Registrar. The other two degrees he attached with his nomination papers, of BA and MA, were also authenticated by the Registrar. See copies BA | MA | PhD

Fact No. 3: He had no MBBS degree from Jamshoro University when he filed his nomination papers because if he had that degree, there was no need to rush to the Registrar with fake degrees, get a letter of authentication on the same day and try to break the Law of the land. This explanation is all an after-thought and it is possible as a Minister he may have managed to get a MBBS degree attached to his nomination papers in the Election Commission. In Pakistan everything is possible in the age of Enlightened Moderation.

Fact No. 4: Dr Aamir claims his PhD degree had nothing to do with his nomination papers. But why did he buy and present the BA and MA degrees to the Election Commission has not been explained by him and that is where he gets caught lying.

Fact No. 5: He says he got his MBBS degree in 1995 from Jamshoro College. But the BA Degree he got from Trinity College is dated 17 March 1995. Is this not a joke? It is an open fraud. How could Dr Fake do his MBBS from Jamshoro and his BA in Islamic Studies from Trinity College at the same time. Click to see BA Degree

Fact No. 6: Trinity College and University’s web address (URL) was registered under the name of: KSR Consulting,1403-1901 19 ST NE, Calgary, Alberta T2E4Y4, Canada. It was registered through: GoDaddy.com with these details: Domain Name: TRINITYEDUCATION.COM, Created on: 05-Jul-00, Expires on: 05-Jul-06, Last Updated on: 18-Feb-05. See details of when Trinity College was Registered

Fact No 7: When the college itself was registered in 2000, and that too in Canada and not in Spain as Dr Aamir claims, although they do have a Spanish address, how can it issue a degree to Dr Aamir dated March 17, 1995. It is thus a fake degree and when Dr Aamir got it authenticated from the Registrar of Karachi University, he committed a criminal act, an outright fraud.

Fact No 8: The degrees Dr Aamir admitted he attached with his nomination papers for the 2002 election do not say anywhere that these are “Honorary” Degrees. In fact the PhD Degree states on its face in bold and capital letters: "The Trinity College has conferred upon Dr Aamir Liaquat the Degree, Rank and Academic Status, Doctor of Philosophy in Islamic Studies.” It further adds: “All requirements of the Board of Regents and Examiners having been completed. All rights and Privileges thereunto appertaining are hereby awarded.” Is this the language of an Honorary Degree. See Face of Degree

Fact No 9: Trinity College offers an All-in-One Package to its customers for UK Pounds 500 (US$960) in which all three degrees, Bachelors, Masters and Doctorate are offered together. This is what Dr Aamir purchased with the request to the college to put the 1995 date on his BA degree. Click to see Trinity package

Fact No 10: Dr Aamir has not explained or clarified why would a commercial company selling its products to the rest of the world offer an almost 1000-dollar package free of cost to him making him an “Honorary” Doctor in a subject in which the College has no experience. What services did he render to the Trinity College and who is he trying to fool?