Islam's Reformers .pdf

how good or useful it was. In fact, there have been people whoattempted such a very dangerous lie as to make up hadîths. ButMuslim scholars have worked without getting tired and bored,looked for such falsehoods, found them and discarded themfrom books. If it had not been for these continuous studies ofMuslim scholars, could such religiously ignorant reformers everdistinguish one mawdû’ hadîth? Muslim scholars haveaccomplished such a delicate and difficult study of recognizinghundreds of thousands of hadîths together with their narratorsand evaluating the soundness of each. As for the reformer, heconfuses those who have made up hadîths with those whohave found out and discarded the made-up hadîths, arousessuspicion among Muslims by talking ill of all of them and tries toundermine the confidence in the Hadîth. The harm caused bythose who made up hadîths has not been greater than thatcaused by the clamours of reformers. By putting forth the harmof making up hadîths to attribute the fall of the Ottoman Empireto it, he slanders unjustly against Islam by implying that the realcause of the fall of the Ottoman Empire was Islam.8 - The reformer says:“In order to make sure the correctness of hadîths, Hadrat al-Bukhârî travelled through Islamic countries in Asia and Africafor many years. At nights, he used to get up ten or fifteen timesand record the hadîths which he remembered together withtheir narrators. He is said to have memorized three hundredthousand hadîths two hundred thousand of which were notsahîh. He understood that only seven or eight thousand of thesix hundred thousand hadîths which he had gathered weresahîh. This fact shows how direly religious knowledge is mixedup. Observing al-Bukhârî’s way of study, some Europeanscholars say that even the hadîths he selected [as sahîh] aredoubtful. You can imagine how other hadîth books are.”By starting with six hundred thousand and reducing thenumber of sahîh hadîths to seven thousand and then eventuallyto zero, this reformer shamelessly copies this idea fromEuropeans. If, instead of taking information about hadîths fromEuropeans, he had taken it from the specialists of thisknowledge, for sure he would not have said so. The knowledgeof hadîth, which is like a boundless sea, is a miracle of Islam.This great sea will not become turbid with few stones thrown bythe enemies of Islam. If there were none of the innumerous- 21 -