Islams Reformers

and also many of the hadîth scholars say that this is so. The
heretical groups, in order to lead Muslims out of the right path,
and apostates, in order to trick Muslims, invented hadîths. And
some tekke shaikhs invented hadîths in order to encourage to
worship and to frighten against sinning. It is harâm to invent
hadîths with such good intentions, and it is kufr if it is intended
to trick Muslims. The hadîths praising the sûras in the tafsîr
books of as-Sa’labî, al-Wâhidî, az-Zamakhsharî, al-Baidâwî and
Abû ‘s-Su’ûd are claimed to be mawdû’ by some ignorant
people. It is obvious that the hadîths that praise the sûras al-
Fâtiha, al-An’âm, al-Kahf, Yâ Sîn, ad-Dukhân al-Mulk, az-
Zilzâl, an-Nasr, al-Kâfirûn al-Ikhlâs, al-Falaq and an-Nâs are
sahîh. The authors of these books quoted in their books the
hadîths that were claimed to be mawdû’ because they considered
them as sahîh, hasan or at least da’îf, or because they had
conveyed them just as they were from the hadîth scholars whom
they depended on, or because they would not admit that they
were mawdû’. With the help of the fairly certain presumption, it
can be decided if a hadîth is sahîh; it cannot be known for
certain. There are many hadîths which the majority of hadîth
scholars said to be sahîh but which other scholars of this branch
did not say so. Many others were not able to understand whether
they were sahîh or not, for it was very difficult to understand if a
hadîth was sahîh. It could be understood only with presumption;
it could not be understood certainly. In order to make sure that
a hadîth is made-up, one of its narrators had to say, “I invented
this”; or it should have been known for certain that the person
who, he said, had told it to him had died before he was born; or
the saying which was said to be a hadîth should have been
incompatible with Islam, with reason, with calculation or with
experience, and it could not have been explained away
differently. Only the hadîth scholars can understand all these.
These profound scholars also may be mistaken in understanding
them. It is for this reason that there have been scholars who said
‘sahîh’, ‘hasan’ or ‘da’îf’ about many of the hadîths for which
Abu ’l-faraj ibn al-Jawzî said ‘mawdû’ in his book Mawdû’at.
Imâm az-Zahabî said that the majority of the hadîths written in
that book were dependable and beautiful hadîths. We have
derived what we have written up to here from the books Taqrîb
by Imâm an-Nawawî, Tadrîb by as-Suyûtî and Nukhba by Shaikh
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