A Gift for Baghdad — Page 97
Reply to the Announcement & Letter 97 do not accept most of his a ha d i th, such as the hadith concern- ing the recitation of S u rah al-F a ti h ah after the Imam and saying ‘ A m i n’ in a loud voice, and so forth. They pay no heed to these a ha d i th. However, no one designates them as disbelievers or con- siders them from among those who have abandoned Prayer or as innovators. In fact, most of the a ha d i th are a ha d, 1 whether they are in al-Bukh a r i or other [collections], so they should not be accepted until after verification, appraisal, confirmation from the Quran that they do not violate its clear statements and decisive verses, and after considering who and how many narrated it consec- utively. Therefore, how can anyone be accused of disbelief for abandoning a hadith that opposes the Quran, or for presenting an interpretation which makes the hadith congruent with the Quran, while by doing so he delivers the Muslims from the critics’ attacks? How can you accuse a believer in Allah, His Messenger, and His Book of disbelief, for the sake of denying one hadith which was reported by a single narrator and which may suffer from the blemish of man’s prevarications? Consider, for example, the subject of the death of the Messiah, peace be on him. It has been confirmed by indisputable evidence in the authentic and mutaw a tir Book of Allah. His death is clearly attested to in approximately thirty verses, which I have recorded in my book entitled Iz a la-e-Auh a m [ The Removal of Misconceptions ] for the benefit of the seekers after truth. Should 1. A tradition in which there is only one chain of narrators connected to the same, single source. Such a tradition may nevertheless be authentic and reliable; however, it cannot be regarded as reliable as those tradi- tions that have more than one chain of reliable narrators. [Publisher]