The Light of the Holy Qur'an — Page 103
T H e J O u r NA l—F AT e H M A S IH T H e J O u r NA l—F AT e H M A S IH 103 the contrary, the hadith has the words, 1 َ اِن ْ قُتِلْت َ وَاُحْرِقْت ; meaning, ‘You should not abandon truth even if you are killed or burned. ’ Now, when the Qur’an says that you should not abandon justice and truth even if you lose your lives for it, and the hadith says that you should speak the truth even if you are burned and killed, then even if we assume that some hadith does exist that is at odds with the Qur’an and s a hih a ha d i th [authentic sayings of the Holy Prophet s as ], it will not be worthy of attention, for we accept only that hadith which is not in contravention with the s a hih a ha d i th and the Noble Qur’an. It is true that some a ha d i th contain a semblance of justifica- tion for tauriyah , but the same has been termed as falsehood in order to create aversion to it. Now, if an ignorant and extremely foolish person finds a word with dual meaning in some hadith, he might take it to mean actual falsehood, for he is unaware of the categorical verdict that in Islam, actual falsehood is considered an abomination, unlawful and akin to idolatry [associating partners with God]. But tauriyah is not actual falsehood, though it bears a semblance of falsehood. Justification for it can be inferred from [some] hadith for common people in desperate circumstances. Even then it is written that those people are indeed superior who abstain even from tauriyah. In Islamic terminology, tauriyah means that, in order to con- ceal a fact lest it lead to mischief or in order to keep a secret for some other exigency, a statement is made in such a way and in such a fashion that while the astute would understand what is meant, the obtuse would not and his mind would turn away from the 1. Musnad Ahmad bin H anbal, Hadith 22075 [Publisher]