A Review of the Debate between Batalavi and Chakrhalavi — Page xiii
Foreword In November of 1902 a debate took place between Muhammad H ussain Bat a lav i and ‘Abdull a h Chakrh a lav i on the impor- tance and position of the Holy Quran and the hadith. Maulav i Muhammad H ussain who belonged to the Ahl-e-Hadith sect of Islam argued that the hadith of the Holy Prophet Muhammad saw were an absolute and final authority in Islamic jurisprudence and that even the Holy Quran was to be judged and studied in light of these narrations. On the other hand, Maulav i ‘Abdull a h, a proponent of the Ahl-e-Quran sect of Islam suggested that the hadith were nothing more than a heap of unreliable, inauthentic and dubious narrations of no consequence. Furthermore, Maulav i ‘Abdull a h propounded that the only true source of guidance in Islam was the Holy Quran, which was the unaltered word of God and that all the hadith were worthy of being discarded. Both cler- ics argued vehemently in support of their starkly differing and extreme views. Hadrat Mirza Ghulam Ahmad of Qadian, the Promised Messiah and Mahdi and founder of the Ahmadiyya Muslim