A Gift for Baghdad — Page 95
Reply to the Announcement & Letter 95 As for our beliefs, which Allah has established for us, know, O my brother, that we believe in Allah as Lord; in Muhammad, peace and blessings of Allah be upon him, as a Prophet; and we believe that he is Kh a tamun-Nabiyy i n [the Seal of the Prophets]. We believe in the Furq a n [Holy Quran] to be from Allah the Most Gracious. We do not accept anything that opposes the Furq a n and differs with its indisputable evidence, its decisive verses, and its narratives, whether it is an intellectual matter from one of the traditions that the Ahlul-Hadith considered to be a true hadith, or whether it is from one of the statements of the Companions or their Subsequent Generation, because the Noble Furq a n is a Book whose being taw a tur has been proved word by word, and it is recitable, doubtless, and certain revelation. He who doubts its decisiveness is in our opinion a renegade disbeliever and is among the disobedient. The Quran is characterized, specifically, by consummate per- fection, and it has a status which is superior to the status of every Book and every revelation. The hand of man has not tampered with it. As far as other Books and traditions are concerned, they cannot approach this sublime position; and whoever prefers any- thing else over it, indeed prefers doubt over certainty. How many sects in Islam have differed with each other in accepting some a ha d i th whilst rejecting others! For instance, most of the a ha d i th which the Sh a fi‘ i sect accept are rejected by the H anaf i s, and those accepted by the H anaf i sect are rejected by the Sh a fi‘ i s, and so it is with other Muslim sects. How many a ha d i th are mentioned by Imam Bukhari in his S a hih, which is the most authentic book after the Book of Allah in the opinion of the Ahlul-Hadith. On the other hand, however, the H anaf i sect