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 Khatamun-Nabiyyin [the Seal of the Prophets]. We believe in the Furqan [Holy Quran] to be from Allah the Most Gracious. We do not accept anything that opposes the Furqan 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 Furqan is a Book whose being tawātur 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 ahādīth whilst rejecting others! For instance, most of the ahādīth which the Shafi'i sect accept are rejected by the Hanafis, and those accepted by the Hanafi sect are rejected by the Shafi'is, and so it is with other Muslim sects. How many ahādīth are mentioned by Imam Bukhari in his Şahih, which is the most authentic book after the Book of Allah in the opinion of the Ahlul-Hadith. On the other hand, however, the Hanafi sect