The Light of Truth — Page 488
488 THE LIGHT OF TRUTH-PART TWO Holy Prophet sas], they feel a sense of shame in front of God and do not substitute non-revelation for divine revelation nor replace the Word of the Gracious God with the word of man, like the audacious. You find many mursalāt¹ in the ahādīth of the Greatest of Messengers and Best of Creation. However, the narrators did not state that they themselves were the original speakers [of these quoted statements] or that these were their own statements or the statements of their peers from among the virtuous and God-fearing. Rather, they reported these statements with such complete certainty, honour, and reverence that is not befit- ting for the speech of anyone of the righteous except that of Khatamul- Anbiya' [the Seal of the Prophets], the Chief of the Messengers. This is the greatest proof and most conclusive evidence that they did not relate a mursal hadith except when their firm belief was that it was from the Best of Messengers, and that it was a hadith of the Messenger of Allah, Khātamun-Nabiyyin. The reason for [the existence of] irsāl was that the reported news was already so widely known as to have reached the point of completeness; and whatever was mashhūr [well known], prevalent, and widely mentioned among the rijāl [narrators] did not require raf‘[escalating the chain of narration to the Prophet sas] or ittișāl [having an unbroken chain of narration]. In contrast, those ahādīth that were ahād [reported by only a single narrator] did neces- sitate raf in order to dispel doubts of interpolation, faithlessness, or error on the part of the narrators. Indeed, how many well-known and fully accepted reports exist, which we do not doubt nor suspect to be fabrications, but rather, which we consider with full certainty to be a part of the pure Sunnah and the Signs of Islam, despite never establish- ing that these ahādīth are marfūʻand muttașil. This is a great secret of religious wisdom, so accept it and be grateful. 1. Mursal and irsal refer to the category of ahādīth whose authentic chain of narration does not explicitly name the Companion(s) of the Holy Prophet sas from whom it was received. [Publisher]