Lying about the Prophet
\r\nOne of the last great Muslim scholars of Andalusia, living in the surviving Muslim mountain kingdom of Granada, pointed out the contradiction inherent in using unreliable Hadiths. The commitment to ‘warding off lies from the Messenger of God’ had been the raison d’être for the Sunni science of Hadith authentication to begin with. If Muslim scholars were open to using Hadiths regardless of their unreliability, then what was the purpose of the intricate and highly developed system they had constructed over the centuries? ‘For the heart of the matter is that it be established as reliable and doubtless that the Prophet, may God’s blessings be upon him, actually said that Hadith,’ wrote the Grenadine cleric. If Muslim scholars felt the need to invoke other sources of authority, whether compelling maxims or moving stories, they could certainly do so. But they could not quote the Prophet as their source. Ibn Taymiyya reminded those bent on attributing everything useful to Muhammad that, ‘Much speech has sound meaning. But one cannot say “from the Messenger” for what he did not say.’
\r\nNo good could come from lying or exploiting fatuous and false attributions to God’s Messenger, wrote Ibn Jawzi in his treatise on weak Hadiths, especially for the purposes of exhortation and warning. Even a good cause is automatically undermined and delegitimized when the forbidden act of lying about the Prophet is committed in its pursuit. Ibn Jawzi observed how the Shariah courts of Baghdad heard cases in which wives complained about their husbands neglecting them after some Hadith promising an outrageous reward for asceticism had led them to wander like a dervish for weeks. When ulama included forgeries in their Hadith collections with the ostensible excuse that a reader could evaluate the chain of transmission himself, they were deluding themselves. This was like using counterfeit coin in the market, Ibn Jawzi explained, on the untenable assumption that ordinary folk would be able to authenticate every coin before accepting it. Most worrying for Ibn Jawzi was how using weak or forged Hadiths that promise outrageous rewards or punishments for certain actions ‘ruins the scales of the significance of actions.’ Taking up the Hadith equating the least sort of Riba with incest, Ibn Jawzi first demonstrates its unreliability by pointing out the damning flaws in its Isnads. Apart from shortcomings from the perspective of Isnad criticism, however, Ibn Jawzi insists that ‘what truly refutes the authenticity of the Hadith is that the magnitude of sins is known by their effects.’ ‘Fornication corrupts lineage and relations,’ he explains, ‘shifting inheritance to those who do not deserve it.’ Did the least severe forms of Riba really have this same moral weight or inflict such social harm? Ibn Jawzi beheld the effects of such Hadiths in Baghdad. He cites the specific case of storytellers in the city advocating a special type of prayer, the Prayer of Disputants, which they claimed the Prophet promised would nullify all a person’s sins if performed. Now Baghdad was filled with rank-and-file Muslims who thought that stealing was no serious matter since this special prayer would wash them clean of the act.
\r\nLapsing into an acceptance of unauthenticated attributions to the Prophet had been a disastrous misstep that had led the Muslims astray into popular superstition, like the belief that the rose was created from the sweat of Muhammad, and cultural accretion, like the forged Hadith warning: ‘Beware of a flower growing in manure, namely a beautiful woman from a bad family.’
\r\n Compiled From:
\r\n \"Misquoting Muhammad\" - Jonathan A.C. Brown, pp. 252-253