Prophet Muhammed: His Sunnah and Hadith

Nawaz A. Raheem

(Daily News)

Sunnah is a behaviourial concept - whether applied to mental or physical acts and denotes not merely a single act as such but in so far as this act is actually repeated or potentially repeatable. A Sunnah is not just a law of behaviour but a normative moral law: the element of moral “ought” is an insuperable part of the meaning of the concept Sunnah.

In its original sense, therefore, Sunnah indicates the doings and Hadith the sayings of the Holy Prophet. Hadith being the narration and record of the Sunnah but containing, in addition various prophetical and historical elements.

According to the view dominant among more recent western scholars, Sunnah denotes the actual practice which, through being long established over successive generations, gains the status of normativeness and become “Sunnah”.

This theory seems to make actual practice - over a period - not only temporarily but also logically prior to the element of normativeness and to make the latter rest on the former.

It is obvious that this view derives its plausibility from the fact that since “Sunnah” is a behaviourial concept, what is actually practised in a society over long period, is considered not only its actual practice but also its normative practice.

This is especially true of strongly cohesive societies like the tribal ones. But surely, these practices could not have been established in the first place unless ab initio they were considered normative.

Six books of collections of Hadith are generally recognized by Ahl - Sunnah. They are collections made by Muhamed ibn Ismail, commonly known as Bukhari (d.256 A.H) Muslim (D 261 A.H) Abu Dawood (d.275 A.H) Tirmidhi (d.279 A.H.) ibn Majah (d.283 A.H) and Nasai (d.303 A.H).
Sunnah and Hadith are the secondary source from which the teachings of Islam are drawn. The content of Prophetic Sunnah did not exist outside the Quranic pronouncement on legal or moral issues. Indeed, the Quran speaks, in more than one place of the “Sunnah” or God that it is unalterable in connection with the moral forces governing the rise and fall of the communities and nations (Holy Quran 33. V 62; 35. V 43).

Here it is only the ideality of the action pattern of one being. Viz God, that is involved. Now the same Quran speaks of the “exemplary” conduct of the Prophet (33.V21). When the word of God calls the prophet’s character “exemplary” and “great” is it difficult to believe that from the very inception the Muslims should not have accepted it as a concept?

There is a prevailing two - fold criticism by the Western scholars, firstly that Sunnah and Hadith are a collection of the behaviour patterns of the Arabs in general - stretching back even to pre - Islamic times. Secondly that a need for recording the doings (Sunnah) and sayings (Hadith) of Holy Prophet may have been felt only after his demise.

Among the modern Western scholars, Ignez Goldziher, the first great perceptive student of the evolution of the Muslim Tradition (although occasionally uncritical of his own assumptions) had maintained the immediately after the advent of the Prophet his practice and conduct had come to constitute the Sunnah for the young Muslim community and the identity of pre - Islamic Arab Sunnah had come to cease. After Goldziher, however, this picture imperceptibly changed.

The Dutch Scholar Snuck Hurgronje, held that Muslims themselves added to the Sunnah of the Prophet until almost all products of Muslim thought and practice, came to be justified as the Sunnah of the Prophet.

Certain other notable authorities like Professor H. Lammens and Dr. D.S. Margoliouth of Oxford came to regard the Sunnah as being entirely the work of the Arabs, both pre Islamic and post - islamic the continuity between the periods having been stressed.

The concept of the Sunnah of the Prophet was both explicitly and implicitly rejected. Joseph Schacht in his “Origins of Mohammedan Jurisprudence’ seeks to maintain that the concept “Sunnah of the Prophet” is a relatively late concept and that for the early generations of the Muslims Sunnah meant the practice of the Muslims themselves.

This development in Western Islamic studies is consequent upon the conceptual confusion with regard to Sunnah.

The reason why these scholars have rejected the concept of Prophetic Sunnah is that they have found that greater part of the content of the Sunnah was the result of the free thinking activity of the early legists of Islam who, by their personal Ijthihad (Judgement) had made a deduction from existing Sunna.

Further, especially in the second and in the third centuries, the whole content of the early Sunnah comes to be verbally attributed to the Prophet himself under the ageis of the concept of the “Sunnah of the Prophet”.

The above assumptions are essentially correct about the development of Sunnah as such and not about the concept of the “Sunnah of the Prophet”.

The Sunnah of the Prophet was a valid and operative concept from the very beginning of Islam and remained so throughout. Indeed, during the life - time of the Prophet, it was perfectly natural for the Muslims to talk about what the Prophet did or said, especially in a public capacity.
The Arabs, who memorised and handed down poetry of their poets, sayings of their soothsayers and statements of their judges and tribal leaders, cannot be expected to fail to notice and narrate the deeds and sayings of one whom they acknowledge as the Prophet of God. Rejection of this natural phenomenon is tantamount to a grave irrationality, a sin against history.

The Sunnah of the Prophet was much too important to be either ignored or neglected. This fact juts out like a restive rock in the religious history of Islam, any religious or historical attempt to deny it is a ridiculous frivolity: the Sunnah of the community is based upon, and has its source only in the Sunnah of the Prophet.

In his book Kitab Al-Kharaj, Abu Yusuf relates that the second Caliph, Umar once wrote that he appointed people in several places to “teach people the Quran and the Sunnah of the Prophet” (p.8 line 32). It is understood that the Quran was taught as the nucleus of the new Teaching.

But the Quran is obviously not intelligible purely by itself strictly situational as its revelations are. It would be utterly irrational to suppose that the Quran was taught without involving in fact the activity of the Prophet as the central background activity which included policy, commands, decisions etc.

Nothing can give coherence to the Quranic teaching except the actual life of the Prophet and the milieu in which he moved.

It would be a great childishness of twenty-first century to suppose that the people immediately around the Prophet distinguished so radically between the Quran and its exemplification in the Prophet that they retained one and ignored the other.

Totally unacceptable is the view of modern Western Islamic Studies which, gained no doubt from the later Muslim theological discussions themselves, makes the Prophet almost like a playing-record in relation to Divine Revelation.

Quite a different picture emerges from the Quran itself which assigns a unique status to the Holy Prophet when it charges with a ‘heavy responsibility’ (73, V5) and whom it in invariably represents as being excessively conscious of this responsibility (18. V6; 20 V1).

As for the criticism levelled by the Western scholars regarding the need to record Holy Prophet’s Sunnah and Hadith, any diligent student of the Holy Quran will realise that the Holy Book deals generally with the broad principles of religion and in only very rare cases goes into details.
Holy Prophet himself supplied the details, showing in his practices how an injunction may be carried out giving an explanation in words.

For example Zakath (alms) and Prayers are the two important institutions in Islam; yet when they were revealed, no details were supplied.

It was the Holy Prophet who gave details of the service of Zakth while on the moral side, his was the pattern which every Muslim was required to follow (33:v 21). Therefore anyone who embraced Islam stood in need of the Holy Quran and the Sunnah.

During his lifetime itself the transmission of the sayings and practices of the Prophet became necessary. In the early days of Madina, to a deputation who waited upon him, the Prophet concluded his admonitions to them with the words, “Remember this and report it to those whom you have left behind” (Mus: 1:1-i).

In another case too there are similar instruction “Go back to your people and teach them these things” (Bu. 3.25). It is related that when ‘Muadh Ibn Jabal, on being appointed Governor of Yeman by the Holy Prophet, was asked how he would judge cases, his reply was “by the Book of Allah”. Asked what he would do if he did not find a direction in the Holy Book, he replied “by the Sunnah of the Messenger of Allah” (Abu D. 23:11).

The Sunnah was therefore recognised as affording guidance in all religious matters during the lifetime of the Holy Prophet.

Abu Huraira tells us that when one of the Ansars (helpers) complained to the Prophet of his inability to remember what he heard from him, the Prophet’s reply was that he should seek the help of his right hand (this refers to the use of pen) (Tirm 39:12). These reports show that while generally the sayings of the Prophet are committed to memory, it was also reduced to writing when there was a need for it.

The popular idea in the West that the need for Sunnah was felt and force of law was given to Hadith after the death of the Holy Prophet is rendered groundless by the facts we have noted above.

European criticism of Sunnah and Hadith has often mixed up with reports met with in the biographies of the Holy Prophet, while all Muslim scholars have recognised that biographies never made an effort to sift truth from error.

The same is true of the early commentaries on the Quran. Speaking of the commentators who confounded Hedith with Jewish and Christian stories, Ibn Khaldun observes “Their books and their reports contain what is bad and what is good and what may be accepted and what should be rejected. Commentaries on the Holy Quran were filled with those stories of theirs” (muqadama: 1, p 481, chap. Ulum Al Quran).

However, one anxiety will trouble many conscientious students of Islam. It is that if it is found impossible to locate and define the historically and specifically Prophetic content of the Sunnah, then the connection between the Prophet and the community would become elusive and the concept “Prophetic Sunnah” would be irrevocably liquidated. But this worry is not real. To begin with, there are number of things which are undeniable historical contents of the Prophetic Sunnah. Prayer, zakat, fasting, pilgrimage etc. with their detailed manner of application, are so prophetic that only an intellectually dishonest person would deny this.