Finding Balance in Islam Includes the Sunnah – Don’t Reject Hadiths

Islam is not a cafeteria religion. That is a given. In Islam, you do not get to pick and choose the rules that you live by. It’s a package deal. You can’t say “I’m cool with the no pork thing, but I really can’t live without a nightly brewski so I’ll just skip that part”. You have to be willing as a Muslim to understand the permissible and the forbidden in Islam, and to move towards living a full life that is fully Islamic.

It is not easy and it is not instant. Living as a Muslim is a process, whether you grew up in a Muslim household or converted yesterday. You have to start with the big stuff – God is One, prayer, fasting, not committing fornication – and over time work on the details and add more and more to your repertoire. Have you ever heard of a juggler who first started out juggling ten chainsaws at once? No, he started tossing one single ball up and down. If you try to take on too much at once, you’ll end up burned out and disenchanted – or, if you’re the juggler, missing body parts.

Where do you start? Honestly, if you start with the Qur’an by itself you are liable to become confused, because while it is Revelation, a blessed Book, and it is unchanged from the time it was revealed, and it is complete, you still need someone to help you interpret its lessons. Imagine that you walk into a calculus class and there is a textbook on the desk. It contains everything you need to know to learn the subject. You still need a teacher to guide you and to explain the meaning of the lessons. It is the same with the Qur’an. We were blessed with the best teacher, Muhammad, may Allah’s peace and blessings be upon him.

Up til now we’re fine. We’re on the same page. We OF COURSE love and respect our prophet and want to follow his example and learn from him because he is the best role model, the walking talking embodiment of the Qur’an, as it were. And then we hit a bump in the road:

HADITHS

What is a hadith? Well, hadith is a record of anything that Prophet Muhammad, may Allah’s peace and blessings be upon him, said or did, or what others did in his presence that he approved of or did not disapprove of. This record constitutes the Sunnah, or “way” of the Prophet. And this record can be a major stumbling block for a new Muslim or a newly practicing Muslim.

Books are written, college courses are written, discussing the science of hadiths. It is a huge topic, and a new Muslim can be forgiven for being overwhelmed by it all. I am not going to launch into a long discussion on hadiths, but I want to warn everyone, new or old Muslim, that if you do not approach the topic of hadiths with humility and respect, and knowledge of your own limitations, you can literally take yourself right out of Islam. I’m not kidding. There’s a whole group of people who are only go by the Qur’an and outright reject the Sunnah (hadiths) and sad to say, this can nullify a person’s Islam.

**** BIG FAT CAVEAT AND DISCLAIMER   ****

It is not appropriate to declare someone is a non-Muslim if he considers himself to be one. I can’t walk up to Bob the Muslim guy who wears gold jewelry, sips whiskey, and eats ham sandwiches, and say “Dude, you’re a disbeliever!” I cannot see into his soul and while he may be obviously engaging in sinful acts, it is not up to me to lower the kaafir hammer on him. I can (privately) advise him that his behavior is incorrect according to Islam and I can pray for him to be guided. Then I better run home and look in a mirror and make sure I’m walking the walk as well.

**** END OF BIG FAT CAVEAT AND DISCLAIMER  ****

That being said, we can say in general terms that rejecting the Sunnah (hadiths) is in and of itself a rejection of Islam, and those who call to this belief are calling to something other than Islam, and it is not permissible to follow their teachings and it is necessary to warn against them and refute them. So here I am, warning and refuting:

Ahem. Okay, first of all, there is a big difference between being a new Muslim with barely an understanding of what a hadith is, and a person who has been Muslim a long time who has made the conscious decision to reject the Sunnah. The first person will be excused; the second will be held accountable for what he has rejected.

The Sunnah is an indispensable part of learning your Islam. Without the Sunnah, made up of hadiths, we would not know how to pray, how to fast, how to pay our poor tax, or all the myriad details of how to live as a Muslim. The Qur’an gives us the general outlines of how to live our lives, the broad picture. The Sunnah, as passed down to us in the tellings called hadiths, gives us the details.

Oh, but you can’t rely on those hadiths! How dare you put them on the same level as the Qur’an! The hadiths are just written by men and a lot of them are false and not trustworthy! And a whole bunch of other comments, written with passion and a bunch of exclamation marks. Listen, you are not covering new ground here. This has been going on for 1400 years. The scholars of the major collections of hadiths were God-fearing men with an immense respect for scholarship and incredible erudition and self-discipline (and note: often their most important early influences were their mothers). They were men who would not even write down a hadith without investigating its authenticity exhaustively and prayerfully. They were lions, yet nowadays we have dogs barking at them as if they were charlatans, astaghfirullah.

I’ve been Muslim for over twenty years, by Allah’s grace, and I can tell you that you CAN rely on the hadiths. You can rely on the major works and rest assured that they are authentic, and that none of the scholars differed on major issues of belief or practice. You won’t find one scholar telling you that asr is four raka’ats and another telling you it is five. You won’t find one scholar telling you to face Makkah to pray and another guiding you to Jerusalem. In all major issues, the hadiths are sound and grounded firmly in the Qur’an. If you are a Muslim, you need to know this and understand it. Believe it, and relax. There is no great conspiracy to foist off inauthentic knowledge on believers.

I could go on, and will, but in smaller chunks so as not to make you antsy for reading so much, but let me leave you for now with this: When you find something in the Sunnah that you do not understand, or that rubs you the wrong way, or that makes you mad, or that simply befuddles you, do not assume that your understanding is correct and that a hadith is wrong. It may simply be that you, at the place you are now spiritually, are unable to perceive the wisdom in a particular ruling or saying. It may be that you are not understanding it due to a translation error or lack of explanation. It may be that you have not cast off the jahiliyyah (ignorance) of your pre-Islam self and you should just step back for now and put that particular message on the back burner.

Recognize your own limitations. It’s okay to be confused, and it might be totally normal to get your feathers ruffled when you read something that you perceive as insensitive, or misogynistic, or wrong. It’s not a sin to question, but where you can fall into sin is when you arrogantly reject something authentic in the religion, preferring your own flawed opinion to that of Allah’s Messenger, may Allah’s peace and blessings be upon him. So all I’m asking is that you back off, and don’t lash out, and don’t make that issue a stumbling block for yourself. Live your Islam where you are now and concentrate on the fundamentals, and ask Allah to open your heart to understand everything, and remain silent when you don’t have the knowledge to comment. Because even worse than bringing sin upon yourself, you can cause someone else to sin if you tell them it’s okay to reject a hadith simply because YOU don’t agree with it.

I love all my Muslim brothers and sisters for Allah’s sake. I was once a shiny naive brand new Muslim, and I learned and stumbled and questioned and pondered, and after twenty years and more, I can tell you that I am more confirmed in my Islam than I was back then, and having seen the damage that can result when people follow their own desires, I am definitely able to understand the wisdom of even some “controversial” hadiths that caused problems for me when I was young in the deen. I am proud to say that I follow the Qur’an and Sunnah and I will never depart from it. May Allah bless you with guidance and tranquility to accept the truth without reservation, Ameen.