A Turkish Martin Luther?

The BBC reported on February 26, 2008 that Turkey's Department of Religious Affairs has commissioned a team of theologians at Ankara University's School of Theology to carry out a revision of the Hadith, the sayings of the Prophet. An adviser to the project says some of the sayings can be shown to have been invented hundreds of years after the Prophet Muhammad died, to serve the purposes of contemporary society.

Turkey, yet again takes the lead in trying to usher the Muslim world into the modern age. However, the challenge ahead is formidable. Accusations of heresy and apostasy will be flying around by those who have an interest in maintaining the status quo—Islamists, extremist ulama and their political benefactors, especially from the Arab world. The following explains the nature of the controversy and the reasons for being cautious with guarded optimism.

Elevating the Prophet's way of life (Sunna) to a source of law equal to the Quran
Following the death of the Prophet Muhammad in 632, the caliphs were faced with different conditions in the conquered lands of Roman Syria, Iraq, and Egypt and of the Persians from what Quranic law has prescribed for the desert Arabians. Of the 6,236 Quranic verses, less than 10% deal with legislative matters, primarily marriage, divorce, and inheritance. The rest deal generally with monotheism, theological matters, and Biblical tales.

By the end of the ninth century the ulama (religious scholars) succeeded in enshrining the Sunna Traditions of the Prophet, His sayings (Hadith) and actions (Sira) as a source of law equal to God's word in the infallible Quran; notwithstanding, that the Quran never made the Sunna a source of law and despite God's attestation that the Quran contains every thing mankind needs to know. The basis for elevating the Sunna was the belief that it was a manifestation of God's will, a guide on matters on which the Quran was silent.

Incorporating the attributed sayings and actions of the Prophet into the Islamic Sharia made the Prophet more than the deliverer of God's message. He became the standard for Muslims to follow faithfully. In so doing, the coverage of Quranic rules was expanded, thrusting the Ulama into the tiniest details of Muslims' daily lives. For example, Ahmad Bin Hanbal (d. 855), founder of the orthodox Hanbalite School of jurisprudence, allegedly never ate watermelon because he was not certain that the Prophet ate watermelon.

Hundreds of thousands of often contradictory and partisan traditions in favor or against every imaginable thing affecting the individual, the family, the tribe, the city, the mosque, religious rituals, personal conduct, personal hygiene, business affairs, etc., were put to the mouth of the Prophet by thousands of sometimes dubious transmitters. Each transmitter claimed that he had been told by x, that y had told him, that z had told him, that f had told him, etc., claiming the Prophet had said this or done that.

We are told that leading scholars diligently verified the authenticity of every word of every attribution and the integrity of every attributer into every chain of attributions. Eventually, a few thousand traditions were accepted as authentic, with six collections elevated to canonical rank by Sunni Muslims.

The most revered and authoritative collection is that of Muhammad Bin Ismail Al-Bukhari (d. 870). According to Hitti (History of the Arabs), Al-Bukhari selected out of 600,000 traditions he collected from 1,000 sheikhs in the course of 16 years of travel and labor in Persia, Iraq, Syria, Hijaz and Egypt 7,400 traditions. His collection, Sahih Al-Bukhari (Sahih means correct or sound), is classified according to some 100 subject matters. Al-Bukhari's collection is considered by most Sunni scholars second only to the Quran in authenticity. A close second in importance is the collection of Muslim Bin Al-Hajjaj (d. 875) with 7,600 traditions. The other four collections are those of Ibn Maja (d. 886); 4,300 traditions, Abi Dawood (d. 888); 5,300 traditions, Al-Tirmithi (d. 892); with 4,000 traditions, and Al-Nasai (d. 915); with 5,800 traditions. Repetitiveness exists in the collections individually and among each other.

The challenge

Notwithstanding the reported integrity of the collectors and the care that they must have taken to ensure the credibility of the thousands of attributers and the authenticity of the hundreds of thousands of Prophetic traditions that grew over more than 200 years, it remains impossible to know with absolute certainty whether every word and comma in every attribution by every memorizer was perfectly authentic and reliable and in the true chronological order in which the Prophet had announced and acted. What is known, however, is that during the first two-and-a-half centuries following the death of the Prophet, the generations of Hadith attributers and collectors were witnesses to momentous doctrinal, legal, and political conflicts.

Aside from the great Arab conquests, which established one of the world's largest empires in a relatively short time, major intra-Muslim conflicts erupted during that era. There were four civil wars, seven state capital cities, and numerous violent political and religious rebellions. These events spilled rivers of blood and divided the nascent Islamic nation into many factions and sects. Under such circumstances, it is fair to say that some attributors, not to mention the collectors, had financial, political, career and other personal interest in the outcome, or they might have simply forgotten what was said or heard.

The first Muslim civil war was from 656 to 661 between Ali (the fourth Caliph) and Muawiyah (the fifth Caliph and founder of the Umayyad dynasty in Damascus). The second civil war (680-692) was during the reigns of Muawiyha's four successors against another claimant of the Caliphate, Abdullah Bin Al-Zubair, who in 683 was recognized as a rival Caliph to the Umayyads in parts of Arabia, Egypt, Iraq, and Syria, until he was killed at Mecca in 692. The third civil war culminated in 750 with the destruction of the Umayyad dynasty in Damascus and the advent of the Abbasid dynasty in Baghdad. The fourth civil war (811-813) was between Al-Amin and Al-Mamoun, the two sons of the famed Caliph, Haroun Al-Rashid (786-809). Eventually, the former was killed and Al-Mamoun reigned from 813 to 833. Additionally, there was the cataclysmic event in 680 that eventually shook the foundations of Islam and caused a permanent split between Shiites and Sunnis to this very day: namely, the rebellion and the resulting killing of Imam Hussain Bin Ali at Karbala, Iraq.

The first capital of the Muslim State was Medina, the Prophet's adopted city, in which He took refuge to escape the persecution of the Meccans in 622. Medina remained the capital during the rule of the first three Caliphs (632-656). In 656, Ali, the fourth Caliph, made Kufa, Iraq his base. Muawiyah (the fifth Caliph) made Damascus his capital in 661. Damascus remained the capital of the Umayyad dynasty's fourteen Caliphs until the Abbasids destroyed the Umayyads Caliphate in 750. The Abbasids moved the capital to Iraq, transitionally to Al-Hashimiyyah before Baghdad was built, starting in 762. In 836, the eighth Abbasid Caliph, Al-Mu'tasim (833-842), moved the capital to Samarra (a short distance north of Baghdad on the Tigris River). The sixteenth Abbasid Caliph, Al-Mu'tadid (892-902), moved the seat of government back to Baghdad in 892. Meanwhile, Cordova became in 756 the capital of the Umayyad Caliphate in Spain, rivaling and eventually outlasting the Abbasids in Baghdad.

To uncover the truthfulness of hundreds of thousands of Prophetic sayings and actions, which supposedly had occurred some ten generations earlier, must have been a daunting task. The monumental size, the passage of time, and the great significance of the issues involved raise questions regarding the genuineness of at least some of the traditions.

To put this challenge into perspective, the assertion that Al-Bukhari (810-870) examined 600,000 traditions means that, even if he had spent forty years of his sixty-year life exclusively on the one and only task of compiling the Sahih, working 14-hour a day without taking a vacation, a sick day, or working on anything else; be it to earn a living or compose other books, he would have had to investigate an average of more than forty traditions every single day, or one tradition every 20 minutes. But, Al-Bukhari wrote 21 books in addition to the Sahih. If we take Professor Hitti's statement that Al-Bukhari spent 16 years of travel and labor in order to produce his Sahih, then he would have had to investigate the provenance of an average of 103 traditions every single day; or, a tradition every 8 minutes. In addition to confirming the exact text of every Hadith, Al-Bukhari had to ensure the personal integrity of the thousands of attributers over ten generations who reported the Prophet's sayings and actions. Even if the number of the traditions involved were half as many; or one tenth, the likelihood that every tradition in Sahih Al-Bukhari is perfectly authentic requires a great act of faith to accept.

The volume of traditions attributed to some memorizers is bewildering. Abu-Huraira, reputedly transmitted some 5,374 Hadiths, Anas bin Malik; 2,286, Aisha (the Prophet's teenager wife); 2,210, Ibn Abbas; 1,710, Abdullah, son of the second caliph Omar; 1,630, Jabir bin Abdullah; 1,540, Abu Saiid Al-Khudari; 1170, Ibn Masud; 748, Omar bin Al-Khattab (the second caliph); 537, and Ali bin Abi Talib (the fourth caliph); 536. These numbers are in dispute, however. Whether the Prophet's wife Aisha, who was 18 years of age, possibly younger, when the Prophet died, could have remembered accurately 2,200 traditions is impossible to tell.

Additionally, the six canonical collectors lived under Abbasid rule during the turbulent decades of the 800s. The Abbasid Hadith transmitters, upon whom the six collectors relied, were in turn reliant on transmitters who had lived for almost a century under the rule the Abbasids' great nemesis, the Umayyads (661-750). Abbasid politics and fervent hatred of the Umayyads could have played a role in choosing or ignoring attributers, as well as altering certain attributions considered pro-Umayyad.

To add to the controversy, Shi'a Muslims disregard the Sunni Hadith collections. They have their own. Shi'a collections differ from the Sunni collections in that they emphasize the Prophet's naming of Ali as his first successor, a claim disputed by the Sunnis. Also, while the Sunnis record the sayings and actions of the Prophet, the Twelver Shiites, the great majority of the Shiites today, record the sayings and actions of not only the Prophet but also those of the twelve Imams. Additionally, for a tradition to be credible it must be transmitted through one of the Imams. Shi'a Muslims denounce the first three caliphs, Abu Bakr (632-634), Omar (634-644), and Uthman (644-656) as usurpers of the caliphate from Ali (656-661). Shiites do not consider Abu Bakr, Omar, or Uthman, along with the Prophet's companions who supported these Caliphs, as reliable transmitters of traditions. Sunnis, on the other hand, revere the first three Caliphs and their supporters, as well as Ali.

The Indian Islamic thinker Muhammad Ashraf observed that it is curious that no caliph or companion found the need to collect and write down the Hadith traditions for more than two centuries after the death of the Prophet. Goldziher (Muslim Studies) concludes that, it is not surprising that, among the hotly debated controversial issues of Islam, whether political or doctrinal, there is none in which the champions of the various views are unable to cite a number of traditions, all equipped with imposing Isnads [supporting references]. Leaders of Turkey's Hadith project say successive generations have embellished the text, attributing their political aims to the Prophet Muhammad.

The prospects for success

Is Turkey's undertaking likely to succeed? Among moderate Muslims, the answer is positive. However, among the orthodox, especially among the Arab orthodox, the answer is negative. The Quran describes the Arab peoples as the "best people evolved to mankind" (3:110). The Prophet, His companions, the Quran, and the Sanctuaries in Mecca, Medina, and Jerusalem are all Arabic. Arabs feel they are the guardians of an Arabic religion.

In the early 1920s, while the Turks acted as if the long decline and the destruction of their empire in the aftermath of the First World War could be blamed on a rigid Islam in a world of secular European modernity, the Arabs acted as if Islam would be their path back to greatness. While Kemal Ataturk was energetically engaged in secularizing the Turkey state, Egyptians responded by establishing in 1928 of the Muslim Brotherhood movement and, Wahhabism succeeded in ruling Saudi Arabia. Since that time, political frustrations at home and from abroad, such as Israel's occupation and humiliation plus U.S. support of Israel and Arab tyrants have had the effect of drawing the Arab masses closer to traditional Islam, turning many among Muslim moderates into orthodoxy.

Arab rulers too would undermine Turkey's attempt at revising the Hadith or allowing reason into religious dogma. In Wahhabi Saudi Arabia, seventh-century Islam helps cement Al-Sauds' rule. In other Arab monarchies and republics, Islam prolongs the hold of Arab kings and presidents on power all the same. In 4:59, the Quran orders: "Obey God and obey God's messenger and obey those of authority among you." The Prophet has also reportedly said, according to Sahih Muslim: "He who obeys me obeys God; he who disobeys me, disobeys God. He who obeys the ruler, obeys me; he who disobeys the ruler, disobeys me." Reforming Islam, Arab rulers fear, would lead to representative governance. Keeping the masses intoxicated with ancient dogma, on the other hand, means obedience to non-representative dictators. Pandering palace ulama to Arab kings and presidents indoctrinate the populace into believing that obedience to Arab rulers is a form of piety. Belief in predestination helps the ulama's indoctrination along. It makes tyrannical rulers seem as if they were ordained by God's will.

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A Turkish Martin Luther?

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