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Rel 103
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Tradition and
Innovation in Islam The following is an
example of the kind of arguments going on within Islam on how to deal with
modern times. Bida [or
bid’a] means innovation, and innovation has traditionally been condemned
within Islam, as you will read. In
spite of some Qur’anic injunctions against bida, there was a period of
great intellectual ferment in Islam, from the 8th to 12
centuries. But every religion
is torn between traditionalists and modernizers.
In the case of Islam, around the 12 century the traditionalists won
out. In the last century, however, some Muslims, especially those more exposed to international
civilization, began to seek ways to justify coming to some positive terms
with the modern world. Read through the
following quickly. The
original 5 pages have been shortened here to 4 (Note the elisions:
* * * *) It is too
dense with traditional references to make much sense to a non-Muslim.
But read it to get an impression of how much effort must be made in
Islamic thought today to justify any adaptation to modern ideas and
values. [Sunna = tradition.
Bid’a or bida = innovation.
Aisha = Mohammed’s wife. The Companions are the earliest
followers of Mohammed, some of whom became Mohammed’s successors
(“caliphs”) in ruling the community.
Mutazilites, Qadarites, Murjiites – of these the first are
rational theologians, the second are also intellectuals, and the third are
unknown to me – MHB], Bid'a in Sunnah and
Sharia, INTRODUCTION: The following is a
talk given by Shaikh Nuh Ha Mim Keller the translator of Ahmad ibn Naqib
al-Misri's "Reliance of the Traveller" (`Umdat as-Salik) at
Nottingham and Trent University on Wednesday 25th January 1995. Nuh Keller, born in 1954 in the northwestern United States,
was educated in philosophy and Arabic at the University of Chicago and
UCLA. He entered Islam in 1977 at al-Azhar in Cairo, and later studied the
traditional Islamic Sciences of hadith, Shafi'i and Hanafi jurisprudence,
legal methodology (usul al-fiqh), and tenets of faith (`aqidah) in Syria
and Jordan, where he has lived since 1980. His English translation of `Umdat
al-Salik [The Reliance of the Traveller] (1250 pp., Sunna Books, 1991) is
the first Islamic legal work in a European language to receive the
certification of al-Azhar, the Muslim world's oldest institution of higher
learning. He also possesss ijazas or `certifiates of authorisation' in
Islamic jurisprudence from sheikhs in Syria and Jordan. His forthcoming book "The Re-Formers of Islam" examines modern calls to replace traditional Islam with an ostensible `return to the way of the early Muslims' unearths some astonishing facts about the claims made by would be reformers. [End of Introduction]
(c)
Nuh Ha Mim Keller 1995 There are few topics that generate as much controversy today
in Islam as what is sunna and what is bida or reprehensible innovation,
perhaps because of the times Muslims live in today and the challenges they
face. Without a doubt, one of the greatest events in impact upon Muslims
in the last thousand years is the end of the Islamic caliphate at the
first of this century, an event that marked not only the passing of
temporal, political authority, but in many respects the passing of the
consensus of orthodox Sunni Islam as well. No one familiar with the
classical literature in any of the Islamic legal sciences, whether Koranic
exegesis (tafsir), hadith, or jurisprudence (fiqh), can fail to be struck
by the fact that questions are asked today about basic fundamentals of
Islamic Sacred Law (Sharia) and its ancillary disciplines that would not
have been asked in the Islamic period not because Islamic scholars were
not brilliant enough to produce the questions, but because they already
knew the answers. My talk tonight is will aim to clarify some possible
misunderstandings of the concept of innovation (bida) in Islam, in light
of the prophetic hadith, "Beware of matters newly begun, for every matter newly
begun is innovation, every innovation is misguidance, and every
misguidance is in hell." [says
the Qur’an] The sources I use are traditional Islamic sources, and my
discussion will center on three points: The first point is that scholars say that the above hadith
does not refer to all new things without restriction, but only to those
which nothing in Sacred Law attests to the validity of. The use of the
word "every" in the hadith does not indicate an absolute
generalization, for there are many examples of similar generalizations in
the Koran and sunna that are not applicable without restriction, but
rather are qualified by restrictions found in other primary textual
evidence. The second point is that the sunna and way of the Prophet
(Allah bless him and give him peace) was to accept new acts initiated in
Islam that were of the good and did not conflict with established
principles of Sacred Law, and to reject things that were otherwise. And our third and last point is that new matters in Islam may
not be rejected merely because they did not exist in the first century,
but must be evaluated and judged according to the comprehensive
methodology of Sacred Law, by virtue of which it is and remains the final
and universal moral code for all peoples until the end of time. Our first point, that the hadith does not refer to all new
things without restriction, but only to those which nothing in Sacred Law
attests to the validity of, may at first seem strange, in view of the
wording of the hadith, which says, "every matter newly begun is
innovation, every innovation is misguidance, and every misguidance is in
hell." Now the word "bida" or "innovation"
linguistically means anything new, So our first question must be about the
generalizability of the word every in the hadith: does it literally mean
that everything new in the world is haram or unlawful? The answer is no.
Why? In answer to this question, we may note that there are many
similar generalities in the Koran and sunna, all of them admitting of some
qualification, such as the word of Allah Most High in Surat al-Najm, ". . . A man can have nothing, except what he strives
for" (Koran 53:39), despite there being an overwhelming amount of evidence that a
Muslim benefits from the spiritual works of others, for example, from his
fellow Muslims, the prayers of angels for him, the funeral prayer over
him, charity given by others in his name, and the supplications of
believers for him; Or consider the words of Allah to unbelievers in Surat al-Anbiya,
"Verily you and what you worship apart from Allah are
the fuel of hell" (Koran 21:98), "what you worship" being a general expression,
while there is no doubt that Jesus, his mother, and the angels were all
worshipped apart from Allah, but are not "the fuel of hell", so
are not what is meant by the verse; Or the word of Allah Most High in
Surat al-Anam about past nations who paid no heed to the warners who were
sent to them, "But when they forgot what they had been reminded of, We
opened unto them the doors of everything" (Koran 6:44), though the doors of mercy were not opened unto them; And the
hadith related by Muslim that the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him
peace) said, "No one who prays before sunrise and before sunset will
enter hell", which is a generalised expression that definitely does not
mean what its outward generality implies, for someone who prays the dawn
and midafternoon prayers and neglects all other prayers and obligatory
works is certainly not meant. It is rather a generalization whose intended
referent is particular, or a generalization that is qualified by other
texts, for when there are fully authenticated hadiths, it is obligatory to
reach an accord between them, because they are in reality as a single
hadith, the statements that appear without further qualification being
qualified by those that furnish the qualification, that the combined
implications of all of them may be utilized. Let us look for a moment at bida or innovation in the light
of the sunna of the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace)
concerning new matters. Sunna and innovation (bida) are two opposed terms
in the language of the Lawgiver (Allah bless him and give him peace), such
that neither can be defined without reference to the other, meaning that
they are opposites, and things are made clear by their opposites. Many
writers have sought to define innovation (bida) without defining the sunna,
while it is primary, and have thus fallen into inextricable difficulties
and conflicts with the primary textual evidence that contradicts their
definition of innovation, whereas if they had first defined the sunna,
they would have produced a criterion free of shortcomings. Sunna , in both the language of the Arabs and the Sacred Law,
means way, as is illustrated by the words of the Prophet (Allah bless him
and give him peace), "He who inaugurates a good sunna in Islam [dis: Reliance
of the Traveller p58.1(2)] ...And he who introduces a bad sunna in
Islam...", sunna meaning way or custom. The way of the Prophet (Allah
bless him and give him peace) in giving guidance, accepting, and
rejecting: this is the sunna. For "good sunna" and "bad
sunna" mean a "good way" or "bad way", and cannot
possibly mean anything else. Thus, the meaning of "sunna" is not
what most students, let alone ordinary people, understand; namely, that it
is the prophetic hadith (as when sunna is contrasted with "Kitab",
i.e. Koran, in distinguishing textual sources), or the opposite of the
obligatory (as when sunna, i.e. recommended, is contrasted with obligatory
in legal contexts), since the former is a technical usage coined by hadith
scholars, while the latter is a technical usage coined by legal scholars
and specialists in fundamentals of jurisprudence. Both of these are usages
of later origin that are not what is meant by sunna here. Rather, the
sunna of the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) is his way of
acting, ordering, accepting, and rejecting, and the way of his Rightly
Guided Caliphs who followed his way acting, ordering, accepting, and
rejecting. So practices that are newly begun must be examined in light of
the sunna of the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) and his way
and path in acceptance or rejection. Now, there are a great number of hadiths, most of them in the
rigorously authenticated (sahih) collections, showing that many of the
prophetic Companions initiated new acts, forms of invocation (dhikr),
supplications (dua), and so on, that the Prophet (Allah bless him and give
him peace) had never previously done or ordered to be done. Rather, the
Companions did them because of their inference and conviction that such
acts were of the good that Islam and the Prophet of Islam came with and in
general terms urged the like of to be done, in accordance with the word of
Allah Most High in Surat al-Hajj, "And do the good, that haply you may succeed"
(Koran 22:77), </STRONG and the hadith of the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him
peace), "He who inaugurates a good sunna in Islam earns the
reward of it and all who perform it after him without diminishing their
own rewards in the slightest." Though the original context of the hadith was giving charity,
the interpretative principle established by the scholarly consensus (def:
Reliance of the Traveller b7) of specialists in fundamentals of Sacred Law
is that the point of primary texts lies in the generality of their lexical
significance, not the specificity of their historical context, without
this implying that just anyone may make provisions in the Sacred Law, for
Islam is defined by principles and criteria, such that whatever one
initiates as a sunna must be subject to its rules, strictures, and primary
textual evidence. * * * * It is plain that this supplication came spontaneously from
the Companion, and since it conformed to what the Sacred Law calls for,
the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) confirmed it with the
highest degree of approbation and acceptance, while it is not known that
the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) had ever taught it to him
(Adilla Ahl al-Sunna wa-al-Jamaa, 119- 33). We are now able to return to the hadith with which I began my
talk tonight, in which the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace)
said, "... Beware of matters newly begun, for every innovation is
misguidance". And understand it as expounded by a classic scholar of
Islam, Sheikh Muhammad Jurdani, who said: "Beware of matters newly begun", distance
yourselves and be wary of matters newly innovated that did not previously
exist", i.e. things invented in Islam that contravene the Sacred Law,
"for every innovation is misguidance" meaning that every
innovation is the opposite of the truth, i.e. falsehood, a hadith that has
been related elsewhere as: "for every newly begun matter is
innovation, every innovation is misguidance, and every misguidance is in
hell" meaning that everyone who is misguided, whether through himself
or by following another, is in hell, the hadith referring to matters that
are not good innovations with a basis in Sacred Law. It has been stated
(by Izz ibn Abd al- Salam) that innovations (bida) fall under the five
headings of the Sacred Law (n: i.e. the obligatory, unlawful, recommended,
offensive, and permissible): (1) The first category comprises innovations that are
obligatory , such as recording the Koran and the laws of Islam in writing
when it was feared that something might be lost from them; the study of
the disciplines of Arabic that are necessary to understand the Koran and
sunna such as grammar, word declension, and lexicography; hadith
classification to distinguish between genuine and spurious prophetic
traditions; and the philosophical refutations of arguments advanced by the
Mu'tazilites and the like. (2)The second category is that of unlawful innovations such
as non- Islamic taxes and levies, giving positions of authority in Sacred
Law to those unfit for them, and devoting ones time to learning the
beliefs of heretical sects that contravene the tenets of faith of Ahl al-Sunna.
(3) The third category consists of recommended innovations
such as building hostels and schools of Sacred Law, recording the research
of Islamic schools of legal thought, writing books on beneficial subjects,
extensive research into fundamentals and particular applications of Sacred
Law, in-depth studies of Arabic linguistics, the reciting of wirds (def:Reliance
of the Traveller w20) by those with a Sufi path, and commemorating the
birth (mawlid), of the Prophet Muhammad (Allah bless him and give him
peace) and wearing ones best and rejoicing at it. (4) The fourth category includes innovations that are
offensive, such as embellishing mosques, decorating the Koran and having a
backup man (muballigh) loudly repeat the spoken Allahu Akbar of the imam
when the latters voice is already clearly audible to those who are praying
behind him. (5) the fifth category is that of innovations that are
permissible, such as sifting flour, using spoons and having more enjoyable
food, drink and housing.(al Jawahir al-luluiyya fi sharh al-Arbain al-Nawawiyya,
220-21). I will conclude my remarks tonight with a translation of
Sheikh Abdullah al-Ghimari, who said: In his al-Qawaid al-kubra, "Izz
ibn Abd al-Salam classifies innovations (bida), according to their
benefit, harm, or indifference, into the five categories of rulings: the
obligatory, recommended, unlawful, offensive, and permissible; giving
examples of each and mentioning the principles of Sacred Law that verify
his classification. His words on the subject display his keen insight and
comprehensive knowledge of both the principles of jurisprudence and the
human advantages and disadvantages in view of which the Lawgiver has
established the rulings of Sacred Law. Because his
classification of innovation (bida) was established on a firm basis in
Islamic jurisprudence and legal principles, it was confirmed by Imam
Nawawi, Ibn Hajar Asqalani, and the vast majority of Islamic scholars, who
received his words with acceptance and viewed it obligatory to apply them
to the new events and contingencies that occur with the changing times and
the peoples who live in them. One may not support the denial of his
classification by clinging to the hadith "Every innovation is
misguidance", because the only form of innovation that is without
exception misguidance is that concerning tenets of faith, like the
innovations of the Mutazilites, Qadarites, Murjiites, and so on, that
contradicted the beliefs of the early Muslims. This is the innovation of
misguidance because it is harmful and devoid of benefit. As for innovation
in works, meaning the occurrence of an act connected with worship or
something else that did not exist in the first century of Islam, it must
necessarily be judged according to the five categories mentioned by Izz
ibn Abd al-Salam. To claim that such innovation is misguidance without
further qualification is simply not applicable to it, for new things are
among the exigencies brought into being by the passage of time and
generations, and nothing that is new lacks a ruling of Allah Most High
that is applicable to it, whether explicitly mentioned in primary texts,
or inferable from them in some way. The only reason that Islamic law can
be valid for every time and place and be the consummate and most perfect
of all divine laws is because it comprises general methodological
principles and universal criteria, together with the ability its scholars
have been endowed with to understand its primary texts, the knowledge of
types of analogy and parallelism, and the other excellences that
characterize it. Were we to rule that every new act that has come into
being after the first century of Islam is an innovation of misguidance
without considering whether it entails benefit or harm, it would
invalidate a large share of the fundamental bases of Sacred Law as well as
those rulings established by analogical reasoning, and would narrow and
limit the Sacred Laws vast and comprehensive scope. (Adilla Ahl al-Sunna
wa al- Jamaa, 145-47). Wa Jazakum Allahu khayran, wal-hamdu lillahi Rabbil
Alamin. |
