Qur’an, Bible, Sunnah, and Ahadith, a Contextual Explanation.

F. Qureshi

There are two opinions on the nature of the Qur’an itself. The most common position is that it is the literal speech and word of God. The second opinion is that the Qur’an as a literature is created. Although it is in its spirit the unwritten heavenly truth revealed, however, it is not the literal speech of God. The idea behind the second opinion is that God does not literally speak as we humans do, and so therefore the Qur’an is not the literal speech of God, rather God’s will must be metaphysical in essence and it is manifested via what God created (time, literature, the human mind, language etc.).

Nevertheless, there is a clear distinction between what Muslims claim the Quran is and what Christians claim the New Testament is. The New Testament from a literary standpoint would be far more similar to the Ahadith. The Qur’an itself does not include a single Hadith, not a single statement of Muhammed (sa), nor a statement from any other man, whether it was a companion of the Prophet, a scribe, or anyone else. It contains only the revealed verses. It is purely revelation from God. Not a single interpretation is included therein. Instead, the Ahadith, the commentary, the history, the traditions, the utterances and the actions of the Prophet (sa), were separated entirely. This kept the true miracle of the Qur’an alive and its eloquent verses remained intact.

According to the Ahadith, Prophet Muhammad (sa) himself kept his companions from writing any statements about him (sa). The Prophet told his companions to not write down the Ahadith in order that the information does not get mixed in with the revelation from God. This instruction by the Prophet (sa) is narrated in the most authentic collections of Ahadith. So by the time when the Ahadith did start to become collected and narrated, the Qur’an’s revealed verses were isolated, and its miracle was preserved.

The Bible on the other hand, includes the perceptions, the narrations, the hearsay, the interpretations, the opinions, and the beliefs, of the scribes, of the Prophets, of the disciples, and of the authors. It became a mixture of revelation and “ahadith”. What is the Torah and what is interpretation? What is the gospel, and what is perception? The Qur’an is saved from this type of mixture.

After the task of preserving the Qur’an was completed, the companions had then officially began to narrate and collect the tradition of Muhammad (sa) into books and volumes. Noticeably, in reference to Ahadith the time frame between the initial occurrences and the narration, was about 100 to 200 years. However, the tradition or sunnah was kept alive via oral transmission. We learn that the Jews initially too followed the “oral Torah”. This is because the oral and practiced tradition, as well as the initial revelation, had to have existed prior to the existence of any scripture.

The words that were uttered by Moses and revealed by God, are understood to have been the original and actual Torah. In other words, there is a vital difference between revelation and scripture, both due to the time of deliverance, and due to the time of original practice and occurrence. Scripture, on the other hand is a narrative presenting itself usually after the original occurrences.

Therefore, it is also the Muslim understanding that when the Glorious Qur’an refers to the Torah and Gospel, it is referring to the initial revelation given to and traditionally practiced by the Prophets of God – and it is not referring to the latter written scripture that came to include and therefore was tainted by the interpretations, perceptions, opinions, and hearsay of men.

Before I go on, let me clarify the position of the Qur’an. The Qur’an too was initially revealed by God through the angel Gabriel, in piece meals. Therefore prior to its inscription, it was revelation. The Arabic term Qur’an means “proclamation”, “recitation”, or “reading”. It comes from the Arabic root “Iqra”. When Gabriel initially came to Muhammad (sa), the angel told Muhammad (sa) to “Iqra”. Muhammad (sa) being an illiterate man thought the angel was suggesting Muhammad to “read” something but there were no pages bind by a cover to read from, nor was the Angel suggesting an illiterate to do something he could not, on the contrary, the angel was telling him to “recite”, “proclaim”, and therefore repeat, exactly what the Angel was saying. This was the initial Qur’an. A recitation of God’s will to the masses that was ultimately memorized and inscribed by several – all within the very lifetime of the Prophet (sa). Each verse was memorized and inscribed under the direction of Muhammad (sa) himself. The Qur’an, in a piece meal fashion, took a total number of 23 years to reveal. So therefore that gave Muhammad (sa) himself 23 years to safeguard its verses (15:9).      

Now that the difference between revelation and scripture has been established; Here comes an important explanation with reference to the difference between Sunnah and Hadith. The “sunnah” or “tradition” of Muhammad (sa) was well known, practiced, and orally taught by the Muslims prior to the collected volumes of Ahadith. However there is again, a difference between the sunnah – the actual tradition, and between the latter narration of that sunnah. The Ahadith are narratives of that tradition, life, practice, and utterance of Muhammad (sa). The sunnah logically was practiced prior to any narratives, which mind you came to be compiled after the fact. Point being, that while it is the ‘sunnah’ (tradition) of the Prophet (sa) that can never be denied, particular Ahadith (narratives) can be rejected based on authenticity.

The intentions of these great scholars who lived during the “golden era” of Islam was in fact to collect the most authentic information they possibly and humanly could. Their intention was to bring to us an organized format of the sunnah, and this intent and accomplishment of theirs is recognized as a great contribution to Islam. However, the difference between actual sunnah and later compiled ahadith, is not to be forgotten. For more information on Ahadith, see the following article: A critical analysis of early sectarianism in Islam and the compilation of Ahadith.

Nevertheless, during the time in which Ahadith were being collected, each existing sect had its personal agenda, and made every effort to incorporate their ideology and their interpretation into the words of Ahadith. The scholars of Ahadith realized that these agendas existed, and Imam Bukhari by himself is known to have rejected a massive portion of the narrations that he came across. Some narratives were considered authentic and were just too long to include, and other narrations he flat out rejected because he believed they were unauthentic. This proves that false information was desperately trying to creep its way into the collections of Ahadith. Sound familiar? How about the existence of numerous gospels before the compilation of the Bible? 

The fact of the matter is that the Muhaditheen (scholars of Ahadith) did the best they possibly could. They came up with a “science” when accepting each Hadith, in order to best decide the authenticity of every narration. This science surrounded the reliability of the narrator, the amount of people in the chain narrating the hadith and therefore confirming it, and the reliability of each of them. This had to do with the ‘sanad’ – or chain of narrators authenticating any given narrative. The matn, or implication of the Ahadith was also considered. The time period, place, and situation, in which the Prophet (sa) said something would be very important., Whether it occurred in the Medina period or the Mecca period, in a time of war, or in a time of patience; and also its saying or occurrence within the context of the doctrine of abrogation and the peace-meal (gradual) revelation of the Qur’an, plays heavily into Hadith interpretation and acceptance. A complicated examination that took great effort and work, one could only imagine. In essence, they each made a hypothesis, they tested their hypothesis via their travels and collected knowledge, and finally concluded whether each particular Hadith was authentic or not. Some Muhadith used additional spiritual methods, such as Imam Bukhari, who would pray two ra’kats before examining each Hadith. However, each Imam recognized their own fallibility as a human being and also the fallibility in existing Ahadith in general due to the fact that there were false Ahadith which were spreading throughout Arabia. Therefore they left the future generations to also use that same ijtehad, methodology and science that they used, when examining the Ahadith that they compiled. Later on, Muslim scholars, using this very method, had accepted six books which they called “sahih” or authentic and from there mapped out the classification of Ahadith.

This classification and science of Ahadith provided the Muslims with a documented history of their Prophet (sa). Noticeably, if we were to level the Bible up to the science used to authenticate individual narrations (Ahadith), the Bible would undoubtedly fall under the ‘dhaeef jidan’ (very weak) category if not ‘munkar’ (rejected). In any event the textual and literary concepts between the Quran and all of these outside sources, be it the Bible or the Ahadith, are different.

The noble effort of our scholars was to provide the Muslims a memory of Muhammad (sa). No Prophet or man in history was ever documented as closely as Muhammad (sa) was by his followers. Could you imagine if there existed seven thousand Ahadith pertaining to how Jesus, or David, or Moses conducted their everyday life? Imagine if their every move was documented. After all, these Prophets were men who lived in a totally different time period than we live in today. Contemporary ethics would absolutely be a basis of scrutiny for those who do not consider social norms and human fallibility. Nevertheless, one must admit that the compilation of Ahadith 1300 years ago was no small accomplishment.

In order to continue to understand the difference between the Quran and all other literature (the Bible and Ahadith), one should refer to the miracle of the Qu’ran, which too, through the isolation of the Qur’anic verses from Ahadith, was preserved.

For any language there is a time when it reached its pinnacle in eloquence. Ask any scholar of English literature, and they’ll unanimously tell you that the English language, whether written or spoken, had reached its pinnacle during the Elizabethan period. No spoken or written English has ever been duplicated after that generation. Therefore, any and every literature that was ever written in the English language after this time period was inferior in its overall linguistics and eloquence.

The pinnacle of eloquence for Greek was during the time of Homer. What they called Ionic-Attic Greek. And so for every language, whether it was Hebrew, Latin, or Sanskrit, there was a point in time when that particular language had reached its height. And so, this was nothing different for the Arabic language itself.

In 7^th century Arabia, when Muhammad (sa) was born, scholars say, either the language was on its initial decline from its pinnacle, or it was in the midst of its pinnacle and declined soon after. Either way, Muhammad (sa) appeared during a time when the language was deep rooted.

In Arabia, the dignitaries from the tribe of Quraish would gather on the norm to drink wine and be entertained by various poets and rhetoricians. This was something they were deeply involved in. This was their form of entertainment. That being rhetoric and live poetry. This culture was surrounded by poets and rhetoricians who used their talents for money, fame and political influence. The dignitaries were presented with rhetoricians as a means of enlightenment. However, to find the best was something that was becoming an extreme rarity.

If you’ve studied poetry or rhetoric, you know that when a line is recited or written, a master of rhetoric can usually come and improve on it. You have what are called “weak lines” in poetry. However rarely, there are times when a statement is made that it simply cannot be improved upon. William Shakespeare, when he made the statement “to be or not to be, that is the question”, that was a statement that simply was the best and most eloquent way to make that particular statement. It simply could not be said in any better way. But even within Shakespeare’s work, there were weak lines; lines that he would more often than not, spend hours, days and months editing until he felt what he had written was a masterpiece ready for publish.

Imagine, if you will, 7^th century Arabia, an illiterate man who was brought up as an orphan, coming to the masses and spontaneously reciting verse after verse, in linguistics and eloquence that was admitted by the rhetoricians of the time, as being impossible to match by any man! Verses with no weak lines and lines that could not be improved upon, and by God they would spontaneously come out of his mouth! Over 6,000 verses! A masterpiece of no small stature. The challenge was made in the Quran, to produce even one single chapter like it. No man was able to step up to the plate. And now that the language has declined from its pinnacle, this outstanding miracle stands tall. No man will ever be able to produce a chapter like it.

When we look at the miracles that God produced through his Prophets, we always notice that the miracles were always relevant to the practice of the people at the time. But in Arabia, black-magic, sorcery, and the like has become a cliché. Dignitaries were simply unimpressed by the circus, if you will. On the other hand, poetic dialogue and beautiful rhetoric was something they had a passion for. God melted their hearts with what they themselves had engulfed their lives in.

Therefore upon reading the English translation it is seriously difficult for one to appreciate this miracle of the Quran. Because the miracle does not lie in the translation, rather it was in the Arabic itself.