On Mahdi
ON MAHDI
3. Harith b. Abi Rabi’a and Abdullah b. Safwan and with them I visited Ummu Salama RA and the two asked her about the army which would be swallowed up by the earth. This was in the days of Ibn Zubair RA. She replied: Rasulullah sws said “A refugee takes refuge in the House (Kaaba) and an army is sent against him. When they arrive at Bayda the earth swallows them up”. I said “Ya Rasulallah sws, what about the reluctant among them?”. He said “He is also swallowed up with them but he is resurrected according to his intentions”. In another report Abdullah b. Safwan RA said “By Allah this is not the army now sent against Abdullah b. Zubair to fight him” (Abdullah b. Qibtiyya, Arbaa)
C: Which shows that the hadith was forged to support Abdullah’s bid to the caliphate, promising that if Umayyad’s dared to send an army against him the army would be swallowed up and no danger to Abdullah’s supporters was in question. Although Mahdi is not mentioned here by name this hadith exactly parallel those about Mahdi who is prophesied to be installed as caliph at Mecca, between the Rukn and the Maqam and then rule justly and divide wealth equally between people etc. Eventually unsuccessful bid of Abdullah b. Zubair RA, son of Zubair b. Awwam RA, one of the ten greatest sahaba of the Prophet sws and a cousin of his, initially looked very promising. Abdullah had rebelled against the increasingly attrocious and unsufferable Umayyads and riding the popular opposition to them he quickly established himself as caliph over almost all Islamic lands outside the Umayyad stronghold Syria. This was after Hussein’s RA martyrdom. But Umayyads were cleverer than him and very well organised. They variously bought off his supporters or divided and eliminated them and eventually cornered Abdullah in Mecca and defeated and captured him at the expense of reducing the Sacred Mosque and its holy grounds to rubble by bombardment and incendiaries. Abdullah fought heroically but eventually was captured and executed and his crucified body was displayed outside Mecca on the main caravan route in and out of the city for a long time to serve as a lesson to all who contemplated to challenge the Umayyad power. The reporters of the hadith seem to wonder whether Abdullah was the expected just caliph whose cause was supposedly prophesied to succeed because the Umayyad army sent against this holy person would be swallowed up by the ground under their feet. One wonders how a man certainly lesser than the Messenger of Allah who for his part had to fight so hard to win… how a lesser man could be spared and pampered by the earth swallowing up anybody sent to fight him. When Abdullah was not helped thus the narrators concluded that Abdullah could not have been the expected saviour and they still had to wait for he latter.
4. Said Ummu Salama RA: Rasulullah sws said “In the case of one caliph’s death there shall be disagreements and a man of Madina shall rise and escape to Mecca. People from Mecca shall come to him and raise him (as caliph) despite his reluctance. They shall make bay’at to him between the Rukn and the Maqam. An army shall be sent against him from Syria but they shall be swallowed by the earth at Bayda between Mecca and Medina. When people see this the ‘abdal’ of Syria and the clans of the people of Iraq come and all make bay’at to him. Then a man from Quraish comes forth whose uncles are Kalb (tribe) and sends an army against them and they defeat him (the man of Kalb). This is the frustration of Kalb and also of those who did not witness the division of the spoils of Kalb. He divides the wealth and practices according to the Sunna of their prophet sws and Islam prevails over the land. He stays among them seven years and dies and muslims pray his funeral prayer (Umm Salama RA, D)
C: Almost transparent abuse of the prestige of Hadith in solving desperate political problems by forging hadiths in the hope that popular credulity and support will counter the state power of an impious but well-organised government like the Umayyad’s. “In the case of one caliph’s death…” begins the hadith which, considering the fact that Mahdi will come at the end of the time (which is not yet toady in the 21st century) indicates that at the end of the time caliphs will still be around and their succession shall be hotly contested. All the Arab tribes and clans of Iraq will be around, somehow resurrected after more than at least a thousand year’s extinction. The very same 7th or 8th century Medina and Mecca shall be there and a man form Medina will escape to Mecca where he will be hailed as the new caliph against his will and will then have to face the wrath of those who disagree. The Quraish will still be in charge of Mecca and its Kalb tribe shall organise an army to chase off the new caliph of Mecca. But Mahdi’s men will defeat Kalb army and take incredible amounts of booty which then Mahdi divides equally (unlike the favouritist Umayyads) between his supporters and brings back the days of the Prophet sws. Obviously when these ahadith were being created and circulated the demise of caliphal usurpers like the Umayyads were seen near and a juster caliph was awaited to save the situation. The very early times then people lived in were thought to be the last days of the world and Mahdi and Dajjal and Jesus were expected to show up soon and in quick succession (Of course we must also consider the possibility that these depictions did not originate in the early Umayyad times but were later developed in retrospect to explain ‘recent’ history in eschatological terms which were complied after the events themselves). There was no time for the Roman power to become extinct let alone new empires to come up or the scientific and technological developments which came centuries later to take place and an entirely new world order to replace the old. All was a caliph. then were the same old Mecca, Medina, Syria, Egypt and Iraq at their tribal level and busy with their intractable intriques and primitive wars and booty-taking and on the spot and sharing of it. Other ahadith mention also the slaves and concubines and in fact depict all the paraphernalia of Umayyad times as still alive and kicking. Even India is nowhere to be seen let alone Europe or America.
5. (Abu Said RA) said “We feared that after our Prophet sws there would be trouble and we asked the Prophet of Allah sws whereupon he sws said “In my umma is Mahdi who lives five or seven. He (Abu Said) said “We asked: What is that?”. He sws replied “Years”. He sws said “A man comes to him, says o Mahdi, give me, give me (wealth). He sws said “He fills his garment so much that he cannot carry it” (Abu Said RA, Tirmizi)
C: You see, there is no need to worry about the effects of the Prophet sws passing away. Mahdi will come to keep the felicity going on, even only for seven years. There is an unmistakeable impression that Mahdi would follow soon, would last seven years and judging from other ahadith then the Hour shall come for the universe to collapse. Does history since then support this impression? In fact do such type of events fit with Allah’s ages-old way of dealing with us? And the same anxieties all over again: Umayyad caliphs were not just in the distribution of wealth and contravened the Prophet’s practice of dividing the spoils of war equally among the combatants. The Arabs were missing the days of the Prophet sws and his nearer caliphs badly and would like very much a good caliph on the Prophetic model to somehow replace the Umayyads and like in the good old days distribute wealth generously and equitably. We must also regretfully note the then bedouin obsession with an economy of warfare and booty instead of regular work, investment and business as every advanced and civilised nation has to follow. We muslims had to wait for the Abbasid times for a modern economy by the age’s standards to emerge and disconnect the masses’ hopes for earning a livelihood from the tip of a sword. Trade and industry then flourished and prosperity became almost universal. In the long run all economies based on warfare and booty can only decline and become a curiosity and irrelevance, and its exponents must end up like the American Indians or the Australian aborigines. True, a hadith is reported to the effect that muslims should not stick to the cow and the plow and abandon jehad but apart from the difficulties which apply to all ahadith in principle (unlike the Qur’an’s absolute status) this admonition can very reasonably be seen as warning against military complacency when a community almost entirely busy themselves with commercial earning and forget about national defence.
Now please consider: A man goes to Mahdi and asks for free wealth, there is no paper or perhaps even other heavier currency and Mahdi fills the man’s garment with dates, prunes etc. until he cannot carry it. Clearly such scenes are painted to put an expectant smile on the face of the mortified Umayyad time Arab rural muslim who found himself cut off from the booty and zakat sharing with which the Umayyads are only blessing their cronies and allies.
6. Said the Prophet sws “Even if only one day remained of the life of this world Allah would prolong it until He raises a man from me (my line) or from my House; his name fits mine and his father’s name fits my father’s name. He fills the earth with justice and fairness as it was filled until then with injustice and unfairness (Abdullah b’ Abbas RA, Tirmizi)
C: But the Qur’an and more credible ahadith emphatically agree that before the end of the world there remain nobody on earth who will say ‘la ilaha illallah’ and it will be that which will justify the collapse of the world. The Qur’an of course says this in general terms when it reminds the reader that for the hour of destruction to come on people they must have grown too wicked to be allowed to live. Since a too wicked nations days are their last days how come a total saviour be sent to restore the land to godliness despite the unwillingness of its inhabitants? And one wonders what is the point of neglecting the condition of humanity for centuries- if that is what Allah is doing; an impossible proposition- and then suddenly grant them a brief springtime of faith and piety and worldwide spiritual prosperity under a perfect leader, which national state felicity no prophet including the incomparable Muhammad sws could achieve before. The Prophet’s (sws) community was full of hypocrites and produced also a few false prophets who after the death of the Prophet looked at the verge of winning the day, were it not for Abu Bakr’s singular insight and determination. And that Allah will never allow mankind to unite is emphatically put in the Qur’an: Allah says: “Had thy Lord willed He could make all mankind one umma. They (mankind) will never cease to be different and disagreeing, except whom Allah pitied- for that He has created them. The word of thy Lord ‘I shall indeed fill the Hell with men and demons’ must come to pass” (S. Hud, 118- 119). Which means no generation of worldwide people shall ever come when all shall be of the same convictions and pursuing the same aims and not disagreeing or fighting. Divisions and disagreements will never cease, no community however righteous will win totally and convert or otherwise exterminate all those who don’t submit to them. Which means any utopias under either Mahdi or Jesus are fictional. Life shall always be a trial and a battle of good and evil.
There is another and very serious dangers in such pious fictions though. Contrary to the persistent semi-pessimistic analyses in the Qur’an and equally semi-pessimistic policies of the Prophet sws (i.e., that man is always fickle and may go to good or evil at the drop of a hat so to speak and that in fact evil is more prevalent and shall remain so oozes from the Qur’an constantly with Divine regrets), all based on level-headed realism conducive to realistic policies, in the utopian ahadith we find that very dangerous infantile tendency in immature people towards doing too little for too great results and then being shattered by the mortifying disappointment ensuing. On the face of it supporters of both Hussain RA and then of Abdullah b. Zubair RA set out expecting an utopian end for their respective leader’s bid for power, trusted that great miracles would more than counter the crass Umayyad power and but they were utterly disappointed and mortified. That shock is still with the Shia who still try to dampen the mortification by beating and bleeding themselves at each Muharram the 10th for more than fourteen centuries now. There is a story among the Mongolians that in the 19th century when the Tsarist Russia was building the Trans-Siberian railway which was threatening the lifestyle and the interests of the nomadic Mongols who then saw no chance of success in fighting against the mighty modern Tsarist army their leader the Mongolian chief lama (believed to be a master of mystic wisdom and occult miraculous powers) promised to stop the invasion by standing on the railtract and stop the trains dead on their tracts by his spiritual powers. He tried as he said, but was never seen again and the trains kept passing through Mongolia. These cannot be the beliefs and policies of the Umma of the greatest and wisest and the most realistic man ever, the Messenger of Allah sws, who advised and DID his material best before making tawakkul on Allah for what he could not do. He both won and lost battles and eventually won the war. That is the Sunnat of not only the Prophet sws but also the Sunnat of Allah and any claims or fiction that struggles can be won by other and easier means must be futile. Yes, Allah does help His good servants in battle as much as He sees fit, but Mahdi or Jesus or not some great effort on the part of believers shall always be necessary and hard choices and hard work shall lie ahead and that is exactly what Allah created us for and asked us to expect and that is for all time to come and no wish-fulfilling utopian times will come except in the Hereafter. Read if you wish:
“When the believers see the regiments of the enemy they say “That is what Allah and His Messenger sws promised us. Allah and His Messenger told us the truth”. This (spectacle of ememy taking positions to attack) only increases their faith and their submission” (S. al Ahzab, 22)
7. Mahdi is one of the grandsons of my uncle Abbas (Uthman RA, Baihaqi)
8. Mahdi is from my House and from the line of Fatima (Umm Salama RA, Tabari)
C: In 6 above it looks as if the Abbasid caliphs tried to appropriate the increasingly popular Mahdi and make him a caliph from their own line. To give the report more credibility they used Uthman RA, the idol of the Umayyads, who were the deadly rivals of the Abbasids.
In 7 however we find the Alids (Alawis/Shia) claiming the probably fictitiousy created imam and Alids of course were the rivals of both the Umayyads and the Abbasids.
ON DAJJAL
9. (Fatima b. Qais RA) says:…. Rasulullah sws said “Tamim al Dari (RA) was a Christian and came and made bay’at and became a Muslim and told me a ‘hadith’ (story) which fits what I have been telling you about the Masih al Dajjal (the False Messiah). He (Tamim) boarded a ship along with other thirty men when sea storms beat them for a month and they were anchored near an island in the sea by sunset time and sat in the a lifeboat of the ship and landed on the island. A very hairy animal met them with so much hair that its front could not be told from its rear. They said “Woe to thee, what art thou?”. It said “I am Jassasah” (investigator and repository of rare and curious information). They said “What Jassasah?”. It said “O people, come to this man in the monastery”…. We hurried to the monastery and found there largest cut of a man tied most tightly with his hands around his neck… all in irons. We said “Woe to thee, what art thou?”. He said “You have arrived to learn about me. What you yourselves are?” (They tell their story). He said “Tell me about Nakh al Baysan (a place in Syria)… about its dates, are they giving fruit?” (The large man asks about its wells, orchards etc. and gets the answers). He (again) asks “Tell me about the unlettered prophet, what did he do? (He asks questions about the Prophet’s sws adventures with his opponents etc and gets the basic biography). “I am now telling you about me: I am the Messiah and I am anxious about being allowed to go out; when I go out I travel the land and I leave no town but I fell it within forty nights except Mecca and Medina for they are protected from me any time I want to enter either of them an angel faces me with a drawn sword, turning me away from entry…”… Rasulullah sws said “He is in the Sea of Syria or the Sea of Yemen. No, perhaps towards the east…”… extending his hand towards the east (Fatima b. Qais, M)
C: So, Rasulullah (sws) takes comfort from a new Christian convert to Islam and narrates a long-winded adventure story Tamim told him, which story has disturbing features ordinarily met in popular tales in which long and hazardous sea voyages, terrible storms and shipwreck are inevitable and unseen and unheard of strange creatures are met. These creatures have human faculties despite their explicitly bestial anatomies engage in question and answer dialogues and divulge the locations of treasures and even beings stranger than themselves. The enchanted sailors continue with their explorations and in this instance they find the greatest villain of all times, Masih al Dajjal, the False Messiah! So, this man who is to come at the end of the time, i.e, more than 15 centuries after the Prophet sws to say the least, was already living during the Prophet’s sws times, banished to an island in the sea of Syria (which can only be the Mediterranean) or Sea of Yemen which can only be the Indian Ocean bordering Yemen. Somebody is not sure. This villain is in chains who knows for how long, what is he eating, drinking and how is he relieving himself, all in chains only God knows. He is awaiting for his destined time to come to be released and unleashed against the hapless mankind as if their already heavy trials by and failures before God have not been enough and God needs to confound them once more, destroy most of the Muslims at a time when the muslims, the time being the last days, could be better off with a saviour than a seducer. What is even more problematic is the fact that Dajjal, Mahdi and Jesus are supposed to be contemporaries to meet each other and take their turns to rule the world. But here we are and back to square one: Mahdi’s desperately needed happy times will be spoiled more badly than even before: He will have to contend with the greatest villain of the until then history: the advent and almost worldwide success of Dajjal! Since Dajjal will begin his destructive career of conquering the world with his false miracles and rivers of fire and water accompanying him and Jesus only will come down later to stop him in his tracts and destroy him, one wonders what the sole and absolute pious ruler of the world, Mahdi would be doing at the time. Jesus somehow proves to be the greater hero and success story than both Muhammad sws and his worthy grandson Mahdi, because Muhammad sws failed to convert and rule the whole world and give them a happy period of absolute peace and brotherhood while Mahdi remained aloof to the advent of the worst enemy of God and allowed him to convert the whole world to blasphemy except Mecca and Medina, belying the Prophet’s sws prediction that Mahdi would fill the whole world with justice and fairness as it was filled with injustice and unfairness before. Since according to the hadith Mahdi would rule for about seven years it means that his happy rule would be brought to an end by Dejjal! How Allah could allow His worst enemy ever to defeat His best friend Mahdi and Mahdi’s all-saintly subjects is not explained. As far as we know from the Qur’an “Allah will never allow a way for the infidels against the believers” (S. al Nisa, 141). Once Dajlal destroys the utopia of Mahdi and must meet his ignominious end in the hands of Jesus we find a Muslim army ‘made of the best of the creation of Allah’ go out and conquer Constantinople which, despite its conspicuousness, escaped Dajlal’s attentions, it is still the Christian capital of the world (who knows how after being captured by the turks in 1453 and fully Islamised), they conquer it (and only God knows where Mahdi is at that time) but are deceived by the Satan and hurry back home to save their families in Medina but somehow end up in Damascus and witness the descent of Jesus and his slaughter of Dajjal. Then, far superior to what Muhammad (sws) could achieve and Mahdi could improve upon Jesus rules over the whole earth for a full forty years when, as another hadith triumphantly detail, not only human beings but even the fiercest and most dangerous beasts live without enmity or fighting, lions and wolves grazing alongside with cows and sheep and children playing with poisonous snakes which would not bite them. All these later pastoral and picturesque depictions are in fact fully Christian and pre-date Islam. The sources of these apocalyptic stories must be outside Islam. Apparently, all converted nations to Islam outside Arabs brought in their cultural baggage as marrying girls bring in their dowries to husband’s home and then raise their joint children on the beliefs and traditions of her own family.
10. His Rasulullah sws described Dajjal to us and said “Probably one who saw me or heard my word will see him (Abu Ubaida RA, Tirmizi)
C: No wonder, since Dajjal as a living dead was awaiting his release from his chain-tomb to attack and conquer nearly the whole world for the Satan, his advent could not delay much longer. Again one wonders why Allah promises in Surat al Fath and the Prophet sws confirms in his many ahadith that instead of almost immediate brutalisation in the hands of Dajjal (about whom the ALL_INCUSIVE Qur’an displays a deafening silence!) the muslims could look to great conquests which would begin with Persia and continue with Rome.
11. I heard Rasulullah sws saying “Between the creation of Adam and the Resurrection Hour no greater affair will happen than Dajjal (Imran b. Husain, M)
C: Really? If Dajjal’s emergence is greater an affair than the emergence of Muhammad sws or if disaster is meant, then the Noah’s flood which drowned the whole humanity except a few individuals, the emergence of the Mongols who laid to waste all lands from China to the Aegean and eventually the invasion by Ya’juj and Ma’juj which the Qur’an positively mentions among the Signs of the Hour while it totally ignores this greatest event ever of Dejjal one wonders how come Dajjal is going to be the most important historical event ever despite being never bothered with by the Creator in His All-Inclusive Qur’an.
12. (Rasulullah sws) said “Dajjal’s father and mother remain childless for thirty years. Then a boy is born to them whose only one eye is good, with much harm and little benefit; his eyes sleep but his heart does not sleep”. Then Rasulullah sws described us his parents “His father is very tall and with excess flesh and his nose is like the elephant’s. His mother is thick with long arms”. Abu Bakra RA said “We heard about a boy in among the Jews of Medina and I and Zubair b. Awwam RA went and visited his parents and found them to fit Rasulullah’s sws description. We said “Do you have a boy?”. They said “We remained childless for thirty years then a boy was born to us with much harm and little benefit, his eyes sleep but his heart does not sleep. He (Abu Bakra) said “We left them and he (the boy) was (outside) there curled up under the sun in a coverlet. His voice was like whispering and he bared his head and said “What did they two tell you?”. We said “Did you hear what we said?”. He said “Yes, my two eyes sleep but my heart does not sleep” (Tirmizi)
C: How can the same Prophet sws once describe Dejjal as a chained monster in his own time secluded in a far away island and describes him as an ugly and eerie child borne of equally disgusting parents and then sahaba locates this child suspected of being Djjal right in the jewish quarter of Medina when both the hapless parents and the horrible child confirm the diagnosis given by the Prophet sws a little while ago. Additionally how and why this shocking discovery failed to make a stir in Prophet’s Medina and no other hadith did reach us elaborating on this most terrible event between the creation of Adam and the Day of Resurrection? How this little Dajjal grew up under the nose of Muslims after his discovery by them and became the greatest ever magician and blasphemer, found his way to Khurasan and walked out to travel the whole earth and get all people follow him all the way to Damascus to meet his end in the hand of Jesus (pbuh)?
More intriguingly Dajlal is described as his two eyes sleeping but his heart not. This is exactly how the Prophet sws described himself according to a hadith. Was Dajjal like the Prophet? And how his eyes could sleep while he had only one eye? One’s heart not sleeping while eyes do sleep is a reference to the Prophet’s being ever-present with Allah’s remembrance and the his incessant exploration of the spiritual heavens. His holy soul sojourns in the ‘Illiyun’ or Sublime Spiritual Realms. A satanic person can only get stuck in the ‘Sijjin’ the dungeon-like dark realms which are next door to hell.
BRAZEN SECTARIAN FORGERIES
13. “There is a hero among my Umma whose name is ‘Wahb b. Munabbih’. Allah gave him wisdom”. (Ubada b. Samit RA, Baihaqi)
C: Ma sha Allah! As if the Prophet sws had nothing better to do he names, describes and enumerates the future greats and villains in his umma thereby pre-empting and pre-judging all the acts of his umma to the Last Day. What is more, each faction have their hero endorsed by the Prophet (sws), not another.
14. “There will be a man named Ghalian. He is more harmful to people thaan Iblis” (Al Suyuti)
C: Here we are! The Prophet sws is slandered to have prophesied and pre-judged a personal rivalry about a century in future. Please guess who Ghailan was. His full name was Ghailan al Dismishqi and he was appointed as his chief judge by the most saintly Ummayyad caliph Umar B. Abdul Aziz RA to make the other Umayyad princes and notables cough up what they had stolen from the treasury and from other muslims. The alarmed Umayyads forged this hadith to discredit their scourge Ghailan and also assassinated the pious Umar by poison.
DRAWING CONCLUSIONS
At least three separate categories of conclusions may be drawn from the above studies and observations. The categories are (i) Authenticity (ii) Utility (iii) Possible causes of the problems. Let us take each under scrutiny.
(i) AUTHENTICITY: First we must haste to point out that all ahadith reporting on (prophesying) future events as looked at from the Prophet’s times need not be forged. Prophets sometimes DO predict, and predict accurately the future by God’s inspiration which is never far away from a prophet. But the future so predicted features realistic elements with all the plausibility characterising real events. For example the Prophet sws is said to have predicted Umar’s martyrdom by assassination which event was a realistic possibility. Had he been reported as having prophesied that Umar RA would suddenly become a baby again and grow up into another man or Umar would turn into a woman or a camel we would be excused for suspecting the authenticity of such a report.
The reports about future Mahdi, Dajjal and Jesus suffer from all the problems which the above categories include. Firstly, it is almost obvious that these three figures were supposedly awaited to arrive soon after the Prophet sws and in fact Dajjal could have supposedly come in his own lifetime. Two sahabas even are reported to have visited the infant Dajjal right in the Jewish suburb of Medina which event can only be before the Battle of the Trench in year 6 H- because after it all remaining Jews were deported. In another hadith we have not quoted a certain jewish boy named ibn Sayyad is suspected of being the expected Dajjal but he not only converts to Islam and changes his name to Ibn Said and gives a credible performance as a sincere muslim. All the same he is suspected and harassed by some sahaba as a possible Dajjal and he defends himself on the grounds that none of the qualifications described by the Prophet sws fits him, for example, Dajjal could not enter Mecca and Medina while Abu Said perfectly could and did etc. So, even if there was a discourse during the Prophet’s time about Dajjal, reports reaching us give a very confused and combine many mutually exclusive possibilities, as we saw above. The reports also depict a very implausible scenario of future events which then never came to pass.
But did the Prophet sws talk about Dajjal at all? If so, which of the conflicting reports is nearer the truth? We have no means of knowing. Also, Dajjal hadiths have something fanciful and incoherent about them which qualities are below the usual high intelligence, rationality and eloquence of the Prophet sws. Mahdi ahadith too disturbingly depict a political and social scene almost identical with late Umayyad, early Abbasid times which are now long extinct and unlikely to return. Jesus ahadith overlap both Mahdi and Dajjal ones and the crowding three great figures into less than a decade and the occurrence of so many bizarre events whose descriptions and calendars change from hadith to hadith cause additional problems and again stretch one’s ability to make the whole confused picture compatible with the Prophet’s brilliant mind and precise self-expression.
But that is not all. There is also the question whether it befits Allah and His Messenger sws to disclose the exact future of people and their characters. Man’s whole life impressions and motivation rely on his not knowing what the future holds for him which ignorance gives him a sense of freewill and power, however limited, to contribute to the form his future will take. Islamic faith is squarely based on hope, even hope against hope, the muslims having been taught that Allah can do everything and men should never give up on Allah’s mercy but keep trying to achieve their worthy objectives. If Allah and His Messenger sws were to divulge what exactly awaited muslims and what the results of the prophesied events would certainly be then men could only feel like chained prisoners who were being inexorably driven to experiences and results to which they only have to succumb. It is important to consider in this context the fact that, again according to some ahadith, the Prophet sws prophesied the whole future of the world to smallest details and among them was his succession by Abu Bakr, Umar, Uthman and Ali R. Anhum etc. etc. But had he done so, one then has to explain how it was that all successions took place after arguments, struggles, resentments and eventually bloodshed. There is no historical reports that any of the sahaba, including the four first caliphs ever brought up these prophecies as proof of their claims or that anybody challenged them on that basis. The sad impression is left therefore that such ahadith are forgeries, misguidedly pious at best and plain cynical at worst. Allah knows best.
(ii) UTILITY: In the worst case the utility of a forged hadith is cynically and impiously advancing the cause of the forger or the group he belongs. In the case of Mahdi, we have seen two similar hadiths one of which supports the Alid/Fatimid cause and the other the Abbasid. Both begin with ‘proper’ if ritual isnads. In the hadith about the Turks we feel that we are being taken for a ride by some non-Turkish muslim or muslim faction whose interests the Turks hurt or aroused the jealousy etc. In the case of ahadith declaring Abu Hanifa as the greatest imam we find Hanafite sectarianism cheaply at work.
But there are also less cynical and sometimes positively pious reasons behind some forgeries. We must realise that among all people there are very talented story tellers who are active in the literary field of fiction which we today call novels. They may base their novels on real persons and events and proceed by re-editing realities and also embellishing for the requisite dramatic effect. As a result there have always been great amounts of pious fiction among muslims alongside the secular and of the pious kind are stories about the prophets and others around them. What we may call popular pulp fiction about the Prophet and other heroes of Islam, which works of fiction one could buy from shops and street vendors only one or two generations ago (and can buy in poorer muslim neighbourhoods even today) are stories about the Prophet sws, Ali RA and other heroes which also sometimes include Persian heroes like Rustam son of Zal and Shahmaran the king of dragon demons. In these books we meet personalities and events quite similar to today’s magical literature like the novels and films in the genre of Harry Potter and The Lord of the Rings. The chief hero is always Ali RA and then it is Ali’s RA lieutenants like Malik Ajdar and sons like Muhammad Hanafi. These are equally pitted against foes from men, demon and dragon and in Ali’s case frequent interviews with and orders from the Prophet sws precede the action. In one case a man’s cut-off head arrives at the Prophet’s Mosque sws and in front of all sahaba complains about a giant living in a deep well who was preying upon people. The giant had captured him and his family as well and for his part he could escape as only the head because the giant had eaten the rest of his body. This perfectly conscious and talking head was walking on two bones jutting from the cut throat. The Prophet sws took pity on the cut-head and ordered Ali to go and find the giant, kill it and rescue the muslim women and children awaiting his eating them one by one. Ali is shown the way by the cut-head which was rolling on the ground at phenomenal speed with Ali’s legendary horse ‘Duldul’ barely keeping pace. The head was doing loud zikr all the way. They arrived at a well into which both jumped. It took Ali forty days and forty nights to fall to the bottom, he was constantly reciting the ‘Ism al A’zam’ (Allah’s secret greatest name) and praying his salats by ‘ima’ (symbolic gestures). Once at the bottom he found and killed the giant with a single blow with his legendary sword ‘zul-fikar’ and rescued the family. All came happily back to Medina where the Prophet sws restored the man’s body to his head etc.
These books not only were avidly read by literate people to others at homes, coffee houses, bazaars and even mosques but doubting their obviously non-existent veracity was regarded as blasphemy. We are recording these to show that in the pre-modern age both public credulity and condemnation of the suspicious were at fantastic levels and ulema themselves often could not dare to contradict the popular literature or they themselves would believe them as a matter of factly. Travelogues were full of implausible reports. Evliya Chelebi, the famous Ottoman traveller and travel writer could quite as a matter of factly write that in such and such town the winter was so severe that he had seen a cat frozen in mid air because it had jumped from one roof to another on a very cold day; it froze and became suspended in mid air and had to wait for the spring before it could continue his jump and land on the other roof. And people had no difficulty in accepting such reports, except of course the most rationally educated and sophisticated- for such education was not lacking sometimes. Since even the Prophet sws could be made a fictional hero and hadiths churned out to give detail and add embellishments to such fantastic stories cynical or misguided pious forging of ahadith was always a possibility. The utility depended on the aims: Sectarian win, political advancement or plain popularity by the story-telling of extraordinary stories. Therefore taking over some Christian and Jewish eschatological beliefs and Islamising them and additionally relating them to the Prophet sws and the sahaba RA should not be beyond the capabilities of early Islamic exponents of fiction and the popular enthusiasm for such material so delightful to pious imagination could only encourage and inspire the story tellers. Both sides felt spiritually uplifted and that was enough reward.
(iii) POSSIBLE CAUSES OF THE PROBLEM: Really problematic ahadith which offend a knowledgeable muslim’s creedal sensibilities, his sense of decency or sanity can most effectively explained as forgery, which is a form of lying. When a hadith is forged its isnad also is a forgery. Ahadith which are regarded as faked or forged (mawdu) by the community of competent ulema are legion and there are big volumes cataloguing such ahadith. A second source of problem ahadith is a weak transmission chain through which when a genuine hadith is being passed down it is seriously damaged en route by the incompetence of some chain members. As to how a muslim would dare to slander the Prophet sws by forging a hadith the answer is simple: It is one thing to appear to be a genuine believer and quite another being really so. Hypocrites even existed during the Prophet’s own time in his own community and why they should not equally exist later is a question difficult to answer. The prizes and attractions of this lowly and limited world are so irresistible to men with savage wild ambitions and almost nil scrupples that they can easily pretend to be proper Muslims and pursue their unholy aims with a single-mindedness, secrecy, stealth and daring of a most skilful predator. Hadith forging could only help them; so they did forge.
But apart from cynical, unconscionable hadith forgers there is another type of person which is now called a ‘pathological liar’ which means without always meaning evil such a person cannot resist a compulsion to tell a fanciful lie. Apparently it gets him attention from others whose attention he craves and additionally it may help him to build for himself a make-believe world where he can feel more important and powerful. These are especially plentiful among the spiritual-seekers and explains why so many unscriptural and often non-sensical Gnostic claims are made by the more imaginative among them. Once such dreamed-up claims come into being, no amount of quoting from the Scripture or sound tradition can move the people who believe in them and may even send them on to an very angry and aggressive response only God knows where it will stop. In fact Christianity itself is one such fictitiously inflated faith and the enthusiasm of serious Christians for their myths is legendary. If contradicted they may do anything to reckless fellow. In the past even burning at the stake was used to punish any doubters or deniers. That is because their precious Christian dream world was at stake, a world without which they think they cannot cope. It seems that some muslims also succumbed to this misguided emotionality, the chief succumbers being the Shia, and cannot contemplate the non-veracity of some ahadith and cannot tolerate those who expose the non-veracity however reasonably and for whatever pious reasons. Strong emotional bonds and blocks are involved and the Satan is ever ready to jump in and put the two well-meaning muslims at each others throats. Nauzu billah!
EPILOGUE
None of the above of course means that we are free to criticise people indiscriminately and tactlessly about claims and beliefs we ourselves find implausible or unrealistic. Normally people become so convinced of and addicted to their beliefs that attacking them frontally or at all may causes tremendous great upset to them and can even trigger violence and that sometimes on a massive scale. What is more, statements like hadith or mystic sayings may have their own metaphoric character and can then be explained, if they can be explained at all, in totally metaphoric terms like the mutashabihat of the Qur’an can. As such, each hadith demands some serious and responsible consideration to see whether it is a non-starter and must be ignored or it has some merits worth evaluating and taking on board even in partly or by way of pious caution. In this context it may be surmised that some persistent futuristic or eschatological beliefs and expectations, although not being scriptural enough, correspond to a need for archetypal heroes and deep yearnings and therefore serve to allay the anxiety, frustration and despair of sensitive but simplistic people and boost their ever-lagging morale. Such people should not be disturbed too much with arguments against their humble beliefs. In the case of Islam it is enough to consent and bear witness to the few basic tenets of Islam and approve of its commandments to be regarded a proper if not perfect muslim and peculiar secondary beliefs not clashing with any of the solid requirements of Islam may be kindly ignored and forgiven.
Lastly, these Hadith Studies of our Academy can only be summary primers on the vast science of Hadith and it is recommended that, equipped with the basics given, the student continues to build up on the foundations already laid by studying more and more ahadith from more and more books which can be regarded competent books, making a primary effort on studying Bukhari first and then the rest of the six or more. May Allah grant us ikhlas and understanding so that our souls are nurtured by the genuine ahadith of His Prophet sws on top of the incomparable nutrition coming from the Qur’an. Amen.