Madame Blossom's Book of Poems

Friday, May 19, 2006

Authenticity

I was springcleaning my email at work, deleting old emails, which were suppose to be deleted a year ago, when I came across the following email, (names and message have been changed to protect the identity of the person(s), so as not to break any of my company's ISM - Internal Security Management rule.)

"Dear Peter,

Doris say, Harry say, Michelle say that Mr John Doe will have the cake and eat it too. "

You see.. this is what we refer to as 'chain of narrators' when we talk about hadith. It's non existent nowadays, except for what I found in the above email. Even then, it was laughed upon when my colleagues read it, if I remember correctly.

But they don't realise, that it can help verify the content of the message. The person, listed in that chain of narrators, will surely correct the content, if they find that the final narrator, have actually misunderstood his/her original message.

In the above email, the 2nd and 3rd narrators (i.e. Doris and Harry) were being copied in the email. Now even though Michelle was not in the CC copy, Harry, who would be reading this email, if he was really working, would be ensuring that he is being quoted correctly, especially when it is quoted that he quoted someone else.

Ensuring authenticity is an important task, that is not deemed as important or perhaps always overlooked, in the current westernised world. We don't have standard work flows ensuring authenticity.

Yup, I'm still very much amazed by the authenticity and how and how much Muslims do, to ensure it in our religion, Islam.

Al Quran is authenticated, as Allah SWT promised. Many a great Muslims memorise the Quran and any mistakes in print is always spotted.

Lo! We, even We, reveal the Reminder, and lo! We verily are its Guardian.
Al Hijr 15 : 9


As for hadiths, previous scholars have helped us do so (as I mentioned before), by studying the narrations and the narrators, and making classifications of those authentic, not very authentic and false ones. Read more about the Science of Hadith >>

Sohih Bukhari is said to be the most authentic book, after Al Quran. Imam Bukhari, sacrificed and worked very very hard in his lifetime in his effort to consolidate only authentic hadiths. ('work very hard' NOT in modern day context, where walking up 2 flights of stairs is considered hard work!) And it is said that before each single hadith is added into his collection of hadith sohih, he would do the 2 rakaat prayers, asking for guidance from Allah SWT. May Allah bless him and reward him for the tremendous effort.

SO, after all these, how can any of us, still doubt or not feel strongly about the truthfulness and greatness of our religion??
Allahu'alam.

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