Understanding Islam Through Hadis

Description

About the book :

Understanding Islam through Hadis is a book by Sri Ram Swarup. The book is a study, based on the English translation by Abdul Hamid Siddiqi of the Sahih Muslim, the second most important collection of Sunni hadiths.  Ram Swarup states in the foreword that “we have quoted extensively and faithfully from it.”

Islam is not merely a theology, or a statement about Allah and his relationship with His creatures.  Besides containing doctrinal and creedal material, it deals with social, penal, commercial, ritualistic, and ceremonial matters.  It enters into everything, even into such private areas as one’s dress, marrying, and mating.  In the language of the Muslim theologians, Islam is a complete and completed religion.

It is equally political and military.  It has much to do with statecraft, and it has a very specific view of the world peopled by infidels.  Since most of the world is still infidel, it is very important for those who are not Muslims to understand Islam.

The sources of Islam are two: the QurAn and the HadIs (Sayings or Traditions), usually called the Sunnah (customs), both having their center in Muhammad.  The QurAn contains the Prophets revelations (wahy); the HadIs, all that he did or said, or enjoined, forbade or did not forbid, approved or disapproved.  The word HadIs, singular in form (pl. ahAdIs), is also used collectively for all the traditions taken together, for the whole sacred tradition.

Muslim theologians make no distinction between the QurAn and the HadIs.  To them both are works of revelation or inspiration.  The quality and degree of the revelation in both works is the same; only the mode of expression is different.  To them, the HadIs is the QurAn in action, revelation made concrete in the life of the Prophet.  In the QurAn, Allah speaks through Muhammad; in the Sunnah, He acts through him.  Thus Muhammad’s life is a visible expression of Allah’s utterances in the QurAn.  God provides the divine principle, Muhammad the living pattern.  No wonder, then, that Muslim theologians regard the QurAn and the HadIs as being supplementary or even interchangeable.  To them, the HadIs is wahy ghair matlU (unread revelation, that is, not read from the Heavenly Book like the QurAn but inspired all the same); and the QurAn is hadIs mutwAtir, that is, the Tradition considered authentic and genuine by all Muslims from the beginning.

Thus the QurAn and the HadIs provide equal guidance.  Allah with the help of His Prophet has provided for every situation.  Whether a believer is going to a mosque or to his bedroom or to the toilet, whether he is making love or war, there is a command and a pattern to follow.  And according to the QurAn, when Allah and His Apostle have decided a matter, the believer does not have his or her own choice in the matter (33:36).

About the Author : 

Ram Swarup was born in 1920 as the son of a banker in Sonipat, Haryana.  He earned a degree in Economics from Delhi University in 1941. He joined the Gandhian movement and acted as the overground contact (“postbox”) for underground activists including Aruna Asaf Ali during the Quit India agitation of 1942.

Initially, Ram Swarup saw Gandhism as the alternative to Communism, and he has never really rejected Gandhism. He continued to explore the relevance of Gandhism to real-life problems, e.g. in his booklet Gandhian Economics (1977). Gandhian inspiration is also palpable in his The Hindu View of Education (1971), the text of a speech given before the convention of the RSS student organization Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad. But gradually, he moved from the Gandhian version of Hinduism to a more comprehensive understanding of the ancient Hindu tradition.

Ram Swarup was assertive about ‘ Sanathana Dharma ‘, Hindu culture, Hindu civilization, Hindu society, Hinduism as a whole and above all for things, issues and ideals Hindu in character.