I had to be a Witness ...

I had to be a Witness to see it so clearly. The title may not suggest what I intend to discuss; however,I am trying to capture the readers attention by it.

While I was attending a Sales and Communication course this morning, I had an epiphany. It made me visualize first hand how the Ahadith (Plural Hadith) have little credibility.


Our instructor was trying to emphasize the importance of taking notes and listening. So he made the group do the following exercise:

He asked 7 people to leave the room first, and then explained the exercise. He was going to read the remaining group (I was one of them) a short story which had a few details. Then he would ask one person to come back into the room. After that he would read the story to the first person alone while asking him not to talk, take notes, nor ask questions; but rather just listen.

Once he finished telling the story to the first person, he asked the second person to walk in the room and asked him again to listen. Only this time, he asked the first person to tell the story as he remembers it. Then asked the third person to walk in and so on ....

As one can imagine, this story went from someone's ear to his tongue and then to another's ear ... By the time the last person restated the story as he remembered, it was a lot shorter, had erroneous details, and even the main message was lost.

Now all of this happened within 20 minutes to half an hour, if not less. I urge whomever is reading this to experiment with this if they can find a willing group of people (9 or more).

Of course after witnessing this, it dawned on me ... Isn't this how the Hadeeth is supposed to have been passed along?

Now is it possible to assume that the Hadeeth is not prone to errors knowing what we know now? After all it was narrated by at least 5 different people over almost 220 years and not 20 minutes.

Therefore, Muslims should not base their lives on Ahadith, nor let it be the base of their religion.

NOTE: To be fair most Ahadith are probably a bit shorter than the story we were told. However, the exercise is still very much valid.


Of course most Muslims reading this will quickly go into denial, start throwing accusations at me and so on. After all how can something they have believed in for so long could be prone to error? How can something their fathers and their great grand fathers have believed in for so long be wrong? How?

The Quran scorns people who have that kind of attitude and gives examples about them. I shall talk about that in a future post.

Now with what I said so far, many people would give me excuses about how Arabs had great memory back then, etc ...

Fine, that's not the only argument I have to state to support my claim. The next argument is, why didn't the Prophet Peace be upon Him order "Katabat il Wahi" his literate loyal followers to write his Ahadeeth (traditions) down? In fact Muslim scholars tell you that he deliberately asked them to refrain from that - then they go on explaining the reason as to not have that mixed with the Quran. The question the becomes: Why do Muslims choose to ignore such an order; while they are so adamant on growing their beards because the Prophet pbuh "commanded them" for example?

My third argument would be to take the Ahadeeth themselves and scrutinize them. One would easily find many contradictions amongst the ahadeeth. I will list some as proof later on.

My fourth argument is that although not many, but some Ahadeeth even contradict the Quran. Ironically some Muslims would rather listen to the Hadeeth than the Quran. Thinking that the Hadeeth is more clear and easier to understand.

My fifth argument is that Muslims believe Christianity and Judaism to be God's religions. We also believe that the Old Testament,and New Testament were God sent in the past; however Muslims say that they have been tampered with or forged if you will ... Either through error or deliberate manipulation. My question is this then. If the Torah was a God sent holy book which lost its purity and was forged, by what logic do you think that Hadeeth is immune to such possibilities?

Finally the last argument is, that Sunna and Shiia both have Haeeth which each group believes in. Neither of the two recognize the others ahadeeth and in fact they don't recognize most of the narrators or Sahaba the followers of The Prophet. Regardless of which group you sympathize with or belong to. Either they are both wrong, or one of them is wrong while the other is right. Regardless of who is right if any, the point is that one of the Ahadeeth collection is error prone and politically motivated. Therefore, has no credibility.

I don't like to go into the Shiia/Sunna debate here. This is not the post for it. I just would like to say that I believe in Islam and only Islam prior to the death of Mohammad pbuh.


I shall leave you with my humble opinion:

I believe the Quran to be the basis for Islam and for it to be your Guide. I do find Ahadith interesting to read specifically those ones that predict the end of time.

Wa Alsalamo Alaikom ...