Well to be honest i'm a little bit of everything. My maternal side is protestant christian and my father's side is ahmadi muslim.
I consider myself an ahmadi muslim humanist. I also like to think there's a little bit of buddhism thrown into the mix.
Unlike most people, my religious denomination is not a statement of my affiliation but rather of my own belief. I consider myself to be of the same religion as those who espouse peace, love and compassion for their fellow human beings. Muslims, hindus, christians, buddhists, zoroastrians, pagans and even the odd wiccan belong to my religion :).
Oh i would appreciate it if people didn't make it a big issue that i call myself an ahmadi muslim.. I mean i know i am liable to prosecution and death on account of the fabulous blasphemy law of pakistan, which denies me the right to call myself a muslim, but i mean come on.. is that really necessary?
Anyhow regarding the hadith. I do not outright reject all hadith, but i do view them with scepticism. The fact is that in my world the authentication of hadith by scholars who lived hundreds of years after the holy prophet (pbuh) has very little value. Firstly, they were not guided by God in this authentication process, but rather by their own intellect and by oral history. Secondly, God gave complete guarantee for the Quran, but not for the hadith. But most important of all, God stated that everything man needs to know is in the Quran and he has given mankind the mental faculties to be able to understand the Quran. The hadith may be a help, and everybody is free to view the Quran through the vision of the hadith, but i personally believe that man should view the Quran through his own eyes. I would not counsel such if God had not guaranteed its authenticity and the complete lack of contradiction in it.
WHy quibble over the authenticity and relevance of hadith when the Quran is there to guide us?? I don't get it.
Particularly the mullahs tends to get furious at this thought and i believe i know why. It is because the hadith tend to limit the spectrum of possible interpretations of the Quran, and gives a greater freedom of personal understanding. that unfortunately is something abhorrent to those who wish to create uniformity in belief.
I think that God made 7 billion humans with each their own amazing intellect precisely to show how beautifully versatile and relevant this one book is to each and every individual. We should not be shunning diversity but rather embrace it. When we embrace it, that is when peace will finally occur. But until then we will ahve constant war between those who wish THEIR interpretation to become the single and unquestioned interpretation to be imposed on all.
War isn't caused by differences of opinion.. it is caused by non-acceptance of those differences.
So yeah one may read and accept the hadith by all means. I just think it is far more challenging and far healthier for a person to read the book itself rather than the guide to the book.
Posted 2 years ago on 18 Feb 2010 13:01
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