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An Alternative Approach to Dealing with Hadith

Posted on by Jad Abou Karroum

 

Sermon Introduction

Praise be to God. There is no other god except God.

I hope Ramadan went well for all of us. It is a month where most people eat less. Some people overeat after they break the fast, but most people eat less. Less food for the body but more food for the soul. So it is a nice package of good deeds which we fulfilled during the month that just passed, the month of Ramadan.

The Standard Approach : Looking at all verses mentioning Hadith

Let me get actually to the topic which I want to talk about today : I want to talk about an alternative approach to dealing with Hadith. As we know, the standard approach which we use to deal with Hadith is that we simply look at all the verses which talk about Hadith, and this approach is given in the Friday Sermon which I titled : “What does the Quran really say about Hadith ?” So if you find that video, you will see that the Quran actually does not tell us to follow Hadith. It actually speaks against Hadith except for cases when it can be used for historical sources, but not for religious purposes. It might be useful for historians, for scholars of history, for people maybe who want to study comparative history or things like that : It might be useful. But for religious purposes, for our religion, for us and for pretty much all the people, Hadith is not useful at all. It is actually against the Quran and in most cases it damages our life.

So for conclusion, our standard approach is that we do not follow Hadith for religious purposes. We do not obey Hadith for religious purposes. We do not believe that Hadith should be used for religious purposes.

The Alternative Approach: The Principle of Asking “Why”

There is another alternative approach which I want to introduce, especially because there is so many heated debates which lead to nothing. There is so many debates online : « Hadith or No Hadith ? Should we do Quran and Hadith ?… » .The debates are so heated sometimes. It is not even constructive. People will try to talk over each other and things like that. So a lot of times it is not even constructive. So an alternative approach would be, and it is not the only approach, but an alternative approach would be to just not deal with it, not try to answer the question. Instead of saying : “Oh, should we follow Hadith or should we not follow Hadith ?” , we use another verse in the Quran which can let us use another approach to Hadith and reach the same conclusions. And the verse I want to focus on today is :

[21:23] : “He cannot be questioned for His acts, but they will be questioned.”

The verse says God is never to be asked about anything He does, while all others are questioned. So basically, the conclusion is : If God says something, He should not be asked why He did it. He should not be asked why. But if others say or do something, they can be asked why. This is a principle. If God says it, you do not ask why. If someone else says it, you ask why. If someone else other than God says something, then you are allowed to ask why. And there is deep reasons for this.

Let’s say God tells us not to eat pork, it is really not useful to ask why anyway because there are billions of reasons why you should not eat pork, but all of them are small. It is only when you combine all of them together can we reach the conclusion that we shouldn’t eat pork. So asking God : “Why shouldn’t we eat pork ?”  does not really make sense :

  • I can say : “Oh, maybe it has parasites.” 
    • And someone can say : « Oh, that’s not a good enough reason. Maybe cows sometimes have parasites. Maybe not as much, but they do »
  • So if I say, “Oh, it’s good for the economy,” 
    • someone might say : “Oh yeah, but there are other things which are not that good for economy, we still do them.”
  • If I say : “Oh, pork has much fat so you’ll get fat.”
    • Someone might say : « Oh, but other things have lots of fat. There are other foods with lots of fat like butter. Should we not eat butter as well? »

So as you can see, if I try to answer the question why we shouldn’t eat pork, none of the arguments I can give are enough.

There is billions of arguments because God can think about all of them at the same time, and only when you combine all of them together can you reach the conclusion that we should not eat pork. There is so many other reasons. I do not even want to go there because we shouldn’t ask God why. God says do not eat pork. If we ask why, the best answer is because God says so. If God says do not eat pork, then do not eat pork. So that is the answer. The answer is always : « God said so ». And there is infinite reasons for it. So when we are dealing with what God said,  the question why is really not useful at all. Plus, it questions God’s authority. You do not ask someone who is higher authority : “Why do you do this? Why did you say that?”  God should ask that to us. We should not ask God that.

So basically, when God says something or does something, we do not ask why. But when humans do or say something, we ask why. We can ask why, especially if it does not make sense, we should ask why. This is the basic idea and we can use this for Hadith, even if we do not decide about Hadith at all. Let’s say we don’t want to go into those debates because sometimes they are very heated debates. Heated debates sometimes don’t help. Another way not to have heated debates is that we use this principle in the Quran which says that God should never be asked why, while others can be asked why, or all others will be asked why. We use this principle and we say every time someone brings something from the Quran, we do not ask why, but every time someone brings something from the Hadith, we ask why. And that pretty much shuts the conversation because pretty much almost all the religious leaders cannot tell you why.

Example 1: The Night of Destiny (Laylat al-Qadr)

For example :

  • According to one Hadith, the night of destiny is on the 27th night of Ramadan. 
  • According to another Hadith, the night of destiny is on the 25th.
  • According to another Hadith, the night of destiny is on the 19th.
  • According to another Hadith, the night of destiny is on the 21st.
  • According to another Hadith, the night of destiny is on the 23rd.
  • According to another Hadith, the night of destiny is on the last 10 nights of Ramadan.
  • According to another Hadith, the night of destiny is on the odd nights of the last 10 nights of Ramadan.
  • Another Hadith says the prophet knew when the night of destiny was, but he forgot : Someone asked him a question while he was thinking about it; someone interrupted him and he forgot.
  • Another Hadith says that the night of destiny changes constantly.
  • Another Hadith says that we cannot know when.

So all of these Hadith say different things. If you ask the scholars : “Oh, how come there’s so much contradiction about this?” They will probably tell you something like : “Oh, you know, some Hadith are authentic, you know, verified, others are not authentic.”  But if you ask them specifically these 10 Hadith we mentioned, which have different answers for the same topic, if you ask them : “Are these actually the authentic ones, (what they call Sahih) the verified ones ?”  They consider all of them authentic or verified, according to them. So then how come they give you different answers?

And the way to deal with it is to ask them why. All you have to do is ask why, and they cannot give you an answer. You are allowed to ask why because humans are allowed to ask a human being why, because Hadith, at the end of the day, was spoken by a human. They say that it is the prophet’s word, so we can ask why, but we cannot ask God why. So all we have to do is ask why:

If they say the night of destiny according to Hadith is on the 27th, why? Why should it be on the 27th? Can you give me a logical reason why? Why not 28th? What is so special about 27? Why not 29? If Hadith says that it is on the odd nights of Ramadan, why? Why should it be that it changes? Why does it change? Why does not it always stay the same? Why? Just ask why. And it sort of shuts the conversation. They cannot give you an answer. If they give you an answer, then it is logical, then it makes sense. But all you have to do is ask why.

And honestly, it is so interesting how they do not ask why. Millions of Sunnis are told Hadith that the Night of Destiny is on the 27th; they never ask why. They do not have the guts, the courage to ask why : “Why is it on the 27th?”  and they cannot give you an answer. And someone might say to us : “Oh, but you do not even know some of the answers.”  Wait a minute. Let me give you an example, we say that Ramadan has sometimes 29 days, sometimes 30 days. If you ask me why, I can tell you. Anyone can tell you because it is correct. Why does Ramadan have sometimes 29 days and sometimes 30 days? Why is it that specific number of days? Because that is how long it takes the moon to go around the earth. It is from a new moon until a new moon. I give the definition of a new moon in another video (Ramadan Calendar). And it takes the moon about 29.5 days to do that rotation, to go around the earth. It takes the moon 29.5 days, and sometimes it happens to be on the side which is closer to 29, sometimes it happens to be closer to 30. But it’s about 29.5. So depending where we cut, depending on when the day happens, so it is either going to lean towards 30 or towards 29. So that is the reason. We can answer it. But if you ask them : “Why is it on the 27th? Why is the night of the destiny on the 27th?”  They cannot tell you why because they do not know. And they still follow it despite not knowing.

In the video where I speak about the night of destiny (When is the Night of Destiny ?), I tell people why is the night of destiny on that specific date. It happens to be most of the time on the 27th, but there is nothing special about number 27, or number 25, or number 23 for this matter, not even number 19. There is nothing special about that. But they do not ask why. So if we just ask them : “Why is this specific thing in the Hadith?” they cannot tell you why on the 27th. So all you have to do is ask why. Whenever they bring a Hadith, all you have to do is ask why. If they tell you : “Oh, you are supposed to spit when the devil tempts you or whatever.” Why? If they cannot tell you why, then it is not good enough. It has to be logical. Anything humans bring up has to be logical. But if God says it, even if it is not logical we have to follow it because God has billions of reasons. God can think about all the things at once. Humans cannot think about everything at once. So if there is some truth to it, they should be able to explain it.

All we have to do is ask why. That’s one example :The Night of Destiny. If we just ask them why, they cannot explain it. So therefore, we don’t have to follow it, you can say : “Oh, I would have followed that Hadith, but you did not tell me why. Sorry, you said 27th. Why? Oh, you do not know? Oh, so I do not follow it. Thank you for your suggestion.”

Let’s repent.

Example 2: Zakat-al-Fitr and Changing Societal Contexts

Praise be to God. There is no other god except God.

Let’s take another example where we just ask why when someone brings a Hadith, and this sort of solves the issue. Let me repeat again : We should not ask why when someone brings something from the Quran. We should not say why. We do not ask God why. But when someone brings Hadith, which is a human saying, then we ask why. All we have to do is ask why.

So millions of Sunnis and Shia believe in something which is called Zakat-al-Fitr. Basically, the idea of this is that during Ramadan, according to them, you are supposed to give about 3 kilograms of flour, of wheat, or maybe dates. So about 3 kilograms of wheat you are supposed to give to the poor. This is what they call Zakat-al-Fitr, and it should be done before the end of Ramadan so that your Ramadan is accepted. That is what they believe in. And all you have to do to tackle this is ask them why. Why? Why should I give 3 kilograms of flour during Ramadan? And no one can give you a reason. All the scholars had 14 centuries to think about this and they cannot tell you why. All you have to ask them is why : “Why should I give three kilograms?” They will tell you : “Oh, Muhammad says so.” But that is not good enough because we can ask human beings why. I would even Muhammad ask why:  « Why 3 kilograms ? Why during Ramadan ? Why wheat ? Why dates ? Why not rice? » So all you have to do is ask them why, and you will see that if they do not give you an answer, you do not have to follow it, you do not have to if they do not give you a logical answer.

So regarding Zakat-al-Fitr, unfortunately, I can give an answer and to show that it does not apply anymore. Let me just tell you the idea behind what they call Zakat-al-Fitr, which is the Zakat during Ramadan, and then let me demolish it, tell you why that idea does not apply anymore. I think probably there was a reason, or else I don’t think it would remain in history like that, but they cannot explain the reason to us now, so we do not have to follow it. Let me actually help them. See, I’m helping their side. Let me help them give a reason because none of the so-called Muslim scholars, the Sunnis and the Shia, can give a reason why Zakat-al-Fitr should be done like that or why should it exist. So let me help them first so then I can destroy it. Let me help them with their own arguments :

The idea of Zakat-al-Fitr is that in the past, during Muhammad’s time, unlike today, people would store the food. They would not go to shops to buy stuff. They had a market, but they would buy the material, the food, for the whole year. So basically, they bought the food when it was harvested. If you needed flour or something, you would buy it when it was harvested from whoever was selling it, if you did not harvest it yourself, and then you would store it for the whole year. You would have a depot in your home, and then you would have food for the whole year. That is how they did it typically. Even to this day in some poorer countries they still do it like that, but very rarely, almost never. Traditionally, that is how it was done. People would buy food for the whole year, and then what would happen is they would sort of try to estimate how much food they need for the whole year for the whole family.

Let’s just imagine we live in the past. Let’s say I have 20 family members and I am going to estimate that this year we need this many bags of flour, this many bags of meat (they will dry it because it would go bad), and this many bottles of oil or milk (they will make it into cheese so that it lasts longer). They would make sure that they had the basics. So they had these basics, staple foods. And they would make sure that they have it for the whole year. This was in the past. That estimation would be done by the family head, and he would make sure that everyone has food for the whole year. And they would go in the market and buy it, he will even estimate how many cows he needed to buy so they can slaughter them at a certain point. So that is what they did.

At the same time, they did not know exactly when Ramadan will start and end because they did not have calculation methods like us : computers and scientists and astronomers. They did not know exactly how to calculate it; they had approximations, but they were not very accurate. So they would rely on the moon. It was normal then to rely on the moon. Today we have really accurate methods, but back then it was not very accurate. So they would just rely on the moon. When the new moon of the ninth month happened, they would start Ramadan. And then when the new moon again happened, they would end Ramadan. And in that circumstance, imagine they had estimated the whole food for the year, but something which they had not estimated was that part of that food was not used because they had fasted. And because of the fasting, they ate a little bit less. And the Quran says : « [2:219] They tell you what to give : Give the excess. » Excess meaning what is left.

So basically, they just realized : “Oh, wait a minute, we have more food than we thought.”  It was like just a feeling. They did not go into specific calculations, but let’s say Muhammad said : “Oh, wait a minute, actually during this month we ate a little bit less, so technically we have more food, and that’s excess, that’s more than we needed, so let’s give it away.” And that’s pretty much how much less people eat, about three kilograms of wheat, is about 10,000 calories. And during a month, a person typically eats about 70,000 calories. And so that’s about one-seventh or one-eigth of the food which you would have eaten in other months, you ate about one-eighth less calories, which means that was left.

Why is that estimation approximate? It is approximate because let’s say you eat one less meal, which would be actually one-third less because you eat breakfast, you eat lunch, you eat dinner, typically someone might eat that. During Ramadan you don’t eat lunch, but you can eat the dinner and you can eat the breakfast earlier. Let’s say eat one-third less because whatever you don’t eat at lunch, you can kind of make up during dinner, but you cannot make up everything because the stomach doesn’t allow to eat two meals at once. So probably, when you break the fast, you probably eat one and a half meals. So that means that during Ramadan, you didn’t eat 70,000 calories if you estimate it, but you probably ate 60,000 calories. So 10,000 calories less, which means that you have 10,000 calories of food left, and typically that’s left in either wheat or dates or whatever. In that time it was left in that, so they gave it away, the excess. So that is the logical reason behind it.

So if someone asked me during that time why, I would explain why, and they would probably do it. But I can also tell them that these don’t apply as much. So in some ways it does not apply at all, but in some ways it applies very little. So it really doesn’t apply as much; it’s insignificant today. Why? The question is why now.

Why we should not even bother to think about Zakat-al-Fitr ? 

First of all, we don’t store the food for one year like in the past. So our estimation was not really thrown off. We don’t even have enough food for Ramadan stored; we go to buy pretty much every week or every other day. We do shopping every week, every two or three days, in some places every day, some places every two weeks, it depends. So there was no estimation in the first place at all, so there was no excess.

Second of all, let me kind of sort of tell you who should do Zakat-al-Fitr, maybe that is the better approach. If there was any excess, it was the food shops. Here in the US and Canada we have Walmart, Costco,… In other countries they have different shops. So the food shops did an estimation about the whole year, how much people need, and very likely because of Ramadan they sold a little bit less, so they should give. So my answer to Zakat-al-Fitr is we don’t have to give it; it applies to big food shops for the most part. So it’s a matter for businesses, for the food shops, if they want to give a sort of present with flour, it’s their problem. So Zakat-al-Fitr today for us is almost insignificant.

Plus in addition to that, in the past during Muhammad’s time, they had a really regular sleeping schedule. So the fact that they did not eat lunch during Ramadan meant that they ate less food. A lot of people today just sleep during the day, so they still eat the same amount of food. By the way, that is allowed, because then you pay through worse health. If you sleep during the day during Ramadan, that is because you do not have a good sleeping schedule, and because of that you will pay through health effects later on in life. You will be older faster, or not very healthy, because it is not a very healthy lifestyle to stay up during the night and sleep during the day. It’s not as healthy. It is allowed though, it is allowed, but it is not as healthy. So what I’m saying is Zakat-al-Fitr does not even apply today because you did not necessarily ate less food during Ramadan. For them during Muhammad’s time, they ate necessarly less food because that is how they lived. They did not use electricity like today. So pretty much Zakat-al-Fitr does not even apply for another reason, is because we do not necessarily eat less food.

And someone might say : “Oh, but does fasting count if we sleep during the day in Ramadan?”  Yes it does count, because even though you might not have eaten less food,  due to the fact that you slept during the day and stayed up during the night, you have worse health, and so you paid for it. You paid for it in another way through health instead of through food. So for you, it would be to give some health back or to have a better diet outside of Ramadan, a better sleeping schedule. That is Zakat-al-Fitr for today. That is our Zakat-al-Fitr. Who even uses that 3 Kilograms of flour they give? Very few people use it today. If you do what they say you should do, it would probably cost more because you do not have it at home. They had it at home. We would have to go to the shop, some people willspend probably more fuel than the actual deed. So do more bad than good by turning the car on or walking or taking the bus or whatever, having to go there, buying the flour. Who are you going to give it to? So it just does not apply.

And all we have to do to give an answer to this is when they say you have to do Zakat-al-Fitr, all you have to do is ask them why, and they cannot give you a reason. I gave you a reason, but as we can see, it only applies to the past, and today it might apply to the big food brands, big food companies, the companies who store the flour, the companies who store the oil. It does apply to them, but they are companies, they are not people. So who cares if they give it or not? Companies will not be judged during the last day; people will be judged, but not companies, not businesses. The people will be judged.

That is the answer. I gave you two reasons why Zakat-al-Fitr does not apply, there is more reasons, but even the parts which do apply are very insignificant, they are so small. So it is probably not 3 kilograms, it’s probably 3-10 grams. Who is going to calculate that? Does it even make sense to talk about it? We do so much worse things in other areas. So to all the Sunnis and the Shia who say : “Oh, you should do Zakat-al-Fitr …”  I think it would be better for them if they did not honk their cars when they drive. That would do better deeds that would be bigger than Zakat-al-Fitr which they give, which is kind of almost useless now.

I was to India in a heavily Sunni populated area, so-called «Muslim», and they were honking the horns all day long in traffic. Even inside homes you can hear it. There is so much traffic, of course, and everyone honks the car all day long. You can hear it all day long. Each individual doesn’t do it all day long, but you can hear it all day long. That is so stressful. If they just stopped that, that would be better than Zakat-al-Fitr. And exactly those people will actually bring the ideas of Zakat-al-Fitr and similar things. They are talking about 3 grams of flour because today three kilograms does not apply as we concluded. There is no reason for 3 kilograms anymore, let the shops do it. But 3 grams might apply. So they spend hours and hours talking about it, and even I am forced to talk about it today. I did not even want to talk about it, but I am forced to talk about it because they mention it so much. They talk about three grams of flour. That would be my estimation how important it is today: three grams of flour. So they talk about 10 cents while honking all year long, giving each other stress.

And by the way, that honking either does some psychological damage or, if it doesn’t, it makes the person more mean because the person has to learn how to how to cut off all the influence from the outside. So when someone tells them something important, they have learned how to how to block their ears. They can just block their mind. It is easier for them to block the mind because of all that honking. Or if they don’t, they have some psychological damage. There is too much pressure. So they would have been better off if they just did not honk and did not do Zakat-al-Fitr.

The Illustration of the Forest and Ridiculous Rules

What do I mean that Zakat-al-Fitr today has become very insignificant?

Let me just give an example : Let’s say you throw a wood branch on the ground, your mom will say : ‘Oh, don’t throw a wood branch on the ground at home.’” And that’s probably a good advice. Don’t throw the branch on the ground, like it is a clean home, why should you throw the branch? But maybe you’re walking in the forest, how significant is it to apply the same principle in the forest? “Oh, don’t throw a branch in the forest.” Why? There is so many branches in the forest! What is it going to do? It might do a little bit of bad, but it is insignificant. How bad can it be to throw a branch in the forest? It is full of branches! So that is how Zakat-al-Fitr is today. It is like they are trying to protect the environment from something in a place where it’s full of that. It is insignificant. It does not apply in so many ways. But even the part which applies is insignificant. The word insignificant means we should not even bother to deal with it.

These illogical things only survive in places where authorities interfere. Let me give you an example : In North Korea, they prohibit the officials from using the word « ice cream » or « hamburger » They are not allowed these words. In North Korea, if you’re an official, you cannot say « ice cream » or « hamburger » because that is too Western. And these ridiculous rules only can exist when there is authorities who will make them, because otherwise people have better logic than that. If they use logic, they would probably reach better conclusions.

Let me give you an example where authorities didn’t interfere : In the past, people did not wear shoes at home. It’s quite logical; you don’t want to make the home unclean. It’s quite logical. But if you go to an office, should you apply the same rule? It’s kind of a home, it’s a building, it’s inside at work. Should you remove your shoes as well, or is working with shoes just fine? I think it is just fine. So when authorities did not interfere, people just naturally realized that : “Oh, wait a minute, it does not apply anymore.”  So they told me at home not to wear shoes, that kind of makes sense. But Not always, people have pets at home these days, why should removing the shoes be a rule? Or the outside is sometimes clean. Some countries really have a very clean outside, so it’s kind of pretty much like walking inside as well. So in that case, it is not very important to remove shoes. In a lot of cases though, it is important to remove the shoes, probably in most cases. But when you go to an office, why should you remove the shoes? Do you want other people to smell your feet? Should you smell their feet in an office where you work and sweat all day long or sit at the desk? Why should you remove the shoes? So it does not make sense. If you let people use logic in that circumstance, they will reach the right conclusion.

They would have reached the right conclusion even about Zakat-al-Fitr if they used logic, but unfortunately, authorities tell them something else and people are too afraid to think for themselves. So it is only authorities which sort of keep the idea of Zakat-al-Fitr existing; other than that, people would use logic and they would reach a better conclusion, they would say : « Oh, three kilograms of flour, I have to go and buy it, that does not really make sense in today’s world ». They would reach the right conclusion if especially if they knew why would Muhammad say so.

All we have to do is ask them why, and I helped them with answering the why. And answering the why also tells us that for today Zakat-al-Fitr is not significant, and in some aspects it does not apply at all. I just gave two examples of dealing with Hadith in an alternative way by simply asking why. All you have to do is ask why. Why should we do that ? Why is that rule so? Why should we spit on our left? Why should we do this? If you just ask why, then you can resolve the issue of the Hadith. We should not ask why when it comes to the Quran; we should never ask God why, but we ask the people why.

Administrative Announcements : How to Join the Submitters

Just another small administrative thing before we leave. Thanks to God, a lot of people have recently sent me emails about that they wanted to join. But like my inbox is really full, so I have not replied to many emails. And as some of you who work know, when you don’t answer emails, they they just pile up, more and more emails. I figured that a lot of those emails were from a lot of people that wanted to join the Submitters. So I had delayed this for a while. So God willing, if you are listening and you are one of those people who wanted to join the Submitters and I have not answered your email, let me answer it through here. I have done it through the website now. You do not have to send an email.

So if you go to our website, to the main page here, in the end of the page, I added this part:

 

How do I join the Submitters?

To become a submitter, you have to:

1. Attend the Live Friday Gatherings.

and

2. Fill the Public Zakat Pledge Form

 

All you have to do is click this last link in the main page of our website, and then you fill the form. And then when I have time, I will check whether you filled it correctly, and if you did, God willing, when I have time I will add you to the group of Submitters. Whoever is listening to the live Friday Gathering, all you have to do is go to this link and fill the Zakat form, and God willing, when I have time I will check who did it, and then I will add you to the list of Submitters on our website. And that’s it.

For those who have to do the contact prayer, do the contact prayer. For the rest of you, peace be upon you.

 

Friday Sermon by: Alban Fejza, Online Congregation Director

 

For more information:

When is the Night of Destiny?

What does the Quran Really Say About Hadith?

Quran: All You Need for Salvation

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