The truth about the claim of following Hadith without Fiqh

It should be remembered that in these times, there is nothing more safe than following any of the 4 Imams as Hadhrat Shah Waliullah (May Allah shower His mercy on him) has also written.  If somebody feels embarrassed of the words “Taqleed” and wants to step out of this fortress, sooner or later, he/she will fall prey to some charlatan, because everyone is not up to the task of answering all the objections and proving the authenticity of one’s religion.  In this case, they will surely end up following someone who is not at all concerned with religion and faith and is only interested in becoming the leader of a group of ignoramuses and make them follow him.

 

Some people claim that we don’t want others to follow us but want them to act upon the Hadith.  This phrase works like magic on the hearts of common Muslims, but the scholars realize that it is not for everyone to act on the Hadith.  It requires a very exceptional jurisprudential aptitude.  Just see, when Hadhrat ‘Umar (May Allah be well pleased with him) argued with Hadhrat Abu Bakr Siddiq (May Allah be well pleased with him) that waging a war against those who didn’t give Zakaat is not correct, he quoted a rigorously authenticated Hadith, which was known to both of them.  Even after this, he felt that Jihad with them was necessary and only Allah knows which verses of the Holy Quran and which Hadith were crossing his mind that he felt that acting on this one Hadith was not correct.  Eventually, all the Companions abandoned this Hadith and acted upon the deduction of Hadhrat Abu Bakr Siddiq (May Allah be well pleased with him).  This shows that only those Hadith and their meanings are reliable which have reached us through the Jurisprudents (Mujtahid) and if it was compulsory to act upon a rigorously authenticated Hadith, Hadhrat Abu Bakr Siddiq (May Allah be well pleased with him) wouldn’t have dared to use his own deduction.  Thus, the Hadith of Sahih Bukhari are worthy of being acted upon only when some Jurisprudent has ruled them to be so.

 

Thus, for those who are not Jurisprudents, the only way to gain reassurance is to check whether a reliable Jurisprudent has declared a Hadith as being worthy of being acted upon or not.  If they start upon Hadith that anyone quotes, then the followers of this particular person will become children’s toys.  No one can become a Jurisprudent (Mujtahid) in these times as it is necessary for a Jurisprudent to gain reassurance about every ruling that this is really the intent of the Law-Maker and reassurance about any religious issue can’t be gained unless and until all the verses of the Holy Quran and Hadith and all the Traditions of the Companions about that issue are known to one as Hadhrat Shah Waliullah (May Allah shower His mercy on him) has written in “Insaaf.”  That rigorously authenticated Hadith and Traditions can be lost is an established fact.  Then how can the Hadith we know today be equal to those millions.  Then among the Hadith, those Hadith are reliable which tell the final choice of the Holy Prophet (Sallallahu alaihi wa sallam) in a matter as Imam Bukhari clarifies in Sahih Bukhari.  When millions of Hadith have been lost to us, then many thousands of these have also been lost.  Of course, if the authors of the Sihah Sittah (the six most authentic books of Hadith) had written in their books that they had received all Hadith, but out of some consideration, they had ignored all useless Hadith and recorded only useful Hadith in their books, then relying on them, we would’ve been able to say that the lost Hadith had no part to play in religion and their being lost was itself good as it absolved us of a needless responsibility to safeguard them, but event his hasn’t been proved that any Hadith-experts has claimed that he (or she) has received all the Hadith and I have selected and recorded only those Hadith which mention the last preference of the Holy Prophet (Sallallahu alaihi wa sallam).  If it were so, then there would’ve been only 1 Hadith in the Sihah about every topic, although in Sahih Bukhari and in other books of the Sihah there are contradictory Hadith as well, which shows that their practice was not to write only those Hadith which abrogate others.

 

This shows that even in Sahih Bukhari there are Hadith acting upon whom is compulsory and Hadith which are not.  Now tell me, is it possible for those who claim the rank of Jurisprudent in these times to learn of all rigorously authenticated Hadith and abrogating Hadith which will reassure them.  The only way this reassurance can be gotten is by assuming that those millions of Hadith don’t exist and that the Holy Prophet (Sallallahu alaihi wa sallam) never said this, but this would be against the facts and deduction based on such would be false based on a falsehood.

 

If we look at this with justice, we understand that in this kind of situation, the Hadith of the Sihah would be considered a godsend and we would not have the summary of all the Hadith.  But, when it is established by the words of the Elders that the Hanafi School of Fiqh is the summary and essence of most Hadith, then it is but logical to take as an equivalent to all Hadith.

 

I don’t say this on my own, but the Hadith-experts themselves say that Abu Hanifa (May Allah be well pleased with him) has preserved Hadith.