Voices of Islam (28 page)

To know things deeply and to understand The loom of God weaves wisdom into man.

The Bridge

Because there cannot be two Absolutes The Truth is that there is no god but God. All beauty blossoms from a sacred root

And everything we love flows from the Good.

This knowledge is a bridge to Paradise. These words, forever new, can set us free. Each day we rise and walk into the light,

The heart knows more than what the eye can see.

10
‌

T
HE
S
UNNA
:
T
HE
W
AY OF THE
P
ROPHET
M
UHAMMAD

•

Hamza Yusuf Hanson

From the time of the Prophet Muhammad to the present day, the
Sunna,
the Way of the Prophet, has had a profound influence on the daily life of Mus- lims, providing guidance in both the celestial and the mundane aspects of their existence. From the way Muslims raise their open palms in prayer to the way they enter and exit their homes, their source of guidance is the Sunna of the Prophet as handed down through generations from fathers to sons, mothers to daughters, teachers to pupils, and friends to one another. The centrality of the Sunna in their lives is such that when the name of the Prophet Muhammad is mentioned, both speaker and listener follow it with a prayer of peace and blessings upon him.

Calligraphic inscriptions of
Hadith,
the Prophet Muhammad’s sayings, are found in almost every Muslim’s house. And although it might be the death of a loved one that causes a person to pull a book of prophetic wisdom off the shelf, Muslims will at some time or another read his words as recorded by the great Hadith scholars of the past and derive sustenance from them. When a child is born into a Muslim family, the rituals surrounding its birth— whether it be the chewed date given to the newborn as its first taste, the shav- ing of its hair on the seventh day, or its circumcision—are all derived from the Sunna. When Muslims marry, they often recite the Prophet’s marriage ser- mon at the wedding, and when they die, it is in accordance with the Sunna that the body is washed, wrapped, prayed over, and lowered into its fi

earthly abode. From cradle to grave, Muslims are infl enced, in greater or lesser degrees, by the Sunna of the Prophet Muhammad.

The Sunna is the second most important source of authority and legisla- tion in Islam after the Qur’an. Scholars of Islamic jurisprudence base the foundation of Islamic Law, the
Shari‘a,
on four primary sources: the Qur’an, the Sunna, the consensus of legal scholars (
ijma‘
), and analogical reasoning (
qiyas
). This chapter explores the differences of opinion among authoritative

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Voices of Tradition

Muslim scholars as to the precise meaning and application of the word
Sunna.
It also examines a number of important issues related to the Sunna, including the basis of its authority, its relation to the major Hadith collec- tions, its role in the development of Islamic jurisprudence, the contribution of women in collecting and authenticating the Hadith and the Sunna, and the significance of the Sunna in the Sufi tradition. Finally, this chapter exam- ines some of the modern and postmodern critiques of the Sunna, the responses of Muslim scholars to these critiques, and the weighty problems modern Muslims face because of the divergent views on the Sunna.

THE QUR’ANIC BASIS FOR THE AUTHORITY OF THE SUNNA

Islam
connotes ‘‘submission’’ or ‘‘surrender.’’ According to the Qur’an, it is the true religion of God (Qur’an 3:19). An adult moral agent who enters into this covenant of surrender is a
Muslim,
one who submits to the will of God. Muslims believe that God communicates His will through divine revelation. Like Judaism, which has both a written and an oral tradition in the Pentateuch and the Talmud, respectively, the central traditions of Islam are twofold: the Qur’an, which Muslims accept in its entirety as the revealed Word of God, and the Sunna, which includes the inspired sayings, acts, and tacit approvals of the Prophet Muhammad. Both the Qur’an and the Sunna were taught by the Prophet Muhammad. The Qur’an, however, was written down in its entirety during the Prophet’s lifetime and was gathered into a sin- gle collected work (known as the
mushaf
) after his death. The Sunna was transmitted orally and was written down haphazardly by the first two gener- ations of Muslims. After approximately 70 years, the process of systematically collecting the sayings, acts, and approvals of the Prophet began and contin- ued well into the third century of Islamic history.

According to the majority of Muslim scholars, the basis of the authority of the Sunna is found in the Qur’an. One verse that establishes the authority of the Sunna states: ‘‘Take whatever the Messenger has brought you, and avoid whatever he has prohibited’’ (Qur’an 59:7). Early scholars understood this verse to refer to the Sunna of the Prophet Muhammad. The jurist Muham- mad ibn Idris al-Shafi (d. 820) was the formulator of the principles of Islamic jurisprudence (
usul al-fi
). In his famous work,
al-Risala
(The Epistle), he notes that in the Qur’an, the word ‘‘Book’’ (meaning the Qur’an) is paired seven times with the word ‘‘wisdom’’ (
hikma
). For Shafi‘i, the Book and the Wisdom are the Qur’an and the Sunna. One verse of the Qur’an that proves this states: ‘‘[God] is the one who sent among the unlet- tered peoples (
al-ummiyyin
) a Messenger who recited His signs to them and purified them and who taught them the Book (that is, the Qur’an) and the Wisdom (that is, the Sunna)’’ (Qur’an 62:2).

The
Sunna
: The Way of the Prophet Muhammad
127

According to the scholars, the obligation of referring to the Sunna as a source of legislation is derived from the verses in the Qur’an that command believers to ‘‘obey God and obey the Messenger’’ (Qur’an 5:92; 24:54). The Qur’an states: ‘‘By your Lord, they do not truly believe until they make you [Muhammad] the arbiter in controversies among them, and until they find in their souls no objection to what you decide, but accept approvingly’’ (Qur’an 4:65). In another verse, the Qur’an warns: ‘‘Let those who oppose [the Messenger’s] command beware lest a trial befall them, or a painful pun- ishment strike them’’ (Qur’an 24:63). The Qur’an also states: ‘‘Obey God, and obey the Messenger, and those with authority among you. If you dispute over anything, refer it to God and to the Messenger, if you believe in God and the Last Day. That is best and most excellent as a determination’’ (Qur’an 4:59). Perhaps the most explicit verse in this regard is the following: ‘‘Whoever obeys the Messenger is obedient to God’’ (Qur’an 4:80).

Many Hadith accounts also refer to the importance of the Sunna. Ahmad ibn Hanbal (d. 855
CE
) related a hadith in which the Prophet said: ‘‘I counsel you to conscious awareness of God, and to hearing and obeying. Those among you who will live shall see much tribulation and bickering, so follow my way (that is, the Sunna) and the way (Sunna) of the rightly-guided leaders who follow me.’’
1
In the
Muwatta’
(The Trodden Path), the earliest extant collection of legislation by the Prophet and his Companions, the jurist Malik ibn Anas (d. 795
CE
) relates the following admonition of the Prophet to the Muslim community: ‘‘I have left two things by which, as long as you do not abandon them, you will never go astray: the Book of God and my Sunna.’’
2

The Qur’an also states that the role of the Prophet vis-a`-vis the Qur’an is to clarify its meanings and provide explanations for its verses: ‘‘And We revealed to you the Reminder, that you might clarify to people what had been revealed to them, and that they might reflect’’ (Qur’an 16:44). This clarifica- tion is part of the Prophet’s Sunna. Without the Sunna, people would not know how to perform ablution (
wudu’
), perform the fi daily prayers (
Salat
), perform the Friday congregational prayer (
jumu‘a
), make the call to prayer (
adhan
), and perform many other actions required of Muslims that are not explained in the Qur’an.

There are numerous statements from the Companions of the Prophet (
al- Sahaba
) confi that one of the purposes of the Sunna is to clarify the meaning of the Qur’an. For example, ‘Ali ibn Abu Talib (d. 661
CE
), the fourth Caliph of Islam, sent the Prophet’s cousin Ibn ‘Abbas (d. 687
CE
) to debate with a group of Muslims called the Khawarij (The Seceders). Because of their misunderstanding of several verses in the Qur’an, the Khawarij con- sidered grave sinners to be unbelievers. Before sending Ibn ‘Abbas to talk to the Khawarij, ‘Ali advised him: ‘‘Do not use the Qur’an to argue with them, for it can be interpreted in many ways. Rather, debate with them using the Sunna, for they cannot escape its clarity.’’
3

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Voices of Tradition

Although the exact content of the Sunna was widely debated in the fi centuries of Islam, by the fourth century (ninth century
CE
), scholars had agreed upon certain methodologies for determining the content of the Sunna. Imam Shafi‘i, after whom the Shafi school of jurisprudence was named, codifi this methodology in his
Risala.
One of his primary objec- tives in writing this book was to establish the authority of the Sunna along- side that of the Qur’an. In it, he states:

God said: ‘‘The believers are only those who have faith in God and His Messen- ger without wavering, and strive for the sake of God by means of their property and their persons. They are the ones who are sincere’’ (49:15). Thus, God pre- scribed that the perfect beginning of the faith, to which all other things are sub- ordinate, is the belief in Him and then in His Messenger. For if a person believes only in [God] and not in His Messenger, he cannot be described as one who has ‘‘perfect faith’’; he must have faith in His Messenger together with Him
...
. God has imposed the duty upon men to obey His divine communications as well as the Sunna of His Messenger.
4

DEFINITIONS AND QUALIFICATIONS OF THE SUNNA

In classical Islamic scholarship, defi tions are divided into three catego- ries: linguistic (
lughawi
), customary (
‘urfi
), and legal (
shar‘i
). Each of these categories may include more than one meaning for any given term. Thus, a single word may have several linguistic, customary, and legal meanings. In the case of
Sunna,
its linguistic meaning is ‘‘path’’ or ‘‘custom’’ because it connotes the ‘‘norms or practices of a people.’’ Its customary meaning refers to ‘‘acts of worship that are not obligatory but encouraged in Islam,’’ such as the performance of extra prayers before or after the obligatory prayers. Its legal meaning may differ depending on the legal school of thought.