Islam
Père Zakaria Boutros

The converses and their veracity

The author      : Father Zakaria Boutros
The publisher:  www.fatherzakaria.com
 

The sources of Islam are the quran and the converses

Many changes had occurred in the converses, and lot of skepticism emerged in the veracity of the prophetical converses

The  Islamic encyclopedia, part 11, and page 3496 and 3497 said:" after the death of Muhammad, people's opinions and handling of the religion issues, those of the first generation, couldn't remain the same , as the epoch of development had come , and scientists tried to introduce some developments and modifications in the religious legislations to befit the recent development

As Islam was dominating a vast space of land, after the great conquests achieved by the Muslims, they acquired by time lot of ideas and regulations from those conquered nations

How did those changes take place?

Those new circumstances resulted into the invention of new converses that were inserted into the converses, and lot of people allowed themselves to fabricate converses and attributed them to the prophet in saying and action, they were aiming for consolidating their opinions

Those intruded converses were attributed to Muhammad, and had been circulating among people, making him saying something that Muhammad never said

From where did all of those changes come?

Some of the Apostles' utterances, fake bibles of the heterodoxies, Israeli opinions and philosophical Greek creeds had been well respected by group of Muslims and all of those utterances were attributed to the prophet

They fabricated such converses telling about purification rules, eating rules, lawful and unlawful, general behavior, good deeds and various aspects of legislation

There were converses about the Day of Judgment, paradise and hell, the angels and ancient prophets

{Islamic encyclopedia, page 3497, 3498}

In general there were new converses about the relationship between man and God, including sermons and preaches attributed to the prophet, while he never uttered with such things
 
 
 
 
 
 

By time those utterances narrated from the prophet had increased tremendously in their number

In the first few years following the death of the prophet, there was a great disagreement among Muslims in many issues, and each party was trying to consolidate its opinion as much as possible by converses attributed to the prophet

So the great discrepancies among the different Islamic rites, made parties trying to claim that they are following the prophet

For example they attributed to the prophet his foretelling about the coming of the Abbasian nation (those came after the Amaoian nation and the Caliphs)

They made him, foretelling about the political events happening later on, the religious actions and the new emerging social phenomena that happened following the conquests of countries

They were exploiting those converses to justify their behavior for the new communities

There were utterances attributed to the prophet concerning places conquered by Muslims, and had never been seen by Muhammad before

In summary those tremendous number of converses are not considered a description of the prophetical life history, but represent the ideas of those influential people after the death of the prophet and had been falsely attributed to him

There was a disagreement among people concerning:

1) the timing of writing of those converses
2) the narrators and their credibility
3) being true or untrue converses
4) their accordance with logic and proper reasoning
5) the Sunnah and Shia'h
6) the abrogator and abrogated in the converses
7) Is it possible for the converse to abrogate a quran verse?

The timing of writing of those converses:

Imam Muhammad Al-Idreesy Al-Fasy mentioned in his book 'Al-Resalah Al-moustatrefa":"it was said that writing of those converses began during the time of Omer Ibn Abdul-Aziz around 100H , some said it was about 150H, other said around 200H

The Islamic encyclopedia said in page 3506 that:" the true converses were all written in the third Hijri century, and had been considered by Al-Sunnah as the 6 true books of converses
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

The narrators:

The judgment of the narrator may differ greatly, as a certain narrator may be well credible by some people and devoid of credibility and considered liar by others

So the credibility of the great companions was not nonnegotiable subject but was a subject of great debate

As trusting Abu-Hurairah the great narrator was the subject of great debate among people, some said that he was honest; other said that he was a big mouth, lying a lot