Bismillah,
I am reminded of the words of 'Abdullah ibn Muburak
"...Sanad is a part of Deen, if it was not there, then everybody would have said whatever they liked..." how true it is here.
Salam
The religion of God has always been about submitting to him.
The question is, is the path of submission to God all coming down to, "trust opinions of certain non-chosen authorities on who is trustworthy and who isn't".
There are somethings that come to my mind.
1. How do we know a person actually knows who is trustworthy and who is not?
Who told you that the religion of God is to submit to him? To begin with you would have expected that the prophet (saw) and the Shia' Imams (ra) would have known who was truthful or not - this is an indication about who you should take your religion from and who you should not take your religion from.
2. How do we know in the chaos of sectarianism and mass fabricators, that those who inherited regarding the opinions of who is trustworthy and who isn't, has usefulness or a some high probability of truth?
If someone who was trusted by the prophet (saw) or the Imam's (as) teaches someone who teaches someone else who informs someone who writes down what they have heard - what problem is there with that?
3. Is the proof of the path of submission to God come to technical historical and analytical analysis of "opinions on men" through time?
You have used the phrase
submission to God quite a number of times so far - what does that mean and how is it realised? Is it not how the prophet (saw) did it? If it is then is not incumbent to seek out how he did it? How else would you find a route back to the source of revelation because the entirety of the revelation has been conveyed by men (i.e. human beings) should you not find out if these people are truthful or not, at the very least? Or does it not matter, if something sounds good we should follow it - by that token if something sounds bad we should reject it, then that would be a free for all because what sounds good in your ear, would probably sound foul in another's ear.
An obvious question a person would come up with to say, yes of course, we need to trust rijaal, is how else can we objectively determine what is from God and his Messenger, and what isn't. I believe there is alternative ways.
We can rather then take people's word on who is trustworthy and who is not. First, we should gather all on contradictions in hadiths, whether authentic or not authentic.
Then we should investigate, them, in light of Quran and reasoning.
Then the narrators always found narrating things that contradict Quran, we should begin to make a tally.
The narrators that give insight to Quran, we should make a tally. By insight, I mean, help us see things in Quran, we would not have seen were it not for the ahadith. See light therein confirmed in Quran through Quran, but with the aide of hadiths.
Sounds like a barmy idea but please go ahead and let us know what you find out - but remember even a liar who gives you "insight" in the Quran is still a liar and a truthful one who gives information which cannot be reconciled in your head is still truthful.
If there is a hadith that gives you insight into the Quran or some other aspect of the Quran and you cannot determine (or cannot be bothered to) whether the hadith is truthful or not, what's the point in even using the hadith, because if insight can be derived without aid of revelation (prophetic hadith are revelations) then we don't need to bother with any of the hadith, indeed we wouldn't even need the Quran, because we could all just figure out what was good and bad and how best to submit to God.
We should also see if a person is constantly narrating things that contradict other hadiths. So if we have an oddball that constantly likes to narrate controversial or opposite type hadiths, it should be noted.
Then we see how all this fairs with how they traditionally were classified.
If a weak narrator narrated things that are confirmed in Quran, but not only that, gives insight to Quran, and his hadiths are all of good nature. Perhaps he was misjudged.
Maybe you should actually take a course in Hadith Studies because you don't seem to know how traditions are classified, the ancient scholars noted these things down. When someone is classified as being weak, there is a reason for that classification, if you think that they are not weak then the reason for the weakness needs to be tackled - the fact that they narrate "good" things sometimes (how do you define good, because you feel something in your water about them? What's your criteria?) doesn't stop them being rejected by others because of the fact that they have been weakened elsewhere.
If a narrator constantly narrates what contradicts Quran, but was trusted, perhaps he was misjudged.
There are some hadiths that about given insight to the religion and are of a very deep nature. Some hadiths about deep meanings of certain things in the Shariah.
Examples about this constantly narrating against the Quran (how do you define constantly, once, twice, thrice?) As for these deep insights again you have to use an external criteria to judge them, what is this external criteria?
I think a re-evaluation should be made.
Some reason are as follows:
1. People don't know exactly who is a liar and trustworthy specially in the chaotic way people displayed themselves as pious and accused people of being liars when they constantly narrated what seem weird to them.
2. Many "authentic" hadiths contradict Quran and reason, showing our Rijaal system wasn't accurate.
3. There was not much detail about how each person formed their opinion on each person. It's like people take people's opinions on who is trustworthy as if God made these opinions obligatory to accept and the way to submit to his religion without even brining rigorous proofs.
4. The people of hell will not be able to recognize a single person they deemed of evil in hell, this has to tell you, that humans can often shift perspective to extent good people are deemed evil, and evil people are deemed good.....and we cannot by circular reasoning prove who are the good people. We have to throw away with the assumption that the people who tell us who are trustworthy and who are not, are themselves trustworthy. We have to find the truth first, and then realize who narrated it. We cannot find all the truth, but when we find important truths in Quran, we can look to see who are the ONLY people who narrated such truths. And those who opposed it, are obviously, not worth our time after that. And we keep narrowing our search like that, because, the Quran describes itself as manifestation of clear proofs of the guidance.
1. If we knew who was truthful and who lied - there would be no problem, but we are not prophets who get revelation about such things hence we have to 'trust' people who were trusted by others. By all means you can reject them all - all the weak and the sahih ones - that would at least be fair then trying to cherry pick the ones which give you an 'insight'. Unfortunately you are from the outside looking in, in that you don't know how the ancient scholars classified men and traditions the way they did - if you could quote an example of a scholar whose methodology you disagree with and an alternate methodology, that would be helpful.
2. Some examples would be good here as I haven't seen any that contradict either, the fault my lie in you dear brutus and not in our stars, because you can't understand something.
3. Maybe not in the Shia school but in the Sunni school there are volumes of books written about how the conclusions have been drawn about who to take, and more importantly who not to take, our religion from. Maybe you should read them.
4. Garbled nonsense that doesn't need a response.
Regards,
Glorfindel.
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January 18, 2015, 04:23:42 PM