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On the Search for Divine Revelation Outside of It
By Rashid Shaz

[continued...]

For the followers of Christ there is no other option except looking for Divine Revelation in the times and practices of Christ. However, for us it is possible to see a reflection of the Divine Revelation in the times and practices of Muhammad. There is a world of difference between the two. While the former represents a human effort to reclaim Divine Revelation through history, while the latter represents the timeless grandeur of the days and practices of the Prophet through the Divine Revelation. For the believers, information about the days and practices and the ways of its creative vision are important because in the affairs of daily life and in matters of safeguarding the Divine Revelation, the model provided by the Prophet is our only guide. In our quest for this model, it would be unreasonable for us to follow principles devised by human beings rather than the authentic sources provided by the Divine Revelation. This is also due to the fact that the act of recreating history through a historical process lands us into the dangerous waters of historiography. In the context of the extremely seminal nature of the Prophet’s age, we can say it with utmost certainty that no historical principle or historical narration has the power to encompass or manifest for us the days of the Prophet in all their dimensions. We should not forget that history is after all history, and it cannot be given the status of Divine Revelation. Moreover, no method of historiography can have the range and breadth to record all the details of the days and nights, of each moment that had the dimension of ages, in all its aspects. Tomes of history or biography can at best make a catalogue of important or semi-important events. But who would decide which particular moments were important in the long span of twenty-three years? The process of recreating history through history can provide us, at best, a collective, vague and rather inadequate record of the time, and that is all. Thus, there is no other option left to us except for striving to conceive the days and practices of the Prophet in the light of the Qur'an rather than history. Undoubtedly, it is such a Book where we not only find the quotidian of the Prophet in all their dimensions, but also the significant moments of earlier prophets and the grandeur of earlier Divine revelations. Despite the presence of an immortal and immutable model provided by the Prophet, our great dependence on human history is fraught with the danger that the personality of the Prophet might get lost in the image of the historical person. The presence of the Qur'an in undiluted form amongst us and the universal and timeless nature of Prophet Muhammad’s mission demand that, unlike the earlier communities, we must try to trace the days and practices of the Prophet beyond the normal historical process and transcending its bounds. It can be possible only when we are able to see the Prophet’s period not simply as a historical chronology but as archetypal history. Otherwise, like the earlier communities, our quest for the model would also be reduced to a mere study of history, a history that, for its own authentication, is dependent on a weak source like itself, i.e., history. 

In the light of the complacency that had developed among the earlier communities about the days and practices of their prophets as a result of which history was regarded as the genuine interpreter of the Divine Revelation, or the Divine Revelation itself, the first generation of Muslims had adopted an attitude of extreme caution towards history. They knew that the extraordinary emotional attachment of the followers to the days and practices of their prophets have often led to aberrations in the world of thought in different communities. The straying away of the Israelites in their religious thought and their assertion that in addition to the written Torah, Moses was also given an oral Torah on the Mount Sinai that had travelled orally from generation to generation through the prophets, scholars and elders, were facts that the first generation Muslims were fully aware of. To give Mishnah and Gemarah the status of written documents for the oral Torah, and to regard the interpretation of Torah through them to be authentic had become such an accepted and valid principle that in practical terms the Pentateuch had remained beyond common people’s access. Its status was largely that of a book of benedictions; Talmud was considered a sufficient guide in the conduct of practical life. Apart from the genuine Divine Revelation, the presence of this interpretive and elucidatory literature that came to be regarded as a substitute for Divine Revelation, led not only to the distortion of the essence of Divine Revelation but also resulted in the fossilization of religious thinking altogether. The strictest strictures that the Qur'an levelled on this intellectual stagnation and religious aberration had forewarned the first generation of Muslims and they were extremely careful. To resist any kind of religious aberration through religion the four caliphs and the Prophet's Companions displayed extreme caution and vigilance, and intellectual alertness. Their efforts were successful to a large extent as today in the huge corpus of hadith literature one cannot pinpoint even a few sayings of the prophet in verbatim, with all its linguistic and spatial dimensions, that can stand the test of historical enquiry or can be called authentic in the truest sense of the term or can be regarded as really “uninterrupted” (mutawatir) where an entire generation transmits openly and without any reservation to another generation. In this sense, it should be regarded as a considerable achievement on the part of the first generation of Muslims that despite their strongest attachment to the person of the Prophet, they realised the danger of religious aberrations in future and, to a great extent, restricted the growth of a possible “Mishanh” or “Gemarrah” in the religion of Muhammad.

Apparently, it seems surprising that the band of holy men who sacrificed everything for the Prophet’s mission on earth, who considered his presence among them to be an extraordinary moment in human history, and who, on the day of his death, felt that the relationship between the heavens and the earth had severed for ever, should, despite their strong attachment to the Prophet, not allow his days and practices to overshadow Divine Revelation and thus protect it from any sort of distortion. As a matter of fact, the notion of a non-sacred history was propagated by the Prophet himself. The Prophet who took utmost precaution in compiling the Qur'an, and who saw to it that it remained protected both in the oral and the written form, had issued the strong instruction: لا تكتبوا عنّي غير القرآن و من كتب عني شيئاَ فليمحه  (recorded in Muslim). One consequence of this strong attitude of the Prophet was that his closest Companions, especially Omar, would always say, “حسبنا كتاب الله”, even though it was not possible for the Prophet's Companions to completely ignore his days and practices on an emotional level. It is said that Abu Bakr had made a compilation of about five hundred traditions of the Prophet. Which compilation of the Prophet’s traditions could be more genuine than the one done by the closest and the earliest of his Companions? But Abu Bakr made the painful decision to rescind it for the specific reason that in future it might not acquire the status of another Mishnah.

The first generation of Muslims regarded history as history. After serious reflection and analysis Abu Bakr had reached the conclusion that there might be an utterance by the Prophet in his compilation that the listener might not have heard properly or might have misunderstood, or its real import could not have been understood for lack of availability of the specific context in which the utterance was made. This critical attitude towards history compelled him to rescind the most valuable compilation of the utterances of the last Prophet. In the early days of Islam, due to large-scale copying of the Qur'an, its memorisation that was very common among people, the availability of the master copy of the Qur'an, and the easy accessibility of the sacred text within covers, it was hardly likely that the compilation by Abu Bakr would acquire the status of a kind of secondary Divine Revelation. However, Abu Bakr was so careful about history that he did not want to lay himself open to such a possibility, however remote, lest it was taken to be the only genuine source of interpretation of the religion in the coming years. Voicing this apprehension he had said, “There may be something in these practices and utterances that the Prophet had not said quite the same way, or at least, meant the same way as it had been understood (by the reporters)”. While discarding the most valuable possession of his life, Abu Bakr’s notion of history was his only help and guide. He knew that despite the historical, interpretive and scholarly importance of his compilation, its absence would not result in any kind of distortion in the religion. In the words of Zahbi, “Hazrat Abu Bakr publicly exhorted the people that they should not report anything from the Prophet.”

Abu Bakr was not alone in protecting and propagating the Islamic notion of history. Caliph Omar, too, tried to stop the reporting of the Prophet’s utterances. It is said that in the beginning Omar had decided to compile a volume of the Prophet’s utterances and practices, but soon he also, like Abu bakr, reached the conclusion that such a compilation of the Prophet’s sunnah would open the door for religious deviations to which the earlier communities had fallen victims. He felt that any such compilation of the Prophet’s sunnah would soon acquire the status of a sacred book and, in the place of history, if the sunnah began to be regarded as Divine Revelation or similar to Divine Revelation, then it would affect the status of the Qur'an as the seminal, definitive and the basic Book. Omar who, in comparison with other Companions of the Prophet, was more aware of the religious heritage of the Israelites, did not want to risk the appearance of a Mishnah in the religion of Muhammad. In his words, “اني كنت اردت أن اكتب السنن و أني ذكرت قوما كانوا قبلكم كتبوا كتاباً فأكتبوا عليها وتركوا كتابا الله واني والله لا البس كتابا الله شئي” It is not only that Omar discarded the idea of compiling the Prophet’s saying at an administrative level, but also instructed other transmitters of traditions to take extreme caution and care. Some historians have even recorded the fact that when Omar came to know that people had recorded the sayings of the Prophet in writing, he had them brought to him and burnt them[1]. As a matter of fact, if Abu Bakr’s compilation of the Prophet’s traditions or a compilation by Omar done under the supervision of the central government and in the presence of the elderly Companions of the Prophet, had come into existence, then it would have been not only more authentic because of the chronological proximity with the Prophet’s age, but because of being put together under the central authority of the Caliphate. For these reasons, it would have enjoyed higher credibility and wide acceptability too. On the one hand, these circumstances could have conferred on it historical authenticity; but on the other, the same circumstances would have been considered sufficient to accord it a status similar to that of the Divine Revelation. The earlier communities had strayed exactly in this way through compilations like Mishanah and Gemarrah. Realising this danger, Omar had adopted a stern attitude towards history.

For those who were close to the Prophet, what could be more pleasurable to them than the memory of those days when Allah’s Prophet was present with them, and of those assemblies where the Prophet was the centre of attraction? However, it was more important to safeguard the religion from all potential sources of danger in future. That is why the caliph of the period discouraged people from excessive reporting of the Prophet’s traditions. This difference between history and Divine Revelation was so clear in the mind of Omar that while sending Qarza bin Ka’b in Iraq he instructed him in clear words not to overburden people with the knowledge of Prophetic traditions lest they got alienated from the Qur'an.[2] Qarza recorded that after that day he had never narrated any tradition. It is said that once when he saw Abi bin Ka’b narrating a tradition he went over to him with a whip to reprimand him.[3] It is recorded in the books of history that Omar had forbidden some of the venerable Companions of the Prophet like Abdullah bin and Abuzar from reporting traditions, in the strongest terms[4]. It has been recorded in some reports that Omar had imprisoned Ibn Mas’ud, Abi Darda and Abu Mas’ud Ansari for the simple reason that they were found guilty of excessive reporting of the Prophet’s traditions.[5] The Madina of the four venerable caliphs witnessed the glorious tradition of referring to the Book of Allah for guidance. There, the Prophet's Companions’ notion of history developed in the light of the Divine Revelation under the personal guidance of the Prophet and the possibility of the emergence of a new Mishnah was rather remote. Despite this if the venerable caliphs did not show any flexibility in their vigilant and cautious view of history, the reason for this was that, apart from the Qur'an, they did not want to establish any other model or framework based on the Prophet’s utterances which, because of its interpretive merits and the sacredness attached to it, could ever pave the way for a Mishnaic literature. It is said that once Ali’s son, Muhammad, wanted to present two written pages that he had taken from his father to Othman that, according to his report, contained commands about zakah attributed to the Prophet. Othman’s reported reply was, “I do not want to associate myself with this ….”[6] The Prophet’s people regarded history as mere history. They were not ready to regard it as an aid to interpretation or elucidation, because according to them, every effort of interpreting Divine Revelation should emanate from within it which they considered the source of the authentic and immutable Prophetic model. That is why when the Prophet's Companions departed from this world one after another, none of them dared to leave behind him any compilation of the utterances and practices of the Prophet for the community.[7] 

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