Two Hadiths on the Importance of Sciences

or

Three Prescriptions for Palestine

First Hadith: He who learns knowledge is a hundred times better than he who works in the market and in the fields.

Second Hadith Learning knowledge for one hour is better than a year's worship: The five daily prayers, the fast of Ramadan, the Hajj and Zakat of the year.

Unfortunately, while there are ten thousand miraculous facts like this in Islam, all of them have been derailed or misunderstood. That is why secularists and scientists are rapidly fleeing Islam and becoming agnostics or atheists. In fact, the first of these two hadiths has taken the form, "A person who knows hadiths that are considered to be true knowledge, but which reject reason, science and qiyas in law, is a hundred times superior to a mujtahid like Abu Hanifa." He excluded the whole Qur'an based on reason and science. This change will be analyzed later on the second page.

The second hadith took the form of "An hour of knowledge is better than a year of nafl (voluntary) prayers without lying down, eating or going to the toilet."

This is not to take the annual prayers lightly. They are basic duties and obligatory obligations for human beings. But sometimes when you learn about the whole existence and life with an hour of knowledge, you save your faith, you gain eternity. You are useful to billions.

Yes, Allah and His Prophet were not short of words. They were never in the role of misleading people. If nafil (voluntary) prayer was the intention, it would have been said so. Also, those who know a little bit of Arabic emphasis and eloquence will understand that the real intention of the hadith is as we have translated it here.

Unfortunately, our problem is not one; it is one thousand. Palestine is not the only problematic region; violence and deception prevail everywhere. For example, if the Palestinians were based on reason and science, if they were united, if they were based on the verses of the Qur'an about peace and the Ahl al-Kitab (pious non-Muslims), these sad and violent situations would not exist today.  And what they are doing is not jihad at all. In jihad, there must be a balance of power, strategy and goals. Let us remind you right away: Booty is never the first goal. It is forbidden in the Qur'an to attack the Ahl al-Kitab unless they attack first. In the Qur'an, jihad has two main objectives. One is to stop sedition, i.e. freedom of belief (Surat al-Tawbah). The other is to prevent oppression, especially oppression of children, especially those who have been exiled (Surat al-Nisa).

When I say science, I don't mean individual thoughts. Physics, Chemistry, Military Service and Sociology are all sciences. Sciences are the collective mind of humanity.

Now we can move on to the analysis of Hadith One and our second prescription. Namely:

A transcendental analysis of the hadith, "The one who learns knowledge is a hundred times superior to the mujtahid."

When Islam came to the Arabian peninsula, there were no heathens. Even those who polytheized Allah had their own beliefs and religious practices. This miraculous verse of the Qur'an beautifully summarizes the need and the situation of the people of that day:

"It is Allah, and Allah alone, who (i.e. in a most extraordinary way) has raised up a Prophet from among the illiterate, who is as illiterate as they are. That Prophet makes those illiterates read and apply (Tilawat) the documents of Allah who sent him. He purifies them from all kinds of filth and wrongdoing (Tezkiye). He teaches them law and legislation (the Book). And educates them in a certain understanding and morality (Hikmat). Even though those who were illiterate (Ummites) were in manifest error before this..." (Surat al-Jumu'ah, 2)

The first generation of Companions (of Prophet Muhammad) were subject to all these four processes. But man consists of the stomach as the first step. Therefore, the majority of those Companions were also engaged in agriculture and trade. A very small group of them devoted themselves to these four holy practices. They used to sleep in the courtyard of the Prophet Muhammad's Masjid. Their livelihood was provided by the Prophet Muhammad. They were called Ashab al Suffa (companions of Suffa). Suffa means courtyard. The Ashab-e Suffa were few in number, but their duty was very important. The Prophet said, "The rank of those who learn knowledge is a hundred times higher than the rank of those who work in agriculture and trade." (Darimi)

But after the Prophet's death, not enough attention was paid to this sacred institution (1). Also, the wars were draining all the energy (2). And with the Sahaba civil war, there was a complete death (3). Knowledge and these four sacred duties virtually disappeared. And when Mu'awiya took over, Islam became all about collecting booty (4), so those four sacred duties became like being hit by four atomic bombs. Fortunately, Hazrat Ali and ten or fifteen Companions close to him, each of them went to a country and conveyed the water of the water of those four sacred duties to the people. I say the water of the water of the water, because from the fifties Hijri onwards there was a great counter-revolution. The ignorance that Prophet Muhammad had fought against had come back. Yes, Islam, as a religion of reason and science, fought against ignorance rather than irreligion. With those four holy missions, things improved in only forty years. But the Umayyad counter-revolution put an end to this quadruple revival. We could finish these examples of change in a volume of books. But when it comes to the History of Science, I think it would be enough to tell you how the following example was reversed. The rank of the scholar is a hundred degrees higher than the rank of the worker.

When the four atomic bombs mentioned above paralyzed the Companions, the Talebes of Ali and their students, the Imams of Mutazila, used language, science and free thought.  Although most of them were lost on the way, they kept that Muhammadan revolution alive for three hundred years. (Muhakemat) But a new calamity came, those Mutazilite Imams became Positivists thanks to Greek Philosophy. The Hadithists and their chief representative Ibn Hanbal had them exiled from Iraq and they dispersed and fled to Iran. Then they disappeared over time, especially with the Mongol invasion. Ibn Hanbal and the Shafi'i Imams, although they were advanced hadith scholaris, what distinguishes them from the other zealous narrators is that they both accepted qiyas, reason and ijtihad and criticized the hadiths when appropriate. They did not rely on narrations but on the practices of the ummah.

Hadithists existed at the very beginning of Islam. They had memorized the life of the Prophet Muhammad. But when those four plagues and those four sacred duties died, a generation grew up that did not know documents and science, that was not purified, that did not recognize law and jurisprudence, and that suffered from a lack of understanding and morality. And with the Umayyad compulsion and counter-revolution, thousands more fabricated hadiths came into the picture. For example, the narrations glorifying Aisha over Ali are just interesting examples of the thousands of them. And the narrations of forced fate are a second set of examples.

These hadithists not only rejected reason and philosophy, which was the science of the day, but they also disbelieved a person like Imam Azam, who was based on qiyas and ijtihad and looked at the spirit of the matter rather than the form. They called themselves Ahl al-'ilm and accepted the Umayyad corpus of narrations as science and considered everything else as bid'ah and blasphemy. They also distorted the Prophet Muhammad's saying that will go down in the history of science: The rank of a hadith scholar, who is a scholar, is a hundred degrees higher than Abu Hanifa, who is a jurisprudent.

Yes, this is how they understood that hadith of the Prophet. Because they did not have any of the four Qur'anic values we mentioned at the beginning. So if you ask why this narration is not in the early hadith scholars, the answer is this: Because the early hadith scholars did not accept Abu Hanifa's ijtihad (jurisprudence) at all. According to them, ijtihad was blasphemy. But with the last generation of hadith scholars, Darimi and Ibn Hanbal, this wrong and ignorant opinion was broken. But if there was hadith and sunnah, a hadith scholar who narrated it was still a hundred times greater than a mujtahid of jurisprudence.

Yes, it was this organized movement of hadithism that held the Islamic Ummah back. This movement became so strong that it even influenced the four fiqh sects and the founders of Ahl al-Sunnah, Imam Ash'ari and Imam Maturidi. It is interesting to note that these Ahl al-Sunnah sects and Imams were always wrong whenever they abandoned their rational methods and used the narrations of the hadith narrators. Like Child Marriage and the issue of Rajm.

Let us remind immediately: No Muslim should deceive himself: All hadithists advocate compulsion (forced fate) and reject human will. However, if human freedom and will were excluded, there would be no religion and no test. There would be no need for other heathens to come and propagandize. Because our century is the century of science and communication; it quickly selects this hadithist understanding that has brought oleanders like ISIS and Al-Qaeda to Islam. As a matter of fact, the Umayyads, who used the hadithists' forced understanding of fate as evidence for themselves, disappeared from history in a short time.

Indeed, their perception of Allah is also polytheistic. According to them, Allah has a limited body with hands and arms and sits on His throne in the seventh heaven. So, to enumerate the religious and scientific mistakes of the Hadith scholaris, one would have to write six volumes, as many as the Kütüb-ü Sitte. It is very sad that Islam is the only religion in the history of science that applies those four sacred duties with equal weight. While the other religions are actually Islam, out of desperation, out of the compulsion of history, they have been able to fulfill one or two of those duties. Let the ears of the Islamists who now know that religion consists of politics, wealth and sex, that is, who are ignorant of those four tasks, ring.

When we look at Fuad Sezgin's collection of Islamic science and technology specimens, most of them were realized in the first three hundred years and some in the first five hundred years. After that, when Ghazali banned philosophy at the beginning of the millennium (five hundred Hijri), all rational sciences were buried together. Consequently, the Seljuks and the Ottomans could not accumulate a scientific knowledge worthy of their reputation. In short, the conquest of Istanbul opened a new era for Europe, but certainly not for us. Even today, the Islamic world is in a quagmire of scholastic knowledge. Yes, "Islam is fully progressive up to three hundred years, half progressive up to five hundred years. The rest is reactionary." (Muhakemat)

Do not take this Muhakemat lightly. Because it is a book that, as far back as 1911, said that the Islamic world should unconditionally take science as its basis and that it had three hundred scientific rules for this. But unfortunately, the author himself violates those scientific principles in many places, saying that the Faith is getting out of hand, that Western science and philosophy has turned into Materialism and Naturalism. Perhaps he thought he had to.

The key sentence of this article is this: The real enemy of Islam is ignorance. No one should look for enemies in foreign powers. The countries they call foreign powers have already taken Islam, that is, science, law, understanding and morality. They only need purification. Jesus Christ, the Bible, does that best.

About Muslims Living with the Ahl-i Kitab (pious non-Muslims) or Prescription 3

A year ago, I published the concept of Islam's jihad against the pagans and idolaters with its annexes. A sister from America said, "Hodja, Islam's relationship with the Ehl-i Kitab (pious non-Muslims) is also a problem, could you explain that too?" I said later, but the miraculous declaration of the Qur'an on this subject made me hurry. Here it is:

In the days leading up to his death, Prophet Muhammad left one and only one principle for Muslims to follow: "If you hold on to the Qur'an and Ahl al-Bayt,  you will never go astray." Because there were enough verses and principles in the Qur'an.  And Ahl al-Bayt had a healthy understanding and practice of those principles. Because Ahl al-Bayt were involved and were the true heirs of the religion.

But forty years after the Prophet Muhammad's death, the Umayyads, who were his sworn enemies and who appeared to be Muslims out of necessity, made a counter-revolution. They took the job away from the Ahl al-Bayt and subjected them to murder and exile.

Soon, they changed his will from "I leave you the Qur'an and my Ahl al-Bayt" to "I leave you the Qur'an and my Sunnah". They also changed the concept of Sunnah, which means groundbreaking and practice, into hadith narrations that have come down to us as much as the Umayyads allowed, most of which are contradictory and contain Umayyad algebra and anthropomorphism. And unfortunately, those who knew the real breakthroughs and practices were silenced, killed or poisoned.

Ahl al-Hadith, which is the owner of these narrations, has exhausted the Imams of Ahl al-Bayt and the Great Sect Imams such as Abu Hanifa, who were based on the Qur'an, reason, science and interpretation in history, and they accused Imam Ashari and Imam Maturidi of heresy. Finally, it turned into Wahhabism, which then turned into ISIS and Al-Qaeda. They say that the Hadith overrules the Qur'an. They takfir anyone who bases their interpretation on reason and science. THEREFORE, THE MESSAGE OF HZ. MUHAMMED'S MESSAGE HAS BEEN LOST ON MANY ISSUES.

a) The Hadith scholars excluded the Universality of Religion. They denied that the Ahl al-Bayt could also be Ahl al-Najat. However, the Qur'an:

"Whoever believes in Allah and the Hereafter and does righteous deeds, whether Muslim, Jew, Christian or Sabiite, he is the people of salvation, and there is no fear for him, nor sorrow." (Al-Baqarah, 62) There are many other verses on this subject.

b) Most of the Ahl al-Bayt are also partners in this crime of the Muslims. They too have given religion a form of culture and nationalism. They do not accept any religious tradition other than their own, especially the Jews. (Al-Baqarah, 120) Therefore, the Qur'an says in al-Ma'idah, 51, do not be friends with such people, that is, those who turn religion into nationalism and prefer the irreligious to the followers of other religions.

c) Another misunderstanding of the religion by today's Muslims and the Ahl al-Kitab is this: "They say, 'Because we are Ahl al-faithful, even if we sin, we will stay in Hell for a few days. Nay, everyone who commits evil and his wrongdoing surrounds him will remain in Hell forever." (Al-Baqarah, 80)

This false belief has been passed down to Muslims from the hadiths, or the Qur'an says: "Those who do not believe, or whose faith does not prevent them from sinning, will be eternal in Hell." (Al-An'am, 158) d) One of the things the Qur'an asks of the Ahl-i Kitab (pious non-Muslims) is that they should not be ancestor-petitioners. It says, "Your ancestors were a nation that passed away, their gain is for them and your gain is for you, you are not responsible for them." (Al-Baqarah:134)

Unfortunately, Muslims and other religious traditions are on the wrong track in this regard. Religion is almost becoming an element of backwardness. Yes, all religious people prefer the understanding of their ancestors to religion and to more accurate and newly known scientific facts. They are losing to European science and sciences. However, they can make religious understanding a soul and an element that explains and gives meaning to those sciences. Worst of all, they see their ancestors, the ulema and priests as authorized to decide what is lawful and unlawful. They go against the verse, "Let us not take one another as gods apart from Allah" (Al-Imran, 64). They forget the infinity of Allah.

e) One of the things the Qur'an asks of the Ahl al-Kitab is "Not to discriminate between the prophets. By the way, to accept the prophethood of the Prophet Muhammad.... That is, not to discriminate... That is, to recognize the universality of the religion (Al-Baqarah, 136; Al-Ma'idah, 19).

If the Ahl-i Kitab (pious non-Muslims) resolve this issue, they can freely remain in their own religion. Everyone would be responsible for his own book. Because the Qur'an confirms the Torah and the Bible. It does not touch them. If the Jews deny the enlightening guidance of the Torah, they become infidels, and if they do not apply its laws, they become oppressors. (Al-Ma'idah, 44 and 45) Christians should follow the Gospel... If they do not, they become transgressors. (Al-Ma'idah, 47) Because the Gospel is Morality. Let religious traditions compete in good deeds without excluding each other. The Qur'an, as a balanced book, encourages this positive competition. (Ma'idah, 48) (For details of this issue, read Ma'idah, 44 to 48 in detail in the article Commonalities of Religions).

Yes, he who does not know the diamond in his opponent's hand as a diamond does not know the value of the diamond in his own hand. He sells it for the value of glass. The Qur'an excludes such people in five or ten places as "those who disbelieve among the People of the Book...". (Quran surah al-Bayyine.) This is because religion is universal, and it tells eternal truths, such as the existence of God. Unfortunately, Muslims, like the majority of the Ahl al-Bayt, do not know this universality of religion. They exclude other Abrahamic religions, except for the wise Sufis.

When I made a prominent Risale-i Nur follower man read the commentaries I had written on the Torah and the Bible, he confessed as follows: "Al-hamdu lillah, I have now understood the Qur'anic verse ".... Muslims believe in the Prophets and the books and do not discriminate between them." Now I have understood the verse of the Qur'an and my faith is complete.

Another Risale-i Nur follower told a loyal friend of mine that I do not like Brother Bahaeddin's book on the Bible, but it has broken my religious nationalism.

f) The Qur'an does not blame the entire Ahl al-Kitab. It also cites them as an authority and example. In two places it says: "Ask Ahl al-Zikr (the people of revelation), O Muhammad, if you doubt what has come down to you" (10/94). Zikr here means the subconscious. Yes, revelation can only be perceived subconsciously.

And the Qur'an says: Ahl al-Kitab (The People of the Book) are not all alike. There is a people among them who recite the verses of Allah during the night, standing up and prostrating themselves. They truly believe in Allah and the Last Day. They enjoin good and forbid evil. And they compete in good deeds. They are among the righteous. Their good deeds will not be denied. Allah knows best who protects himself (has piety). (Al-Imran, 113-115)

g) The Qur'an does not prohibit the Ahl al-Kitab from entering Mecca and Medina. It only forbids idolaters in Surah al-Tawbah, and then only to enter the Haram... Unfortunately, this prohibition has become a bida introduced into Islam through Ahl al-Hadith (people of hadith). The Qur'an does not forbid it; it makes Hajj obligatory on all people, Muslim and Ahl al-Book, and commands Ahl al-Kitab to come and cooperate with Muslims. (Al-i Imran, 97) In the time of the Prophet Muhammad's death, Ahl al-Kitab used to come to Mecca and Medina.  When the Christians of Najran came to Medina, Prophet Muhammad opened his Masjid to them and they worshipped there.

A FINAL NOTE: In history, Ahl al-Bayt and the great Sufi mystics understood this Ahl al-Book issue of the Qur'an correctly... But they did not leave scholars and sultans who excluded reason and interpretation and relied on narrations of unknown authenticity. (An important doctoral thesis has been prepared on this subject. I recommend that you consult it. It is published on Academia.edu). Bediuzzaman, who is based on the Qur'an, reason and science, goes even further and says the following in his Kastamonu and Emirdag Letters:

"Muslims and Spiritual Christians will stand shoulder to shoulder and eliminate the scourge of materialism and immorality that is ravaging humanity like cholera." "The Mahdi, who will represent the Islamic world, will leave world politics to pious Christians."

Because Muslims will not be able to balance sciences, religion and politics. And because the power will be in the Christian world that day. In fact, Bediuzzaman in the 25th Word even considers the Ahl-i Mektebi as Ahl-i Kitab... Yes, anyone who knows the unity and order of the universe, who lives according to universal law and pays attention to hygiene is an Ahl al-Kitapb  and his life is guaranteed.

As for the issue of the Trinity, if it is not in terms of flesh and blood as the common people understand it, if Jesus' warning to Peter is taken into consideration (Matthew, 16), if the understanding that Jesus is the word of Allah and a spirit from Him, as verse 171 of Nisaa explains, is taken as a basis, then nothing will happen. It would be like the Muslim belief in the attributes of God.

A) Do not take the People of the Book as friends (al-Ma'idah, 50). When we take this verse together with al-Ma'idah 48- 49, the following universal message emerges: "O Believers (Muslims)! Do not take as friends the Jews and Christians who do not know the universality of the religion (al-Ma'idah, 48) and who prefer the pagans, the jahiliyyah period and today the heathens to you Muslims (al-Ma'idah, 49)". Otherwise, throughout history, Muslims have always had friends among the People of the Book.

B) The Jizya Issue. This is not about the Ahl al-Kitab who truly believe and live their faith.  The verse reads as follows: (Unfortunately, this has also been distorted in history)

"Fight those of the People of the Book (in name) who do not believe in Allah and the Hereafter, who transgress what Allah and His Messenger have forbidden, who do not follow a heavenly tradition, until they give the jizyah in humiliation." (Tawbah, 29)

Yes, priests, who are pious Ahl al-Kitab, have not been charged jizya in history. But the generalization of jizya has been wrong. There is a narration that when Jesus (pbuh) comes in the end times, he will abolish the jizya.

Because Muslims and Ahl al-Kitab (people of the book, pious non-Muslims)  will learn the universality and true meanings of religion correctly on that day, that is, when Jesus comes, when Christianity is fully understood and lived with the meanings in the Bible, and when the religious, especially Muslims, are freed from formalist shariaism. For example:

Islam is the name of all the heavenly religions, the religion of all the prophets who believed in one God. It is not to discriminate between them. (Quran Surah Al-i Imran, 84) Allah will not accept other human beliefs in the Hereafter except this religion. (Al-i Imran, 85) All the prophets who practiced the Torah were Muslims. (Maide, 44) The first Muslim was Abraham. (Hajj, 78) The truths (main principles) explained by the Qur'an have prevailed in the human world for seven thousand years. (Risale-i Nur Collection, Barla Appendix)

And for example, the Trinity will be understood as the expression of the unity of Spirit, Soul and Body in human beings, and the unity of God, Spirit and Universe in the infinite Being; it will be known as a fundamental principle for those who understand and explain the unity and infinity of Being.  Not polytheism, but true unity and monotheism will be expressed. Otherwise, the people of science will not understand the spirit and will become materialists, and those who see Existence as separate entities as Allah, the Spiritual realm and the Cosmos (matter) realm will not understand eternity and will remain idolaters.

In short: Ahl al-Kitab means a pious person who lives lawfully and observes halal and haram. The first meaning of the word Book is law. And law manifests itself primarily in commandments and prohibitions.

No nation has ever been cursed in its entirety.

Of note here are Ma'idah 78-81 and Ma'idah 12-13. It should be noted at once that the term Beni Israel was used in a small scale and in its first real instance to mean the Jews, and later to mean the pious civilized nations. This is clear from many verses of the Qur'an and many chapters of the Torah (see our book The Torah Between Past and Future).

Al-Ma'idah 78: Those who disbelieved from among the Children of Israel were cursed with the tongue of David and Jesus Ibn Maryam. Because they were rebellious and rebellious.

There are 4-5 important clues in this verse: a) Not all Beni Israel is cursed. Only the unbelievers are cursed. b) Why with the language of David and Jesus?... Because David represents the religious state and the religious world. Jesus represents spirituality and otherworldliness. In other words, when civilized, knowledgeable nations become unbelievers, they are deprived of both the world and the hereafter, that is, they are cursed. Cursed means deprivation. c) In a narrow sense, the Jews have been suffering for 2500 years because they did not listen to the Prophet Jesus (Christ, Son of Mary) as a human being, not as a revelation and word, just as they did not listen to David (as) in history. d) If a nation does not come under the command of a religious state and a mystical movement, it is doomed to rebellion (anarchism).

21.12.2023

 Bahaeddin Saglam