THE SUNNAH OF THE PROPHETﷺ

 

THE SUNNAH OF THE PROPHET

(An appreciation of its significance in the cognitive order of Islam)

Muhammad AI-Ghazali

(Research Fellow, Islamic-Research institute, IIU). 

Since its dawn, Human civilization had been identified in a significant sense, with the endless process of knowing. By an inner compulsion of his inquisitive nature, the man had been posing unlimited questions about himself and his environment and restlessly sought to answer these questions. It is this distinctive quality inherent in man to raise and answer questions of all sort, that has ensured continuous and uninterrupted progress, expansion, diversify-cation and so­phistication in knowledge the mainstay of culture and civilization.

To answer different kinds and categories of questions man had been employing his vast potential of instinctive, intuitional sen­sory and intellectual cognition and under­standing to seek the best solution to the problems that encountered him during the course 'of His multi-faceted civilizational journey. As pointed out above, this privilege of man to know, discover, understand and innovate things, is rooted in the natural constitution of macrocosmic man and in­grained in his archetypal disposition. This distinctive prerogative of man has been, fully acknowledged and granted by Islam the Universal religion of mankind.

Pursuit of Knowledge:

Statements abound in the Qur'an and the Sunnah that emphasizes the need of man to employ his faculties of observation, intui­tions, imagination and intellection to the maximum possible degree so as to under­stand the wonderful world of nature within and nature without. There is no bar in Islam to knowledge and its fruitful utilization, which has been regarded as a great Divine bounty and blessing. Those who are commended in the Qur'an they are men, of knowledge, wisdom and piety who bring their knowledge to fruition by actualizing the objectives of their creation in history. Those whom the Qur'an condemns, they are condemned for their ignorance and ada­mant refusal to perceive the cardinal truth, namely tauhid and its concomitant course of action, namely Islam. But the question arises whether each kind of knowledge is conducive to every category of the answer, or there should be some classification and hier­archical categorization in knowledge. Obvi­ously every category or level of knowledge is not appropriate or useful as means of acquir­ing an understanding of all dimensions or levels of reality. A mathematician can not do the job of a physician, nor a chemist can perform the function of a zoologist. A gram­marian can not be expected to deal with the problems dealt with by a historian.

If this life is taken seriously and not merely explained away as an accident or pastime then there are a number of inevitable questions that pose themselves to man. These are cardinal questions relating to the ultimate meaning of life. What are the origin and the destiny of man? Whence did he come? Where will he disappear after this earthly tenure of his existence is termi­nated? Is there any higher purpose and ulti­mate end of life? If so, what is that purpose? Who is really competent to assign a para­mount purpose to life? How is the man to come out of the empirical confinements of his present existential career?

Islamic Explanation:

The answer of Islam to these questions are clear and emphatic: While man has been granted by Allah the ability to know and explain a lot of things pertaining to the im­mediacies of life, there are certain questions of momentous significance for the worldly career of man, that can not be answered within the limits of His own sense percep­tion and intelligence. Hence these can only be answered by recourse to the transcenden­tal guidance communicated by Allah to his Prophet (ﷺ). The value of recognizing and following the terms of this guidance is that man is enabled to assign a clear meaning and definite purpose to life. For it is in terms of this prophetic guidance alone that man can explain and order the entirety of his existential career, within the unity of a purposeful and coherent world-view. Without falling back on the prophetic guid­ance, neither any meaningful orientation can be provided to the enterprise of cre­ation, nor can harmony permeate the rhythm of life?

The guidance provided by the Prophet (ﷺ) consists in the revelation transmitted to him by Allah (in the Qur’an) and in its authentic interpretation through his oral, practical and tacit Sunnah. 

Ultimate Axioms:

Now the Qur'an and the Sunnah are not concerned with answering primary ques­tions pertaining to the immediacies of life. They are concerned with spelling out ulti­mate axioms relating to the transcendental infinities of our being. They provide a world-view within the framework of which the intellectual process of the mind finds unlimited scope to function and to give a meaning and definite purpose to life. Because such fundamental question as 'who created man and why'? are indeed pertinent questions and on their answer depends our knowledge of the whole objective of man's life and his ultimate destiny. But these questions cannot be addressed by any kind of empirical science. For such issues, by definition, do not constitute an area of sci­entific inquiry. This is so because science only provides us with a reductionist mode of inquiry. In this mode, the object of investi­gation has to be reduced to the smallest por­tion of the reality which can lend itself to sensory experiment, measurement and cal­culation. 

Therefore, all cardinal questions relat­ing to the holistic explanation of the whole or understanding the meaning of the higher realm of meta-cosmic reality can only be answered by an inevitable recourse to the highest and the most authentic source of knowledge, i.e., Revelation communicated by Allah to the Prophet (ﷺ) The Revelation embodies "die infallible writ of God which spells out the ultimate answers about life its authenticity is essentially determined by testimony of the Prophet (ﷺ). The bearer of the testimony to the absolute truth of the Revelation, namely, the Prophet (ﷺ) of Islam, has stood the scrutinising test of history. For it is he alone who is singled out in the entire known history of mankind as someone who has earned a universal acknowledgement for being 'the honest and the truthful par excel­lence' by his friends and foes alike. He is not somebody whose life might be concealed under the thick veils of pre-historical antiq­uity. On the contrary, his entire life had been exposed to the search-Light of history. And an entire generation of meticulous biographers has exhausted their intellectual potential in investigating every facet and dimension of his eventful life. The re­sult of this ruthless and highly critical re­search of historians into every major or mi­nor report containing any evidence bearing on any significant or trivial aspect of his; public or private life, is that not even the slightest inconsistency with universal norms of ethics could be found in his entire career.

But a supplementary question still seems to persist through the above discussion: Why at all should an enlightened man in this age of scientific advancement, submit to the revealed guidance provided by the Prophet (ﷺ) and emulate his ex­ample in life? Or, in other words, why should man acknowledge a source of knowl­edge beyond his own perceptive scope on the authority of the Prophet (ﷺ)? Is it rational to believe in the un-seen on the evidence-on the Prophet (ﷺ)? 

Critical Assessment:

If we make a critical assessment of all those things that we admit as facts, we will not fail to appreciate the axiomatic reality of life that out of our total fund of knowl­edge a large and significant part is acquired on the basis of nothing but information coming from an authentic source. None has had a voyage into the galaxy to believe that the stars exist. None of us has witnessed his own birth from his mother's womb to affirm the legitimacy of his ancestry. How many individuals have seen their own hearts be­fore accepting the fact that a heart does beat in their bosom? How many of us have ever been to Macau, Liechtenstein or San Marino to believe in the existence of these independent states within the global community? None of us has seen perfect beauty. Yet we all believe in its existence. All our aesthetic yearnings to pursue objects of beauty stem from this belief. For mankind from their genesis have lived with the conviction that 'beauty is possible'. When we regard anything as beautiful, we do so only rela­tively. Our perceptions of beauty are subjec­tive and meaningful only in relation to the perfect beauty, the existence of which is only a matter of ‘belief in the unseen' for us.

If there is anybody who insists that he will not accept any of the above things as authentic fact, unless it is 'empirically proved by the criteria of sense perception', then he cannot possibly know anything. Nay such a person will soon end up in a lunatic's asylum. Even a genuine scientist in the pursuit of pure scientific investigation has to tall back on his intuitions, but in a much greater degree, he has to rely on the findings of numerous other scientists before he can proceed one single step further with his own empirical enquiry. To that extent, a scientist too has no option but to resort to belief in the unseen.

 

Humanity has, therefore, no escape from 'belief in the unseen in acquiring knowledge about so many vital needs of daily life. And many of our important atti­tudes in life inevitably rely on such knowledge. It is a great misunderstanding credu­lously carried by many, people of our times that all knowledge is to be validated only when it is acquired from empirical sources. In point of fact, only a very meagre amount of our knowledge is derived from the sources of empirical enquiry. Therefore, in matters of religious belief too, the sole valid basis of knowledge, can only be an. authentic 'source of information. 'This source is no other than the Prophet (P.B.U.H.) who was provided access to the knowledge of religious truths by Allah?

(Courtesy: Da'wah Highlights}

 

Therefore, all cardinal questions relat­ing to the holistic explanation of the whole or understanding the meaning of the higher realm of meta-cosmic reality, can only be answered by an inevitable recourse to the highest and the most authentic source of knowledge, i.e., Revelation communicated by Allah to the Prophet (ﷺ)

 

"O, Muslim women,

Out-of-the evening create a dazzling  morn

To the true lovers of God

Recite the Holy Qur'an

And enthusiastically translate its spirit into action.

Don't you know that the pathos of your recitation

Changed altogether Umar's fate".

Allama Iqbal