Jonathan Brown – How To Understand Prophetic Speech

			all
		

			being
		

			said I want to come
		

			out of the dam and shutdown the regime is similar Amanda Rahim al hamdu Lillah wa Salatu was Salam
ala Silla, mostly. And while earlier he was so happy, I mean,
		

			first of all, thanks very much for inviting me. It's always an honor and a privilege to be able to
speak to a Muslim community like this.
		

			And, but I'm still a professor and I have to start with a history story from history because I'm a
historian, I find this story to be very interesting and useful. That anyone ever heard of the famous
Mughal Emperor Akbar? Yes, a lot of South Asians in the room, I'm sure you've heard of him. So Akbar
had this Emperor Akbar had this interfaith salon he would hold. And in one of the discussions he
had,
		

			the issue of marriage came up. And he asked, how many wives can a Muslim man have? And the scholars
who presents I do, they can have four. So Akbar had way more than four wives. He had way, way more
than four eyes. Apparently, this had escaped his attention until this moment, when he realized that
he had way more wives and he was allowed to have so he
		

			guests scholars, you know what he should do? And one person who wasn't a scholar, but he said, You
know, I've called the Quran says,
		

			if you are afraid that you will not be just to the orphans,
		

			and komati like I'm in an ISA, so marriage married those mithuna with ratha robot, marry what seems
goodly to you from amongst the women. Two and three and four.
		

			So one, and two and three and four is nine. So this is nine women, so maybe you're okay. And
		

			Akbar asks other scholars, and no one would actually give him a fatwa to this, but he was the ruler
so we just did whatever he wanted. Anyway.
		

			There are two points I want to make with a story. One is that we read the Quran, not on our own, but
we read the Quran through the Sunnah of the Prophet lays lots of them. So the Quran says, marry what
seems good to you from amongst the women, two and three and four. Now, that was always understood
not as two plus three plus four, but two, or three or four, one or two or three or four. And we know
that from the Sunnah of the Prophet lays out Salaam, because we know that the Prophet
		

			when one of the chiefs of the city of tarrif, after time surrendered to the Muslims, one of the
Chiefs name is named Kayla and had been Salama. And he was married to 10 women. And when he became
Muslim, he was forced to choose which four he was going to keep us as wives and the rest he had to
divorce. So we know that Muslims who had more than four wives were not allowed to keep one for
wives, except the Prophet Lisa Lamb who was a special exception.
		

			So we know that read it, the understanding of this verse, this Quranic verse, from the son of the
Prophet through the son of the Prophet and the son of the Prophet is the lens through which we read
the Quran and understand his message. The second point is a little bit slightly off topic, but I
think it's very important to keep in mind, it's always important Keep in mind, it's especially
important to keep in mind these day in these days, namely, that it's very hard to to avoid the
political world. It's very hard to avoid the political world, and the forces of power and politics
will always try and make use of Islamic ideas and Hadith of the Prophet, especially. So you can see
		

			here Akhbar was just looking for a way to justify what he wanted to do.
		

			The Sunnah is the son of the Prophet Alayhi Salaam is as one of one great scholar set it's tough to
be called mousumi unlucky tabula, it is an infallible application of the book of God. The Sunnah is
the Quran explained by the prophet lays out Salaam. Its meaning clarified its details given and
information added to it.
		

			The Sunnah is not the same as Hadeeth. The Sunnah is the precedence of the Prophet, his example, His
teachings.
		

			And that can take the can be transmitted and understood in numerous ways. It can be understood
through certain principles that can be understood through a method of problem solving, that his
companions inherited, and that they then bequeathed to the next generation. And they bequeath to the
next generation to the next generation, the next generation, and eventually becomes embodied in the
schools of law and theology of Muslims. And it's an inherited all the way up into the present time
by Muslim scholars.
		

			But what is the probably the most concrete way in which the Sunnah of the prophet is embodied? is in
Hades in actual reports about things that the Prophet said, The Prophet did, were things that were
done in his presence to which he did not object, anything done in his presence to which he did not
object is understood to be allowed, otherwise, he would say something.
		

			Now,
		

			this is kind of a general talk, but I tried my best to really sum up what I think are important
points for you. hadiths are just pieces of data. So heads are just pieces of data, it's very
important to keep this in mind. Because the Sunnah is the overall teachings of the Prophet, to
coherent, consistent teachings of the Prophet. Now, deeds are just reports about things that happen.
And sometimes these reports are not representative of the profits, overall teachings, just like for
example, if I come to class every day, that's my son, no. But if I miss class one day, because I'm
sick, they can be a story, someone can say Professor brown didn't come to class today. But that's
		

			not my center. That's just that's a true report. But it doesn't represent what I generally do, or
what I generally
		

			advocate. So sometimes these data points can actually be important rules. Some of these data points
can be in important rules. So when the Prophet says, in the middle amount of vignette, deeds are
returned by intentions, this is a very important principle the Prophet is giving us so they sell to
them, when the Prophet says, Let's have malice antic, don't sell what you don't have, don't sell
what you don't own. This is extremely important rule. This is a rule, that's the basis for much of
Islamic buying and selling Islamic contracts, Islamic Finance, it's an extremely important point
that comes from the prophets.
		

			a rule that he gives us, in his words, that's encapsulated in the Hadith. These data points can also
give important exceptions to these rules. So the Prophet says, Don't sell what you don't have. But
he gives exceptions to, for example, for farmers, who only get their their income their crop one or
two, once or twice a year, they need to have some form of income, the rest of the year. So they can
buy seeds and buy tools and feed their animals and their families. So the profit allows people to
sell their promise the sale of their crop in advance in return for money beforehand. This is like a
sale on credit. But it has to be that you have to know generally what your crop is generally how
		

			much it yields. So it can't be something totally,
		

			totally unknown. This is very important. This is how Muslims know that it's okay to buy and sell
things on credit. This is an exception to that general rule that you can't sell what you don't have.
		

			Sometimes the profit these these data points that come in from the profit.
		

			Sometimes these data points can be extremely important, even though it's just one report. So for
many, many years, during the early days of Islam, the Muslims were taught that they would have to do
will do after they ate food that was cooked,
		

			cooked by fire.
		

			So if you ate let's say, you cooked meat and you ate it, you you couldn't pray without doing will do
this was a broker will do. And then one day toward the end of his life, the prophet Dave says lamb
ate a lamb shoulder, and they prayed without doing would do.
		

			And he didn't say Oh, that was a mistake. He didn't say that I forgot to do he didn't do and he ate
meat.
		

			From that we know that at that point is no longer required for Muslims. So do we do after they eat
meat is cooked by fire and then that indeed this this rule seems to be something that Muslims even
know about today.
		

			One of the the most important job of Muslim scholars is and has always been to try and make sense of
all these data points to take the message of the Quran, which is in and of itself, sometimes
General, sometimes specific, sometimes literal, sometimes metaphoric. So they have to make sense of
how the Quran relates to itself internally. Then they have to make sense of, of how the Quran should
be understood through the Sunnah of the Prophet.
		

			They have to they have to find out the relationship between the
		

			Sunnah and the Quran and had to also find out the relationship between the different parts of the
Sunnah itself. So which Hadith comes maybe overrules and other Hadith, which had ethers General,
which has a specific which had, it gives you a rule, which had it gives you an exception to that
rule. So this is the all has always been the job of Muslim scholars. And because it's a process of
interpretation,
		

			there are always and there have always been differences of opinion. That's why always within Islamic
thought, there's been a recognition of acceptable disagreement. First, you have the companions
disagree with each other, then you have the early Muslim scholars just agreeing with each other at
various times, you have even 10 nine or 10 different methods that exist, and then eventually in
Sunni Islam, these are basically pared down to 474 methods by the 1200s of the Common Era. And in
Shiite Islam, you have the umami or Joffrey School of Law and NZD. Islam, you have the Zaidi School
of Law, you have the Abadi School of Law. So these are the these are all all Muslims. And they're
		

			all looking at the same sources. But they their interpretive conclusions are different, because
they're all finding different relationships between parts of the sun, not between the Sun and the
Koran.
		

			The other
		

			sorry, the other major challenge
		

			when Muslim scholars have dealt with Hadeeth, has been the question of authenticating the Saudis.
Unlike the Quran, which was written down by various companions during the life of the Prophet, which
was compiled two years after his death by the order of the Caleb abubaker, which was then recompile,
again, under the reign of the killer fourth man, or De La Jolla, and Homer, and promulgated
officially in 650. Around 650 is a common error, unlike the CRAN, which is written down very early.
And there's only one version of the Quran there's only one text of the Quran, Heidi's are not
written down formally.
		

			They're not written down formally for
		

			in any lasting way for about 150 years after the death of the Prophet. Muslims have been having
their own collections of Huddy small collections, private collections, family collections that are
passed down from generation to generation, but it's not written down in lasting form, until the mid
1700s, and even the late 1700s.
		

			So in that time period,
		

			there's a tremendous number of studies that are made up that are made up or mistakenly attributed to
the Prophet. And one of the major task of Muslim scholars has been to sort out which had deeds are
authentic, and which had deeds are unreliable.
		

			In order to understand this, we have to answer The answer the question of why Muslims would make
heads up, and something I think a lot of Muslims find hard to believe, why would somebody how would
somebody go in consciously attribute something they know is false to the prophet of God, if they
believe in that Prophet? Well, first of all,
		

			a lot of during the early Islamic period, the number of Muslims who settled in the newly conquered
lands was very small percentage of people, very small percentage of people. A lot of times people
think that Muslims Go on, they conquer the Middle East, and then suddenly, the whole map is green,
everybody's a Muslim. That's not true at all. Actually, Muslim for many, many centuries were
minorities in in Iraq, in the year 800.
		

			Only 18% of Iraq was Muslim, the same year 800, in Andalusia, only 25% of the population was Muslim.
Places like Egypt doesn't become majority Muslim, until the 1100s. And even in Egypt, today, you
still have 10 15% of the population is Christian. So for many centuries, Muslims are a minority. And
so lots of people are converted, you know, Muslims are small number of people, people who are
converting are bringing their own ideas. And sometimes they don't know anything about the religion
that they're embracing. So sometimes people bring their own cultural ideas, their own religious
ideas. And they attribute these to the profit. Sometimes, and this is a major issue. There are
		

			different political agendas. So during the first 100 years of Islam, you have three different civil
wars. Sorry, first 150 years, you have three three civil wars that Muslims fight against each other.
And one person says, you know, the prophet said that it should be the case of another person says,
oh, the prophet said that Malia was
		

			second only to Gabriel and being trusted with the words of God. So these
		

			You know, people making heads right making up heads right left and center to support their different
political causes. Sometimes they would make up heads to support their, their theological causes
their theological arguments.
		

			This is important to keep in mind today, because you can see, Heidi's being used for political
reasons, all our political purposes all the time. I remember after the the coup against President
Morsi, in Egypt in 2013, on Egyptian television, there were all these advertisements saying, you
know, for the for the Egyptian Egyptian army, and there was one would cite this hadith that the
Prophet lays out saddam said that the soldiers of misp of Egypt are highridge, not the best soldiers
in the in the world, saying this is Hadeeth. This is attributed to the Prophet but it's an
unreliable Hadith very, very unreliable Hadith. And it's made up by people who are partisans of
		

			Egypt.
		

			In fact, it's somewhat accurate Egyptian soldiers are very good at killing their own people, but
they're not,
		

			you know, maybe good at actually fighting wars.
		

			People another major
		

			source of, of IDs that are mis attributed to the Prophet are not instances in which someone's
intentionally
		

			intentionally lying about the profit, but rather, it's a mistake. And you can imagine this a lot of
times if I said, for example, that
		

			so to the Model T, our, the woman's voice is louder. Has anyone ever heard this before? Yeah. Is
that a hadith?
		

			Well, you guys are smarter than usual. But most people would say, Yeah, that's it. This is not a
hadith. It's just some principle, and especially the Hanafi School of Law.
		

			But a lot of times it gets attributed to the Prophet. Sometimes, even in early, early texts, you'll
see things that are companion opinions attributed to the Prophet, for example, not all Muslim, Luna
has enough water and the light has enough. But the Muslim sea is good, is good in God's eyes as
well. This is something that is a important principle, but it's not something the Prophet said later
on. It's something that the companion Abdullah and Mr. Rude said, or you you'll see a legal
principle like a dura to be hauled Mahabharat. necessity, allows the prohibited things and says that
he makes prohibited things allowed.
		

			This is a lot of times you'll see attributed to the Prophet, but it's not a hadith. It's just a
legal principle. So sometimes, especially the words of companions, the opinions of early Muslim
scholars get pushed back to the Prophet accidentally. Because you can imagine Muslim scholars are
sitting around, they're discussing things over and over again, they're throwing out ideas, and
somebody mistakes, something that's a companion opinion, for something The Prophet said.
		

			So oftentimes, a lot of the Hadees that are uncovered as being unreliable by Muslim scholars are not
intentional forgeries, they're not even malicious, a lot of them actually have very good meaning.
They're just things that have accidentally been attributed to the Prophet.
		

			Finally, it's important to keep in mind that Muslim scholars
		

			treated different types of heads with different levels of scrutiny. So for classical Muslim
scholars, and this is something we know all going all the way back to the early days of Islam.
		

			The studies that were most important to them dealt with things like prayer fasting contract as a cat
marriage, divorce, clida, what we believe God, God, these were for them the core areas of religion,
and these are these they were extremely strict with. That's why most of the time, when you hear
people talking about Hadees, that are controversial. They don't involve things like prayer. They
don't involve things like contracts, or as a cat. What do they involve? They involve things like
what's going to happen at the end of the world? What happened at the beginning of the world? If you
do this sin, What punishment will you get in Hellfire, if you do this good deed, what reward were
		

			you get in heaven? A lot of idiots, that, actually, and I've tried to do a study of this, almost all
the deeds that are really controversial today has to do with things happening at the end of the
world, things happening the beginning of the world, these are precisely the areas that Muslim
scholars did not actually think were important topics. Because for them, something happens at the
end of the world. First of all, it's not happening now. Second of all, what's the good about No, no,
who cares? If something's gonna happen, and the world is gonna happen? Like the signs of the last of
the Day of Judgment, I always get confused. Why is everyone so interested in this? Either the Day of
		

			Judgment is happening, or it's not, it shouldn't affect our behavior, right? or What happened? How
is the world created? This isn't really this doesn't affect how we live as Muslims or what we
believe about God. So these were the these were areas of religion that Muslim scholars didn't
consider to be as important as the core areas of the Sharia. And this is very ironic.
		

			Because today, if you went out on the street in America and just ask people, you know, tell me
something about religion, they'd say, oh, Adam and Eve, it's the end of the world. But if you ask
them well, what about, you know, contracts? What about marriage and divorce. They're like, that's
not religion. That's we have Laufer that. So in the modern period, the situation is exactly the
opposite, as it was for the early Muslims, and in fact, for Muslims throughout Islamic civilization
up until the modern period. Now, the things that were marginal, in terms of religion for Muslim
scholars, these are now the things that people actually care about. And this is in at least in the
		

			United States.
		

			So you often you've probably heard this hadith that the Prophet supposedly said to Kaduna, who'd had
a phobia head home, Roger, way, akula, Roger, young man, how they who they were if to do that, the
prophet said, you Muslims will fight the Jews until such a time that Jews will hide behind rocks and
trees. And until one rock will say, all Muslim, there's a Jew behind me. So come kill him. So this
hadith is about the end of the world.
		

			And even if you look at the way Muslim scholars talk about this idea, they say, we don't really know
what it means. Its meaning is unclear. Because this wasn't their primary concern. They didn't, they
didn't. First of all, they didn't treat these idiots very skeptically. So they didn't
		

			analyze them and try and authenticate them in the same way that they dealt with the deeds on prayer
on fasting on the cat.
		

			And second, they didn't, they weren't even sure what they meant. So a lot of times the Hadees that
we come across today that are controversial, like that had teeth I just gave you about, you know,
Jews hiding behind rocks at the end of the end of time. These are actually not representative of the
Hadith that Muslim scholars really tried very hard to authenticate.
		

			The lesson that I would like to impart to you, or the, if you can take maybe one idea away from my
lecture, is that the Sunnah of the prophet is the communal inheritance of the Muslims, the son of
the Prophet is the communal inheritance of the Muslims, no one person, no one group can hijack this
another prophet of Islam. And this has always been the case, the sooner the Prophet is always
safeguarded by the Muslim community as a whole, as a whole. So when somebody comes and misrepresents
us, or none of the Prophet, Muslim scholars will speak out against that,
		

			when one group claims to be acting in the name of the Prophet, and is lying, or is pursuing their
own agenda, or is trying to enrich themselves, or do whatever, Muslim scholars will identify that,
and they have always done that. And they continue to do that until this day.
		

			Part of that, the thing you have to keep in mind is, remember that IDs, individual IDs are just
points of data. They're just points of data. And a lot of times I find Muslims, they'll come across
Hadith, and they really get concerned because they don't want it, they don't know what it means. It
seems to mean something that they don't like, or something that seems morally objectionable, or
religiously objectionable to them. And this causes them great concern. What I always tell them is,
this is just one piece of information. First of all, it might not be authentic, so don't even don't
even consider reacting to this Hadeeth until you at least know whether Muslim scholars have
		

			authenticated it. Second of all, does this hadith deal with something like what's happening at the
end of the world or the beginning of the world, because even if that Hadith has been authenticated,
it's not something that Muslim scholars actually tried very hard to authenticate, it's sort of like
a second level of seriousness, they didn't spend that much time dealing with those heads. So even if
it's something that you find it comes from a reliable source, it might not actually be something
that that source considered very seriously. Third,
		

			remember, even if added is something that the Prophet said, it always fits into a bigger system.
It's always one piece of information that fits into a bigger system, and until you understand its
relationship to that system, and what that system says, What Muslim scholars as a whole have set on
an issue is no point in reacting. There's no point in reacting. So save yourself the emotional
trauma, save yourself the anger.
		

			And, and always try to remember that any headache you come across is always part of a bigger system
of law and theology. Finally, if you find people or you hear people you hear about people who are
hijacking the son of the Prophet, those people do not represent the prophets teachings. And Muslim
scholars are and will prevent that. Hi
		

			jacking from being successful and those people will not ever represent the religion. And the Jenner
generation from now a century from now God willing, they'll just be blips blips on the history on
the radar screen of history,
		

			swallowed up in time and ignored, while the swaddle album, The Great continuity, the Muslim
tradition goes on. There's Aquila hair. Thank you very much.