Marife Turkish Journal of Religious Studies

Abstract

The efforts and studies that have been made recently under some names such as bringing the hadith and/or the Sunnah nearer to the age, making it say something to the understanding of the century or making it actual, has two aspects: one is what is to be transferred and the other is how it will be done. The main hadith books, especially Kutub-i sitta, and the enormous literature on hadith and sunnah formed around them are mostly about "what the hadith-sunnat is" and consist of academic studies in today's language. Including the commentaries, these contain the information that the scholars will convey to each other and a certain scientific infrastructure is needed to benefit from it. Those who do not read the history, terminology and literature of science hadith science have little or no chance of understanding the works in question through their cmmentaries, which we do not find correct and useful.
It is unquestionable, as in other branches of Islamic sciences, that the ultimate aim of science of hadith, in accordance with the main purpose of religion, is to ensure the peace of people in this world and in the hereafter, which brings up the problem of how the Sunnah will be carried into the era. The not so bright situation of the Islamic world displayed in the corruption indices published regularly by more than one international organization in recent years necessitates serious new studies for this ultimate goal. In order for this purpose to be realized, whether it is called the actual value of hadith and sunnah, or bringing the sunnah closer to the modern age or conveying it to the age, or presenting and making the sunna say something to the understanding of the century, there is a need for studies that can be a bedside or handbook for (in medical terms) practitioners who will make the students at school, the congregation in the mosques, and the people in different activities outside the mosques or in social media acquainted with the exemplary personality and guidance of the Prophet. just like the limited number of works written in the past in the style of Riyâdu's-sâlihîn, put aside their sufficiency, this type of studies should embody the abstract objectives produced in academic literature, orient the teaching directly, and take average readers to the center like the textbooks which fill the gap when there is no teacher. Apart from the language problem, it is clear that the translations of classical sources and a few contemporary commentaries on a particular book do not have the qualification in question. It cannot be denied that the book Islam with hadiths, prepared by the Directorate of Religious Affairs as the first original, collective, and themed contemporary hadith commentary, is a great step forward in meeting the aforementioned need of Islam. The only study put forward concretely as a solution by choosing the average people who constitute the mass of readers, savad-ı Azam, whom the exemplary life style and guidance of the prophet will be transferred to and transformed into behaviors is Islam with Hadiths. We would like to specify our modest suggestions to make this work, the first work compiled in the contemporary period in terms of its quality, and similar works to be compiled in the future more useful.
a. First of all, a distinction should be made between hadith and sunnah, as the ahl-i re'y and the ahl-i amel schools did in the first centuries of Hijri; the Sunnah, which we can call the exemplary life style and guidance of the Prophet, rather than the hadith should be presented to the average readers; and the hadith should be seen as the carrier of this sunnah for the next generations, or as the database and raw information repository of the sunnah, and be left to the judgment of experts. Since hadiths cannot be conveyed without using technical terms such as hadith, narration, narrator, sound, weak, fabricated, etc., the people who do not have any religious knowledge background should not be confronted with hadiths and they should be directly presented only the sunna without leaving them look for references to take the Prophet as a model and to follow him. It should be contented with the presentation of the hadiths of the Rasul al-Akram (pbuh), full of wisdom, authentic, and with the quality of cavâmiu’l-kalim and whose authenticity and indication are are not disputed. Although the expression of fabricated hadith is used in classical sources, we would like to state also that it would be more appropriate to prefer the term fabricated rivayat instead of fabricated hadith in presenting it whenever a hadith is needed.
In this context, apart from its content, since the title Islam with Hadith is problematic because it can give legitimacy to different understandings such as Islam with Verses and modern Salafism, at least as a discourse, such hadith-emphasizing namings should be avoided.