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From: arma@kaa.eng.ohio-state.edu (Lama Hamandi)
Newsgroups: soc.religion.islam
Subject: Re: A HADITH ABOUT WAR IN THE MIDDLE EAST ?? (or my misunderstanding)
Message-ID: <1990Dec18.222113.13513@nntp-server.caltech.edu>
Date: 18 Dec 90 22:21:13 GMT
Sender: bes@nntp-server.caltech.edu (Behnam Sadeghi)
Organization: California Institute of Technology, Pasadena
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Approved: bes@tybalt.caltech.edu


assalamualaykum brothers and sisters
In several articles, people try to ask about the legitimacy of
interpreting ahadith (sayings of the prophet) like the hadith
that talks about war in the Gulf and the hadith? of the horses of iron ?
When reading both articles, many points came to my mind, I hope I can
state them all:
1.
First about the legitimacy of doing interpretations to Ahadith. Well I
am not a aalem (scholar) but I will try to analyze it a little bit. What
are we benefiting from saying that the prophet knew about these things ?
Did any of the mentioned ahadith and their interpretation give us
something that will benefit us or is it just like a crossword puzzle
(you solve it and then you throw it away) ? In my opinion and i
may be wrong, we should let the ulamaa (scholars) who have memorized and
understoud Quran and many ahadith (sayings of the prophet) do their own
analysis of ahadith and as long as we are less than ulamaa we should
justify our interpretations with the sayings of learned men (ulamaa).
Also in every hadith we should look after the things that benefit us, by
reading both hadiths (the gulf and the iron horse) I didn't see anything
to infer other than that the prophet knew about the future, this leads
me to my other point.
2.
The prophet in some cases knows about the future but he knows ONLY what
allah (god in arabic) told him nothing more. The prophet CANNOT by
himself see in the future, he is an ordinary man with the only thing
that distinguishes him from the other humans, his message and him being
chosen by Allah to convey that message. Nothing is divine about him
other than that. We should respect him and love him but not raise him to
a level where he shares some divinity with god (like knowing al-ghaib,
the future). It seems to me when I read the article about the "horses of
iron" that the author beleived that one of the characteristics of the
prophet is that he can tell the future, well that is not a
characteristic but telling the future is something revealed by Allah and
not an ability of a prophet.
I had a third point that I forgot may allah forgive me for what I have
done wrong.