In one of this articles criticizing Robert Spencer, CAIR”s Omar Subhani wrote this:
Fitzgerald says that when Muslims say jihad is really a spiritual struggle they are not telling the truth. He asserts that the hadith that states that the struggle against the ego is the greater jihad has weak chains of transmission and he also states that this interpretation is a “recent one in Islam.” He is wrong on both counts (honestly, this is like talking to a Salafi).
First, how could the interpretation of jihad being a spiritual struggle be a “recent one” when the hadith is mentioned in so many ancient Islamic texts that it couldn’t possibly be limited to the last hundred years? The fact is, it is not a “recent” interpretation. The Muhaddithun, as Fitzgerald is wont to cite, and which ones he does not mention, have mentioned this hadith in many works, including by notable hadith shcolars like: al-Bayhaqi, al-Khatib, and ibn Hajr al-Asqalani. These scholars have criticized the chain of narrators, but none of them have said the hadith was forged, only that the chain was weak, which Fitzgerald is correct in noting.
But what does Fitzgerald know about hadith? Obviously nothing because if he knew anything then he would know that just because a hadith has a weak chain that it’s [sic] meaning can still be sound. In the case of this hadith, many of the scholars of Islam, all before a hundred years ago, confirm the authenticity of the statement concerning the greater jihad being that of the struggle against the ego. In fact, some of the scholars say that the jihad against the ego is a precondition before a military jihad can be waged.”
First, when I wrote that the “interpretation” of Jihad as a “spiritual struggle” — which has as its “authority” only that single, doubtful hadith (doubtful according to the most respected muhaddithin, such as al-Bukhari and Muslim) — is a “recent one,” I did not mean, obviously, that the hadith is of “recent origin.” There are no hadith, of any level of “authenticity,” that are less than a thousand years old. Rather, I meant that the very notion of such an interpretation of “Jihad” only has gotten going in the modern period, when some Muslim would-be reformers, early in the 20th century, aware of Islam’s weakness vis-Ã -vis Infidels, sought ways to reinterpret the Jihad.
They did this because they knew that Jihad in the traditional sense, using the traditional means — qitaal — would lead to disaster for Muslims. And still later, with millions of Muslims now having managed to settle in the West — without the Infidel elites realizing what folly they had committed, unaware of the grim but inexorable future consequences for Infidel societies, and for Infidel security — Muslims have become keenly aware of the need to keep emitting a steady smokescreen of misinformation, diversion, blague, in order to prevent the most obvious truths about Islam from being known. Just consult any of the scholars of Islam who wrote before the curtain of the Great Inhibition descended, and the Saudi-funded School of Apology managed, step by well-financed step, to take over so much of the academic teaching about Islam.
The espositos and armstrongs, and of course the Muslims themselves, have been quick to claim that “Jihad” does not mean what a billion Muslims think it so obviously means, and what for 1350 years it has been taken to mean. And they keep repeating this, and there are some Infidels — but a diminishing number — who fall for this nonsense. Among those falling for it, of course, have been, at least publicly, Bush and Blair.
But it becomes harder and harder for anyone to maintain this with a straight face, or without fear of being the object of corruscating and well-deserved ridicule. Intelligent Infidels have begun to take note not only of the world’s Jihad news, the news that comes every month, every week, every day involving Muslim attacks on non-Muslims, whether in Dar al-Harb (in India or Thailand, in Sudan or Nigeria, in France or Great Britain, in Netherlands or Sweden, in Denmark or Italy) or in Dar al-Islam (in Pakistan or Bangladesh, in Egypt or in Iraq, in Algeria or in Morocco, in Indonesia or in Malaysia). They also have begun to find out about and read the texts (Qur’an, Hadith, Sira) and therefore, to find out about the tenets, of Islam, and not only the tenets, but the attitudes and atmospherics of states, societies, peoples, even families and individuals, suffused with Islam.
Omer Subhani attempts in similar fashion to call into question my understanding of the Hadith. (I use “Hadith” for both the singular and the plural, because I find the Arabic plural “ahadith” an example of Fowler’s pedanticism.) He states this in a remarkable way:
The Muhaddithun [sic], as Fitzgerald is wont to cite, and which ones he does not mention [sic], have mentioned this hadith in many works, including by notable hadith shcolars like: al-Bayhaqi, al-Khatib, and ibn Hajr al-Asqalani. These scholars have criticized the chain of narrators, but none of them have said the hadith was forged, only that the chain was weak, which Fitzgerald is correct in noting.
But what does Fitzgerald know about hadith? Obviously nothing because if he knew anything then he would know that just because a hadith has a weak chain that it’s [sic] meaning can still be sound. In the case of this hadith, many of the scholars of Islam, all before a hundred years ago, confirm the authenticity of the statement concerning the greater jihad being that of the struggle against the ego. In fact, some of the scholars say that the jihad against the ego is a precondition before a military jihad can be waged.
First, Subhani is wrong that I fail to mention the muhaddithin that Muslims themselves consider the most authoritative. There are two, above all others, and I never fail to cite them: al-Bukhari and Muslim. And one can see that Subhani not only fails to mention that I mention them, on every conceivable occasion, but his own little list of “hadith scholars” (i.e., muhaddithin) who mention this hadith, contains the names of “al-Bayhaqi, al-Khatib, and ibn Hajr al-Asqalani,” but not al-Bukhari, and not Muslim.
Why not? And besides, my point still remains: that hadith’s isnad-chain is not given any high degree of reliability by any creditable muhaddithin. Perhaps Omar Subhani would care to explain why he left al-Bukhari and Muslim off his list, or would he like me to give the answer?
Most astonishing and preposterous of all, it is he, Omar Subhani, who in attempting to call into question my judgment — or rather, not my judgment but the judgment of the most respected muhaddithin about this hadith purporting to interpret Jihad as a spiritual struggle, which I merely transmitted — starts to question the very role of the muhaddithin in their main function, which was to study isnad-chains (that is, the train of transmission of a particular hadith, as relayed down through time — a study that requires the muhaddithin to do the reverse, and to go back in time, to see how far back, and through what transmitters, a particular hadith can be traced. Obviously the most reliable hadith can be traced through each transmitter, or human link, in the isnad-chain, and ideally right back to the Prophet Muhammad himself, or, as good though not quite as good, to one or more of the Companions of Muhammad, or failing that, to one of those called the Successors. And of course there are isnad-chains where a “link” is missing, and obviously that affects the judgment of the muhaddithin as to likely authenticity.
Since 80% of the world’s Muslims are non-Arabs, it was desirable to provide such guides to Hadith, and how they have been studied, in languages other than Arabic. I would recommend, in English, a little guide, “Studies in Hadith Methodology and Literature” by M. M. Azami, which explains helpfully in 120 pages the methods used by the great (i.e., most “authoritative” for Believers) muhaddithin. There one will find all of the considerations that have gone into judging which Hadith-scholars are to be regarded as the most trustworthy, and what elements go into their own judgments as to what makes this Hadith receive a higher ranking of authenticity, and that one a lower ranking.
While I cannot reproduce all of the considerations so clearly set out in Azami’s book, I think the ranking system (Azami, p. 61) deserves to be understood:
Grading of Ahadith:
Hadith can be graded into two groups:
Accepted (maqbul) and rejected (mardud)
(1) The accepted ones may be divided into two groups:
Sahih (accepted)
Hasan (agreeable)
Both groups are sub-divided into two sub-groups:
Authentic by itself (Sahih li dhatihi)
Authentic owing to the presence of others (Sahih li ghairhi)
Hasan li dhatihi (agreeable by itself)
Hasan li ghairihi (agreeable owing to the existence of others)
As a matter of fact this last one is a weak hadith which acquires strength from other ahadith which verify it because the same subject or the same sort of problem dealt with it in other ahadith, which thus support the weaker one.
(2) The rejected ones may be divided into two groups:
Rejected as such, but may be accepted if it acquired strength from outside. However, rejected ones have many names.
Rejected totally.
Every hadith consists of two parts. One is the content of the Hadith, what it says. And the other part is the isnad-chain, that is the list of people who transmitted this hadith. And this isnad-chain is for Muslims not a minor matter, not something that Omar Subhani can dismiss, or appear to, for everything hangs on the hadith’s authenticity, which is to say on the study of that same isnad-chain. He attempts to suggest that one muhaddithin is practically as good as another, as a way of dismissing my point that the hadith in question is a “weak” hadith of doubtful authenticity — in Muslim terms (we non-Muslims can doubt away not only at the authenticity of any of the “Hadith” as more than the product of imaginative reworkings of the Qur’an, then attributed to Muhammad).
In other words, what has been the major work of so many Muslim scholars, what has been their essential task, has been the study of isnad-chains (see pp. 32-45 in Azami), and the attempt to rank according to authenticity many thousands of hadith. Tens of thousands of claimed “hadith” were simply dismissed altogether by the authoritative muhaddithin, who had first to patiently study them and their claimed chains of transmission, in order to perform that dismissal.
One can find, at any Muslim website worthy of its name, not merely a “hadith” but in what collection, of what particular muhaddithin, that “hadith” is included, and still better, among the real authorities, one finds the isnad-chain set out.
Yet here comes Omer Subhani, wishing you to ignore the very essence of the study of the Hadith, and thus the very essence of the Sunnah, because he wishes, if he can, to undercut my contention.
Well, he’s failed. Completely. And in failing, he has belittled, almost dismissed, feats of scholarship and research that are at the heart of Islam. He has dismissed, he has dissed, al-Bukhari and Muslim. And all for the sake of attempting to undercut a few Infidels who hardly matter.
Well, well. That’s quite a performance.