Why I trust Siras and hadiths

Submitted by Ayesha (United States), Dec 6, 2005 at 19:02

What Mohammed said and did was witnessed by all who lived then. Aban bin Usman (3rd caliph's son) and Urwa b. Zubayr (Mohammed's cousin) were very first chroniclers of those events. Ishaq, a scholar (whose grandfather was a sahabi) wrote his sira based on their works plus many other sources and accounts from his father and grandfather.. Tabari , a pious imam, a mufassir and a great historian used Ishaq and all other avilable sources to write history of Tabari (. In my humble opinion it is the least biased account, more trust worthy than sahih hadith) Bukhari and others used everything available and wrote their hadiths. Ishaq 's sira (available now) was edited by Hisham by removing what he thought could bother muslim sensibilities.History of Tabari (39 volumes) remains unedited and uncensored to this day and was translated to English in 80's and 90's. Thus the only siras in chronology and context are Ishaq and Tabari.

Tabari, and Ishaq were scholars and historians, they never killed , robbed and raped any one. Nor did the hadith writers, as far as any one knows. I therefore trust their accounts of events..The same cannot be said about Mohammed , there are too many winesses of his violent life . Quran itself points to everything he did.To me a book authored by such a man is not worth anything. I dont care if a billion people believe in it or 2 billion people follow it.

Sira and hadiths may not be 100 % correct, no history book is. But there is truth in them. Why would muslims lie about their own prophet. Why didnt they lie about Jesus (whom they also consider a prophet of Allah) and made up stories that he was a violent man and killed people, or that he distributed innocent women among his desciples or that he married a 6 year old child or that he killed his enemies and slept with their wives. They said all that about their prophet Mohammed.

Where there is a fire there is smoke.

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