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For the majority of people
who believe that God is the creator of the universe
and remains a willful agent in the world.
God's ability to perform miracles
or to enable others to perform them is easy to accept,
after all if God created the laws of nature,
it logically follows that He is not bound
by the system of laws that He himself designed.
And so He can also, if He so chooses
bring about occurrences outside of that system,
like miracles.
(air whooshing)
Miracles are only problematic
for atheists who believe in no God
or deists who posit a non-intervening God.
These are the only people that dismiss miracles
as the remnants of the naive pre-modern mind
as Spinoza and Hume tried to argue centuries ago.
Of course, just because miracles are logically possible
does not mean that every last historical claim
about a miracle occurring should just be accepted blindly.
No, there must be compelling evidence.
As the saying goes, "Extraordinary claims
require extraordinary evidence."
But are we open to evidence?
As many people say nowadays only seeing is believing.
I cannot believe in something unless I've seen it myself.
But do we actually operate consistently
according to that principle?
Do we only use and trust maps
that we have charted ourselves?
Do we use this principle in that way with scientific facts?
I refuse to accept them
unless I've performed the experiment myself.
Rational people accept that testimony, and its traceability
and its corroboration
they mount together sufficient evidence that an event
or a fact is certainly true or at least likely true.
This brings us to the science of hadith,
a unique and sophisticated discipline
in the Islamic scholarly tradition
that is comprised of seven sub-disciplines,
all engineered to filter for us what can
and cannot be traced authentically
back to the Prophet Muhammad
SallAllahu Alaihi Wasallam.
As a result of this objective and meticulous process,
only a tiny fraction actually of what is reported
about the Prophet Muhammad,
peace and blessings be upon him,
passes through all of the filters
and the rigorous authentication process
to be classified as an authentic hadith.
But the scholars of this discipline did not even stop there.
They further subdivided and classified authentic traditions,
authentic hadiths of the Prophet Muhammad,
peace and blessings be upon him,
into mutawatir which are abundantly concurring
or ahad which are solitary reports.
Mutawatir reports are those narrated to us by many narrators
in every layer of their chain of transmission,
which would make it inconceivable that all of this
cross-referencing would give us a mistake in report.
And it would make it inconceivable
that all of these different, disconnected people
colluded on a forgery.
Ahad reports when they are authentic,
that means they've been transmitted to us reliably
just without reaching the benchmark,
the criteria of a mutawatir report.
For this reason the majority of hadith scholars
believe that this category, the ahad, offer us preponderance
meaning greater likelihood
as opposed to certain positive knowledge
which the mutawatir offer.
So how does this relate to miracles?
Miracles occurring at the hand of the Prophet Muhammad,
SallAllahu Alaihi Wasallam,
by Allah's leave and consent is a mutawatir concept.
This means that the sheer multitude of reports
about the Prophet Muhammad, peace and blessings be upon him,
performing miracles make it irrelevant,
whether or not one specific incident,
one specific miraculous event has been verified or not.
Even if some of these specific accounts of miracles
are not independently mutawatir,
this can never amount to overturning the fact
that He performed miracles.
And this is widespread common knowledge
to all those who are around him
and for generations to come.
A good analogy to a mutawatir concept
is the occurrence of World War I,
the sheer multitude of reports we receive 100 years later
after World War I, make World War I occurring uncontestable
even if some of the specific incidents reported to us
about World War I come from unsubstantiated pathways
of knowledge.
Rejecting a mutawatir concept would be tantamount
to a person refusing to believe
that the Mayan and Inca and Aztec civilizations ever existed
unless they first invent their own time machine
and travel back in time to verify themselves.
And until that happens
this person would be willing to accept
and entertain the possibility
that these major historical civilizations
existing in the first place
could simply be some transhistorical conspiracy,
similar to what the Flat Earth Society posits today.
Islam therefore requires with stringent conditions,
a demonstrable chain of transmission
before attributing any statement or any action,
like a miracle to the Prophet Muhammad,
peace and blessings be upon him.
It's important to recognize how different this is
from the accounts of miracles
that exist in other faith traditions.
They usually, if not always lack a chain of transmission
to begin with and are predicated entirely on faith.
With that bedrock and foundation in place,
the next episode will cover accounts
of some of the specific miracles of the Prophet Muhammad,
peace and blessings be upon him
that were independently mutawatir.
In other words it will restrict itself
to the most undisputable examples
of specific miraculous events,
Allah allowed to unfold on his blessed hands
SallAllahu Alaihi Wasallam.
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