Ahl al-Hadith"; also Așḥāb al-ḥadīṯ; أصحاب الحديث), is a branch of Islam and
a name given to various Islamic conservative traditionalists, and refers
to the adherent's belief that they are not bound by taqlid but consider
themselves free to seek guidance in matters of religious faith and practices
from the authentic hadith which, together with the Qur'an, are in their
view the principal worthy guide for Muslim. Adherents contrast themselves
with those they call Ahl al-Rai, literally "the people of rhetorical
theology". The Ahl-e-Hadith movement is often described as being synonymous with
Salafism. In recent times it has referred to a
sect in Indian subcontinent started in the mid-nineteenth century in Northern
India. Followers call themselves as Ahl al-Hadith or Salafi, while others refer
to them as Wahhabi, or consider them a variation on the Wahhabi movement. In
recent decades the movement has drawn both inspiration and financial support
from Salafi Saudi Arabia, but the movement itself claims to be distinct
from Wahhabism, and some believe it possesses some notable distinctions from
the mainly Arab Salafis. History
= Early and medieval Islam = The term ahl-al-hadith has been used to
refer to The People Who Strictly Follow Quran, Sunnat(sayings of Prophet
Muhammad) and Understand them in the way The First Three Generations of Muslims
Understood it .The first Three Generations which are known as Salaf.
The characterization refers to the adherents of the powerful movement of
the late second and third centuries of Islam that insisted on the authority of
the traditions attributed to Muhammad, as against the informed “opinions” on
which many contemporary juristic schools based their legal reasoning. This
movement played a critical role in the emergence of Sunni Islam.
According to R. Kevin Jaques, it appears to have "developed out a of a pious
reaction" to the assassination of Caliph Yazid b. Walid. Ibn Hazm has been called
"the foremost philosopher-theologian" of the Ahl al-Hadith.
They again drew attention in the post-Mongol era, when Ibn Taymiyyah, the
very influential Hanbali scholar of Damascus, started a reformist movement
to purge the Islamic community of what he believed as deviant beliefs. Noting
the academic prowess of the people of hadith, Al-Dhahabi remarked, "Where is
the knowledge of hadith, and where are its people? I am on the verge of not
seeing them except engrossed in a book or under the soil."
The orientation towards the Salaf and a textualist commitment to hadith instead
of speculative reasoning characterized the ahl al-hadith movement of
9th-century scholars like Ahmad Ibn Hanbal. Classical Salafism represented a
revival of Hanbali thought in the 14th century, specifically at the hands of
Ibn Taymiyya, and his chief acolyte, Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya. Early proponents
ascribe the authority of Ahl al-Hadith to specific hadith of Muhammad
al-Bukhari. Ibn Hajar al-Asqalani mentioned the people of hadith in his
commentary of the hadith, "And this nation will continue, established upon
Allah's Command, unharmed by those who oppose them until the arrival of Allah's
Order." He stated that Muhammad al-Bukhari was adamant that those
referred to in this hadith were the people with knowledge of the narrations,
Ahl al-Athar, i.e. the people of hadith, and then quoted Ahmad ibn Hanbal as
saying, "If they are not Ahl al-Hadith, then I do not know who they are." Qadi
Ayyad explained that Ahmad was referring to Ahl al-Sunnah and those who share the
beliefs of the people of hadith. The followers of the Ahl al-Hadith movement
claim their beliefs and practices to be the same as those of early Muslims and,
in particular, the Rashidun. The movement rose to prominence in the 9th
century AD during the Abbasid era to counter the beliefs of Mutazilities.
= South Asia = In the mid-nineteenth century an Islamic
religious reform movement was started in Northern India that rejected everything
introduced into Islam after the Quran, Sunnah and Hadith. Syed Nazeer Husain
from Delhi and Siddiq Hasan Khan of Bhopal drew primarily on the work of
hadith scholars from Yemen in the early years of the movement, reintroducing the
field into the Indian subcontinent. Their strong emphasis on education and
book publishing has often attracted members of the social elite both in
South Asia and overseas; University of Paris political scientist Antoine Sfeir
has referred to the movement as having an elitist character which perhaps
contributes to their status as a minority in South Asia. Folk Islam and
Sufism, commonly popular with the poor and working class in the region, are
anathema to Ahl al-Hadith beliefs and practices. This attitude toward Sufism
has brought the movement into conflict with the rival Barelvi movement even
more so than the Barelvis perennial rivals, the Deobandis.
In the 1920s, the Ahl al-Hadith opened a center for their movement in Srinagar.
Followers of the Hanafi school of law, forming the overwhelming majority of
Muslim in Jammu and Kashmir, socially boycotted and physically attacked Ahl
al-Hadith followers, eventually declaring such followers to be apostates
and banning them from praying in mainstream mosques. From the 1930s the
group also began dabbling in the political realm of Pakistan, with Ehsan
Elahi Zaheer leading the movement into a full foray in the 1970s, eventually
gaining the movement a network of mosques and Islamic schools. Following
other South Asian Islamic movements, the Ahl al-Hadith now also administer
schools and mosques in the Anglosphere. In the modern era, the movement draws
both inspiration and financial support from Saudi Arabia, now being favored
over the rival Deobandi movement as a counterbalance to Iranian influence.
Tenets Its adherents oppose taqlid. They
believe that they are not bound by taqlid, but consider themselves free to
seek guidance in matters of religious faith and practices from the authentic
hadith which, together with the Qur'an, are in their view the principal worthy
guide for Muslim. They reject the use of kalam in theology.
Due to their reliance on the Qur'an and Hadith only and their rejection of
analogical reason in Islamic law, the modern-day Ahl al-Hadith are often
compared to the older Zahirite school of Islamic law, with which the Ahl
al-Hadith consciously identify themselves.
While their educational programs tend to include a diverse array of Muslim
academic texts, few adherents of the movement ascribe themselves to one
school of Muslim jurisprudence, placing a greater emphasis on personal
responsibility to derive judgments and ritual practice. While the movement's
figureheads have ascribed to the Zahirite legal school, with a great
number of them preferring the works of Yemeni scholar Shawkani, the generality
of the movement is described as respecting all Sunni schools of Islamic
law while preferring to take directly from the Qur'an, prophetic tradition and
consensus of the early generations of Muslims. While the movement has been
compared to Salafist movement in Arab nations and been branded as Wahhabist by
the opposing Barelwi movement, the Ahl al-Hadith remain similar to yet distinct
from Salafists. In the 19th century, the Ahle Quran
formed in reaction to the Ahle Hadith, whom they considered to be placing too
much emphasis on hadith instead of Quran.
Practices Like other Islamic movements, the Ahl
al-Hadith are distinguished by certain common features and beliefs. The men
tend to have a particular style of untrimmed beard often considered a
visual indicator. In regard to ritual acts of Muslim worship, the movement's
practices are noticeably different from the Hanafi legal school which
predominates in South Asia; the men hold their hands above the navel when lined
up for congregational prayer, raise them to the level of their heads before
bowing, and say "amen" out loud after the prayer leader.
While the terrorist organization Lashkar-e-Taiba has recruited followers
of the Ahl al-Hadith movement in the past, the organization's views on jihad
are thought to alienate the mainstream of the movement.
= Organizations = Some of the organizations of the
Ahl-e-Hadith are the All India Ahl-e-Hadith Conference, founded
sometime on or before 1916, of which smaller organizations in India are
members. One member is the Anjuman-i-Hadith formed by students of
Maulana Sayyid Miyan Nadhir Husain and divided into Bengali and Assam wings.
After the 1947 separation of India and Pakistan, the Pakistani Ahle-Hadith
center was based in and around Karachi. In 1930 Ahl-i Hadith was founded as a
small political party in India. In Pakistan, the movement formed a
political party, Jamiat Ahle Hadith, which unlike similar Islamic groups
opposed government involvement in affairs of sharia law. Their leader,
Ehsan Elahi Zaheer, was assassinated in 1987. The Ahl-i Hadith oppose Shi'ism.
The number of Ahle Hadith madrassa in Pakistan has grown from 134 in 1988 to
310 in 2000. The group has 17 organisations active in Pakistan,
"looking after their own seminaries," three of them involved in jihad. It is
linked to the Ahl al-Hadith movement, and receives support from Wahhabis in
Saudi Arabia. Demographics
During the rule of the British Raj, no accurate census was ever taken of the
movement's exact number of followers. In the modern era, the number of followers
of the movement in Pakistan constitute 4% of the Muslim population, 25-30
million followers in India, and 27.5 million in Bangladesh.
In the United Kingdom, the Ahl al-Hadith movement maintains 42 centers and boasts
a membership which was estimated at 5,000 during the 1990s and 9,000 during
the 2000s. Although the movement has been present in the UK since the 1960s,
it has not been the subject of extensive academic research and sources on the
movement are extremely limited and rare. Adherents of the Ahl al-Hadith movement
Bangladesh Muhammad Asadullah Al-Ghalib
India Pakistan
Yemen See also
Salafi movement Jamiat Ahle Hadith:A religious-political
party in Pakistan Shirk
Bid‘ah External links
Markazi Jamiat Ahle Hadees Hind Markazi Jamiat Ahle Hadees Pakistan
Al-Markazul Islami As-Salafi Ahlehadeeth Andolon Bangladesh
References