Saturday, 23 April 2011

Necessary to study ALL ahadith?

It's a very common scare mongering tactic employed by the  marjas/mujtahids and their followers, that they will try to persuade people that it is practically impossible for laymen(those people with self respect who did not go to hawza so as to spend their life shamelessly living off khums) to not do taqlid since that would entail reading up all ahadith which is very hard. On surface this argument may seem good but on closer inspection it becomes clear that this argument is baseless since one only needs to study those ahadith which are relevant to ones daily life. Just like a marja's taudhihul masail will contain countless laws, from how to clean an utensil in which a mouse has fallen to the different types of blood seen by women, a muqallid will only read the laws which are relevant to his life instead of memorizing the whole taudhihul masail. Considering that our classical scholars took up the hard work to collect ahadith and compile books organized by topics, it is pretty easy for anyone to pick up the hadith book, open up the relevant chapter and read the ahadith pertaining to his problems. The clerics and their followers then try to scare off people by saying that there are so many ahadith books and each chapter often coontains lots of ahadith which makes it impossible for laymen to read all of them. So the question is, even if this is true, does it even matter? Are we obliged to read up all ahadith? Did the Imams(as) order people to read all ahadith or is it OK for people to read a few ahadith to solve their problems? What do ahadith say?
 

Al mu'atabar min ahadith al Kafi

وعنه ، عن أحمد بن محمد، ومحمد بن الحسين، عن ابن محبوب، عن عبدالله بن سنان قال: قلت لابي عبدالله عليه السلام يجيئني القوم فيستمعون مني حديثكم فأضجر ولا أقوى، قال: فاقرأ عليهم من أوله حديثا ومن وسطه حديثا ومن آخره حديثا

And from him, from Ahmad b. Muhammad, and Muhammad b. al Hussian, from ibn Mahboob, from Abdullah b. Sinan who said: I said to Abi Abdullah(as): "My community comes to me so as to listen from me your(as) ahadith(sayings of masoomeen(as)), so I get/feel tired and weak." (Imam(as)) said: "So read upon them a hadith from start of it, and a hadith from middle of it and a hadith from end of it."

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