A Response to Those Who Doubt the Prophetic Hadiths on the Claim That the Hadith Was Not Collected During the Life of the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him)

The Shaykh : As for the fact that they are not confident in some of the hadiths, and I commented on a word in some of them, why are they confident in some and not in others? Since the objection they are raising is that the hadith was only collected after the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him), then logically, they should have no confidence in any hadith whatsoever. Sufficient proof of the error, indeed the misguidance, of this claim, or of this lack of confidence, is that in that case, nothing would remain in the hands of the Muslims that connects them to their glorious and radiant history at all. Because if any person raises objections and many doubts regarding the hadith of the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him), who was commanded to clarify His Lord’s book, “You, O Messenger, to clarify for the people what has been revealed to them,” if they doubt this clarification, meaning the hadith of the Messenger (peace and blessings be upon him), then doubt will inevitably spread, a fortiori, to the entire history of the Messenger, to the entire life of the Companions, to all the battles, to all of history. Nothing would remain for us at all. Knowing that the scholars of Islamic history, even among the disbelievers and the Orientalists, and the testimony of the enemy is sufficient, what do they say? “And the merit is that which is witnessed to by the enemies”. These people say that there is no history on the face of the earth more authentic than the history of the Muslims.
The history of the Muslims; there is no history more authentic than it. So what can you say about the history of the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him) and his biography in particular, which includes, first and foremost, his (peace and blessings be upon him) clarification of the Noble Qur’an? So this doubt means, as I said before, that these doubters should return to the first or second group. But if they believe, no, they say, “No, we believe in the hadith and the necessity of the hadith, and that it is impossible to do without it,” otherwise people would come up with new religions in the name of Islam. At that point, we draw their attention to something I previously hinted at briefly, which is the way of knowing the hadith: it is the scholars of hadith. The second thing is not true, which is spread and broadcast on various occasions in lectures, writings, and different magazines, and this is from the whispers of the missionaries and the enemies of Islam and the religion, that this hadith was not written and not collected until about a year and a half after the death of the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him). This is not true at all, and that is due to authentic hadiths known to us, the hadiths by which we prohibit and permit, that the hadith was being written during the time of the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him), and that sometimes he himself (peace and blessings be upon him) would order the writing of a sermon he delivered to the people. For example, there is a hadith in Sahih al-Bukhari from Abu Hurayrah who said, “Abdullah ibn Amr ibn al-As had more hadith than I did; he used to write and I did not write”. Look at this text: a Companion who was present with the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him) and was a companion to his brother Abdullah ibn Amr ibn al-As in accompanying the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him) and receiving knowledge and hadith from him, says that in what he thought, and his thought was actually wrong as complete investigation later indicated, he thought that Abdullah ibn Amr had more hadith than he did. He explains by saying, “He used to write and I did not write”. So Ibn Amr was writing the hadith during the time of the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him), and therefore Abu Hurayrah thought he had more hadith than him. And we have from his preserved hadiths with authentic chains what confirms Abu Hurayrah’s statement that Ibn Amr was writing the hadith. There is a hadith in Musnad Ahmad and others from Abdullah ibn Amr himself that he sat in a gathering with a group of polytheists, and they said, “How do you write down everything your Prophet says, whether in a state of satisfaction or anger? He is a human being.” So it seems this doubt entered his heart, and he hastened to his Prophet to ask him to remove it, and he related to him the previous statement of the polytheists. Then the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him) said to him, and you heard this hadith in the recording, . So the Messenger is telling him, “Write down every hadith you hear from me.” So he was writing the hadith. This is a second hadith, and a third hadith from him, the same person, that he was sitting around the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him) writing the hadith from him, and a questioner asked him, “O Messenger of Allah, will we conquer Constantinople first or Rome?” He said, . This is what concerns me: this great glad tidings, and this must be preserved well so that you know that the future belongs to Islam. But this requires work for Islam and understanding Islam correctly. The point of this is that while we were sitting with the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him) writing the hadith from him, a questioner asked him. Therefore, there is even today a document known among hadith scholars as the “Sahifah of Amr ibn Shu’ayb from his father from his grandfather,” and his grandfather is this Abdullah ibn Amr ibn al-As. A “Sahifah” means a document that was inherited by the sons from the fathers from the grandfather in writing. And there are other documents known in the books of terminology and the science of hadith. So this is sufficient for us as an example to refute this doubt which says that the collection of the hadith did not begin during the time of the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him).