As promised to some people who requested me to post what is the MUIS response to my question to MUIS. SO here it is.
My email to MUIS questioning about hadiths, nafsu and syaitan
>Assalamu’alaikum! I would like to ask some question regarding syaitan,
>nafsu and hadiths.
>Is it true that in Ramadhan, syaitan are tied up? i was told it is from a
>hadith. Can hadith be trusted? The reason why i asked if the hadiths could
>be trusted because i have this friend which tells me that the hadiths
>can’t be trusted because the hadiths contradicts each other and also
>because the hadiths were written by human beings. So i would like to
>confirm it. Is it true what my friend stated?
>Also, my friend claims that only syaitan can incite us to do sin. Is it
>true? But i’ve read somewhere that the Nafs also can do so too? Which is
>right? I hope you will answer my questions.
MUIS RESPONSE
Assalamualaikum wr wb
In The Name of Allah, Most Gracious, Most Merciful.
All praise and thanks are due to Allah, and peace and blessings be upon His
Messenger.
Thank you for your query. We commend your effort to seek clarifications in
matters concerning Islam.
It is dangerous to have some knowledge and pretend or thought that one can
speak authoritatively on Islam.
Hadith is prophetic sayings. They have been recorded since the earliest
time by the Prophet’s companions, and preserved both in writing and orally
throughtout the ages. For sure, there are some people who attempted to
falsify hadith, creating new hadith and claming that it came from the
Prophet. They usually did this for worldly reasons, such as to gain
recognition, favours from the sultans, or even to increase their business
profits.
It is because of this, in the second to fourth century Hijrah, there
appeared many scholars who did meticulous background research on each and
every individual who has even conveyed any hadith. These individuals
numbers hundreds of thousands. The collective efforts of those scholars are
recorded in voluminous books, that survived to this day. No other scholars
of other religion can even attempt to do that.
Besides this gargantuan task, the scholars also compiled all the hadith in
book form for preservation to next generations. One scholar in the 5th
century Hijrah by the name of Jalaludin Suyuti sorted all those hadith in
alphabetical order, and those hadiths numbered almost 100 000.
Thus, it can be seen that the science of hadith is very rigorous and
respected as field of knowledge taught and learnt at many universities,
even in the west such as Oxford and Cambridge. Reputable scholars, Muslims
and non-Muslims alike, agree that the collected hadith which has been
classified as authentics came from the Prophet himself and not creation of
others.
There are hadiths which seems to contradict each other. And this is not
something new. The scholars even from the earliest time created a field of
study called Ikhtilaf Hadith as a specialised study on this subject. One of
the logical explanation is that those hadith was mentioned by the Prophet
at different times to different individual. An anology is this: suppose a
student ask a teacher which is the most important topic to learn, and the
teacher said: trigonometry. The teacher said that because the coming test
will concentrate much on that topic. Another year, another class, another
student asked the same teacher the same question. And the teacher replied:
algebra, because that year’s test will touch more on it.
Now, looking just at the question and answer without looking at the
circumstances around them, one may think that the teacher gave conflicting
answers.
The same goes with hadith. Contradicitons occur if one disregard the
circumstances surrounding the hadith.
As for the second question, people commit sinful acts because of syaithan
and also his nafs, his desire. Thus, even during Ramadan, when the big and
major syaithans are tied down, the nafs are free to trick people into
commiting sinful acts.
We hope that this reply answers your question. Please continue to seek
religious knowledge at mosques or by reading authentic materials. A good
book that you can rely on is The Reliance of the Traveller by Nuh Ha Mim
Keller. This book can be found in many Muslim bookstores, especially Darul
Arqam and Pergas.
And Allah knows best.
Wassalam.
