READER RESPONSE: Anti-Hadis

Ignore not prophetic wisdom
MZHApr 25,
06 4:12pm


With respect to Umran Kadir's criticism towards Azly Rahman on his article, I did not see Azly's alleged labeling and generalisation of people of various interests and agenda to the extent where he ‘conveniently lump artists, feminists and musicians into one group and then proceeded to accuse this group of a plethora of ills’.

The usage of the adjectives 'reformed', 'pseudo', 'wayward' and 'extremely' proves well that it is not Azly's intention to categorise the mainstream artists and intellectuals together with those who ignore the prophetic wisdom as source of Islamic jurisprudence. I have to appreciate Azly's effort to highlight the true light of Islam with his exposure of the anti-hadeeth subculture.

It is the job of excellent 'independent' status-quo challengers like Umran to develop an internal radar in order not to fall to the trap of either truth-relativism or blind- adherence, instead of being sensitive to superficial semantic interpretations. Due to these one-way criticisms, people around the world have taken them out of context in their effort to ridicule Islam's role in maintaining social justice.

The public, especially non-Muslims, who are generally well-versed with the principles established within the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, will not have the expertise, time and space to refer to the divine texts and thus will treat Islam as a mere non-sociological belief system. Wild scrutiny of the divine revelations in the absence of contextual understanding laid down by the prophetic tradition is similar to denying the Messengerhood of the Prophet, as it ignores the role of the prophetic wisdom in constructing the Islamic worldview.

Being balanced does not mean being a bland conformist, and it prevents the dichotomy of conservatives and liberals which have been severely reinforced by self-interested politicians. There are great ideas flaunted by several Muslim feminists and social activists, but most of them have gone straight into the dustbin, sadly, due to their pick-and-choose ‘mazhab’. The silent Muslim majority will definitely not be perturbed by writings which not only highlight errors in un-Islamic practices, but offer solid remedies to current failings in the syariah implementation fully backed up by the Quran under the light of the prophetic wisdom.

The gatekeepers of both the mainstream and alternative media may not like balanced views like Azly’s (and to a certain extent, Umran’s, if he wishes to be critical of both the conformists and non-conformists), but the silent Muslim majority will quietly scissor out your content, laminate it and hang it on their small, humble cubicle cells.

On the other hand, the only benefit of publishing ‘tip-toey’ articles which lack critical insight of the extremity of both truth-relativism and blind- adherence is fewer trees to be cut, and more free bandwidth to be shared.


Time to correct gender imbalance04:17pm Mon Apr 24, 2006
Azly Rahman’s paroxysm troubling04:08pm Fri Apr 21, 2006
Azly out to bamboozle04:05pm Fri Apr 21, 2006
Feminism is about humanity03:05pm Fri Apr 14, 2006
Unfair to keep women ‘down on the farm’04:31pm Tue Apr 11, 2006
Feminism: What is he afraid of?04:01pm Mon Apr 10, 2006
We know what feminism is, thank you03:33pm Thu Mar 30, 2006
Don’t deny women equal rights07:58pm Wed Mar 29, 2006
Malaysian feminists and still proud of it!04:45pm Mon Mar 27, 2006
Muslim feminists and reality levels03:18pm Wed Mar 22, 2006