Role of Hadith in the promotion of Islamic climate and attitudes

Syed Abul Hasan Ali Nadwi, Mohiuddin Ahmad

• Publisher: Nadwi Press
• Year: 2025
• eBook ISBN: 9789366083056
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Islamic Theology

Preserving the Living Legacy: Hadith as the Heartbeat of Islamic Civilization

In the contemporary discourse surrounding Islamic tradition, few questions carry more weight than the authenticity, authority, and necessity of hadith literature. At a time when modernist voices question whether Muslims need the Prophetic traditions beyond the Qur'an, and when orientalist scholarship has long sought to undermine hadith reliability, Sayyid Abul Hasan Ali Nadwi's Role of Hadith in the Promotion of Islamic Climate and Attitudes offers a compelling and comprehensive defense of hadith's indispensable place in Islamic life.

A Unique Approach to a Timeless Question

Unlike traditional defenses of hadith that focus on chains of transmission, manuscript evidence, or jurisprudential arguments, Nadwi adopts a fresh perspective. He addresses readers shaped by modern education and influenced by Western orientalist critiques—readers who ask not whether hadith is authentic, but whether it is necessary. What practical purpose does it serve? What would be lost if Muslims relied solely on the Qur'an? These questions, Nadwi argues, reveal a fundamental misunderstanding of how religion functions in human life.

The author's central thesis is both simple and profound: hadith preserves not merely legal rulings or theological doctrines, but the complete spiritual, psychological, and moral environment in which Islamic faith flourishes. The Qur'an provides divine guidance; hadith shows that guidance embodied in a living personality. Commands to pray are one thing; witnessing the Prophet's tears during night vigils, his impatience for the next prayer, and his statement that "the coolness of my eyes lies in prayer" is something entirely different. The former provides obligation; the latter creates aspiration.

The Four-Fold Mission and Its Realization

Nadwi begins by examining the Qur'anic description of the Prophet's mission: reciting revelations, teaching the Scripture, imparting wisdom, and purifying people from spiritual and moral corruption. These objectives, he demonstrates, were achieved through three interconnected elements: the Prophet's exemplary personality, the Qur'an's divine message, and the Prophet's teachings and guidance as preserved in hadith.

The companions absorbed not only the Qur'an's words but also the Prophet's lived example. They saw his humble lifestyle despite his authority, his generosity toward his late wife Khadija's friends decades after her death, his kindness to servants and children, his patience with enemies. These observations, transmitted through hadith, created what Nadwi calls the "Islamic climate"—an atmosphere conducive to faith, piety, and moral excellence.

Comparative Religious Context

One of the book's most illuminating sections compares Islam's preservation of hadith with other religions' failure to maintain authentic records of their founders' lives. Nadwi notes that even Christianity, whose adherents revere Jesus as divine, possesses only fragmentary biographical information covering perhaps fifty days of Christ's ministry. The resulting vacuum was filled by apocryphal additions—the Acts, Paul's Epistles, and later hagiographies—which often departed from original teachings.

Similarly, Judaism's Talmud, compiled centuries after Moses, incorporated folklore and legends alongside genuine tradition. Hindu scriptures like the Mahabharata and Ramayana blend history with mythology. The Zoroastrian Avesta and its commentaries face similar questions of authenticity. In each case, the loss of reliable biographical material enabled drift from original teachings and the introduction of innovations.

Islam's difference, Nadwi argues, reflects Divine wisdom. A faith meant to guide humanity until the end of time required preservation of both the message (Qur'an) and the messenger's example (hadith). The companions' meticulous memorization, the next generation's careful compilation, and subsequent scholars' development of biographical criticism and chain-of-transmission analysis ensured this preservation.

Historical Evidence: Hadith and Religious Vitality

The book's most substantial historical contribution lies in documenting the correlation between hadith study and Islamic religious vitality. Nadwi provides detailed case studies from various Muslim societies, demonstrating a consistent pattern: when hadith scholarship flourishes, religious practice remains sound; when hadith is neglected, innovations and deviations proliferate.

The Indian subcontinent offers the most extensive evidence. During the tenth Islamic century (sixteenth century CE), Indian Muslim scholars focused on jurisprudence, logic, and philosophy while neglecting hadith study. Gujarat alone maintained connections with Arabian hadith scholars through figures like Ali Muttaqi and Muhammad Tahir. The result? Widespread unorthodox practices including grave worship, innovations in Sufi ritual, and syncretism with Hindu customs.

Reform came when scholars like Shaikh Ahmad Sirhindi (d. 1624) explicitly rejected these innovations based on hadith evidence. Sirhindi's famous declaration—"We require the testimony of Muhammad, not that of Muhyiuddin Ibn Arabi"—signaled a turn from speculative mysticism to Prophetic precedent. His contemporary, Abdul Haq Muhaddith Dehlavi, devoted his life to teaching hadith, while Shah Wali Allah (d. 1762) and his sons popularized the six authentic hadith collections throughout India.

The movement's culmination came with Sayyid Ahmad Shaheed's nineteenth-century revival, which produced extraordinary examples of religious devotion and successfully combated numerous unorthodox practices. All these reforms, Nadwi demonstrates, drew their strength and legitimacy from hadith scholarship.

Similar patterns emerged across the Muslim world. In Afghanistan, Mulla Ali Qari's hadith studies in Mecca enabled him to challenge prevailing superstitions. In Iraq, the Alusi family's hadith scholarship distinguished them from jurists and philosophers. In Egypt, Mahmud Khattab Subki's hadith-based reforms transformed religious practice, eliminating innovations related to prophetic birthday celebrations and mourning rituals.

Addressing Modern Objections

Nadwi reserves his most pointed critique for contemporary hadith skeptics. He identifies their motivation not in genuine historical criticism but in cultural capitulation. Drawing on Muhammad Asad's insights, he argues that modern Muslims educated in Western institutions face an uncomfortable choice: the Prophet's lifestyle or the Western lifestyle. Unable to reconcile the two, some opt to diminish hadith authority, making Islam more compatible with secular modernity.

This strategy, Nadwi warns, is spiritually and intellectually bankrupt. It severs Muslims from their heritage, destroys religious continuity, and ultimately leads to the same religious decline that befell Christianity and Judaism. The sunnah, preserved in hadith, forms Islam's "iron framework"—remove it, and the entire structure collapses.

The Climate of Faith

Perhaps the book's most enduring contribution is its concept of "Islamic climate"—the atmosphere in which faith thrives. Legal injunctions alone cannot create this climate. Muslims need not only to know that prayer is obligatory, but to feel the eagerness for prayer that the Prophet felt. They need not only to understand that the afterlife is real, but to internalize the certainty that made the companions accept poverty and hardship without complaint.

This climate is generated and maintained through hadith. The detailed accounts of the Prophet's daily life, his expressions of devotion, his interactions with companions, his tears of repentance, his generosity in poverty—these create emotional and spiritual resonance that mere commandments cannot achieve. They transform religious obligation into religious aspiration, making faith not a burden but a joy.

Practical Implications

Nadwi's analysis has practical implications for multiple domains. For Islamic education, it underscores the necessity of hadith study beyond jurisprudential purposes. Students must encounter hadith not as legal evidence but as spiritual nourishment—windows into the Prophetic era that inspire emulation.

For reform movements, the book provides historical validation. Authentic revival consistently flows from returning to hadith, while neglect of hadith invariably precedes religious decline. Contemporary reformers thus have both precedent and methodology: ground reform in Prophetic precedent as preserved in authenticated hadith.

For interfaith dialogue and comparative religion, Nadwi's work offers insight into how textual traditions function. Islam's success in preserving both scripture and biographical material represents a unique phenomenon in religious history, one that explains Islam's relative resistance to the secularizing forces that transformed Christianity.

Scholarly Significance

While accessible to general readers, this work makes substantial scholarly contributions. Its comparative religious analysis, though brief, opens avenues for further research into how different traditions preserved (or failed to preserve) founder biographies. Its documentation of hadith-based reform movements across diverse Muslim societies provides essential historical context for understanding modern Islamic revivalism. Its psychological insights into how religious communities maintain identity across time offer valuable perspectives for religious studies broadly.

The book also models a particular approach to Islamic apologetics—one that neither concedes to critics nor simply reasserts traditional positions, but instead reframes the conversation. By shifting from "Is hadith authentic?" to "Why is hadith necessary?", Nadwi addresses modern doubts more effectively than traditional polemics.

Enduring Relevance

Four decades after its original delivery, this work remains urgently relevant. Contemporary debates about Islamic authority, authenticity, and reform continue to revolve around hadith's status. Progressive Muslim voices still advocate sidelining hadith in favor of Qur'an-only approaches. Conservative voices still defend hadith using primarily traditional arguments. Nadwi's psychological and historical approach offers a productive middle path—neither rejecting modern concerns nor abandoning traditional commitments, but showing why hadith remains functionally indispensable for Islamic life.

Role of Hadith in the Promotion of Islamic Climate and Attitudes thus stands as essential reading for anyone seeking to understand how Islam has maintained doctrinal and practical continuity across fourteen centuries and diverse cultures, why hadith literature remains central to Muslim identity, and what happens to religious communities when they lose touch with their founders' authenticated legacy.

Table of contents

• Preface
• Role Of Hadith In The Promotion Of Islamic Climate And Attitudes
• Endnotes