Muslims should appeal against the decision of the Supreme Court of Tatarstan to recognize the Sahih al-Bukhari collection of hadiths as extremist: if the court decides to recognize only a particular edition as extremist, it will remove the bitter aftertaste, said Anton Ignatenko, President of the Institute for Religion and Policy (IRP) to RIA Novosti.
Only one edition of the book - the 2007 edition of the summary by Imam Abu al-Abbas Ahmad bin Abd al-Lateef al-Zubaydi and the Arabic translation by Abdullah Nirshi - has been declared extremist in Russia. The decision was made by a court in Tatarstan after requests for expertise to various authorities, including the Moscow Islamic University (MII). Earlier, Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov in his Telegram channel called the expertise incompetent and expressed confidence that "it is necessary to urgently review the decision with the involvement of competent theologians."
"In the current situation the most productive thing seems to be for Muslims, together with the Tatarstan Muftiyat, to appeal against the decision of the Supreme Court of the Republic of Tatarstan. Let secular lawyers get involved and help prepare and send such an appeal to the right instance. If it makes a decision regarding the extremist part of a particular book and doesn't declare the authoritative collection of hadiths extremist so broadly, I'm sure it will remove the bitter aftertaste of an awkward step in the hearts of Muslims," Ignatenko said.
He stressed that Sahih al-Bukhari is one of few existing collections of hadiths, and at the same time it is one of the most reliable and most authoritative. The Sunnah of the Prophet Muhammad is the narrative of his life, set forth in hadiths transmitted orally from the Prophet's contemporaries along an unbroken chain of tradition through the generations to the compilation of written collections. After the Qur'an, the Sunnah Hadith are the basic texts that serve as a guide for a Muslim in their actions.
The religious scholar stressed that the Prophet Muhammad is famous for his kind and gentle nature, he repeatedly solved difficult and acute life, political and doctrinal situations through mercy and forgiveness, "this is what the collection of Hadith tells people, and it was declared extremist - a bitter paradox."
"The Chairman of the Religious Board of the Chechen Republic, Mufti Salakh-hadji Mezhiev, and other muftis correctly make the distinction: after all, the very text of the Hadith in Sahih al-Bukhari does not raise questions with anyone, including Russian courts. There may be complaints about the commentaries in the specific edition in question - Wahhabi ideas are sometimes noticeable in them; perhaps also about the translation into Russian. But let the Russian justice to point them out, without mixing the noble Hadith with later errors or misconceptions of others," concluded the religious scholar.
GSV "Russia - Islamic world"
Photo: Khusen Rustamov\Pixabay
Based on materials from RIA Novosti