Transfer Of Reward To The Deceased And The Status Of The Hadith

July 10, 2024

2 min read 2 min

Question

I have a question regarding the punishment in the grave. According to Mr Ghamidi, the punishment in the grave is only for the people who were the direct addressees of prophet, or the people with a definite result in the hereafter. But as I was reading one of the articles uploaded recently regarding “eesal-e-Sawab“, there was a Hadith when prophet (sws) asked a companion to put a branch of a tree on a grave in which some body was being punished for a very small sin of not caring about his urine. Now the writer, a fellow of Al-Mawrid, has accepted that hadith, if that is so, doesn’t it contradict the above argument? Secondly, I am a bit confused about Ghamidi’s explanation of Hadith, at one point he is off the view that it does not add anything in religion, but in the same paragraph in his book he says that if one is satisfied about the authenticity of a hadith, it is compulsory for him to follow it. Now if somebody agrees with the authenticity of the hadith and follows it then wouldn’t it add some thing in religion?

Answer

Kindly revisit the article about eesaal-e sawab. I believe the author has interpreted the narrative about the boughs differently. His interpretation does not negate the view of Mr Ghamidi regarding punishment in the grave.

As for the role of Hadith Mr Ghamidi believes that the basic content of the religion is found in the Qur’an and the Sunnah. The hadith does not add to the independent concrete contents of the religion. They however, do provide explanation to the texts, detail certain things and contain Prophet’s best example set in following the religion. Now as explanatory source the Hadith has immense importance. We should not hastily reject the hadiths. All the sound narratives have their basis in the Book of God or the Sunnah. However, they are not independent source. They have to be interpreted and understood in the light of the Qur’an and Sunnah. If they contradict the basic sources or cannot be reconciled to them they have to be kept under consideration till the time a scholar studying them finds their relation to the sources or is sure of the fact that they contradict the sources. In the latter case they have to be discarded.

Answered by: Tariq Mahmood Hashmi

Date: 2015-03-03