Understanding The Prophet's Life
From Issue: 917 [Read full issue]
Logic of Faith
Some schools of thought and Islamic sects surely went to extremes, for example, Mutazilis, in rejecting some of the sahih hadiths that seemed far-fetched to their reason. We have seen this in the attitude of some of them with regards to the following hadith:
"In the Garden there is assuredly a tree in whose shade a rider may travel for a hundred years without crossing through it." [Bukhari, Muslim]
Ibn Kathir said in his Tafsir, "This hadith from God's Messenger is well-established, indeed definitively mutawatir in being sahih according to the leaders of hadith scholarship."
The outward sense of this hadith is that the hundred years are the years of this world. None knows except God the kind of anything between the time of this world and the time of the world that is with God. When a hadith has been authenticated there is no scope for us except to say we are content: we believe and we affirm the truth of it, being certain that the particular norms in the hereafter are different from the norms of this world. Ibn Abbas said: "There is nothing from the world in the Garden except the names!"
Compiled From:
"Approaching the Sunnah: Comprehension & Controversy" - Yusuf Al-Qaradawi, pp. 176, 177