right guidance is hard

a very nice post by yursil talks about hadith and what they are and arenot supposed to have been.

The opposite of Taqlid is the approach taken by the Ahl ul Hadith (People of Hadith), otherwise known as Salafi’s or Wahabi’s. Their influence has been far and the printing press has been their friend indeed. Wrapped in source texts they seek every answer in between marks on paper, not realizing the heaviness of those texts and the burden they bear.

Hadith were an attempt at capturing the Amal (Manners) of the Prophet (صلي الله عليه و سلم) in a supplementary way for future generations. They were not meant to replace those who the Prophet (صلي الله عليه و سلم) himself described as his inheritors and those who the Quran praises. Reading Hadith to achieve those manners is possible for pieces here and there, but at the same time it is quite like parents communicating to their child only through one way text messages. Such an approach is insufficient to handle the needs of transmitting the fundamental expressions of our faith (including ritual prayer) much less raising a well rounded person.

Today’s Muslims are, for the most part, like such children.

not to say that i am an adult but this is very true we are all children, i mean i a community way. We have been made into children by the colonial powers and now are shadows of what we are supposed to be, and it is because we look for the easy fix like Bukhari instead. in my last post I did mention that I don't like the way that muslims make Bukhari into a prophet and there is a lot of silly things in Bukhari and it shoudl be okay to be able to say that. Now there is even a big book out slandering the Prophet by the jihad watch man and he uses Bukhari as his source! Doesn't that tell us something about Bukhari? And there are muslims who think Ayesha was only 9 years old too. Again thanks to Bukhari.

And then look at The Transhumanist who speaks beautifully about reason. Isn't Bukhari the opposite of this? How I wish muslims could do this:

It is speculative reasoning (al-nazar) which leads to knowledge of God, because He is not known by the way of necessity (daruratan) nor by the senses (bi l-mushahada). Thus, He must be known by reflection and speculation.
The Mu'tazilis had a nuanced theory regarding reason, Divine revelation, and the relationship between them. They celebrated power of reason and human intellectual power. To them, it is the human intellect that guides a human to know God, His attributes, and the very basics of morality.

that is so beautiful and yet i admire it but i do not know God except through my own imams and shayks so the question is am I doing taqlid? how do i know my imams and shayks are rightly guided? ar they just reading bukhari in the back room? i dont think that the mutazhili survived to today because what they say sounds great but who actually achieves that? everyone eventually just relies on someone else and then we assume it is taqlid. maybe we dont have the institutions for proper taqlid anymore though because bukhari has eaten them all.

it is still ramadan and I have been neglecting my qur'an with my blogging bad habit but then again maybe thinking about issues like this is part of my ibadat. this i guess is my attempt at reason but i am not a fancy thinker, i would rather just follow tradition rather than try and reason my way to something that is incorrect and how would I even know? I want to be right, not wrong.