There are many hadith which make him appear as lustful and licentious...

There are many hadith which make him appear as lustful and licentious; vindictive and cruel; opportunistic and unprincipled; and treacherous and unethical. Then there are some other traditions which can only be called smutty. But the evidence of history runs counter to such characterization of Muhammad. He could have been all these things but he was not. It is important, therefore, for Muslims and non-Muslims alike, to separate bunk and junk from fact and truth in studying the history of Islam.

How did such “traditions” which defy commonsense and logic, insinuate their way into the hadith literature, and how were the deeds and statements which can only be called shocking, attributed to the man whose real life was the epitome of all purity, truthfulness, sincerity and simplicity? Shibli has made a rather perfunctory attempt to answer this question in the passage quoted above.

He says that the most powerful extraneous “agent” influencing the writing of history in the times of the Umayyads and the Abbasis (661-1258) was the government.

The government in those days had the power to get history written to its own “specifications.” Both dynasties felt they were free to distort history or to suppress history, and whenever they believed it was in their interest to do so – to invent ‘history.' Whereas many hadith were invented for political reasons, there were also those hadith which were invented for sensual reasons. The sybarites of the courts of Damascus and Baghdad sought “sanction” for their own pleasures in these hadith .

A hadith means a statement. If a man saw the Prophet doing something or he heard him saying something, and then he reported it to others, it would be called a hadith or a tradition. The companions considered it their duty to preserve all the traditions of the Prophet for the benefit of the Muslim umma for all time. A hadith could also be a comment of the Prophet on some person.

If he paid a compliment to any of his companions, or if he criticized someone, his remarks gained wide publicity among the Muslims. During the khilafat of Muawiya, many of these hadith were in circulation. He was quick to grasp their importance, and he decided to make them a political weapon in his campaign against Ali ibn Abi Talib and the Banu Hashim.

Muawiya who was the founder of the Umayyad dynasty, won for himself another “distinction.” He founded the “cottage industry” for the production of hadith .