Website: www.ummahreflections.co.za
Quarterly: Issue No 96
Shawwal 1441 – May 2020
TAQWA (PIETY)
FAKE
NEWS vs HADITH SCIENCE
In the Name of Allah, Most Gracious,
Most Merciful. All thanks and praise are
due to Allah and peace and blessings be upon His Messenger Muhammad, his family
and all his companions.
In
today’s Internet World, production and distribution of multimedia is all in
digital format. Not long ago, people used to copy books by hand and had to
prove from whom they copied it for authenticity and security purposes. But in this age, the transfer and use of
digitized media is on the increase. This frequent transfer and usage of digital
media has created the need for verification and authentication of that which is
being shared by the public.
When
this digital information is tampered, distorted and then distributed amongst
the public, it can cause chaos and great damage to all parties involved. This
focus of concern has now shifted to social media. We can see how social media
platforms such as Facebook have a dramatically different structure than
previous media technologies. Social media content can now be relayed
amongst users with no significant third-party filtering, fact-checking or
editorial judgment. Any individual person - with no track record, authority or
reputation - can reach many readers including huge news corporations like Fox
News, CNN or the New York Times.
From an Islamic
perspective, our rich tradition is filled with how the Science of Hadith was
developed to check for the authenticity. It verifies, not just the text that
was being transmitted, but also the chain of narrators. It also includes the check if the narrators
had heard the text in the first place. Through this very rigid verification,
most of the fabrications and lies were rooted out from the core.
FAKE NEWS
The massive spread of fake news has been identified
as a major global risk and has influenced elections and threatens
democracies. Fake news boomed onto the
international stage and took the media by storm in the recent US Presidential
elections held in 2016. We saw how fake news has played a major role in
polarizing the society and duping them into believing narratives that did not
even exist in the first place. Fake news intentionally convinces the readers to
accept biased or false beliefs. Fake news is usually propagated by those out to
convey some political messages, influence people, or in some cases just to
cause instability.
A
glance at most news outlets today shows that they are more of a reality show
rather than credible news organizations. Most people today get their news from
their social media rather than tv channels or the newspapers. Not only fake news, we see a huge rise of
misleading headlines known as “click-bait” in many social media pages. The idea
is to get people captivated enough to read more and click the link provided in
them. Clicking the link generates revenue for these companies. For many social
media users who are just scrolling by without reading the actual article, the
misleading title itself acts as a source of information. And in many cases,
these misleading titles can be classified as fake news. Social media for news
consumption is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, its low cost, easy access
and rapid dissemination of information are leading people to seek out and
consume news from social media. On the other hand, it enables the wide spread
of fake news, i.e. low-quality news with intentionally false information.
As
long as these ‘fake news’ looks official, we find that many people tend to
share this news without verifying it. By liking, sharing and searching for
information, social “bots” (automated digital programs – related to chatbots -
that imitate humans) can magnify the spread of fake news to a very large
extent. By one recent estimate, between 9 and 15% of active Twitter accounts
are bots. Facebook estimated that as many as 60 million bots may be infesting
its platform. They were responsible for a substantial portion of political
content posted during the 2016 U.S. campaign.
And some of these same “bots” were later used to influence the 2017
French election.
While it is
commendable that Facebook is trying to alleviate the fake news problem, it does
not seem to be working. Refer to the
following website: (https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/may/16/facebook-fake-news-tools-not-working). Even if an
article is debunked, the “disputed” flag often does not appear. The reliance on
manual fact-checking by a select few organizations means that only a fraction
of fake news can be adequately debunked and labelled as such. One of the most
critical issues, however, is that the manual process takes too long given how
quickly fake news spreads. If a third party debunks a fake news article, there
is an approximate 13-hour lag between its initial release and the release of
the third-party response. This is not considering the additional delay caused
by Facebook’s implementation, where the content must first be flagged by users
and then reviewed by at least two fact-checking organizations. This process is
far too slow because a news article is viewed mostly in its first 36 hours, and
it can peak in views in just a few hours. Before Facebook responds to the fake
news, most of the damage has already been done. The issue is compounded by the
fact that there is no available data (analytics) to show that Facebook’s flagging
and tagging policy reduces the number of views and shares of fake news
articles.
The Internet has
not only become a medium for spreading fake news but
it also provides platforms for propagating it further into the masses. In this
fast-paced world that we live in today, social media has become part and parcel
of our daily life. We get majority of our news and updates from sites like
Facebook or micro-blogging giant, Twitter. Facebook – only recently –
acknowledged that they were working to fix their algorithm so that it would
filter out fake news, click bait and others, and promote a more holistic
content for its users.
FAKE
NEWS AND ISLAMOPHOBIA
In 2016, from a leaked
cable of WikiLeaks, it was revealed that the Pentagon paid a UK PR firm to
produce fake videos of Al Qaeda Attack during the Iraq war. The amount of
payment was huge amounting to $540 million (Black & Fielding-Smith, 2016 –
refer to the website: http://labs.thebureauinvestigates.com/fake-news-and-false-flags/). They used very
similar territories to film the false videos with crews having make up like
Muslim terrorist and uploaded those videos on internet which reached millions,
creating hatred towards Muslims. Hence, the question: Are all the videos that
we see today, of the beheadings and other propaganda videos of the terrorist
groups really true? Or those were created by the firms paid by US government,
to demonize the entire Muslim community. Even doubts arise whether all the news
that we hear about terrorist activities and published by the media in lucrative
way of condemnation, are true or just fake news on the basis of false
propaganda.
SCIENCE
OF HADITH
Hadith is part of
the Prophetic legacy also known as the Sunnah. A Hadith is basically the words,
actions, tacit approval and description given by the Prophet Muhammad (SAW).
Hadith literally comes from the Arabic word ‘Haddatha’
which means ‘story’ and ‘news.’
From
an Islamic perspective, for any classical work or text to be accepted amongst
the people it needs to be authenticated and verified by the scholars of that
discipline. It should be based on original and reliable sources of information
i.e. the Quran and the Sunnah of the Prophet Muhammad (SAW).
In
the Science of Hadith, as per the Ode of Bayquniyyah,
written by a well-known Shafi’ite scholar of Syria, 5
specific conditions are needed for a narration to be graded as Sahih:
- اِتِّصَالُ
السَّنَد The chain of narration, from the Messenger of Allah (SAW) to
the final narrator, must be connected in such a way that every single
person in the chain has himself heard or received this narration from the
person he is narrating.
- اَلْعَدَالَة – All the narrators in the chain must be upright, meaning
that they must be:
a) a Muslim
b) Has attained the age of accountability (puberty)
c) Sane of mind
d) Not an open sinner
e) Free from bad habits - ضَبْطُ – All the narrators must possess the ability to preserve
the hadith precisely.
- عَدَمُ
الشُّذُوْذ – The hadith should not contradict other hadiths which have
come from more reliable narrators.
- عَدَمُ
العِلَّة – There are no other hidden weaknesses such as a hidden gap
in the chain of narration.
The Sciences of
Hadith that have developed over 1400 years of meticulous scholarship is one of
the strongest verifications and authentication methodologies known to man. Let
us take lessons from the Science of Hadith to battle and cut the increasing
tide of fake news in social media looking at issues of content verification,
reliable transmission, transmission method and charge of custody etc.
THE REALITY OF
FAKE NEWS
Fake news is
generally defined as authentic material used in the wrong context. It may
include imposter news sites designed to look like the everyday brands we
already know and trust. Such sites are then infested with fake information and
manipulated. Similarly, in the Sciences of Hadith we see that people used to
attribute their own words and meanings to the sayings of our beloved Prophet
(SAW). Like the trusted news sites, they used to use names of the trusted
narrators and make additions to the people in the chain of narration and
modifications in the text to further their personal agenda. In the Sciences of
Hadith such topics are mainly tackled by the conditions of اِتِّصَالُ السَّنَد
and عَدَمُ
العِلَّة. This includes checking if the chain of narrators is connected
and hidden defects in the narration itself. The Arabic language is such that
the slightest change in the way a word is written or pronounced changes the
entire meaning of what is to be relayed. This concept was exploited by the
enemies of Islam to sow doubts and misinformation into the narrations to
misguide the people. This is where the scholars of Hadith have meticulously put
in years of effort to sift through and check where any such changes have been
made, hence preserving the Sunnah of the Prophet (SAW) and safeguarding
it from the plots of the enemies of Islam.
For more detailed
discussion on this subject, check out the following website:
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/using-methodologies-hadith-science-battle-rise-fake-news-mateen
Our beloved Prophet (SAW) used to
pray: “O
Allah! grant to my soul (Nafs) the sense of
righteousness and purify it, for You alone are the Best Purifier of my soul.
You are the Protecting Friend (Waliy) of it and the
Guardian (Mawlaa) of it as well. O Allah! I seek refuge in You from the knowledge which
does not benefit, from the heart that does not fear (You), from the soul that
does not feel satisfied and from a DU’AA that is not answered.” (Muslim)
O
Allah! Your Forgiveness is far greater than my sins and I have more hope in
Your Mercy than in my own deeds.
Requesting your
duas!
Abdul Haq Abdul Kadir
Johannesburg, Gauteng
South Africa