Question

The Sunnis believe that the traditions and the sunnah have notbeenrecorded for about a century, i.

e.

 from the caliphate of `Umartill thecaliphate of `Umar ibn Abdil Aziz (the Umayyad caliph).

 Manytraditionshave been burned in the lifetime of Abu Bakr and Umar.

3- Can we expect any remaining of the trdaitions and sunnah afteracentury of prohibition? Even if we found some of them, weshould askhow much and to what degree of accuracy were theyrecorded? Do wedare say that all the traditions existing in theSunni sources remainedsafe from abrogation? And, if thosetraditions were all accredited andreliable, then why did Muslimchoose only six thousand hadith fromabout three hundredthousand? Or why did al-Bukhari choose only fourthousandhadiths from more than six hundred thousand - and left therest?If all the traditions that are talking about the Prophet (s.w.) andhissunnah were reliable and trustworthy then why do the Sunnispractiseijtihad, qiyas and istihsan? Wasn't Abu Hanifa, and otherscholarspractising qiyas and istihsan in order to derive certainrules of the Islamiclaw (shar`)? Doesn't this prove that thetraditions do not contain religiousrules? Even those which containsome religious rule, are not reliable.

 Weread in the book titled"Kitaab al-Mawdhou`aat" (vol.

1, Beirut edition, thelast lines of thechapter called `fadhaa`il al-Khulafa'') that the two greatand eminentscholars, i.

e.

 al-Soyouti and Ibn al-Jawzi, had declared thatmost ofthe known narrations which eulogize the caliphs are fabricatedandnot trustworthy!4- Prohibiting the writing of the traditions led the enemies of AhlulBayt(a.s.) to omit all these traditions containing the virtues of theProphet'sHouse, and in their place they fabricated thousands oftraditions thateulogize their enemies! (See the first volume oftafseer al-Fakhral-Raaziöa great Sunni scholaröwhen interpreting thephrase "BismAllah"; he says: The traditionalists have concealedmany traditions thatrelated the virtues of Imam Ali (a.s.) becausethey feared Mu`awiyah!!!5- If the Sunnis are true when they pretend that the Muslims havetofollow the sunnah of the Holy Prophet (a.s.), then why do theyrefuse tonarrate the traditions that eulogize the Holy Imams (a.s.),especially ImamSadiq (a.s.).

 This is so, while in the same timethey narrate manytraditions about the Khawarij and Nawasib.