Why Turtle Island Native Folks Don't Have Written Records
There's a number of things that we relate to in both the
indigenous culture and Islam. We appreciate the Greatness of the Creator
when we see the good things He Created. We see the beauty of it and we thank
Him in prayers for that. The other thing would be that we refuse to be
assimilated.
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Prophet Muhammad Salallaahu Aleyhi wa Sallam says not
to resemble others and not to live among them in order to not get
assimilated. We hear again and again folks preferring to stay in poverty
rather than having to be assimilated. Another stunning thing that we can relate to is the
variety of dialects in Native languages and the importance given to that.
The Qur'an can be read in many ways according to different Arabic dialects
that were present when the Qur'an came. There's Qiraat u Saba'a, the seven
readings that have been standardized and the Qur'an was written and spread
among Muslims to distant places in order to keep it in the uniform way.
Great importance is given to the seven readings of the Qur'an just like the
Native culture gives great impotence to the different dialects of a Native
language.
In Native cultures there's no writing of records and the
reason for that is exactly the same as the reason there is the study of
Hadith in Islam. Native story tellers say that if their stories were
written down on paper anyone could later come and change that. People have
indeed done that in the past with Books like the Bible. They still
continue to rewrite the Bible into new versions adding, taking out and
rearranging it from their own whims and claim it is not their
words but the Creator's words. To avoid that happening to their stories
Native in Turtle Island would designate story tellers what is called in
Arabica Rawi, and each would live in a separate territory They would live
distant from each other and it would be impossible for each of them to
agree on the same mistake. Then when Nations would gather the story tellers
would get together and one would tell the story while others listen, making
sure that the story is told correctly. The stories would be passed on from
generation to generation and they are very much alive till today. This is
exactly the same as the way the Hadith of the Prophet were
transmitted. A narrator would recite in a gathering with everyone listening
and new listeners would record while the old would listen to make
corrections if a mistake would be made by the narrator.
The reason we have written Hadith books of is
because the transmitters would reach numbers of up to 100 000 and it would
be safe to have the books written and rewritten. The chance of the same
mistake being made by so many transmitters in all the separate cities in the
Islamic world would be impossible to happen. In the terminology of the
Hadith this is called a Mutawatir narration. When there is a great number of
narrators transmitting the same narration be it an Ayah from the
Qur'an, a Hadith or a historical event when the number of narrators is
so great that the chance of a same mistake being made by all was
eliminated the narration is called Mutawatir and recording it in books and
giving it to everyone to transmit was made acceptable. The Qur'an is
Mutawatir and it is exactly the same word for word as it was when it came
1400 years ago. The Hadith that have been checked for authenticity are the
exact words of Prophet Muhammad Salallaahu Aleyhi was Sallam.
The method of the Riwaya and the Mutawatir Riwayaat is not
present in other cultures. The Bible people absolutely don't possess that
in their culture yet they come and preach to both Native and Muslim folks.
They even go so far as to claim that the Bible is unchanged yet they don't
have the original Hebrew version and they have different versions of Bibles
in different languages with totally different contents from sect to sect and
version to version. The original version of the Bible disappeared after Isa
Aleyhi Salaam, and the first record of the Bible was written three
centuries after Isa Aleyhi Salaam. That is a narration with a missing
link not between two genrations but between three centuries of
generations making it totally unacceptable and deeply falling under the
category of Mawaduo meaning lie.
In Native stories there's lots of inner meanings and
things that need explanation and for the person who can understand them
there's stories mentioning geological events on earth that took place
thousands of years ago such as the reversal of the flow of rivers at
the time of the formation of the Great Lakes. There's stories mentioning
animals that lived 20 000 years ago in Turtle Island such as the woolly
mammoths. These stories were narrated from the eyewitness to the person
today from generation to generation over tens of thousands of years.
This shows the successfulness of the method of oral
narration from generation to generation. It also shows the failure of
writing something down on paper and letting anyone transmit it and rewrite
it without making sure the narration to be correct. It is also of great
value as a cultural heritage of indigenous Nations who were eyewitness to
things that occurred millennia ago and who continue to preserve that moment.