Criticism of hadith

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This article is about the critique of the classical Islamic consensus on the collection and use of hadith. For the religious science of the collection and use of hadith, see Hadith studies.
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A manuscript copy of Sahih al-Bukhari, Mamluk era, 13th century, Egypt. Adilnor Collection, Sweden.

Criticism of ḥadīth[Note 1] or hadithical criticism is the critique of

Islamic prophet Muhammad.[1][Note 2]

Mainstream Islam holds that the

Mu'tazilites rejected the hadiths as the basis for Islamic law, while at the same time accepting the Sunnah and Ijma.[8]

Criticism of ḥadīth has taken several forms. The classical Islamic science of ḥadīth studies was developed to weed out fraudulent accounts and establish a "core" of authentic (i.e., "sound" or ṣaḥīḥ) ḥadīth compiled in classical ḥadīth collections. But some Muslim thinkers and schools of Islam contend that these efforts did not go far enough. Among their complaints is that there was a suspiciously large growth in the number of ḥadīth with each early generation;[9][Note 3] that large numbers of ḥadīth contradicted each other; and that the genre's status as a primary source of Islamic law has motivated the creation of fraudulent ḥadīth.[12][13]

These critics range from those who accept the techniques of ḥadīth studies but believe a more "rigorous application" is needed (Salafi

Sayyid Ahmad Khan);[15] to "deniers of hadith" or "Hadith rejectors" who believe that the ḥadīth are not part of the Sunnah and that what Muslims are required to obey is contained entirely in the Quran (20th-century modernists Aslam Jairajpuri and Ghulam Ahmed Perwez).[16]

Canonization of hadith

The earliest schools and scholars of Islamic law—starting around a century and a half after the death of Muhammad—did not all agree on the importance of Prophetic sunnah and its basis, being hadith ultimately attributed to Muhammad.

salat, the correct forms of salutations,[27] and the importance of benevolence to slaves.[28]) Al Shafi'is advocacy played a decisive role in elevating the status of hadith[29][30] although some skepticism along that of earlier lines would continue.[31]

Hadith sciences

Main article: Hadith studies

The objective of hadith sciences (ʻilm al-ḥadīth) is to distinguish between reliable or "sound" (sahih) and unreliable hadith, such that the former can be used to establish Islamic practice and belief. This practice had entered into a mature stage by the 3rd century of Islam.[32][33][Note 4] The hadith sciences helped undergird the triumph of Al-Shafi'is prioritization of prophetic hadith[34] which became the primary sources of Islamic law and also became "ideological" tools[12][13] in political/theological conflicts.[23]

A challenge the hadith sciences had to confront was the massive scale of hadith forgery,

matn) of a narration as opposed to its isnad.[Note 7]

The major collections of hadith, for Sunni Muslims, became the

Jami' al-Tirmidhi, Sunan Al-Nasa'i, and Sunan ibn Majah.[36]

History of Muslim criticism of hadith

Historically, some sects of the

Mu'tazilites also rejected the hadiths as the basis for Islamic law, while at the same time accepting the Sunnah and ijma.[8]

Similarly, critics of collection and/or use of hadith in Islam can be found in the early era when the classical consensus of

Syed Ahmed Khan, Muhammad Iqbal) sought to revitalize Islam.[43] In addition scholars from the West such as Ignác Goldziher and Joseph Schacht
have criticized the science of hadith starting in the 19th century.

Although scholars and critics of the Hadith such as

Islamic world come partly from the traditional elements of the hadith and seek to reject those teachings.[45]

Early criticism

Science of hadith

"Systematic application of hadith criticism" began with Abū Hanīfa (died 767 CE/150 AH) when there were a "huge number of forged hadith" creating a situation "out of control".

Al-Shafi‘i (d.204 AH) were also "severe critics of hadith".[46] Perhaps the most famous of the classical collections of ṣaḥīḥ hadith in Sunni Islam
, Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī, was completed around 846 CE/232 AH. ʻIlm al-ḥadīth, or "hadith studies", became a "mature system",[32] or entered its "final stage"[33] with the compilation of the classical collections of hadith in the third century of Islam, roughly a century after al-Shafiʿi's passing. (The last of the authors of the Kutub al-Sittah or "Authentic Six" books of ṣaḥīḥ hadith to die was al-Nasa'i (d. 915 CE/303 AH).

Ahl al-Kalam

According to scholar Daniel W. Brown, the questioning of the authenticity, scholarship and importance of Hadith goes back to the second century of Islam when al-Shafiʿi was establishing the final authority of a hadith of Muhammad in Islamic law. An opposing group, known as Ahl al-Kalam, were "highly critical of both the traditionists' method and the results of their work",[47] doubting "the reliability of the transmission" of the hadith,[24] including the traditionists' evaluation of the "qualities of the transmitters" of hadith they considered "purely arbitrary",[47] and thought the collections of hadiths to be "filled with contradictory, blasphemous, and absurd traditions."[48]

They did not doubt that Muslims ought to follow the example of the prophet, but maintained his "true legacy" was found "first and foremost in following the Quran"[47]—an "explanation of all things" (Quran 16:89)—which hadith "should never be allowed to rule on".[47] If a question was "not referred to in the Qur'an", Ahl al-Kalam "tended" to regard it as "having been left deliberately unregulated by God."[47] They contended that obedience to the Prophet was contained in obeying only the Qur'an that God has sent down to him, and that when the Qur'an mentioned "the Book" together with "Wisdom" (4:113, 2:231, 33:34), "Wisdom" was not another word for hadith, but for "the specific rulings of the Book".[49]

Mutazilites

Later, a similar group, the

Mu'tazilites (which flourished in Basra and Baghdad in the 8th–10th centuries CE),[50] also viewed the transmission of the Prophetic sunnah as not sufficiently reliable. The Hadith, according to them, was mere guesswork and conjecture, while the Quran was complete and perfect, and did not require the Hadith or any other book to supplement or complement it."[51]

According to Racha El Omari, early Mutazilites believed that hadith were susceptible to "abuse as a polemical ideological tool"; that the

matn (content) of the hadith—not just the isnad—ought to be scrutinized for doctrine and clarity; that for hadith to be valid they ought to be "supported by some form of tawātur", i.e. by a large number of isnād strands, each beginning with a different companion.[52][53]

In writing about

ahad (hadith with a single chain, i.e. almost all hadith) and their importance from the legal theoretician's point of view, Wael Hallaq notes the medieval scholar Al-Nawawi (1233–1277 CE) argued that any non-mutawatir hadith is only probable and can not reach the level of certainty that a mutawatir hadith can. However scholars like Ibn al-Salah (d. 1245 CE), al-Ansari (d. 1707 CE), and Ibn ‘Abd al-Shakur (d. 1810 CE) found "no more than eight or nine" hadiths that fell into the mutawatir category.[54]

Wāṣil b. ʿAṭāʾ (700–748 CE, by many accounts a founder of the Mutazilite school of thought), held that there was evidence for the veracity of a report when it had four independent transmitters. His assumption was that there could be no agreement between all transmitters in fabricating a report. Wāṣil's acceptance of tawātur seems to have been inspired by the juridical notion of witnesses as proof that an event did indeed take place. Hence, the existence of a certain number of witnesses precluded the possibility that they were able to agree on a lie, as opposed to the single report which was witnessed by one person only, its very name meaning the "report of one individual" (khabar al-wāḥid). Abū l-Hudhayl al-ʿAllāf (d. 227/841) continued this verification of reports through tawātur, but proposed that the number of witnesses required for veracity be twenty, with the additional requirement that at least one of the transmitters be a believer.[53]

One Mu'tazilite who expressed the strongest statement of skepticism of any source of knowledge outside of reason and the Qurʾān was

Ibrahim an-Nazzam (c. 775 – c. 845). For him, both the single and the mutawātir reports could not be trusted to yield knowledge. He recounted contradictory ḥadīth and examined their divergent content (matn) to show why they should be rejected: they relied on both faulty human memory and bias, neither of which could be trusted to transmit what is true. Al-Naẓẓām bolstered his strong refutation of the trustworthiness of ḥadīth within the larger claim that ḥadīth circulated and thrived to support polemical causes of various theological sects and jurists, and that no single transmitter could by himself be held above suspicion of altering the content of a single report. Al-Naẓẓām's skepticism involved far more than excluding the possible verification of a report, be it single or mutawātir. His stance also excluded the trustworthiness of consensus, which proved pivotal to classical Muʿtazilite criteria devised for verifying the single report (see below). Indeed, his shunning of both consensus and tawātur earned him a special mention for the depth and extent of his skepticism, even among fellow Muʿtazilites.[55]

Modern era

Since the 19th century Islamic scholar

Al-Shafiʽi and classical hadith criticism.[57]

Revivalists

Revivalists (like Shah Waliullah Dehlawi, Shibli Nomani, Rashid Rida,[Note 8] Salafi Jamal al-Din al-Qasimi, Abul A'la Maududi, and Mohammed al-Ghazali[59]), however, believed in the classical principles of hadith and Shariah law[60] and held highly negative views about those who express skepticism towards classical hadith collections. Nevertheless, some also believed in the re-examination of those classical collections[37] and enhancing emphasis on the content (matn) of hadith during evaluation.[61]

In the 18th century,

matn) which Hadith experts had traditionally ignored, to clear up apparent contradictions among the hadith caused by transmitters who did not always understand "the significance" of what they had witnessed by using scholars with expertise in both hadith studies and jurisprudence.[63]

Later in the 20th century,

Salafist revivalists Shibli Nomani, Rashid Rida, Abul A'la Maududi, and Mohammed al-Ghazali[59] also sought "to restore Islam to ascendency"[64] (not just in India) and in particular to restore Sharia to the law of the lands of Islam it had been before being replaced by "secular, Western inspired law codes" of colonialism and modernity.[65] At the same time they agreed that restoring relevant Sharia required "some reformulation" of the law, which would require a return to sources, which required agreement on how the sources were to be "interpreted and understand" and reassessment of hadith.[66]

muhaddith).[46]

Applying legal scholarship involved examining hadith content (matn) for its spirit and relevance "within the context of the Sharia as a whole" according to the method of scholars of Islamic law (fuqaha) and weeding out corrupted hadith inconsistent with "reason, with human nature, and with historical conditions".[67] (Rather than hadith collectors being the scholars of hadith science, they more resembled "laborers" who provided the raw materials to the "engineers" of hadith—namely the scholars of Islamic law.)[68] Abul A'la Maududi (1903–1979), the leading South Asian revivalist of the 20th century, also argued matn was neglected and resulting in Hadith collectors accepting "traditions that ring false" and rejecting "traditions that ring true".[67][69]

Maududi also raised the question of the reliability of companions of the prophet as transmitters of hadith, saying "even the noble companions were overcome by human weaknesses, one attacking another",[70] and cited disputes among the companions:

Ibn Umar called Abu Hurayra a liar; Aisha criticized Anas for transmitting traditions although he was only a child during the life of the Prophet, and Hasan b. Ali called both Ibn Umar and Ibn al-Zubayr liars.[Note 9]

(Maududi's criticism clashed with the doctrine of classical hadith criticism that the collective moral character (ʿadāla) of the first generation of Muslims was above reproach, and though Maududi strongly opposed modernists who thought hadith should be used sparingly or not at all in Islamic law, he nonetheless came under attack from traditional Islamic scholars (ulama) for his views).[72]

Yusuf al-Qaradawi (born 1926) offered "three basic principles of hadith criticism" to work with sunnah:

  1. verification of the "trustworthiness and authenticity" of the hadith using "the tools of classical isnād criticism";[73]
  2. examination of the circumstances of the "event or utterance" of the hadith, the "reasons for its occurrence", "its place among" Quranic verses and other hadith, must be done in order to understand the hadith's "real meaning and intent";[73]
  3. comparison of hadith with "other more reliable texts" to ensure it does not contradict them.[73]
Preeminence of the Quran

Another development was the view that the Quran (and sometimes mutawatir traditions) should be used to re-evaluate the Sunnah,[57] as among Mohammed al-Ghazali (1917–1996).[74] While Shafīʿī and classical scholarship held that the "Sunnah rules on the Quran",[75] Al Ghazali (and Shibli, Rashid Rida, Maududi) believed that the Quran must be "the supreme arbiter of the authenticity" of hadith.[68] Rida "argued that all traditions at variance with the Quran should be discarded, irrespective of their chain of transmission".[76] Examples of conflicts between the two sources were

  • whether consumption of beef was haram, (The Quran gave permission to eat it, but muhaddith
    Muhammad Nasiruddin al-Albani declared it forbidden citing a hadith.)[74]
  • Whether the murder of a non-Muslim should be punished just as the murder of a Muslim was—with
    qiṣāṣ, or retribution. (When a non-Muslim engineer was attacked and killed in Saudi Arabia, a religious judge—qadi—ruled that qiṣāṣ could not be applied to his murderer, citing a hadith stating la yuqtalu muslimun fi kafirin. According to Muhammad al-Ghazali, this violated a Quranic principle of human dignity,[77] though others do not find it in disagreement with the Quran.)[78]

Modernists

Later, in nineteenth century

Syed Ahmed Khan sought to deal with Western colonial influence and the decline of Muslim powers through greater understanding of science[79]
and application of reason. They often favored reinterpretation of some doctrines, including sharia law in favor of modern norms like equal rights, peaceful coexistence, and freedom of thought.

Ahmed Khan "questioned the historicity and authenticity of many, if not most, traditions, much as the noted scholars Ignaz Goldziher and Joseph Schacht would later do."[80] He blamed corruption of hadith on transmission according to bi'l-ma'na (sense of the story rather than verbatim) in particular, and "came to believe" only mutawatir hadith as "a reliable basis for belief independent of the Quran".

matn (hadith content)—emersed in the difficulties of "examining the trustworthiness" of the narrators of the hadith, "they never got around" to the task of examining the hadith content.[81]

One of the most influential modernist critiques comes from Mahmoud Abu Rayya, who argued that the basis of Islam rests on the Quran, reason, and mutawatir (as opposed to merely sahih) hadith.

Sayyid Ahmad Khan[41], Rashid Rida,[76] and a number of Egyptian intellectuas.[76]

Recent political reforms in Saudi Arabia under King

Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud also reflect trends towards the belief that hadith can be redundant and that religious law can more closely emphasize the Quran.[84]

Textual Criticism

Whether al-Bukhari and other traditional hadith scholars were successful in narrowing down hadith to its authentic "core" is disputed. Medieval Jurist and hadith scholar Al-Nawawi wrote that "a number of scholars discovered many hadiths" in the two most authentic hadith collections—Sahih al-Bukhari and Sahih Muslim—"which do not fulfill the conditions of verification assumed" by the collectors of those works; and European scholar (Joseph Schacht), argues that "even the classical corpus contains a great many traditions which cannot possibly be authentic".[85]

Al-Ghazali addresses questions from an unnamed "questioner" about a number of problems the questioner sees in several hadith[86] in his work Al-Qanun al-kulli fi t-ta'wil; such as: "Satan runs in the blood vessels of one of you"[87] "satans nourish themselves from manure and bones", and "Paradise is as wide as heaven and earth", yet it must be contained somewhere within the bounds of those two?"[88]

Centuries earlier, objections by Mutazila to these and similar hadith and been dismissed by Sunni scholars as error brought about by a failure to subordinate reason to divine scripture. When fifteenth century medieval scholar Ibn Hajar al-Asqalani came across the hadith

  • When `God created Adam, and he was sixty arms tall,' and that, after Adam fell, 'mankind has continued to shrink since that time.'[89]

he noted that the ancient inhabitants of houses carved out of cliffs he had seen must have been about the same size humans of his day, simply "admitted frankly that 'to this day, I have not found how to resolve this problem'", without doubting the hadith's authenticity.[90] However, with the rise of natural sciences and technology of the West, some Muslims came to a different conclusion.[91]

Critics complain of hadith that sound less like what a prophet would say than someone in the post-Shafiʿi era justifying fabricating hadith. Such as

  • '[Sayings attributed to me] which agree with the Koran, go back to me, whether I actually said them or not', and
  • 'Whatever good sayings there are, I said them.'[92][93]

Joseph Schacht argues that the very large number of contradictory hadith are very likely the result of hadith fabricated "polemically with a view to rebutting a contrary doctrine or practice" supported by another hadith.[12]

Internal contradictions

Some examples of hadith members of the

Muʿtazila found fault with include:[94]

The two hadith suggest God considers adultery and theft less serious than a grain of pride.[94]

Hadith contradict each other over whether the Islamic prophet urinated while standing: According to Hudhaifa:

  • I saw Allah's Messenger coming to the dumps of some people and urinated there while standing.[97]

According to Umar:

  • "The Messenger of Allah saw me urinating while standing, and he said: 'O 'Umar, do not urinate standing up.' So I never urinated whilst standing after that."[98]

Contradiction with science

In the 19th and 20th century, controversy grew in Islamic sources over the interpretation of hadith (sometimes called mushkil al-ḥadīth) that came into conflict with the growing body of scientific knowledge, leading some, like ahmud Abu Rayya, tto ques.ion the corpus.[91][40] In turn, some M For example, one hadith in Sahih al-Bukhari describes the course of the sun involving a phase where it prostrates towards God after setting, which was difficult to reconcile with the finding that the sun was always visible from some part of the earth and that the phenomena of rising and setting is relative to one's position on the earth.[99][91] Other examples include descriptions of the activity of the devil in relation to Islamic ritual.[91]

Arguments and explanations for existence of false hadith

Among the scholars who believe that even sahih hadith suffer from corruption or who proposed limitations on usage of hadith include early Muslims

Syed Ahmed Khan (1817–1898 CE), Muhammad Iqbal (1877–1938 CE); and scholars from the West such as Ignác Goldziher, Joseph Schacht, and G.H.A. Juynboll, (and in the present day Israr Ahmed Khan).[100]

Flaws in traditional hadith science

For many critics, the contradictions of hadith with natural law and with other hadith demonstrated that the traditional scientists of hadith (muhaddithin) had failed to find all false hadith and there must be something wrong with their method.[101] Explanations of why this was included the neglect of hadith content (

isnad of the hadith.[100] But this did not mean critics accepted the traditional evaluation of hadith transmission with its supposed knowledge of the character and capacity of the reported narrators, that the scientists had focused on. How could the study of the character of transmitters (ʿilm al-rijāl) be an exact science when it was "difficult enough to judge the character of living people, let alone those long dead." Information on the narrators was scarce and often conflicting, hypocrites could be very clever, there was "no assurance that all the relevant information" had been gathered,[81] and if hadith could be falsified, could not the historical reports about transmitters be as well?[23]

And for that matter, if the content (

isnad? This was an issue traditional scientists of hadith had "completely discounted" and was "perhaps the most serious challenge of all" to classical hadith criticism (according to Daniel Brown). How could a hadith be judged "reliable on the basis of its chain of transmission when we know that forgers commonly fabricated" these chains "in order to hide their forgery?" There was, after all, strong incentive "to attribute one's own information" to the most highly regarded authorities.[23]

Motivations/explanations for corruption

According to Bernard Lewis, "in the early Islamic centuries there could be no better way of promoting a cause, an opinion, or a faction than to cite an appropriate action or utterance of the Prophet." This gave strong incentive to fabricate hadith.[13]

According to

Syed Ahmed Khan and Shibli Nomani, the major causes of corruption of even the ṣaḥīḥ hadith of Bukhari and Muslim[46]
are:

  1. political conflicts,[59]
  2. sectarian prejudice,[59] and
  3. the desire to translate the underlying meaning (bi'l-maʿnā), rather than the original words verbatim (bi'l-lafẓ).[102]
Other criticism

whatever the motive was to falsify, and in addition to the indisputable contradictions in hadith, there are reasons why some sahih hadith must be wrong or should not be given an exalted position as source of Islamic law:

  • With the exception of the ḥadīth qudsī, sunnah/hadith was not revealed and transmitted verbatim (bi'l-lafẓ), as was the Quran. It was often transmitted giving the sense or gist of what was said (known as bi'l-maʿnā);[103]
  • Unlike the Quran, sunnah/hadith was not "preserved in writing" until over a century after Muhammad's death. This opens the question of how much corruption and/or error entered the writings, and why—if sunnah/hadith was divinely revealed, eternal truth—orders were not given to the earliest Muslims to write it down as they were for the Quran.[104][103] If Muhammad did forbid the writing of hadith, does not that suggest it was not "intended to be taken as binding" on later Muslims.[105]
  • Islamic law/Shariah involves the honor, property and lives of Muslims, and so its sources should be held to the highest standards, providing a "certainty of knowledge". The sahih hadith that are the primary source of Islamic law/Shariah are defined as "authentic"—rated above hasan (good) and daif (weak) hadith. But they do not provide "certainty of knowledge" that Mutawatir hadith (meaning reports from "a large number of narrators whose agreement upon a lie is inconceivable") do. (Unfortunately, the extreme scarcity of Mutawatir hadith limits their use in development of Islamic law.)[Note 11]

Other arguments that the sunnah in the form of the hadith falls short of the standard of the Quran in divinity include:[106]

Unreliable transmitters

The primary tool of orthodox

isnad (chain) of transmitters. But in the oldest collections of hadith (which have had less opportunity to be corrupted by faulty memory or manipulation) isnad are "rudimentary", while the isnads found in later "classical" collections of hadith are usually "perfect",[107]
suggesting the correlation between supposedly high quality isnads and authentic hadith is not good.

According to Muslim Islamic scholar

Abu Hurairah, joined the Muslim community only three years before the Prophet's death (i.e. when the community was becoming triumphant) yet was the "single most prolific" transmitter of hadiths from among the companions, passing on "thousands of hadiths he claimed" to have heard—far more traditions than companions who had been with Muhammad since the beginning.[Note 12] Abu Rayya and others think it highly unlikely Abu Hurairah could have heard the thousands of hadiths he claimed to transmitted, nor that he learned the details of ritual and law to avoid mangling the meanings of hadiths on these issues he reported. (Abu Hurayra was also known to be obsessed with isr’iliyyat, i.e. tales from Jewish lore about earlier prophets,[82] see below).[111]

According to some narrations, Caliph

Muʿāwiya were state sponsored.[101] The succeeding dynasty—the ʿAbbāsids—circulated hadith predicting "the reign of each successive ruler". Even traditionists whose job it was to filter out false hadith, cirulated fabricated hadith for causes they thought worthy—one Nūḥ b. Maryam "passed on false traditions [hadith] in praise of the Quran".[101]

Influence of other religions

In hadith studies, narratives assumed to be of foreign import are known as Israʼiliyyat. Although the designation indicates such stories develop from Jewish/Israelite sources, they may derive from other religions such as Christianity or Zoroastrianism.[113] Some pre-modern scholars enthusiastically used them in exegisis while others condemned their use.[114][115] In modern times they have been criticized as unIslamic.[116]

Mahmud Abu Rayya (d. 1970), a friend and fellow disciple of

Jewish lore that had been attributed to Muhammad".[111]

The earliest Western scholar to note a relation between the hadith and Jewish influences was the French Orientalist

Ignaz Goldziher
(d. 1921), etc. continued criticism in that direction.

A more elaborated study was "Al‐Bukhārī and the

Zoroastrian background, David Samuel Margoliouth with Biblical apocrypha and Alfred Guillaume puts more stress on a generic Christian influence.[119]

Orthodox response

Against critics claims that oral transmission of hadith for generations allowed corruption to occur, conservatives argue that it is not oral transmission that is unreliable but written transmission. In fact oral transmission was "superior to isolated written documents" which had "little value" unless "attested by living witnesses". In contrast, the reliability of oral transmission was "assured by the remarkable memories of the Arabs".[120]

Orthodox Muslims do not deny the existence of false hadith, but believe that through the work of hadith scholars, these false hadith have been largely eliminated.[121] al-Shafi'i himself, the founder of the proposition that "sunna" should be made up exclusively of specific precedents set by Muhammad passed down as hadith, argued that "having commanded believers to obey the Prophet", (in Quranic verse Al-Ahzab 33: 21: "In God's messenger you have indeed a good example for everyone who looks forward with hope to God and the Last Day, and remembers God unceasingly.")[122] "God must certainly have provided the means to do so."[24] Hadith were evaluated for forgeries from the beginning, before the science of hadith was established. The number of false hadith is exaggerated. Many hadith not in sahih collections are perfectly authentic. And the science of hadith reached such a level of perfection that "no further research is necessary or fruitful".[123] Furthermore, critics who cite hadith that criticize the use of hadith are "tacitly accepting its authority as a legitimate basis for argument" and so contradicting themselves.[124]

One defense of orthodox hadith studies, The Evolution of a Hadith by Iftikhar Zaman, according to one supporter (Bilal Ali) asserts that "the method of hadith criticism that has been implemented by the muhaddithin [orthodox hadith evaluators] for the past thousand years, ... is far more scientific and exact than modern orientalist approaches."

Muhammad Mustafa Al-A'zami
.

Some Western academics have also been critical of this "revisionist" approach as a whole, for instance

Jonathan Brown demonstrates "convincingly" that studies of early hadith and law by Joseph Schacht and the late G. H. A. Juynboll "used only a small and selective body of sources", "based on sceptical assumptions which, taken together, often asked the reader to believe a set of coincidences far more unlikely than the possibility that a hadith might actually date from the genesis of the Islamic community.")[126]

One prominent conservative fatwa website, The Salafi site

IslamQA, supervised by Muhammad Saalih al-Munajjid
, states that one who "persists in denying and rejecting" a hadith is exposing themselves to "grave danger" unless they

Interpreting injunctions to obey/imitate Muhammad

Use of limited set of mutawatir hadith

According to M.O. Farooq, while it is untrue that sahih hadith provides "certainty of knowledge" of what Muhammad said, there is a subset of sahih that can be provide this knowledge—the much rarer mutawātir hadith. Mutawātir involves something transmitted by "a large number of narrators whose agreement upon a lie is inconceivable. This condition must be met in the entire chain from the origin of the report to the very end."[128] (Mutawātir sunnah includes ṣalāt prayer and the ceremonies of hajj pilgrimage; the "entire Quran itself is accepted as" being mutawātir; in addition there are a small number of mutawātir hadith)[129][76]

However, while mutawatir hadith would exclude the implausible and contradictory hadith outlined above, and might satisfy the Quranic injunctions to obey and imitate Muhammad, they would not provide a basis for the Islamic jurisprudence developed and revered by Muslims for centuries. (Scholars differ on how many mutawatir hadith there are, but the number of mutawātir bil lafz hadith, (mutawatir that involve narrations in identical wording rather than wording with the same meaning) is thought to be only a dozen or less.)[130] According to Wael Hallaq, "the bulk of hadith with which the traditionists dealt, and on the basis of which the Jurists derived the law" were known as ahad—i.e. non-mutawatir hadith; Hadith without "textually identical channels of transmission which are sufficiently numerous as to preclude any possibility of collaboration on a forgery".[131] The authenticity of these hadith "are known only with probability", not certainty.[132]

Jurists disagreed on how many channels of transmission there had to be for a hadith to be mutawatir. Since "the qadi in a court of law must deliberate on the testimony of four witnesses (as well as investigate their moral rectitude) before he renders his verdict,"[131] some thought at least five, but others set the number at "12, 20, 40, 70 or 313, each number being justified by a Qur'anic verse or some religious account".[133][134][135][136]

Farooq quotes a number of sources speaking highly of Mutawatir:

  • In the view of Muslim scholars any hadith which has been transmitted by tawatur and whose reporters based their reports on direct, unambiguous, perception unmixed with rationalization would produce knowledge with certainty.[137]
  • A mutawatir tradition is one which has been transmitted throughout the first three generations of Muslims by such a large number of narrators that the possibility of fabrication must be entirely discarded.[138]
  • [T]he mutawatir hadith stands on the same footing as the Qur'an itself."[139]
  • According to the majority of Ulama, the authority of a mutawatir hadith is equivalent to that of the Qur'an. Universal continuous testimony (tawatur) engenders certainty (yaqin) and the knowledge that it creates is equivalent to knowledge that is acquired through sense-perception.[140]
  • A great majority of Muslim legal theoreticians (usuuliyyun) espoused the view that the mutawatir yields necessary or immediate knowledge (daruri), whereas a minority thought that the information contained in such reports can be known through mediate or acquired knowledge (muktasab or nazari).[141]

Orthodox hadith scholars (like Wael Hallaq and Ibn al-Salah) disagree, finding non-mutawatir hadith adequate. "According to the majority of the ulama of the four Sunni schools, acting upon ahad is obligatory even if ahad fails to engender positive knowledge. Thus, in practical legal matters, preferable zann [meaning, speculative] "is sufficient as a basis of obligation", according to Mohammad Hashim Kamal.[142] (However, in "matters of belief", the bar is higher and ahad hadith are not sufficient.)[142] Ibn al-Salah (d. 643/1245), "one of the most distinguished traditionists of the muta'akhkhirun",[143] argues (according to Farooq), that because mutawatir type hadith is rare, "for much of Islamic praxis, certainty of knowledge is neither feasible nor required. Rather, probable or reasonable knowledge is adequate" for determining the gamut of Islamic practices.[128]

Applicable only to the first generation?

Another argument is that those verses of the Quran enjoining Muslims to obey/imitate Muhammad are directed at the Muhammad's contemporaries and not later generations.

A least one group of Muslims (the

Quranist Ahle-Quran movement) argue that the verses were directed towards the particular circumstances of the companions of the Prophet, Muhammad's contemporaries, and not to generations thereafter. As circumstances change so must details of the law, while the basic unchangeable principles of Islam are found in the Quran.[144] (In addition, while the Quran includes term sunnah several times, including in the phrase "sunnat Allah" (way of God),[145] it never talks about "sunnat al-nabi" (way of the prophet)—the phrase customarily used by proponents of hadith—or "sunnah" in connection with Muhammad or other prophets.)[146]

Later Quranists expanded on this. Early twentieth century scholar, Muhammad Tawfiq Sidqi (d. 1920) of Egypt argued that "even mutawatir connection" of a hadith was not enough to "prove that a practice is binding in every age and every place".[81] Sidqi called the hadith-based sunnah of Muhammad "temporary and provisional law", and offered several reasons why the sunnah was "intended only for those who lived during the Prophet's era":[144]

  • that the sunnah "was not written" down for safe keeping "during the time of the Prophet";
  • the companions of Muhammad "made no arrangement for the preservation of the Sunnah "whether in a book or in their memories";[144]
  • hadith were not transmitted from one generation to the next verbatim;[144]
  • the sunnah was "not committed to memory" like the Quran so that "differences developed among different transmitters";[144]
  • if the sunnah "had been meant for all people" this would not have happened and it "would have been carefully preserved and circulated as widely as possible";[144]
  • much of the sunnah obviously only applies to "Arabs of Muhammad's time and is based on local customs and circumstances".[144]
Obedience/imitation in modern times

In a high court decision in 20th century Pakistan, justice Muhammad Shafiʿi argued against the doctrine that the words and actions of the Prophet are divine revelation, and that (at least in the contemporary era) Quranic demands for obedience to Muhammad are actually demands for us to

be as honest, as steadfast, as earnest and as religious and pious as he was and not that we should act and think exactly as he did because that is unnatural and humanly impossible and if we attempted to do that, life will become absolutely difficult.[147]

Sunnah from practice not hadith

Some critics (

salat (ritual prayer) and zakat (alms), etc.—were known to Muslims from being passed down 'from the many to the many' (according to scholars of fiqh such as Al-Shafi'i) i.e. by Mutawatir practice[148] bypassing books of hadith. (Muhammad Tawfiq Sidqi[144] and Rashid Rida[149] also strongly embraced the five pillars of salat, zakat, sawm, etc. while questing the importance of hadith.) Fazlur Rahman Malik argued sunnah should be "a general umbrella concept"[150] but not one "filled with absolutely specific content"[150] of hadith. Though hadith and isnad (chain of transmitters) had been tampered with and could not be held at the level of vertatim divine revelation, nonetheless they should not be discarded because they passed on the "spirit" of Prophet and should be given high regard as ijma (consensus or agreement of the Muslim scholars—which is another classical source of Islamic law).[151]

Applicable only to the Quran?

Associated with the argument that verses of the Quran enjoining Muslims to obey and imitate Muhammad apply only to contemporaries of The Prophet, is the idea that for modern Muslims, not only is hadith unnecessary, so is (much) of its basis, the Sunnah. Obedience to the Prophet is contained in obeying the Qur'an, the book that God sent down to Muhammad; that the Quran was an explanation of everything (16:89). When Muslims read verse Q.3:81—"Now that We have given you a share of the Book and Wisdom, ...", the common interpretation that "the Book" is the Quran and "Wisdom" is hadith is incorrect—"Wisdom" refers to "the specific rulings of the Book".[152] Quranic verses sometimes sited in support of the idea of "Quranism", that the Quran is clear and complete as it is, and hadith are not needed, are:

  • 7:52 10:37 6:114 which say the Quran is "detailed" or "fully explained";
  • 6:115 "complete", "perfect", or "fulfilled";
  • 12:111 "detailed explanation of all things";
  • 6:38 which says that "we have not neglected in the book a thing"[153]

This idea goes back to the Ahl al-Kalam movement of the second Islamic century which rejected the Hadith on theological grounds (as well as questioning its authenticity) and was embraced by Muhammad Tawfiq Sidqi, who wrote, "If anything other than the Qur'an had been necessary for religion ... the Prophet would have commanded its registration in writing, and God would have guaranteed its preservation."[154]

A different version of this idea is that all hadith "at variance with the Quran should be discarded, irrespective of their chain of transmission." The Quran "overruled" hadith.[76]

Western scholarship

Western scholars have had some of the same "specific concerns" about hadith as Muslim Islamic scholars, but have "only occasionally" had any "direct impact" on debates by Muslims over the issues.[56]

Between 1890 and 1950 the era of "Orientalist" studies of hadith began with Ignác Goldziher (1850–1921) and Joseph Schacht (1902–1969) and their "two influential and founding works", (according to Mohammed Salem Al-Shehri).[155][Note 13] Goldziher "inaugurated the critical study" of the hadith's authenticity and concluded that the "great majority of the Prophetic hadith constitute evidence not of the Prophet's time which they claim to belong, but rather of much later periods", according to Wael B. Hallaq. Schacht later refined Goldziher's critical study.[54]

John Esposito notes that "Modern Western scholarship has seriously questioned the historicity and authenticity of the hadith", maintaining that "the bulk of traditions attributed to the Prophet Muhammad were actually written much later." According to Esposito, Schacht "found no evidence of legal traditions before 722", from which Schacht concluded that "the Sunna of the Prophet is not the words and deeds of the Prophet, but apocryphal material" dating from later.[157] According to Wael B. Hallaq, as of 1999 scholarly attitude in the West towards the authenticity of hadith has taken three approaches:

since Schacht published his monumental work in 1950, scholarly discourse on this matter (i.e., the issue of authenticity) has proliferated. Three camps of scholars may be identified: one attempting to reconfirm his conclusions, and at times going beyond them; another endeavoring to refute them and a third seeking to create a middle, perhaps synthesized, position between the two. Among others, John Wansbrough, and Michael Cook belong to the first camp, while Nabia Abbott, F. Sezgin, M. Azami, Gregor Schoeler and Johann Fück belong to the second. Motzki, D. Santillana, G.H. Juynboll, Fazlur Rahman and James Robson take the middle position.[158]

Henry Preserved Smith and Ignác Goldziher also challenged the reliability of the hadith, Smith stating that "forgery or invention of traditions began very early" and "many traditions, even if well authenticated to external appearance, bear internal evidence of forgery."[Note 14] Goldziher writes that "European critics hold that only a very small part of the ḥadith can be regarded as an actual record of Islam during the time of Mohammed and his immediate followers."[Note 15] In his Mohammedan Studies, Goldziher states: "it is not surprising that, among the hotly debated controversial issues of Islam, whether political or doctrinal, there is not one in which the champions of the various views are unable to cite a number of traditions, all equipped with imposing isnads".[161]

Also throwing doubt on the doctrine that common use of hadith of Muhammad goes back to the generations immediately following the death of the prophet is historian Robert G. Hoyland, who quotes acolytes of two of the earliest Islamic scholars:

  • "I spent a year sitting with Abdullah ibn Umar (d.693, son of the second Caliph, who is said to be the second most prolific narrator of ahadith, with a total of 2,630 narrations)[162] and I did not hear him transmit anything from the prophet";[163][164]
  • "I never heard Jabir ibn Zayd (d. ca. 720) say 'the prophet said ...' and yet the young men round here are saying it twenty times an hour".[165][164]

Historian Robert G. Hoyland, states during Umayyad times only the central government was allowed to make laws, religious scholars began to challenge this by claiming they had been transmitted hadith by the Prophet. Al-Sha'bi, a narrator of hadith, when hearing of this, criticizes people who just go around narrating many prophetic hadiths without care by saying he never heard from Umar I's son ‘Abdallah any hadith from the Prophet except just one.[166][164] Hoyland vindicates Islamic sources as accurately representative of Islamic history.[167] Gregor Schoeler, a German Orientalist writes:

"He [Hoyland] shows that they [non-Islamic sources] are hardly suitable to support an alternative account of early Islamic history; on the contrary, they frequently agree with Islamic sources and supplement them.[168]"

Bernard Lewis writes that "the creation of new hadiths designed to serve some political purpose has continued even to our own time." In the buildup to the first Gulf War a "tradition" was published in the Palestinian daily newspaper Al-Nahar on December 15, 1990, "and described as `currently in wide circulation`" It "quotes the Prophet as predicting that "the Greeks and Franks will join with Egypt in the desert against a man named Sadim, and not one of them will return".[13][169] [Note 16]

Isnads

Reza Aslan quotes Schacht's maxim: `the more perfect the isnad, the later the tradition`, which he (Aslan) calls "whimsical but accurate".[170]

According to G.H.A. Juynboll, "the institution of the isnad came into existence roughly three quarters of a century after the prophet's death" and before that hadith and "qisas (mostly legendary stories) were transmitted in a haphazard fashion if at all, and mostly anonymously. Since the isnad came into being, names of older authorities were supplied where the new isnad precepts required such. Often the names of well-known historical personalities were chosen but more often the names of fictitious persons were offered to fill the names in isnads which were as yet far from perfect. ..."[171][172]

isnads) of their hadith that by later standards were sketchy/deficient, even though these early scholars were closer to the historical material. Later hadith possessed impeccable isnad, but were more likely to be fabricated.[173]
She argues it is not possible to narrow down a "core" of authentic hadith because we do not know when the fabrication of them started.

Ibn Abbas [d.687]. Yet less than fifty years earlier one scholar had estimated that Ibn Abbas had only heard nine traditions from the Prophet, while another thought that the correct figure might be ten. If Ibn Abbas had heard ten traditions from the Prophet in the years around 800, but over a thousand by about 850 CE, how many had he heard in 700 or 632? Even if we accept that ten of Ibn Abbas' traditions are authentic, how do we identify them in the pool of 1,710?[174][175]

Joseph Schacht states that the "whole technical criticism of traditions ... is mainly based on criticism of isnads", which he (and others) believe to be ineffective in eliminating fraudulent hadith.[107] as they were subject to "growth, back-formation, and lateral spread"[176] over decades.

Isnad and not Matn

If critics found fault with the traditionists examination of isnads, they were even less complimentary of their evaluation (or failure to) of matn—i.e. the substance of the hadith, what the Prophet did/said/approved of.

Schacht quotes Shafi'i asserting that hadith from the Prophet have to be accepted without questioning and reasoning: `If a tradition is authenticated as coming from the Prophet, we have to resign ourselves to it, and your talk and the talk of others about why and how, is a mistake ..."[177]

Goldziher also casts aspersions on isnads, saying, "judgement of the value of the contents depends on the judgement of the correctness of the isnad. ... Muslim critics have no feeling for even the crudest anachronisms provide that the isnad is correct ... Traditions are only investigated in respect of their outward form".[178]

Biographical evaluation

Another criticism of isnads was of the efficacy of the traditional Hadith studies field known as biographical evaluations (ʿilm al-rijāl)—evaluating the moral and mental capacity of transmitters/narrators. John Wansbrough argues that the isnads are should not be accepted, because of their "internal contradiction, anonymity, and arbitrary nature":[179] specifically the lack of any information about many of the transmitters of the hadith other than found in these biographical evaluations, thus putting into question whether they are "pseudohistorical projections", i.e. names made up by later transmitters.[180][181][179]

References

Notes

  1. ^ The plural form of hadith in arabic is aḥādīth, أحاديث, ʼaḥādīth but hadith will be used for both singular and plural in this article.
  2. ^ Islamic scholar Patricia Crone writes "Nowadays, hadith almost always means hadith from Mohammed himself", but traditionally hadith meant "short reports (sometimes just a line or two) recording what an early figure, such as a companion of the prophet or Mohammed himself, said or did on a particular occasion, prefixed by a chain of transmitters."[2]
  3. ^ According to Ibn Rawandi, "the danger inherent in this criticism is that it leads Muslims who accept it to the fatally dangerous conclusion that the body of Hadith is not the sayings of the Prophet and therefore does not carry his authority:[10] [quoting Hossein Nasr] 'In this way one of the foundations of divine law and a vital source of guidance for the spiritual life is destroyed. It is as if the whole foundation were pulled from underneath the structure of Islam'".[11]
  4. ^ The last compiler of the six Sunni Kutub al-Sittah to die, al-Nasa'i, passed on in 303 AH, 915 CE; some of the classical the Shia The Four Books were compiled later; Al-Shafiʿi had died in the middle of the second century
  5. ^ According to Ibn Rawandi, "the danger inherent in this criticism is that it leads Muslims who accept it to the fatally dangerous conclusion that the body of Hadith is not the sayings of the Prophet and therefore does not carry his authority:[10] [quoting Hossein Nasr] 'In this way one of the foundations of divine law and a vital source of guidance for the spiritual life is destroyed. It is as if the whole foundation were pulled from underneath the structure of Islam'".[11]
  6. ^ (Experts, in general, have estimated the number of full-isnad narration at 7,397; eliminating those hadith with the same or only slightly different content, but with different chains of narrators, reduces the number to approximately 2,602.)[36]
  7. matn) was "not entirely unknown".[41]
  8. ^ Rashid Riba has been called both a "conservative revivalist" and a "rationalist reformer"[58]
  9. ^ Quote is from Daniel Brown.[71] All of the examples come from Ibn ʿAbd al-Barr, Jamiʿ
  10. ^ found in Jami` at-Tirmidhi[95] and other collections.
  11. Syed Ahmed Khan believed there to be only five such hadith.[41]
  12. Ali ibn Abi Talib with no more than 586 hadith.[110]
  13. ^ Earlier European scholars who expressed skepticism of the hadith system were Aloys Sprenger (1813-1893) and William Muir (1819-1905)[156]
  14. ^ "In truth the Hadith must be regarded with marked scepticism, so far as it is used as a source for the life of Mohammed. The forgery or invention of traditions began very early. The Companions were not always too scrupulous to clothe their own opinions in the form of anecdotes ... These natural tendencies were magnified by the party spirit which early became rife in Islam. Each party counted among its adherents immediate followers of Mohammed. Each was anxious to justify itself by an appeal to his words and deeds. It is only the natural result that traditions with a notoriously party bias were circulated at an early day. A traditionist of the first rank admits that pious men were inclined to no sort of fraud so much as to the invention of traditions ... From our point of view, therefore, many traditions, even if well authenticated to external appearance, bear internal evidence of forgery."[159]
  15. ^ "... European critics hold that only a very small part of the ḥadith can be regarded as an actual record of Islam during the time of Mohammed and his immediate followers. It is rather a succession of testimonies, often self contradictory, as to the aims, currents of thought, opinions, and decisions which came into existence during the first two centuries of the growth of Islam. In order to give them greater authority they are referred to the prophet and his companions. The study of the ḥadith is consequently of the greater importance because it discloses the successive stages and controlling ideas in the growth of the religious system of Islam."[160]
  16. ^ David Cook notes the "tradition was" not the only one that appeared around the time of the Gulf War. He translates the story:

    "Believing tongues these days are passing around an unknown tradition, whether it proceeded from the great Messenger [Muhammad] or not. An examination of [whether] the source is trustworthy and the transmitters reliable has occurred, and until now a large number of religious authorities have refused to confirm or deny the reliability of this tradition, [that it] came from the Messenger [of God] Muhammad. The tradition says: ‘The Messenger of God said: "The Banu al-Asfar [white people], the Byzantines and the Franks [Christian groups] will gather together in the wasteland with Egypt[ians] against a man whose name is Sadim [i.e., Saddam]-- none of them will return. They said: When, O Messenger of God? He said: Between the months of Jumada and Rajab [mid-November to mid- February], and you see an amazing thing come of it".’ "

    The hadith is "unknown" and of course turned out to be very untrue, but uses terms "Byzantines" and "Frank" used in early Islam. The date given—December 15, 1990—was after the anti-
    Sadam Hussein
    "coalition" forces had mobilized but before the war had been fought.)

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Bibliography

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