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Old May 7, 2012, 01:08 PM
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Purbasha T Purbasha T is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by shuziburo
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You can find some additional info at:
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The problem is that today many people regard the Sunnah and the Hadith as synonymous terms, whereas the two are quite distinct from each other. The Sunnah (or Sunnat-i-Thaabitah) refers to `those established customs of the Prophet (sws) that were passed on as religion to the Muslim Ummah by the Companions of the Prophet (sws) through their practical consensus on these customs or through their perpetual adherence to them. Therefore, there is no doubt about the authenticity of the Sunnah as an original source. Just as the Quran was perpetuated by oral transmission, the Sunnah was passed on by perpetual adherence. Hence, the authenticity of the Sunnah does not depend on the narratives told by a few individuals; the entire society in the Prophet's time adopted and transmitted the Sunnah, thereby making it an established fact of history.

A Hadith on the other hand, refers to a short narrative which describes a statement or an action or a tacit approval of the Prophet (sws). Most of these narratives were told by a few individuals at each link of the chain of narrators and, therefore, are very appropriately called Akhbaar-i-Ahaad.

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A Hadith is accepted only when its authenticity has been established on the basis of both Fann-i-Riwaayat and Fann-i-Daraayat.

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However, the following points must be kept in mind which stem from these criteria:

1. No Hadith can present anything as religion which does not have its basis in the Quran or the Sunnah or the established principles of human nature and intellect. Therefore, whatever a Hadith presents would either be an explanation of a principle found in these sources or a branch emanating from that principle.

2. A Hadith must not be against the Quran or the Sunnah or the established principles of human nature and intellect. In short, the Hadith in question must conform with the entire fabric of Islam.

3. A Hadith must have been transmitted by reliable sources.

The first two of these points relate to Fann-i-Daraayat and the last to Fann-i-Riwaayat.

Unfortunately, the scholars competent to analyse Ahaadith on the basis of these criteria are few, and the untrained eye is often confused while studying the Hadith. There are three major reasons for this confusion:

1. Almost all the available written collections of Ahaadith, including the most revered ones, contain those Ahaadith which were analysed primarily on the basis of Riwaayat. Most Ahaadith, therefore, have to be analysed further on the basis of Fann-i-Daraayat before they can be accepted or rejected.

2. In most cases the context of a Hadith is not clear or is even left out. The reason is that a typical Hadith is what is called Riwaayat-bil-Maa'naa, which refers to such a Hadith the narrators of which had not transmitted its exact subject-matter but had used their own words to convey the meaning.

3. Placing a Hadith in its right context is not the job of a layman. It requires a sound understanding and appreciation of the classics of Arabic literature of the Prophet's time and training in various disciplines necessary for understanding and analyzing any segment of the whole corpus of the sources of religious knowledge.

In short, analysis, in the true sense of the word, of this historical record---the Hadith---is the job of a scholar. Unfortunately, this confusion pertaining to Ahaadith has given rise to some adverse reactions. People who have shown such reactions can be classified into two categories:

1. There are those who have reacted by formulating the erroneous premise that the Hadith can in no way be a reliable source of religious knowledge. This reaction went beyond all proportion when they confused the Hadith with the Sunnah and then refused to accept even the Sunnah as an original source.

2. On the other hand are those who tried to defend the status of the Sunnah as an original source but in the process lost sight of what they were actually defending. They too have come to regard the Sunnah and the Hadith as one and the same thing. Therefore, they consider those Ahaadith which have already been evaluated on the basis of Fann-i-Riwaayat as an unchallengeable source of knowledge even where the possibility of further analysis on the basis of Fann-i-Daraayat clearly exists.

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Finally!!! This is what I'd been crying out loud for. A REVISION (or the resumption of the paused analysis rather) of the Hadiths.

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Collecting the hadiths: Briefly, the great collectors of hadiths such as Imam Bukhari and Imam Muslim followed a methodology that they collected everything that there was on a subject, and they marked down how authentic it was. Rather than discarding the material they felt was not wholly authentic, so that it became lost to history, they included it. This means that other scholars can examine the evidence for themselves, and make their own determination of what is authentic.

The above description of the methodology of the hadith collectors should make it abundantly clear why there are hadiths that appear to be contradictory, hadiths with variant wordings, and all the other problems with hadiths that the rejectors point to. Imam Bukhari and Imam Muslim, and the other great hadith collectors, were not incompetent. Rather, they saw their job to be preserving the evidence so that each later scholar could make his own determination.

Simply put, the rejectors are attempting to take the honesty of Imam Bukhari, Imam Muslim, and the others and to twist it to prove their own point.


There is no reason for any Muslim to be confused or feel doubt because of variant hadiths in the collections. It is simply a matter of learning about the methodologies and procedures of the scholars.

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Thanks, this is what I've always believed. There had to be a difference between the sunnah established in the community and the Hadiths compiled centuries after. Now for the scholars to get back to the minefield again in their attempts at digging gold (but is that happening anytime soon?).

However, the clash of 3 prayers in the Qur'an versus 5 prayers in the Hadiths (or Sunnah rather?) remains.

Last edited by Purbasha T; May 7, 2012 at 02:17 PM..
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