Hello again,
You appear to be concerned more with the status of the aḥādīth than with Islam as a whole.
The aḥādīth are collection of traditions containing sayings of the Prophet (sallallahu 'alayhi wa sallam) which – with accounts of his daily practice (the Sunna) – constitute the major source of guidance for Muslims, apart from the Qur’an.
The Prophet gave orders that no aḥādīth were to be written down while he lived (he did not want his own words to be mistaken for those of Allāh (subḥānahu ūta’āla), as revealed in the Qur’an.
The aḥādīth are categorised as follows:
‘Sahih’: Those reported by an unbroken chain of reporters whose integrity is judged, by the compilers, to be beyond reproach.
‘Hassan’: Those that do not conform to the conditions laid down for ‘sahih’ in that their chain of reporters, while good, contains one weak ,though honest, reporter.
‘Ḍaʿīf’: Those that do not meet the requirements adopted for the other two classes. They have one or more defects in the chain of reporters and they are classified into several sub-classes ranging from the ‘acceptable’ to the ‘fraudulent’ depending on the type and gravity of the defect in the chain of transmission.
Mawḍū: Fabricated and wrongly ascribed to the Prophet.
Maqlūb: An ḥādīth in two different narrations, in which the names of the narrators have been changed.
The Muslim Community is divided as to the veracity of the aḥādīth
At one extreme are the Qur’anists; folk who consider all aḥādīth to be unreliable; worthy only of outright rejection. At the opposite extreme are those who claim that to doubt the authenticity of even a single ḥādīth is to place oneself outside the fold of Islam.
The majority of Muslims appear to float somewhere in between.
Dr. Kamil writes:
‘Muslim jurists and ulama have developed elaborate methodologies for the authentication of hadith with the purpose precisely to enhance the scope of scientific objectivity in their conclusions. This they have done in full awareness that in no other branch of Islamic learning has there been as much distortion and forgery as in hadith .’ (‘A Textbook of Ḥādīth Studies’; my emphasis).
There was extensive forgery of aḥādīth in the early decades of Islam, following the murder of Uthman – the third caliph. According to Dr. Kamil, the killing of Uthman ‘dealt a heavy blow to the unity of the umma’, resulting in ‘the emergence of serious political differences and partisan groups such as Shia, Kharijites and Mutazila.’
An ḥādīth that stands in conflict with the Quran – such that no reasonable compromise or interpretation can reconcile the two; or that conflicts with the accepted behaviour of the Prophet, or with another ḥādīth; or that conflicts with human experience, or with the natural sciences must be treated with caution.
I know of no Catholic organisation that specialises in the study of aḥādīth.
You appear to be concerned more with the status of the aḥādīth than with Islam as a whole.
The aḥādīth are collection of traditions containing sayings of the Prophet (sallallahu 'alayhi wa sallam) which – with accounts of his daily practice (the Sunna) – constitute the major source of guidance for Muslims, apart from the Qur’an.
The Prophet gave orders that no aḥādīth were to be written down while he lived (he did not want his own words to be mistaken for those of Allāh (subḥānahu ūta’āla), as revealed in the Qur’an.
The aḥādīth are categorised as follows:
‘Sahih’: Those reported by an unbroken chain of reporters whose integrity is judged, by the compilers, to be beyond reproach.
‘Hassan’: Those that do not conform to the conditions laid down for ‘sahih’ in that their chain of reporters, while good, contains one weak ,though honest, reporter.
‘Ḍaʿīf’: Those that do not meet the requirements adopted for the other two classes. They have one or more defects in the chain of reporters and they are classified into several sub-classes ranging from the ‘acceptable’ to the ‘fraudulent’ depending on the type and gravity of the defect in the chain of transmission.
Mawḍū: Fabricated and wrongly ascribed to the Prophet.
Maqlūb: An ḥādīth in two different narrations, in which the names of the narrators have been changed.
The Muslim Community is divided as to the veracity of the aḥādīth
At one extreme are the Qur’anists; folk who consider all aḥādīth to be unreliable; worthy only of outright rejection. At the opposite extreme are those who claim that to doubt the authenticity of even a single ḥādīth is to place oneself outside the fold of Islam.
The majority of Muslims appear to float somewhere in between.
Dr. Kamil writes:
‘Muslim jurists and ulama have developed elaborate methodologies for the authentication of hadith with the purpose precisely to enhance the scope of scientific objectivity in their conclusions. This they have done in full awareness that in no other branch of Islamic learning has there been as much distortion and forgery as in hadith .’ (‘A Textbook of Ḥādīth Studies’; my emphasis).
There was extensive forgery of aḥādīth in the early decades of Islam, following the murder of Uthman – the third caliph. According to Dr. Kamil, the killing of Uthman ‘dealt a heavy blow to the unity of the umma’, resulting in ‘the emergence of serious political differences and partisan groups such as Shia, Kharijites and Mutazila.’
An ḥādīth that stands in conflict with the Quran – such that no reasonable compromise or interpretation can reconcile the two; or that conflicts with the accepted behaviour of the Prophet, or with another ḥādīth; or that conflicts with human experience, or with the natural sciences must be treated with caution.
I know of no Catholic organisation that specialises in the study of aḥādīth.
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