Criticism of Hadith

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The criticism of Hadith refers to critique directed towards collections of the reports quoting what the prophet Muhammad said verbatim on any matter, that are known as Hadith. The criticism revolves primarily around the authenticity of hadith reports and whether they are attributable to Muhammad, as well as theological and philosophical grounds as to whether the hadith can provide rulings on legal and religious matters when the Quran has already declared itself "complete", "clear", "detailed" and "perfect".

Background

According to Daniel Brown there exist three major causes of corruption of the Hadith literature: political conflicts, sectarian prejudice, and the desire to translate the underlying meaning, rather than the original words verbatim.^[1] Orthodox Muslims do not deny the existence of false hadith, but believe that through the scholars' work, these false hadith have been largely eliminated.^[2]

Main areas of criticism

Authenticity

According to Wael Hallaq the central issue with hadith is its authenticity. From the legal theoretician's point of view, hadiths can be divided into mutawatir (transmitted via numerous chains of narrators) and ahad (anything that is not mutawatir). The medieval scholar Al-Nawawi 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.^[3]

Daniel Brown notes that a group referred to as Ahl al-Kalam, who lived during the time of Al-Shafii also questioned the authenticity of the Hadith. The Prophetic example, they argued, "has to be found elsewhere – first and foremost in following the Qur'an."^[4] The Mu'tazilites, who are the later Ahl al-Kalam, 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."^[5]

Later in nineteenth century Syed 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."^[6] His student, Chiragh Ali, went further, suggesting nearly all the Hadith were fabrications.^[7] Ghulam Ahmed Pervez also noted, "No steps were taken by the Prophet or by his immediate followers to preserve the integrity of Hadith."^[8]

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." He mentions Joseph Schacht, considered the father of the revisionist movement, as one scholar who argues this, claiming that 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.^[9] Henry Preserved Smith and Ignác Goldziher also challenged the reliability of the hadith.^[10][11] Goldziher writes, in his Mohammedan Studies: "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".^[12]

Patricia Crone noted that early traditionalists were still developing conventions of examining the chain of narration (isnads) that by later standards were sketchy/deficient, even though they were closer to the historical material. Later though they possessed impeccable chains, but were more likely to be fabricated.^[13]

Theological or philosophical critiques

Early criticism of the Hadith came from a group referred to as Ahl al-Kalam, who lived during the time of Al-Shafii, and mentioned in his Kitab Jima al-Ilm, rejected the Hadith on theological grounds. Their basic argument was that the Quran was an explanation of everything (16:89). 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, the Wisdom was the specific rulings of the Book."^[14] Daniel Brown notes that one of the arguments of Ahl al-Kalam was that "the corpus of Hadith is filled with contradictory, blasphemous, and absurd traditions."^[4]

At the turn of the twentieth century, Muhammad Tawfiq Sidqi (d. 1920) of Egypt wrote an article titled 'al-Islam huwa ul-Qur'an Wahdahu' ('Islam is the Qur'an Alone) that appeared in the Egyptian journal al-Manar, which argues that the Quran is sufficient as guidance: "what is obligatory for man does not go beyond God's Book. ... If anything other than the Qur'an had been necessary for religion," Sidqi notes, "the Prophet would have commanded its registration in writing, and God would have guaranteed its preservation."^[15] "Sidqi held that nothing of the Hadith was recorded until after enough time had elapsed to allow the infiltration of numerous absurd or corrupt traditions."^[16] Although Muhammad Iqbal never rejected the hadith wholesale, he proposed limitations on its usage by arguing that it should be taken contextually and circumstantially.^[17]

References