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Certainty About Authenticity Of Hadith
We have to be mindful that there are several Challenges in Verbal Accounts- Memory decay over time can affect the accuracy of verbal accounts, Factors such as bias, distortion, and cultural context also play a role, Verbal accounts may be influenced by personal perspectives, myths, and oral traditions.
As far as we know, the compilation of ahadith started almost 250 years after the death of the prophet. If we assume, 80 years as average age of people of that time, it would be 3 or 4 generations after his death. Assuming the best case scenario: 1000 persons who overlapped 23 years with the prophet’s life, all those were 20 years old avg. and lived to be 80 years old avg. The kept sharing their memories of what the prophet said with others who were alive at that time and so on. This continued and 250 years passed (to put it in perspective, assume something happened in year 1700, never written down, just shared verbally amongst people and then those events that happened in 1700 were written down in 1950). How likely is that all those verbal sayings were not corrupted by “chinese whispers” phenomenon? If we have to live our lives based on directions & conditions given by someone, I can’t do that unless I know that the teachings reaching me are perfect, nothing less. To me such sayings would only be worthy of listening if 3 or more recollections of a hadith from three different geographical locations coincided e.g. one from Tabuk, one from Mecca, one from Riyadh, all saying the same thing (basically making sure that statistics are in favor of authenticity). Allah has taken the responsibility to protect Quran only, had Hadith been that important, HE would have taken that responsibility too and mentioned in Quran, since this is not the case….where does that leave the authenticity of ahadith, even the ones mentioned in Bukhari? My question is, were any of the reported ahadith held to this or even stricter criteria before being circulated amongst the Muslims?
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Certainty About Authenticity Of Hadith
updated 1 week, 5 days ago
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Yes hadith are not equal to Quran. Our Meezan o Furqan is Quran only.
Hadith compilation started in the time of prophet too. The academic work to collect authentic hadith could be said it was after 200 years. Though it started earlier too.
For details see Discussion 84980 -
Correct. I agree with your reasoning. It was not only a sensitive matter but also completely unnecessary. Many hadiths point to the fact that Nabi (saw) never wanted anything but the Qur’an to pass down through generations. Abu Bakr and Umar r.a. shared only a handful of hadiths, and when asked, they simply reminded that Prophet (saw) said “Whoever ascribes to me what I have not said then let him occupy his seat in Hell-fire”.
Yet we see a fearless audacity by Abu Huraira and Imam Bukhari not take this seriously.. Each blundering in their own way. Let me explain.
Imam Bukhari’s criteria of “Sahih” (despite apparently a strict one) was illogical. For example (1) he never had “A hadith must not contradict the Qur’an” as a criteria, which should have been the first criteria, (2) Just like the chain of narrators’ reputation (in terms of lies, or memory, or inventing false stories) the source of narrator must also be scrutinised. Let me explain!
Abu Huraira passed down 4000+ Hadiths, and it turns out it’s usually his ahadith that are objectionable when it comes to contradictions, defying Qur’an, mocking and degrading women, defaming and insulting Prophets etc. Not Acceptable already due to such reasons but let’s say Imam Bukhari had a very lenient criteria and wanted everything to be recorded, my question is how can we even trust Abu Huraira after:
Sahih Bukhari #5355: Narrated by Abu Huraira: “The Prophet (ﷺ) said, ‘The best alms is that which is given when one is rich, and a giving hand is better than a taking one, and you should start first to support your dependents.’ A wife says, ‘You should either provide me with food or divorce me.’ A slave says, ‘Give me food and enjoy my service.” A son says, “Give me food; to whom do you leave me?” The people said, “O Abu Huraira! Did you hear that from Allah’s Messenger (ﷺ) ?” He said, “No, it is from my own self.”
Sahih Muslim #2493: Narrated by A’isha (ra): Don’t you feel surprised at Abu Huraira? He came (one day) and sat beside the nook of my apartment and began to narrate (the hadith of Allah’s Apostle). I was hearing while I was engaged in extolling Allah (reciting Subhan Allah) constantly. He stood up before I finished my repetition of Subhan Allah. if I were to meet him I would have warned him in stern words that Allah’s Messenger (ﷺ) did not narrate the hadith as you narrate it.
Sahih Muslim 1109a: Abu Bakr (ra) heard a hadith from Abu Huraira, but when checked with the wives of the Prophet (saw) it turns out the hadith is not true. When Abu Bakr (ra) and others confronted him about the same hadith. Abu Huraira first confirmed who claimed it as false?then when he was proven wrong, he (Abu Huraira) retracted from his claims and attributed the story to another person that he actually heard it from someone else not the Prophet.
These are the only few instances where listeners questioned what he said, and it turned out that he was indeed lying! .. .In the rest of 99% of his narrations, it’s only a one-way communication (hadith) transmitted, khabre wahid, so perhaps the majority of those (especially the BS ones, mostly related to women, insulting stories of prophets, and those that contradict the Qur’an) are also made up by Abu Huraira himself? — It literally destroys the whole “Sanad” theory here… because everyone scrutinized the “chain” not the source!
I’ll leave you with one last hadith, which I find very interesting:
Bukhari #6582: The Prophet (ﷺ) said, “Some of my companions will come to me (in the Hereafter) at my Lake Fount, and after I recognize them, they will then be taken away from me, whereupon I will say, ‘My companions!’ Then it will be said, ‘You do not know what they innovated (new things) in the religion after you.”
Assuming that Hadiths is correct, can you guess which ‘companion’ is being referred to here?
The whole Sunni-ism and their methodology is a fail. Islam is simply Qur’an and the Sunnah (actions) that we need to obey the Qur’an. Nothing more.
Just wanted to share my personal research into this. I’m not a scholar. JazakAllah khair.
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