Hadith rejectors

**Hadith rejectors** (Arabic: منكرو الحديث) are Muslims who do not accept the authority of hadith—the sayings attributed to the Islamic prophet Muhammad. Reasons for rejecting hadith vary. Some believe the Qur'an is the only source of guidance in Islam. Others argue that hadith contain unreliable or contradictory reports, conflict with reason or science, or contribute to sectarian divisions. Some also maintain that the hadith lack an authentic historical connection to Muhammad or his Sunnah. According to Dr. Farhad Shafti, Hadith rejectors usually do not consult hadith collections when studying Islamic topics.

One group of Hadith rejectors are the Quranists, who believe the Qur'an is the only source of guidance in Islam and the only book needed by Muslims. Other groups throughout Islamic history—such as Ahl al-Ra'y, Ahl al-Kalam, some Mu'tazilites and Kharijites, as well as various modernist and reformist Muslims, including Neo-Mu'tazilites, some Islamists, and independent Shia reformers—have also questioned or rejected hadith. In the late 20th century CE, the Submitters movement helped spread Hadith rejection in the West. In addition, there is a distinct group of Qur'an-and-Bible-only Muslims who reject Hadith.

In the 21st century CE, the number of Hadith rejectors has grown, especially in the Middle East and North Africa, partly due to online access to hadith in many languages.

## Beliefs and practises

Hadith rejectors dismiss Hadith collections as unreliable and untruthful.

Most Hadith rejectors pray two units of Salat three times a day, deriving this structure from their interpretation of Qur'anic verses. Quranists who follow the Ahl al-Qur'an movement founded by Ahmed Subhy Mansour and members of the Submitters movement founded by Rashad Khalifa (d. 1990 CE) perform five daily prayers. They claim that acts of worship—including the five daily Salat and the Hajj—were preserved through consecutive generational practice rather than through reliance on written hadith collections.

The Bida'iyya, a branch of the extremist Kharijite sect known as the Azariqa—emerging specifically through the sub-lineage of the Khazimiyya—rejected the five prayers and prayed only two or three times a day. Ibn Hazm (d. 1064 CE) also credits this practise to another Azariqa offshoot known as the _Bittikhiyya_ (or _Batihiyya_). The Bida'iyya further rejected the hadith altogether.

Hadith rejectors do not believe it is obligatory for Muslim women to cover their hair.

## Relations with Hadith followers

Traditional Sunnis strongly disagree with Hadith rejectors and Quranists. This is because these groups criticize major hadith scholars like al-Bukhari and Muslim. Some Hadith rejectors, in turn, view Hadith followers as pagans or infidels. Sunni scholars classify Hadith rejectors into two types: innovators who deny that a specific hadith is truly from Muhammad, and disbelievers who knowingly reject an authentic hadith from Muhammad. Additionally, those who dismiss _ahad_ (solitary) hadith as a basis for religious rulings are considered to be acting like Hadith rejectors. This is because they disregard major hadith collections such as Sahih al-Bukhari and Sahih Muslim.

Since those who reject hadith are not a monolithic group, the Twelver Shia position holds that one should not generalize about them without first understanding the specific claims each group makes.

## Early Islamic periods

Some historical reports say that Muhammad prohibited writing down hadith. Other accounts—found mainly in Shia sources but also in some Sunni works—claim that Caliph Umar ibn al-Khattab (r. 634–644 CE) enforced a "ban on hadith," which continued through the rule of the Rashidun Caliphate and into the Umayyad Caliphate, ending only under Umar ibn Abd al-Aziz (r. 717–720 CE). Debates over Umar's policy, along with reports that Abu Bakr (r. 632-634 CE) burned his own hadith collection, represent some of the earliest tensions over the authority and role of hadith.

## Classical theological and legal schools

Unlike the early Ahl al-Hadith, who were strict adherents to the hadith corpus, Ahl al-Ra'y (The People of Reason) and _Ahl al-Kalam_ (The People of _Kalam_) were skeptical of the authentication of hadith, doubting most hadiths were in fact the words of Muhammad. They accepted only _mutawatir_ hadith, thereby rejecting the bulk of _ahad_ (singular) Hadith that form the traditional corpus.

According to Turkish writer Mustafa Akyol, Ahl al-Ra'y remained doubtful of the methods of Ahl al-Hadith who compiled and canonised hadith, with "skepticism" or even "wholesale rejection" of hadith.

A key figure of the Ahl al-Ra'y was Abu Hanifa (d. 767 CE), who was heavily criticized by leading members of the Ahl al-Hadith. They felt he relied on ra'y (personal reasoning) to the point that it undermined the legal authority of hadith. Their main dispute centered on Abu Hanifa’s refusal to accept isolated (ahad) hadith when their legal implications conflicted with the broader principles of law as he understood them.

Another major representative of Ahl al-Ra'y was Ibn Abi Layla (d. 765 CE). He seldom used hadith or the reported opinions of Muhammad's companions in legal arguments, instead depending primarily on his own reasoning.

_Ahl al-Kalam_ rejected the authority of the hadith on the grounds that its corpus was "filled with contradictory, blasphemous, and absurd" reports, and that in jurisprudence, even the smallest doubt about a source was too much. Thus, they believed, the true legacy of prophet Muhammad was to be found first and foremost in the Qur'an. _Ahl al-Kalam_ is sometimes considered to contain the Mu'tazila and rejectors of Hadith.

Under the Abbasid caliph Al-Ma'mun (r. 813-833 CE), the adherents of Kalam were favoured and the supporters of Hadith were dealt harshly. Al-Ma'mun was inclined towards rational inquiry in religious matters, supported the proponents of Kalam and persecuted the adherents of Hadith. His two immediate successors, Al-Mu'tasim (r. 833-842 CE) and Al-Wathiq (r. 842-847 CE), followed his policies. Unlike the three caliphs before him, Al-Mutawakkil (r. 847-861 CE) was not inclined to rational inquiry in religious matters, and strove to bolster the Hadith as a necessary source of the Sunnah.

Khatib al-Baghdadi (d. 1071 CE) explains that the Kharijites rejected many hadiths, but did not reject the authority of Sunnah as a principle. Al-Baghdadi, when summarizing al-Balkhi's classification of Khariji sub-sects, explains that they: "accept only the reports transmitted by those whom they consider believers." According to Ibn Taymiyyah (d. 1328 CE), the Khawarij accepted the Sunnah as a source, but rejected many hadith because they distrusted the narrators, especially from among the Sahaba they considered liars or sinful. According to German historian Hannah-Lena Hagemann, a number of Kharijites are said to have rejected the use of hadiths.

According to Mark A. Harlan and Racha El-Omari, early schools of jurisprudence—including parts of the Maliki tradition—also dismissed hadith, holding a non-hadith-based conception of the sunnah.

Sunni sources report that critics of hadith existed during the lifetimes of al-Shafi'i (d. 820 CE), Ibn Qutaybah (d. 889 CE), and al-Khatib al-Baghdadi (d. 1071 CE). These critics were mainly associated with the Mu'tazila.

The Mu'tazilites rejected hadith as a basis for Islamic law, even though they accepted the Sunnah and ijma (consensus). Their main argument was that hadith—being transmitted by individuals—cannot provide certain knowledge the way the Qur'an does, since the Qur'an's transmission is universally agreed upon by Muslims.

According to historian Ahmad Amin, the Mu'tazilite thinker Ibrahim al-Nazzam (d. 845 CE) relied almost entirely on the Qur'an and rational thought. His followers were called the Nazzamiyyah. Al-Nazzam held that the Qur'an's miraculous nature came from its divine inspiration, rejected ijma (unlike most Mu'tazilites), and denied that hadith had independent legal authority. He argued that hadith could only be trusted when supported by reason or direct evidence, no matter how many people transmitted them.

Another Mu'tazilite, Dirar ibn Amr (d. 815 CE), also rejected ahad and was known to reject hadith outright in deriving law, though he accepted ijma. The Mu'tazilite Abu Bakr al-Asamm (d. 816 CE) also had little use for Hadiths.

A student of al-Nazzam was al-Jahiz (d. 868/869 CE). Al-Jahiz was affiliated with the Mu'tazilite school of thought to which he belonged and founded an offshoot known as the "Jahiziyya" school. Al-Jahiz was also averse to hadith, rejecting any hadith—regardless of how well attested it appeared—if it conflicted with empirical observation. Known for his significant engagement with religious and scholarly texts, he fused the Islamic sciences to Greek rationalism and was also one of the earliest Muslims to make use of biblical material in Arabic translation.

The Shia Isma'ilis had no independent hadith collection or distinct legal tradition before the Fatimid dynasty was founded in North Africa in 909 CE. Qadi al-Nu'man (d. 974 CE) became the main jurist of the Fatimid state and produced the first major Isma'ili legal code, which relied heavily on hadith. After his work, the Isma'ilis did not compile any other significant hadith collections. Their strong focus on batini (esoteric) teachings—linked to the special knowledge of Muhammad's family—over zahiri (exoteric) disciplines like hadith and jurisprudence likely explains this lack of interest. As a result, hadith never became central to Isma'ili religious scholarship and remained relatively unimportant in their later history.

For the Sunni theologian al-Ghazali (d. 1111 CE), the Batiniyya—especially the Isma'ilis who ruled the Fatimid Caliphate and the Alamut state (associated with the "Order of Assassins")—did not truly uphold the authority of prophet Muhammad. He argued that they replaced the guidance found in the Hadith and Sunnah with the absolute teaching (ta'līm) of their Imams.

However, Isma'ilis do not reject the idea of the Sunnah, but they define it differently from Sunnis. In Nizari Isma'ili thought, a strong distinction is made between the Sunnah of Muhammad and the hadith collections. They argue that hadith are merely scattered reports lacking the full context of a living tradition. Since Muhammad never commissioned a compilation of hadith nor left behind books like Sahih al-Bukhari or Sahih Muslim, Nizari writers claim that relying solely on hadith is unreliable due to the uncertainties of historical transmission. For Nizari Isma'ilis, the true Sunnah is accessed through the Ahl al-Bayt (Muhammad's family). The Imam is viewed as the "Speaking Qur’an," the living representative of the Sunnah. Therefore, the Sunnah is not only what Muhammad did in the past, but what he would do today—knowledge made available through his spiritual successor.

## Modern interpretive and reform movements

Hadith rejectors include Quranists, who believe the Qur'an is the only source of guidance in Islam and the only book needed by Muslims. Quranists hold that the prophet Muhammad was never the source of religion or _sharia_ legislation, and that his role was confined to conveying the Qur'an. They maintain that Muhammad was not permitted to answer religious questions on his own accord, but was required to wait for revelation in the Qur'an. Quranists believe hadiths are fabrications ascribed to Muhammad decades and centuries after his death. These include hadiths compiled by al-Bukhari. Quranists deem ascribing such hadiths to Muhammad as utter disbelief (_kufr_) in terms of faith.

The modern Quranist movement emerged in the 20th century CE, shaped in part by reformists such as Ahmed Subhy Mansour, who helped establish Quranism as a distinct current in Egypt, though Qur'an-only groups predate this period. Currently, it is reported that the Quranist movement encompasses tens of thousands to potentially a million followers globally.

Quranists such as Ahmed Subhy Mansour believe that hadiths praising certain companions—such as Abu Bakr, Umar, Uthman, Ali, and Mu'awiya I—whom they view as disbelievers because of their roles in the early Arab conquests, are fabrications produced during the intellectual and political conflicts between Sunnis and Shias. They also accuse Ibadis of fabricating their own hadiths.

Many modernist Muslims believe that some problems in the Islamic world stem from traditional hadith teachings, and they therefore seek to question or reject them. Some apply historical‑critical methods—using fields like archaeology and science—to evaluate hadith, similar to the approach of the medieval scholar al-Biruni (d. 1052 CE). According to Yasir Qadhi, Al-Biruni was "not pro-Hadith" and was "sceptical of the Hadith". Al-Biruni rejected hadiths which contradicted established scientific knowledge, even when they appeared in Sahih al-Bukhari.

Submitters follow the teachings of Rashad Khalifa, an Egyptian-American biochemist who founded United Submitters International (USI) in Tucson, Arizona. They reject hadith and believe in the "Qur'an alone", along with Khalifa's "Code 19," and regard him as a "Messenger of the Covenant." Submitters do not regard themselves as Quranists, arguing that their beliefs—especially about Khalifa's status and certain practices—are fundamentally different. Quranists, in turn, have accused Khalifa of deception and disbelief.

Neo-Mu'tazilites, who revive some of the rationalist methods of the classical Mu'tazila, take a critical approach to hadith and often question their authority. The reformer Syed Ahmad Khan (d. 1898 CE) promoted a rationalist, neo-Mu'tazilite reading of Islamic texts. He argued that many hadith were unreliable or only relevant to Muhammad's own time, rejected the authority of ijma, expanded the role of ijtihad, and even interpreted Biblical texts sympathetically (see: Muslim Hebraism). He rejected the traditional views on authenticity of the canonical collections of hadith. His ideas strongly influenced hadith skepticism in the Indian subcontinent.

Another modern neo-Mu'tazilite figure is Ayatollah Seyed Kamal Heydari (b. 1956 CE). He argues that since the 10th century CE, Iranian Shia scholarship has prioritized hadith over the Qur'an. He describes his own approach as "Qur'an-centric," giving the Qur'an priority and rejecting hadith that conflict with it.

Mohammad Tawhidi, a Shia imam who identifies as a _Muhtaat_ and reformer, has explicitly stated his rejection of the books of Hadith and has stated: "The political, historical, social, ethical, and jurisprudential books that cover aspects of the life of Mohammad were written by scholars from many sects. They vary and contradict each other due to the different perceptions of Mohammad within all 70+ Islamic schools of thought. I encourage my co-religionists to review and evaluate their historical texts".

## Additional movements and trends

Ghulam Ahmad Pervez (d. 1985 CE), founder of _Tolu-e-Islam_, is often accused by traditional Sunnis of being a Hadith rejector, though his position is more nuanced. While Tolu-e-Islam accepts individual Hadith that it believes aligns with the Qur’an and portrays prophet Muhammad and his companions in a positive light, it questions the overall reliability of the classical Hadith collections, viewing them as later interpretations rather than Muhammad's exact words. Pervez also distinguished clearly between Sunnah and Hadith and rejected Hadith as a binding legal source. For him, the Qur'an provides permanent principles, while the Sunnah is the practical framework established by Muhammad and preserved through the continuous practice of the Muslim community. He believed an Islamic state should be built on the Qur'an, operate through a Sunnah-based social order, and use Hadith only as supporting material rather than law. Tolu-e-Islam also denies any connection to the Quranist (Ahl al-Qur'an) movement.

The Yan Tatsine was a militant sect founded in Nigeria by Muhammad Marwa (d. 1980 CE), a Cameroonian-born preacher known as Maitatsine ("the one who curses"). The sect allegedly regarded Maitatsine as a prophet, is reported to have performed two rakats in Salat, rejected the Hadith, avoided praying toward Mecca, and employed charms and ritual "magic" as part of their armed uprisings against the Nigerian army and other Muslim communities. The sect also fell into a Mahdist-millenerian tradition. The group was responsible for the Maitatsine revolts, in which 4,200 people were killed. The Shagari administration of Nigeria believed Libya's Muammar Gaddafi (r. 1969-2011 CE) was linked to the insurrections.

In the 1970s, Gaddafi began rejecting the use of hadith for Islamic law. This brought strong criticism from groups like Hizb ut-Tahrir (HT), who even demanded he hand power over to them. Gaddafi responded by executing HT members. Saudi religious authorities also accused Gaddafi of rejecting hadith, denying the Sunnah, and ignoring ijma. Though he often quoted the Qur'an, Gaddafi was accused by some of being a Marxist and of holding heretical beliefs that contradicted the hadith. Throughout his rule, he suppressed opposition from Salafists, the Muslim Brotherhood, and the Sufi Senusiyya.

Gaddafi's interpretation of Islam was tied to his own socialist ideology, which he explained in the _Green Book_. He promoted his own form of ijtihad and, while attacking hadith, he also claimed that all Muslims follow the Sunnah and are "Shias by default." Overall, he pushed a "progressive" version of Islam blended with socialism and Arab nationalism, which fueled his "Cultural Revolution". His ideology is called _Gaddafism_.

The Zumratul Jamiu Mumin (ZJM) is a society in Nigeria that regards only the Qur'an and the Bible as sacred books of Allah for determining religious matters. To them, the use of Hadith is an aberration. The group, numbering in the thousands, occupies a specific "Islamic City" settlement in the Ogun State.

A similar sect in Nigeria is the Isawa, who reject all established Muslim traditions and instead preach that the Qur'an and the Christian scriptures alone should be the foundations of a Muslim's faith. They are also called "Yan Sap" because they pray Salat by going straight into prostration, and they interpret the Qur'an directly, rejecting classical tafsir and other forms of exegesis. They are often confused with the Kala Kato, a Qur'an-only group that rejects hadith. The Isawa emerged as a significant force in the 19th century CE, allying with the Ningawa and Umbatawa rebels to wage an insurgency against the Sunni-Maliki Sokoto Caliphate.

According to historian Eric Morier-Genoud, members of the Islamist sect in Mozambique that later came to be known as Al-Shabaab were described as refusing to 'know the sayings of the Prophet,' adopting scripturalist, Qur'an-only views. Among their distinctive practices was performing Salat three times a day instead of the five required in Sunnism.

## See also

- Muslim Hebraists
- Non-denominational Muslim
- Islamic philosophy
- Islamic Golden Age
- Sola scriptura
- Protestantism