Criticism of hadith

Criticism of hadith is the critique of hadith (attributed reports about what the Islamic prophet Muhammad said and did). Not all Muslims believe the hadith are the words of Muhammad. Muslims who criticise the hadith are known as "Hadith rejectors", and are distinguished from "Hadith advocates", such as Sunnis and Shias who believe in traditional hadiths.https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=pGoCEAAAQBAJ&pg=PT163&dq=rejectors+of+hadith+quranist&hl=en&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&source=gb_mobile_search&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjA_-XG7JeEAxVbUUEAHb0tBOE4FBDoAXoECAsQAw#v=onepage&q&f=falsehttps://books.google.co.uk/books?id=h8hOEAAAQBAJ&pg=PT213&dq=%C2%A0hadith+rejectors+people+of+hadith&hl=en&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&source=gb_mobile_search&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwitm-aImZqEAxWAUkEAHc4gBCs4ChDoAXoECAcQAw#v=onepage&q&f=false Groups who have rejected the hadith include Ahl al-Kalām, Mu'tazilites, some sects of the Kharijites, modernist Muslims, and Quranists.

Historically, Ahl al-Kalām, who have been described as the forerunners of the Mu'tazilites, 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 Muhammad was to be found elsewhere, i.e. in the Sunnah, which is separate from the hadith.Brown, Rethinking tradition in modern Islamic thought, 1996: p.15 Similarly, some sects of the Kharijites also rejected the hadith; there were some who opposed even the writing down of the Hadith itself for fear that it would compete, or even replace the Qur'an. https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=j8c_DwAAQBAJ&pg=PA75&dq=khawarij+rejected+the+hadith&hl=en&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&source=gb_mobile_search&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjappLF5KGDAxWUU0EAHc0TC1s4HhDoAXoECAsQAw#v=onepage&q&f=false 

Like Ahl al-Kalām, Mu'tazilites also rejected the hadiths as the basis for Islamic law, while at the same time accepting the Sunnah and Ijma. For Mu'tazilites, the basic argument for rejecting the hadiths was that "since its essence is transmission by individuals, [it] cannot be a sure avenue of our knowledge about the Prophetic teaching unlike the Qur'an about whose transmission there is a universal unanimity among Muslims".

Quranists also reject the hadith, who view them as un-Quranic; they believe that obedience to the Islamic prophet Muhammad means obedience to the Qur'an; some further claim that most hadiths are fabrications (pseudepigrapha) created in the 8th and 9th century AD, and which are falsely attributed to Muhammad.Aisha Y. Musa, The Qur’anists, Florida International University, accessed May 22, 2013.Neal Robinson (2013), Islam: A Concise Introduction, Routledge, , Chapter 7, pp. 85-89 Like Quranists, modernist Muslims also believe that the problems in the Islamic world come partly from the traditional elements of the hadith and seek to reject those teachings.https://listverse.com/2016/04/08/10-forgotten-sects-of-major-world-religions/

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." According to Esposito, Joseph 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.

In his book Mohammedan Studies, Ignác Goldziher states: "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". Historian Robert G. Hoyland, states during Umayyad times only the central government was allowed to make laws; religious scholars began to challenge this by claiming they had been transmitted hadith by the Prophet.Hoyland, In God's Path, 2015: p.137 Hoyland vindicates Islamic sources as accurately representative of Islamic history.

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Category:Islam