Authenticity of Ahadeeth (Split from Companion thread)

Society Religion & Philosophy
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Well, the point is, that the arguments about authenticity of ahadeeth comes up again and again in various threads. It should be discussed here, so that in rest of the threads folks can use their own reference points and move the discussion forward instead of rehashing the same argument and getting bogged down.

After review, I have split the first four posts and merged them back with the Companions thread. I apologize for the inconvenience, but lets keep the focus on the topic(s) under discussion. :-)

Jazak Allah.

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[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by Fraudz: *

So just dont take a hadeeth as the word of God,

use it as a source for supporting information, but be critical of what you read in there, and use logic and understanding of religion and the type of person our prohet was to see whether the hadeeth makes sense and that its not tampered with, fabricated, or changed due to people adding their own spin on it ..knowingly or unknowingly.
[/QUOTE]

hadeeth as word of God????
atleast get ur basics right....

there r weak ahadith, the ahadith that the scholars have researched on and found to be not-so-accurate....
bukhari is considered to be the most authentic colection....
but it too has some ahadith considered as 'weak'....
why????
because bukhari collected many, then he did a check and removed the ones he thought to be unauthentic....
human error comes into play and he might have still been left with some....
but to say that even 10% of the hadith r 'weak' doesnt mean u outrightly reject the hadith....
after all many orders of the Quran r left with a BIG QUESTION MARK without the support of ahadith....
salat, zakat, hajj, everything....

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*Originally posted by armughal: *

hadeeth as word of God????
atleast get ur basics right....**

atleast learn to comprehend.

the point is thaty hadeethare not the word of god, the authenticity of them can not be guaranteed.

there r weak ahadith, the ahadith that the scholars have researched on and found to be not-so-accurate....

does not prove that the hadeeth that are there are all 100% accurate, he did teh best he could but errors, omissions, incorrect narrations, are all possible.

bukhari collected many, then he did a check and removed the ones he thought to be unauthentic....

exavtly, what he "thought" and he could have made errors.

human error comes into play and he might have still been left with some....

exactly my point, there could be some completely false ones in there, there could be some which had spin put in by narrators intentionally or unintentionally. The possibility exists, its like chinese whispers, after the phrase goes thru 5 ppl u may get a result which is quite different from the original statement.

but to say that even 10% of the hadith r 'weak' doesnt mean u outrightly reject the hadith....

Nor did i suggest that anywhere at any point, I merely suggested that people be wary of hadeeth and use some common sense and see how they link up to what quran has to say and not follow them blindly because the accuracy of hadeeth can not be guaranteed.

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but while we try to work on common sense, those people (bukhari and co) actually worked with people who had heard the hadith directly or indirectly with a 2-3 person transmission, and hence were in a much better position than us to judge the accuracy of ahadith....

and while we can only sit and argue based on common sense, the hadith scholars actually do much more research on hadith, identifying the reliability of each person in the chain of narrators and also benchmarking the contents and the words (language) of the hadith to see whether it is infact genuine....

e.g. a hadith from bukhari says that the prophet (saw) refused to pray for the people of syria cuz of the fitna that will arise from there....
neither is it the nature of "rehmat-lil-alameen" to refuse to pray for someone, nor is it common sense to believe that "rising a fitna" from a nation sometime in the future cud be an excuse to refuse a prayer for them....
hence the scholars classify this hadith as 'mawdhoo'" although it has a strong chain of narrators....

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Hello everyone,

greetings and yes, very nice topic for discussion.

However, it would be better if people realised what hadith really is and what purpose it ought to serve and how it has been categorised and why?

It is a fact that none of the hadith are accepted authentic by muslim ummah as a whole. For example, sunnis reject the shia collection eg Al-Kafi etc and the shias reject the sunni collections eg bukhari, muslim, tirmizi, ibn maja, abu dawud, nisaee etc etc. The quran only muslims reject all the collections by either of them. The question is, why?

It seems that there is no proof that hadith are authentic and the reason is the conflciting principles on which the hadith are judged for their authenticity. For example, on one hand the rule is that if the narrators are good then the ahadith they narrate must also be good. This rule is then set against the rule that if any hadith is found against the quran, it is not acceptable. This rule does not work because if you accept narrators authentic then you cannot afford to reject them. However, if you do reject the narrators on the basis of the quran then whatever they narrate becomes suspicious and so loses its authenticity. So the rules by hadith collectors themselves do not work out when put to the test. Now if rules do not work then whatever is based upon those rules cannot be acepted authentic either. This is why, it is not possible to prove any hadith authentic no matter what. So categories do not matter at all.

If the quran is accepted authentic then anything against the quran has to be false. So if anyone tells that prophet said or did this or that which is against the quran that person would be proven unrelaible. Once a person is proven unreiable, there is no way that one could then accept the unreliable person's other narrations and so the whole hadith literature falls under suspicion that is judged on the basis of such like rules. You either accept a testimony on the basis of self evident facts and logic or you do not.

Just for the benefit of the readers, the hadith are categorised mainly on the basis of isnaad=chain of narrators and the text=matan. Some hadith have one but others multiple chains as well as some are well known others not so well known.

Any chain of narrators is either complete or incomplete between the alleged witness who says he heard or saw the prophet say or do something and the collector of the hadith in form of the book eg bukhari. The chain could be broken at either end or the middle and could even be broken in more than one places. Likewise the text reported may be complete or incomplete, clear or confused. So the sahih hadith is said to be that which has reliable chain of witnesses as well as clear text and is not against the quran or illogical and or against self evident facts. All other categories of hadith are defective in some way or another. However, if a hadith is reported by more than one chain of narrators then it is only re-enforced provided it has been reported by at least one reliable chain.

Thus hadith are said to be khabray wahid=single chain and not well known, mash-hoor= single chain or multiple chains and well known, matwater= many chains and very well known. Such categories of hadith are based on number of chains as well as how well they are known.

Likewise we have sahih, ahsan,zaieef categories due to text being clear or not or defective chain. The chain is categorised as murfu, maroof, muttasil, mun-qata, etc etc. Mozoo are such ahadith as are thought to be made up.

I hope this explanation helps move discusion forward.

Regards and all the best.

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the following is taken from Shaikh Albani’s words on rejection of hadith…

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hadith---> collection of word of mouth accounts of people who died at least a hundred years ago

authenticity of hadith---> based on the character of the narrators

character of narrators determined by? ---> word of mouth accounts collected by the same people qualifying hadiths.

authenticity of these personality accounts ---> determined by the same compilers/scholars

Examples of holes..... Abu Huraira's hadiths.. hundreds of them where he's the ONLY witness at the beginning of the chain; quite surprising that the Prophet would chose him over all his other companions to disclose about 70% of what Ahl-e-Sunnah have as their Religion today, and more surprising is the fact that he's the one at the source of hadiths vouching for his own credibility!

Amazing is not that scholars bought it, who knows under what pressure they wrote or with what designs, but intelligent folks today who are quick to dig out conspiracies in any action of the Western powers just turn off their critical instincts and follow without investigation when it comes to their own faith.

[25:1] Blessed is He who sent down the criterion to His servant, that it may be an admonition to all creatures;-

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Originally posted by armughal: *
**but while we try to work on common sense, those people (bukhari and co) actually worked with people who had heard the hadith directly or indirectly with a 2-3 person transmission, and hence were in a much better position than us to judge the accuracy of ahadith....*

better position, yes...perfect flawless position, no. they did the ebst they could, but I state again the authenticity of the words can not be guaranteed.

and while we can only sit and argue based on common sense, the hadith scholars actually do much more research on hadith, identifying the reliability of each person in the chain of narrators and also benchmarking the contents and the words (language) of the hadith to see whether it is infact genuine....

but they still had to make assumptions and calls. They used common sense too, looking at what was said who said it, how many sources and whether or not it is in direct conflict with something else that was stated.
Were the in a better position, yes..were the results completely free of error, omissions, fabrications.. I would not bet on that.

The examples that you are giving indicate that there are hadeeth which are disputed, but disputed by the compilers who compiled these ages afterwards. If we did nto have any disputed ahadeeth, and no hadeeth that were considered false and removed by these gents, we would have a much better level of confidence in hadeeth. the fact that there are weak and unsupported hadeeth present in the books now, and that there were hadeeth that were deemed as fabrications and taken out indicates that its a best effort of compilation with the issues related to human error as well as incorrect sources, or alteration (intentional or unintentional) of the message during transmission from a chain of person to person.

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The foundation of sunni shia claim rests on the assertion that the quran cannot be understood without the hadith and therefore becomes impractical. Or that quran says to obey or follow the prophet he is best example, so how can you obey or follow the prophet without knowing how did he respond to the quran or what he asked of people?

This gives rise to the question, is it possible to understand something clear and reliable through something that is doubtful and confusing, for that is what these people themselves believe about the quran and the hadith ie that the quran is clear and reliable and hadith is not?

As for understaning the quran on its own, even hadith need to be understood on its own and not only that but any text needs to be understood on its own. The true sense of a text is whatever sense it makes from within itself. It is exactly because of this principle that even the sunni shia ulema accept the first principle of interpretation of the quran, which is tafseeral quran bil quran ie the explanation of the quran by the quran itself. Now when a new rule is introduced ie that the quran is to be understood through hadith, it conflicts with the first principle which renders the whole thing senseless.

As for prophet being obeyed or followed, he is simply to be obeyed and followed in matters relating the quran which has nothing to do with any other source of information, say the quran only muslims. This makes better sense and gives islam a better context than sunni and shia etc etc versions of islam. One can see the following sites to have some idea of what is going on

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I will like to warn everyone to be very careful of this website. It is maintained by the followers of Rashad Khalifa, who made the “discovery” of the miracle of 19 in the Quran. However, he went a step-ahead to claim that there are two verses in the Quran which do not conform to the so-called miracle of 19, and hence these two verses must be fabricated and added at a later time. After this claim, almost all the scholars of Islam rose up against him. If I remember correctly, he was killed some time later for calling himself “god”. Not sure, though. Search on “Rashad Khalifa” and you will get a lot of information on the whole saga.

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it was not that Prophet Muhammad (saw) wished to impart 70% of the sunnah to abu-huraira, but abu huraira's keenness on gaining knowledge from the prophet that makes the number of hadith reported by him so high....

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[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by armughal: *
it was not that Prophet Muhammad (saw) wished to impart 70% of the sunnah to abu-huraira, but abu huraira's keenness on gaining knowledge from the prophet that makes the number of hadith reported by him so high....
[/QUOTE]

yes that's his own words.. but who's to corroborate that?

It sounds disturbing to say the least to believe the Prophet would have neglected spreading his teachings (taken as an explanation of the Qur'an and religion by Ahl-e-Sunnah) to everyone he used to preach.. and reserve it for just one Jewish convert who was nowhere near the Prophet throughout his life except for the last few years and maintained ties with his friends and was often accused of borrowing stories from his Jewish friends.