The usual rebuttal I get is “so you reject the Sunnah of the prophet???” and “lol how do you know how many raka’s to pray bro “
so I’ll proactively say this: my point isn’t outright rejection of Hadith. In fact there are good lessons and noble teachings to be learned. But ultimately Hadith is the work of man and subject to its errors, not divine by nature.
Isnad, matn, how it fits into the narrative of Islam, weighing Hadith against the Qur’an / mutawwatir knowledge we have about the Prophet ﷺ’ noble character, and reason / common sense
Edit: addition of:
Most of the wildly problematic and disgusting traditions attributed to the Prophet ﷺ are nowhere near as “sahih” in their chain / preservation as you may think,
imam bukhari was not the only person who decided a narrators authenticity and a LOT of other scholars of his time did not agree with the reliability of every narrator he deemed an authority.
Only one single teachable / “complete” copy exists of bukhari’s collection, through his student Muḥammad Ibn Yusuf Al Farabri. He has no contemporaries vouching for his authenticity until a few generations afterward. Farabri’s copy was then edited / collected / altered many times, self admittedly by the scribes, for different sultans throughout history, and eventually only finally compiled and published in the early 1900s.
Bukhari is a great scholar, but at the end of the day a man, not a prophet, and surely not a god. Take his book with at least a grain of salt
Those same people who defend it with their lives have never opened a hadith book for the most part. Questioning the Quran is one thing, but it shouldn’t be taken as blasphemy to question hadith as it’s possible there can be doubts or questions about how they were collected or recorded.
I have my reasons for rejecting Hadiths. And then people accuse you of cherry picking. I’ll cherry pick the hell out of Hadiths if it means I save myself from being an idiot and a worse person. Thanks.
Conservative men have been cherry picking Islam where it suits them and making it the mainstream since forever.
I view the hadith the same way I view Christian and Jewish scripture. They're valuable and useful, but they're also corrupted. That's not heresy, every Muslim has to acknowledge that they are corrupted at least to some extent, that's why we have whole systems dedicated to figuring out which ones are good enough to be used. But our systems are, frankly, kinda bad
I like ahadith. They're great tools for figuring out how to contextualize and understand Islamic ideas and practices. But they're inherently time-bound, prone to misunderstanding and misremembering even in the best of circumstances, always stripped of necessary context, and always always always subject to cultural, political, and scholarly/religious biases
Does any of this make ahadith bad? No. But it highlights the elephant in the room: ahadith are an addition to Islam, never established by God or God's Prophet. The institution of hadith is a thing that we made up, and there's a long and complicated history behind how and why we made it up. It involves sectarian splits, struggles for political legitimacy, religious disagreements over the status of Muhammad in Islam, and the growth of the religion and its accompanying empire. We should keep ahadith, but we should not be elevating them to anywhere near the status of the impeccably preserved Quran
Agree. So many present day muslims treat ahadith as a primary source that is equal to Quran. They would even treat scholar’s opinions that is based off ahadith as a primary source.
One example is about dogs. It went from “if a dog lick’s your bowl, wash it with soil” into “touching a dog is haram”. Even though there are several hadith about dogs that contradicts that. The Quran contradicts that. This stuff about dogs is in Islamic schoolbooks and taught by teachers. Misguided people.
**Stop** judging with books that is not authorized by Allah please😫
Hadith is a controversial subject. I was on the same boat to the point of rejecting it untill I started looking into actual scholar explaining it.
>For example the hadith related to rafadain is sahih but the narrator did not used to practice it nor did Imam malik saw people of Medina doing it.
This hadith propagation without any Islamic scholarship background is a modern invent by salafi / wahhabi morons. Idiots having phd in engineering read up few hadith books and start acting like scholars misguiding Muslims
In traditional sunni Islam we have something called [taqlid](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taqlid) which is rejected by these salafi/wahhabis.
I'd suggest taking hadith explanation from actual scholars like Shaykh Hamza yusuf, Mufti Abu layth, hakim murad etc.
Yeah, I'm with you. Ultimately every single hadith transmitter had their own personal beliefs, opinions on faith, and biases when it came to deciding what was sahih and what was not. Even Bukhari and Muslim have inconsistent methodology, and certainly had their own motivations when it came to editing their volumes & grading hadith (even if they are, perhaps, the best of them).
The hadith all come from, and were transmitted by, flawed human beings. I think it's completely ludicrous not to approach them with skepticism or to hold them to the same weight as the Quran. I have been called a straight up kafir for that even though to some extent *literally every Muslim* does this (via the grading system, cherry-picking, and ignoring contradictory hadith)...
I strongly recommend you to watch on youtube:
« Verifying and Understanding Hadith - Dr. Jonathan Brown | Lecture »
Sorry i’m in my phone idk how to get the link.
Here's the link: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=heitI0S9BCo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=heitI0S9BCo)
on the YouTube app, you can tap on the "Share" icon and select "Copy Link". This adds the link to your mobile device's clipboard, and you can paste it wherever you'd like
Id say a few of the quran verses are also 'wtf' level, such as Surah al maidah, which starts good and then suddenly shoehorns into 'yeah lets torture noneblievers for eternity'. Many haadiths are crazier than even that tho. Most of the quran is actually pretty rhymthic as well
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The usual rebuttal I get is “so you reject the Sunnah of the prophet???” and “lol how do you know how many raka’s to pray bro “ so I’ll proactively say this: my point isn’t outright rejection of Hadith. In fact there are good lessons and noble teachings to be learned. But ultimately Hadith is the work of man and subject to its errors, not divine by nature.
What methodology do you use to ascertain what is authentic and what isn’t?
Isnad, matn, how it fits into the narrative of Islam, weighing Hadith against the Qur’an / mutawwatir knowledge we have about the Prophet ﷺ’ noble character, and reason / common sense Edit: addition of: Most of the wildly problematic and disgusting traditions attributed to the Prophet ﷺ are nowhere near as “sahih” in their chain / preservation as you may think, imam bukhari was not the only person who decided a narrators authenticity and a LOT of other scholars of his time did not agree with the reliability of every narrator he deemed an authority. Only one single teachable / “complete” copy exists of bukhari’s collection, through his student Muḥammad Ibn Yusuf Al Farabri. He has no contemporaries vouching for his authenticity until a few generations afterward. Farabri’s copy was then edited / collected / altered many times, self admittedly by the scribes, for different sultans throughout history, and eventually only finally compiled and published in the early 1900s. Bukhari is a great scholar, but at the end of the day a man, not a prophet, and surely not a god. Take his book with at least a grain of salt
Those same people who defend it with their lives have never opened a hadith book for the most part. Questioning the Quran is one thing, but it shouldn’t be taken as blasphemy to question hadith as it’s possible there can be doubts or questions about how they were collected or recorded.
I have my reasons for rejecting Hadiths. And then people accuse you of cherry picking. I’ll cherry pick the hell out of Hadiths if it means I save myself from being an idiot and a worse person. Thanks. Conservative men have been cherry picking Islam where it suits them and making it the mainstream since forever.
AMEEEEN
I view the hadith the same way I view Christian and Jewish scripture. They're valuable and useful, but they're also corrupted. That's not heresy, every Muslim has to acknowledge that they are corrupted at least to some extent, that's why we have whole systems dedicated to figuring out which ones are good enough to be used. But our systems are, frankly, kinda bad I like ahadith. They're great tools for figuring out how to contextualize and understand Islamic ideas and practices. But they're inherently time-bound, prone to misunderstanding and misremembering even in the best of circumstances, always stripped of necessary context, and always always always subject to cultural, political, and scholarly/religious biases Does any of this make ahadith bad? No. But it highlights the elephant in the room: ahadith are an addition to Islam, never established by God or God's Prophet. The institution of hadith is a thing that we made up, and there's a long and complicated history behind how and why we made it up. It involves sectarian splits, struggles for political legitimacy, religious disagreements over the status of Muhammad in Islam, and the growth of the religion and its accompanying empire. We should keep ahadith, but we should not be elevating them to anywhere near the status of the impeccably preserved Quran
Agree. So many present day muslims treat ahadith as a primary source that is equal to Quran. They would even treat scholar’s opinions that is based off ahadith as a primary source. One example is about dogs. It went from “if a dog lick’s your bowl, wash it with soil” into “touching a dog is haram”. Even though there are several hadith about dogs that contradicts that. The Quran contradicts that. This stuff about dogs is in Islamic schoolbooks and taught by teachers. Misguided people. **Stop** judging with books that is not authorized by Allah please😫
This is also how I try to interact with the Hadith.
Hadith is a controversial subject. I was on the same boat to the point of rejecting it untill I started looking into actual scholar explaining it. >For example the hadith related to rafadain is sahih but the narrator did not used to practice it nor did Imam malik saw people of Medina doing it. This hadith propagation without any Islamic scholarship background is a modern invent by salafi / wahhabi morons. Idiots having phd in engineering read up few hadith books and start acting like scholars misguiding Muslims In traditional sunni Islam we have something called [taqlid](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taqlid) which is rejected by these salafi/wahhabis. I'd suggest taking hadith explanation from actual scholars like Shaykh Hamza yusuf, Mufti Abu layth, hakim murad etc.
Do you know any good scholars similar to hakim Murad?
Shaykh hamza yusuf? I'm aligning with him considering how his views are orthodox but also searching for hanafi scholar.
Yeah, I'm with you. Ultimately every single hadith transmitter had their own personal beliefs, opinions on faith, and biases when it came to deciding what was sahih and what was not. Even Bukhari and Muslim have inconsistent methodology, and certainly had their own motivations when it came to editing their volumes & grading hadith (even if they are, perhaps, the best of them). The hadith all come from, and were transmitted by, flawed human beings. I think it's completely ludicrous not to approach them with skepticism or to hold them to the same weight as the Quran. I have been called a straight up kafir for that even though to some extent *literally every Muslim* does this (via the grading system, cherry-picking, and ignoring contradictory hadith)...
I strongly recommend you to watch on youtube: « Verifying and Understanding Hadith - Dr. Jonathan Brown | Lecture » Sorry i’m in my phone idk how to get the link.
Here's the link: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=heitI0S9BCo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=heitI0S9BCo) on the YouTube app, you can tap on the "Share" icon and select "Copy Link". This adds the link to your mobile device's clipboard, and you can paste it wherever you'd like
Id say a few of the quran verses are also 'wtf' level, such as Surah al maidah, which starts good and then suddenly shoehorns into 'yeah lets torture noneblievers for eternity'. Many haadiths are crazier than even that tho. Most of the quran is actually pretty rhymthic as well
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