The Qur'anists
- ️https://independent.academia.edu/AishaMusa41
Ḥadīth: The Other Scripture in Islām
2023
Ḥadīth (oral narrations) are less commonly known than the Qurʾān, which is known as the main scripture of Islām. However, it could be argued that Ḥadīth are much more influential in Islamic civilization than the Qurʾān. There are over 200,000 Ḥadīth with some stretching pages in length and others are merely two words. Some classical scholars such as al-Shāfiʿī (d. 820 CE) argued that the Ḥadīth explain the Qurʾān, which cannot be understood without these oral traditions. However, some classical scholars, such as Abū Ḥanīfa (d. 767) argued that Ḥadīth that contradicted the Qurʾān were to be thrown out. Such debates shaped Islamic jurisprudence for over a thousand years, as well as commentaries on the Qurʾān, discussions on gender, theology, Sufism, Prophetic Biography, and so on. In other words, it is a crucial corpus to understand, if one wants a basic understanding of Islamic civilization, whether for international policy, business, travel, interfaith dialogue, self-edification, or general cultural competency.
This writing-intensive, upper-level course introduces students to the two key texts of Islam, including their origins, content, and meanings as well as the science of their interpretations. The Qur'an is the central text of Islam; its title is taken from a verb that originally meant "to recite" and later evolved to mean "to read". It contains 114 suras (chapters), arranged by length, which contain the revelations that Muhammad received from the Angel Gabriel. As a result, Muslims consider the Qur'an the direct, unmediated word of God. Like God, the Qur'an is eternal and unchanging; it entered the earth at a particular point in human time but is itself uncreated. (Scholars note that the Qur'an is in many ways equivalent for Muslims to Jesus Christ for Christians -both are considered the logos of God.) While many translations of the Qur'an have been made, its text is considered authentic and authoritative only in Arabic; translations are considered human interpretations.
Prophetic Hadith and the Qur'ān Only Movement: The Response of Muslim Scholars
Journal of Islamic and Muslim Studies, 2023
This article explores the Quran-only movement, which advocates for the exclusive interpretation of Islam based on the Quran without reference to the Prophetic Hadith. This movement emerged in the nineteenth century and represents a departure from traditional Islamic scholarship. To shed light on the complex intersection between religious tradition and modernity, this essay discusses the influence of modernity and Westernization on the development of Quranist thought. It then provides a succinct overview of two primary contentions maintained by Muslim scholars who oppose the Quranist movement. The first argument concerns the authority of hadith, while the second concerns their authenticity and historical reliability. With regard to the former, traditional Muslim scholars underscore the significance of the Prophet's life for deriving Islamic belief and practice from the Qur'an, knowledge that can only be acquired from the Hadith. The second argument examined here involves the ways in which Islamic scholars defend the authenticity of the Prophetic Hadith with probabilistic reasoning, suggesting that rejecting the Hadith solely based on the absence of absolute certainty is not reasonable or consistent with the broader Islamic intellectual tradition. They argue that accepting something that is probable but not certain is common in many fields of study, including hadīth scholarship. In the science of hadīth ('ilm al- hadīth), scholars have developed what they consider to be sophisticated methods to evaluate the authenticity of hadīth reports based on various degrees of probability. Therefore, they advocate for an approach that acknowledges the role of probability in hadīth scholarship while upholding the rigorous standards of authenticity and reliability that have been developed over centuries of Islamic scholarship.
Hadith: origins and developments
Muslims produced several metanarratives on hadith since its rise as a narrative genre in Islamic history, which gradually became more and more systematic. Among them are usul al-hadith, al-fiqh and ilm al-rijal. Sociologically speaking, this phenomenon was to be expected because every major narrative in the world, religious or secular, gives rise to its metanarrative(s). These metanarratives may sometimes conflict with each other. Indeed, it is commonly observed that every major narrative is subject to conflicting interpretations.
At the time of Abbasid Empire, the Caliph's court seems to give serious attention in safeguarding the prophethood of Muḥammad and supporting the development of ḥadīth literature. Not only had the Muslims scholar, his own Caliph also produced a work on Islamic Prophetology. Caliph al-Ma'mūn (d. 218/833) has been documented as one of the Abbasid Caliph that produced a work known as Risāla fī Aʿlām al-Nubuwwa. In fact, the Abbasid ruler were also identified as participating in ḥadīth discourse and praising for the ḥadīth colloquy. This actions clearly exhibit the court's patronage of ḥadīth discourse. In his account, Ibn al-Samʿānī records that al-Manṣūr (d. 158/775), al-Rashīd (d. 193/809) and al-Ma'mūn (d. 218/833) were among the Abbasid Caliphate's supporters who extolled the ḥadīth colloquium. This study aims to explore the Abbasid's court and community influence on the development of ḥadīth discourse and Islamic Prophetology. The study is qualitative in nature, in which the researcher employed both critical and analytical analysis on Islamic sources related to the subject. It is indeed an arduous task to sift the enormous amount of Islamic sources, thus, this study is focuses on works produced within the ninth century as its parameter of study. The study in its finding confirms that the Abbasid court appears as playing significant role to safeguarding the prophethood of Muḥammad and expanding ḥadīth literature. The study also ascertains salient evidences bearing witnesses to Muslim and non-Muslim encounters concerning the prophethood of Muḥammad that contribute to the development of Islamic discourse on the subject.