Hadith and Sunnah: Why they are different and why this matters
In a previous article, we discussed how common criticisms of Pakistani scholar, Javed Ahmed Ghamidi are misleading, false and often very selective.
Opponents often unfairly lump him with Quranists and ‘rejectors of hadith’.
As we shall see, Ustad Ghamidi Saab’s views on this matter are not far removed from the views of classical scholars, and robustly supported by logic and historical evidence.
Khabar al Wahid vs Amal: Why isolated narrations are not the source of Sunnah
Generally, Muslims today do not distinguish between the Sunnah of the Prophet (pbuh) and the Hadith literature.
The widespread and accepted stance amongst both laymen and scholars, is that Sunnah is derived from narratives ascribed to the Prophet.
Especially if said narrations are regarded as ‘Sahih’ (authentic) based on the certification of the ancient scholars of hadith.
It is indubitably true, that Sunnah is the basic source of Islam alongside the Qur’an.
The Qur’an clearly alludes to practices and matters such as Salah, months of Hajj etc, without explaining how they are to be performed or observed.
It is also obligates Muslims to obey the Messenger, alongside obedience to Allah (4:59 and many other verses).
All attempts to understand the Qur’an without reference to the Sunnah have resulted in absurdity and religious vandalism.
Quran-alone Islam is intellectually redundant and historically illiterate.
As I stated elsewhere:
Over time, it became clear to me the Quran if interpreted individually without reference to the common practice of Muslims, would be utterly vandalised and nothing of Islam would remain.
Thus Hajj could not happen, Salah could not be performed, Zakat could not be paid because every Quranist was individually reintepreting what each word even means and following a different intepretation from the other. So for some Salah means creating a fair society, for others it is prayed twice a day, for others three times and for some it means going to war against injustice!
The Quran asks Muslims to unite and clearly expects them to understand its instructions without each person, trying to reconstruct each meaning for themselves. I thus found myself estranged from Quran only Islam.
Sunnah is without doubt, essential to practicing Islam, both at the individual level and the collective.
However: Sunnah is not primarily derived from hadith!
The reports or narratives we have of the Prophet’s actions and sayings, fall into the category of ‘khabar al wahid‘. They are attributed to no more than a handful of people.
The scholars recognised the difficulty of confirming the content of such a report, and concluded that it provided only probabilistic evidence (dhanni ilm) not certain knowledge (ilm al Qati).
This applies to reports labelled as ‘Sahih‘ by Hadith Scholars, as well as other grades of hadith.
In the first centuries of Islam, the Sunnah was generally derived from the living practice or (‘amal) of the Muslim community, not from second hand reports from a person here and a person there.
This stands to reason; it is unthinkable that the Prophet (peace be upon him) would leave large parts of the faith in the hands of one or two people, to narrate or forget, as they might.
The Messenger was instructed to deliver his message to the whole community by the Qur’an, and Allah said that this was the duty which the Prophet could not fail to perform (5:67)
To this end, the Messenger instructed the Quran to be written and compiled, as well as committed to memory.
Thus the Qur’an was preserved by the consensus and practical perpetuation of the Muslims, one generation teaching the next.
This was how the Sunnah too was transferred, from the companions, one whole generation to another, with their ijma (consensus) and tawatur (continued practice).
Sunnah according to the Early Scholars
Before the conflation of Sunnah and Hadith occured, the jurists articulated (with slight differences) that the Sunnah is most reliably transferred by mass transmission, not by person-to-person reports.
This was agreed to provide a much stronger basis than a report from one companion, or a few. Prominent Maliki scholar Aisha Bewley explains:
..this hadith-based view is obviously a rather anachronistic view of the early period. People were doing the prayer, performing hajj, doing wudu‘, collecting zakat, carrying on their lives as Muslims in Madina as they had done from the time of the Prophet right up to Malik and beyond. Any conflict would only arise if someone came with something new, and then it would have to be compared with the existing practice. They did not reach for a volume of hadith. They were not a bookish people. Transmission was immediate and direct..
Amal of Madina
Imam Malik derived the Sunnah from the practice of the people of Medina.
He repeatedly rejected even Sahih ahadith, preferring the communal practice in the city where thousands of companions learnt directly from the Prophet, and then thousands of them taught the Sunnah to their children and grandchildren ad infinitum.
In other words, the Sunnah in Medina was being observed daily, with absolute practical consensus i.e. ijma.
The scholar, Ibn Qutayba illustrated this process most lucidly, whilst perceptively noting the many pitfalls of taking hadith as an independent source of Sunnah:
In our view, Truth is established by ijma more frequently than by the transmission of hadiths since the hadith can be exposed to the mischance of forgetfulness or carelessness. It can be affected also by ambiguities, reinterpretation and abrogation. The reliable also accept information from unreliable persons . There are also parallelisms, with one report saying one thing another another thing, both of which may be acceptable. One man might report a Prophetic command but be absent when it is later rescinded. So he reports the command in good faith, but not about its cancellation, since he does not know anything about it.
‘An Introduction to the Hadith’, Burton, J (1994).
Ijmā is exempt from these hazards. That is why Malik would report a hadith from the Prophet and then say ‘But what is done in
Madina is something different’, on a basis other than that particular hadith. Malik’s town was the Prophet’s town. (It stands to reason that) if something was done in the Prophet’s day, the same thing would be done in the second generation, and in the third and subsequent generations. The Madinans would not all abandon things done in the Prophet’s day in his town and adopt something different… What is transmitted by an entire generation outweighs what is transmitted by one man from one man .Hanafi scholars were also reluctant to accept a solitary narration, if it related to something that should have been known and practiced by a large number of Muslims, or related to things that are essential (umum al balwa/ dhururi ilm).
The prominent Hanafi scholar, Imam Sarakhsi, clearly explains that individual narrations are not an independent source of Islam, and must be understood in the light of the Qur’an and well-known or mass transmitted Sunnah, to avoid adding things to Islam (biddah):
The door to innovation and misguidance was first opened, when solitary reports were not tested against the book of God (Qur’an) and well-known Sunnah. Consequently, some people accepted such reports as being an independent source (‘asal), even though its attribution to the Prophet always is questionable and it does not give us positive knowledge. Then (such) people started explaining away (to reconcile) the Book and known Sunnah (Sunnah malooma) with solitary narrations. In this way, the independent source (Quran/ established Sunnah) was made subservient to the dependent one (Hadith) and the door to innovation (in Islam) was opened. The correct approach was followed by our (i.e. hanafi) scholars to keep each religious proof in its place. So that, the Quran and established Sunnah are considered the true source of the religion, and solitary narrations are subjected to these, and we then consider and ponder over them.
Usul Al Sarakhsi, 1/368The above view is identical with that of Javed Ahmed Ghamidi and myself.
Indeed, even Imam Shafi’ (the most pro-hadith of early scholars) puts these narrations in a secondary position, and distinguishes between the Mass transmitted Sunnah and hadith, in a way modern Sunnis do not:
Firstly we will derive a ruling from the Qur’an and agreed-upon Sunnah, which is accepted by all (Muslims). In this case, the ruling will be based on absolute truth, both apparently and inwardly. After this we will take a ruling from a solitary report, but acknowledge that it may not be absolute truth, as the narrator of hadith may have made a mistake…
Al-Risala, p.598
Identifying the Sunnah
From the foregoing it is absolutely clear that Sunnah is primarily derived from generation-to-generation transmission (tawatur) and based on the consensus of all Muslims.
We would still have the whole deen in our hands, even if a single hadith had never been collected.
Javed Ghamidi’s unique and valuable contribution has been to investigate what those practices are, that are common to all Muslims, across all sects, across all generations, across the world.
Given the rapid spread of Islam in an age where travel and communication were limited, and knowing that Muslims were divided into hostile political and religious camps, very soon after the time of the Prophet (Pbuh), the possibility of all Muslims coming to agree on five daily prayers with the same number of units for instance, or upon circumcision for boys, is practically zero, unless these practices had indeed been instituted by the Prophet.
So what is the Sunnah Mutawatirah or established Sunnah? Ghamidi Saab’s list can be found here.
A Critical Look At Sahih Hadith
Any criticism of the traditionalist narrative of hadith, is met with fierce opposition. Supporters often claim that the scholars of hadith carried out impeccable research in investigating the probity of narrators (ilm ul rijal), and thus we can be confident that when a hadith is classified as ‘sahih’ it is genuinely authentic.
Some go as far as excommunicating fellow Muslims for rejecting even a single ‘Sahih’ hadith from Bukhari or Muslim, for example.
There is no doubt that Imams of Hadith, did indeed work hard to try and establish the authenticity of each narration.
I salute their efforts. Yet, like all human endeavours, their work is full of lapses and errors, as we shall see.
Naming your men
Ibn Sirin famously stated that prior to civil strife some 50 years after the time of the Prophet, there was no concept of naming narrators of hadith.
By the time the ‘science of hadith’ fully developed in the second and third century after the Prophet, scholars were trying to establish the probity, memory, time placement et cetera, of narrators who had died maybe a century or more earlier.
It is not surprising that the results of this enterprise were confused and somewhat mixed.
This why we find one muhaddith declaring a certain narrator as ‘truthful’ whilst another considers him ‘weak’, whilst a third declares him to be an outright liar.
I strongly recommend this excellent article on the intricacies of hadith grading, which shows the differences between hadith scholars, and highlights the essential subjectivity of the whole exercise.
For our purposes, one instance will suffice from this article:
Practical examples
- The narrator;
‘Abdullah ibn ‘Umar Al-‘Umri (rahimahullah); was a descendant of Sayyiduna ‘Umar (radiyallahu’anhu). The scholars of Hadith (rahimahumullah) have the following to say regarding him:
Imam Ibn Ma’in said: He is reliable.
Imam Ahmad said: There is nothing wrong with him.
Imam ‘Ali Ibn Madini (rahimahullah) said: He is weak.
Imam Nasai said: He is weak in Hadith.
This is only one of countless examples of ‘differed upon’ narrators of Hadith. The books of rijal (Hadith narrators) are filled with such cases.
Moreover, the author notes that not only do different scholars grade hadith differently even the same classifier, has at times, given varying judgements on the reliability of a chain of narration:
Imam Dhahabi (rahimahullah) writes in “Al-Muqizah”:
At times a Muhaddith changes his view on one particular narration a few times; on one day he may declare it sahih (authentic), on another day he deems it hasan (sound). Sometimes he may end up classifying it as weak.
Al Muqizah, pg 28-29
Errors in ‘Sahih’ Hadith
It is not difficult to demonstrate that not all hadith graded as ‘authentic’ are true. Some have obvious mistakes and blatant errors.
Here are a few examples:
Sahih al-Bukhari 6167 claims the Prophet (pbuh) wrongly predicted that the Hour i.e. day of judgement would happen within the lifetime of a slave alive at that time i.e. 7th century: “…In the meantime, a slave of Al-Mughira passed by, and he was of the same age as I was. The Prophet (ﷺ) said. “If this (slave) should live long, he will not reach the geriatric old age, but the Hour will be established.”
Sahih al-Bukhari 3308 states a particular snake causes abortion, and blinds on-lookers. No such snake is known to exist: “Narrated `Aisha: The Prophet (ﷺ) said, “Kill the snake with two white lines on its back, for it blinds the on-looker and causes abortion.”
Sahih al-Bukhari 4802 incorrectly describes the sun physically setting and rising underneath God’s throne. The narrators clearly didn’t understand the rotation of the earth, and it’s orbit around the sun.
Sahih Hadith – Contradictions Aplenty
The Sahih books of Bukhari and Muslim have a startling number of contradictions, further underlining the futility of regarding a ‘sahih’ classification as evidence of accuracy.
A few examples:
- Did the Prophet live in Makka for ten or thirteen years or fifteen years after Prophethood ? (See: Bukhari 4464 vs Bukhari 3902 vs Muslim 2353 a)
- Did the Prophet depart from the world aged 60 or 63 ( See: Muslim 2347 vs Muslim 2352)
- What was last revealed verse of the Qur’an regarding? inheritance or usury (Reference: Bukhari 4364 vs Bukhari 4544)
- Did the Prophet have nine or eleven wives? (Bukhari 5215 vs Bukhari 268)
- Is the Dajjal (antichrist) blind in the left or the right eye? (Bukhari 7123 vs Muslim 2934 a )
Hadith Absurdities & Matn Analysis
For all the tall claims made by some, there are plenty of absurd narrations to be found in the Sahih collections of hadith, from Allah (SWT) putting his foot in hell, to Moses (PBUH) taking out an Angel’s eye, to a goat eating verses of the Qur’an, to the Prophet (saw) being under the sustained influence of black magic and many more.
There is also much fodder for islamphobes in terms of material that contradicts both the countless beautiful aspects of the Prophet’s character found elsewhere, and also the ‘golden rule’ based morality of the Qur’an.
From blasphemy to apostasy, slavery to inheritance, large parts of Islam derived from the ‘Furqan’ have been replaced by contradictory laws and teachings by questionable Hadith.
This would have never happened, if the rules derived by imams for matn (textual) analysis, were consistently applied to ahadith with the same fervour, as chain of narrations were investigated by them.
No hadith should be accepted unless it accords to the Qur’an, Sunnah, common sense, and established knowledge:
Professor Muhammad Zubayr summarises traditional criteria for testing the matn or text of a hadith, as follows:
…The mere formal soundness of an isnad is not considered definite proof
of the actual genuineness of the text of the traditions to which they are attached.
According to the traditionists, even if the isnad is completely without fault, the
text should still be analysed before the genuineness of its attribution can be
established.According to a well-known principle:
‘If you encounter a hadith:
(1) contrary to reason,
(2) or to what has been established as correctly reported,
(3) or against the accepted principles,
then you should know that it is forged.’Abu Bakr ibn al-Tayyib is reported to have remarked that it is a proof of
the forged character of a tradition that:
(1) it be against:
(i) reason or
(ii) common experience;
(2) or that it conflicts with:
(i) the explicit text of the Qur’an
(ii) and the Mutawatir tradition,
(iii) or the consensus (ijma);
(3) or that it contains the report of an important event taking place in the
presence of a large number of people (when it is related by a single individual);
(4) or that it lays down severe punishment for minor faults, or promises high
rewards for insignificant good deeds.
Al-Hakim gives several examples of forged and weak hadiths having sound
isnads {Al-Hakim, Ma’rifa ‘Ulum al-Hadith (Cairo, 1937 CE), 58ff.}Al-Suyuti remarks that such Hadiths are encountered frequently. {Suyuti;
Tadrib al-Rawi. (Commentary on Al-Nawawi’s al-Taqrib wa’l-Taysir), Cairo, 1307;
100.}In fact, the only sure guidance in the determination of the genuineness of
a tradition is, as remarked by Ibn al-Mahdi and Abu Zar’a, a faculty that a
traditionalist develops through a long, continuous study of the hadiths, and as a
result of continuous discussion of them with other scholars.All such research, of course, must be reconciled with a historical
awareness of the circumstances (asbab al-wurud) in which a given Tradition was
generated, for many hadiths were relevant only to the early period of the
Prophet’s (pbuh) ministry, and were later abrogated by other teachings.On the basis of the above mentioned understanding, the following general
principles for the criticism of the texts of the traditions have been laid down.(1) A tradition must not be contrary to the other traditions which have already
been accepted by the authorities on the subject as authentic and reliable.(2) Nor should it contradict:
(i) the text of the Qur’an
(ii) a Mutawatir hadith
(iii) the absolute consensus of the community (ijma qat’i),
(iv) or the accepted basic principles of Islam.(3) A tradition should not be against:
(i) the dictates of reason,
(ii) the laws of nature,
(iii) or common experience.(4) Must be rejected:
(i) Traditions establishing a disproportionately high reward for insignificant good
deeds,
(ii) or disproportionately severe punishments for ordinary sins.(5) Traditions describing the excellent properties of certain sections of the Qur’an
may not be authentic.(6) Traditions mentioning the superior virtue of:
(i) persons,
(ii) tribes,
(iii) and particular places
Should be generally rejected.
(7) Traditions containing detailed prophecies of future events, equipped with
dates, should be rejected.(8) Traditions containing:
(i) such remarks of the Prophet (pbuh) as may not be a part of his prophetic
vocation,
(ii) or such expressions as are clearly unsuitable for him,
should be rejected.(9) A matan should not violate the basic rules of Arabic Grammar and style.]
Hadith Literature – Its Origins, Development and Special Features, pg 31-36 (cited by Asim Iqbal)
‘Sahih’ Hadith our scholars rejected
Our classical scholars did on occasion, apply the aforementioned conditions.
Consequently, we find some Hadith which are regarded as ‘Sahih’ in terms of isnad (chains of narration) but were regarded as incorrectly ascribed to the Prophet by ulema, due to their content.
Here are some examples (all references available here)
- Imam Ar-Razi rejected the ‘sahih’ report found in Bukhari and Muslim which claims that Ibraheem alayhislaam lied three times. He rightly stated that it is better to accuse the narrator of this report of falsehood, than accusing a Prophet of lying.
- Hafiz Hajr Al Asqalani rejected the narration in Bukhari that Adam (PBUH) was created 60 cubits tall and that humans had gradually got shorter over time. He based this on the fact that archeological remains in Arabia suggested ancient peoples like Thamud were no taller than his contemporaries.
- Imam Ibn Taymiyya rejected the claim found in a ‘sahih’ hadith, that God would create a nation to burn in hell in order to fill it up.Hafiz Ibn Qayyim, Abu Hasan Qubsi & Imam Al-Asqalani also do not accept this report ,which is contrary to the Qur’an which says nobody will be wronged by Allah, in the least and will only be requited for their own actions (36:54)
- Imam Ibn Abdul Barr rejected the bizarre narration in Bukhari whereby monkeys were punishing two of their number by stoning.
- Imam Ibn Kathir rejects the attribution of this Hadith to the Prophet – (Sahih Muslim 2789) : Abu Huraira reported that Allah’s Messenger (ﷺ) took hold of my hands and said:, ” the Exalted and Glorious, created the clay on Saturday and He created the mountains on Sunday and He created the trees on Monday and He created the things entailing labour on Tuesday and created light on Wednesday and He caused the animals to spread on Thursday and created Adam (peace be upon him) after ‘Asr on Friday; the last creation at the last hour of the hours of Friday, i. e. between afternoon and night”. Ibn Kathir says this narration contradicts the Qur’an and the Prophet could not say anything against the Qur’an. Many scholars think this is in fact a saying of Ka’b a Jewish convert to Islam.
Hadith rejected by companions
There are a number of reports that show the Prophet’s family and companions rejecting hadith that contradict the Qur’an:
- The Prophet (ﷺ) stood at the well of Badr (which contained the corpses of the pagans) and said, “Have you found true what your lord promised you?” Then he further said, “They now hear what I say.” This was mentioned before `Aisha and she said, “But the Prophet (ﷺ) said, ‘Now they know very well that what I used to tell them was the truth.’ Then she recited (the Holy Verse):– “You cannot make the dead hear… …till the end of Verse).” (30.52)” Sahih al-Bukhari 3980, 3981
- Aisha also rejected the reports suggesting the Prophet saw Allah during the ascension (miraj) as contradicting the Qur’an:`Aisha said, “If anyone tells you that Muhammad has seen his Lord, he is a liar, for Allah says: ‘No vision can grasp Him.’ (6.103) And if anyone tells you that Muhammad has seen the Unseen, he is a liar, for Allah says: “None has the knowledge of the Unseen but Allah.”
- Syedna Abdullah ibn Abbas rejected the narration that the Prophet (pbuh) forbade the meat of domestic donkeys, as contradicting Quran 6:145 (Sahih al-Bukhari 5529)
- Syedna Umar (Allah be pleased with him) refused to accept a hadith from Fatima bint Qays that the Prophet had not given her lodging or maintenance upon divorce. Hadhrat Umar stated that the narrator is liable to err, and her statement contradicts the Qur’an and established Sunnah: “Umar said: We cannot abandon the Book of Allah and the Sunnah of our Apostle (ﷺ) for the words of a woman. We do not know whether she remembers that or she forgets. For her, there is a provision of lodging and maintenance allowance. Allah, the Exalted and Majestic, said:” Turn them not from their houses nor should they themselves go forth unless they commit an open indecency – Qur’an 65:1 (Sahih Muslim 1480 n)
Conclusions about Sunnah & Hadith
- The Quran and established Sunnah are the only sources of Islam.
- The Sunnah consists of the practices common to all Muslims, across time from the time of the Prophet onwards. A complete list has been compiled by Javed Ahmed Ghamidi, here.
- The Sunnah is preserved by the whole ummah through amal or practice, and transmitted from each generation to the next. We do not need hadith to follow the Sunnah.
- Hadith literature is a useful historical record, but despite the valiant efforts of Hadith scholars, many erroneous narrations were granted ‘authentic status’.
- As solitary narrations, they have less prior reliability than the mass-transmitted Qur’an and Sunnah. Maliki and Hanafi scholars have made this point extensively.
- The process of judging the reliability of narrators was highly subjective and speculative.
- The Early Muslims and prominent scholars throughout history, have not accepted hadith that contradict the Qur’an, established Sunnah, or known facts. It is completely wrong to insist a hadith is true, purely because of a ‘sound’ chain of narration, if it contradicts the aforementioned.
- Sahih Bukhari and Muslim have many ahadith within them that are insulting to Allah and his prophets, contradictory to the Qur’an and established knowledge, and which cannot and should never have been regarded as ‘Sahih’.
- We need to return to a Quran-and -Sunnah centric understanding of Islam, which places hadith in a secondary position and does not allow this questionable source, to overule the definitive sources i.e. the Quran and established Sunnah.