The Rules of Matn Criticism: There are No Rules

In an effort to avoid the subjectivity of individual reason, Sunni Islam elaborated a method of ḥadīth criticism that subordinated evaluating the meaning of a report to an examination of its chain of transmission. With the fourth/tenth-century epistemological compromise of Ashʿarism, however, Sunni ḥadīth scholars adopted rationalist criteria of content criticism that included explicit rules…

Faithful Dissenters: Sunni Skepticism about the Miracles of Saints

Faithful Dissenters – Sunni Skepticism about the Miracles of Saints Belief in the miracles of saints (karāmāt al-awliyāʾ) is a requirement in Sunni Islam. Challenges to this position are generally seen as limited to Islamic modernists effected by Western historical criticism. This article demonstrates that there have actually been leading Sunni Muslim scholars from the…