Not long ago one of my students approached me asking my opinion on a small text that had been circulating on social media, particularly amongst advocates of Progressive Islam. The snippet of text was fascinating, since it touched on a major question of Islamic law and legal reform, namely the competing authority of the original…
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…
The Canonization of Ibn Mâjah: Authenticity vs. Utility in the Formation of the Sunni Ḥadîth Cano
Summary: In Sunni Islam, the canonical ‘Six Books’ of hadith derive their authority as doctrinal references from scholarly consensus on their reliability as representations of the Prophet’s Sunna. One of the Six Boooks, the Sunan of Ibn Majah, however, presents a bizarre exception. Although it has been considered part of the Six Book collection…
IS THE DEVIL IN THE DETAILS? Tension Between Minimalism and Comprehensiveness in the Shariah
Summary: The comprehensiveness of Islamic law has been questioned seriously in the modern period by Muslim reformists like Rashīd Riḍā . Such reformists have used as evidence Qur’anic verses and Prophetic reports that seem to state clearly that the strictures of Islamic law are few and limited and that Muslims should not extend them to…
Did the Prophet Say It or Not? The Literal, Historical, and Effective Truth of Hadīths in Early Sunnism
Summary The article contends that ahl-al-hadīth did not view the historical reliability of hadīths through the epistemological lens of later Sunni legal theorists. It claims that the ahl-al-hadīths conceived of sound hadīths as providing what will define a historical certainty. It explores the extent to which the term ahl-al-hadīth, which means Partisans of Hadityh, was…
Critical Rigor vs. Juridical Pragmatism
Summary Modern scholarship has accepted the ‘backgrowth of isnāds’ in the early ḥadīth tradition, but this phenomenon did not occur without controversy among classical Muslim scholars. Ḥadīth critics were aware that material was being pushed back to the Prophet, a phenomenon they approached through the lens of ziyāda (addition). By examining works devoted to criticizing…