In Islam the Hadith is second in authority only to the Qur'an. It is a
record of the prophet Mohammed's (pbuh) life, actions, and deeds. A
saying in the Hadith is called a sunnah. These sunnah were transmitted
by word of mouth down through the centuries having been memorised first
by prophet Muhammad's (pbuh) companions and then later by subsequent
Muslims. Therefore, the hadith is the written record of the oral
traditions passed down from Muslim to Muslim of what the prophet
Mohammed (pbuh) was supposed to have said and done.
The Hadith are split into two categories, "Hadith Qudsi (sacred hadith)
in which Allah (God) himself is speaking in, as it were, a
complementary revelation through the prophet, and Hadith Sharif (noble
hadith), the prophet's own acts and utterances."
The most famous and universally accepted among the six collections of
Hadith are those of Sahih Bukhari and Sahih Muslim.
The internet
is full of sites that claim the Hadith to be false. Muslims need to be
careful
about going to such sites as they are deliberately making false claims.
This is
the work of the none believers who are trying to mislead Muslims. Many
western scholars
have written books and papers claiming to prove that the Hadith are
false. We
also have many Muslim sects that also make such claims. Be very careful
what
you read on the internet. Always check your source with at least 3
accepted
Islamic sources. Please remember that the Qur'an is the main authority
in
Islam.
It is essential to remove one of the
serious misgivings under which so many none muslim and weak
Muslim scholars are labouring. When they are told that Imam Muslim
selected 4,000 ahadith out of a total collection of 300,000, they think
that since quite a large number of ahadith were unreliable, therefore,
these were rejected, and then jump to the conclusion that the whole
stock of hadith is spurious and should be rejected outright. This
betrays utter ignorance of the critics even about the elementary
knowledge of hadith. Matn (text) is not the basis
on which is calculated the number of ahadith. Hadith is counted on the
chain of transmission. Thus when we say that Imam Muslim collected
300,000 ahadith and included only 4,000 in his compilation, it does not
imply that he rejected the rest of the whole lot of the Prophet's
sayings being unreliable. What this means is that the words and deeds
of the Holy Prophet (may peace be upon him) were transmitted to Imam
Muslim through so many chains of transmission out of which he selected
4,000 chains as most authentic and narrated the text on their
authority. A text (matn) which is transmitted
through one hundred isnads (the chain of
transmitters) is in Hadith literature
treated as one hundred traditions. For example, the text of the first
hadith in Bukhari (The Actions Are Based on Intention) is counted as a
selection of one out of 700 ahadith since it has been transmitted
through such a large number of isnads(the chain of
transmitters).
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