Quranism: Difference between revisions

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→‎Criticism of hadiths: Have added a video on scholarly/academic criticisms of hadith from a historical POV, covered by recent PHD from Oxford Joshua Little, highlighting the main points in titles and linking the video, so users can explore them themselves.

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 The entire method of verifying isnads<ref>https://www.britannica.com/topic/isnad</ref> (a chain of narrators leading back to the prophet or his companions), and therefore the hadith, as being classed as authentic, good, weak or fabricated is also never mentioned in the Qur'an. These tell the reader whether they should be followed or not, so are of utter importance to the religion. However as Britannica notes, these are also a non-contemporary (to Muhammad or early companion's of his) invention:{{Quote|{{cite web|url=https://www.britannica.com/topic/isnad |title=Britannica entry on 'Isnads'}}|During Muhammad’s lifetime and after his death, hadiths were usually quoted by his Companions and contemporaries and were not prefaced by isnāds; only after a generation or two (c. 700 CE) did the isnād appear to enhance the weight of its text. In the 2nd century AH (after 720 CE), when the example of the Prophet as embodied in hadiths—rather than local custom as developed in Muslim communities—was established as the norm (sunnah) for an Islamic way of life, a wholesale creation of hadiths, all “substantiated” by elaborate isnāds, resulted. Since hadiths were the basis of virtually all Islamic scholarship, especially Qurʾānic exegesis (tafsīr) and legal theory (fiqh), Muslim scholars had to determine scientifically which of them were authentic. This was done by a careful scrutiny of the isnāds, rating each hadith according to the completeness of its chain of transmitters and the reliability and orthodoxy of its authorities.}}This has resulted in many different large collections across different books, which examining them all and personally scrutinising these chains being such an enormous task, it is usually simply left to scholars to issue rulings on matters, rather than a personal reading.
-{{Quote|{{cite web|url=https://www.britannica.com/topic/isnad |title= Britannica entry on 'ʿilm al-ḥadīth'}}|Many scholars produced collections of hadiths, the earliest compilation being the great Musnad of Aḥmad ibn Ḥanbal, arranged by isnād. But only six collections, known as al-kutub al-sittah (“the six books”), arranged by matn—those of al-Bukhārī (died 870), Muslim ibn al-Ḥajjāj (died 875), Abū Dāʾūd (died 888), al-Tirmidhī (died 892), Ibn Mājāh (died 886), and al-Nasāʾī (died 915)—came to be recognized as canonical in orthodox Islam, though the books of al-Bukhārī and Muslim enjoy a prestige that virtually eclipses the other four.}}
+{{Quote|{{cite web|url=https://www.britannica.com/topic/isnad |title= Britannica entry on 'ʿilm al-ḥadīth'}}|Many scholars produced collections of hadiths, the earliest compilation being the great Musnad of Aḥmad ibn Ḥanbal, arranged by isnād. But only six collections, known as al-kutub al-sittah (“the six books”), arranged by matn—those of al-Bukhārī (died 870), Muslim ibn al-Ḥajjāj (died 875), Abū Dāʾūd (died 888), al-Tirmidhī (died 892), Ibn Mājāh (died 886), and al-Nasāʾī (died 915)—came to be recognized as canonical in orthodox Islam, though the books of al-Bukhārī and Muslim enjoy a prestige that virtually eclipses the other four.}}[https://www.rug.nl/staff/j.j.little/?lang=en Dr Joshua Little], on [https://islamicstudies.harvard.edu/people/javad-hashmi Dr. Javad T. Hashmi]'s YouTube channel gives a brief overview of 21 core reasons historians are skeptical of their historical value and accuracy in the video [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bz4vMUUxhag Oxford Scholar Dr. Joshua Little Gives 21 REASONS Why Historians are SKEPTICAL of Hadith]. The list as he notes is in order of the weakest reasons to the strongest, i.e. the most damming points are found later in the video. As Joshua notes at 1:32:10, the first seven are the most trivial in comparison (though are still highly problematic and important to understand, and give context to the rest). If their historical value is of doubt then so are key parts of both Sunni and Shia scripture.
+<u>Timestamps:</u>
+* 0:00 Introduction
+* 4:43 Hadith compared to other sources of history
+* 12:15 Transmission of hadith vs Transmission of the Qur'an
+* 15:46 Difference between oral and written preservation
+* 18:42 Discussion on skepticism and revisionism
+* 35:42 Meta-historiography; traditionalist dismissal that skepticism is fringe and outdated
+# 42:22 Prior probability of false ascription in religious-historical material
+# 47:13 The earliest extant collections were recensions from the ninth century onwards
+# 56:23 Hadith are full of contradictions
+# 1:03:51 A large number of hadith suspiciously look exactly like later religious sectarian, political, tribal, familial, and other partisan, polemical and apologetic creations
+# 1:08:45 Hadith talking about later terms, later institutions, later events, and later phenomena.
+# 1:11:51 Putative supernatural explanations for texts have a vanishingly low prior probability of explaining the existence of these reports
+# 1:27:48 Reports of mass fabrication
+# 1:32:04 Isnads rose relatively late, and became widespread even later
+# 1:44:33 Early usage of the word Sunnah was a generic notion of sunnah as good practice, which was not specifically Prophetical, and was independent of hadith
+# 1:52:44 A rapid numerical growth in hadith can be observed
+# 1:57:01 Absence of Hadith in early sources
+# 1:59:49 Retrojection of hadith; ratio of cited hadith changes from mostly ascribed to followers then to companions then to the Prophet
+# 2:09:02 Various peculiar correlations, descriptions, and content that don't make sense as a product of genuine historical transmission but make more sense as a product of later debates and later ascription preferences
+# 2:17:45 Hadith contradicting earlier literary and archeological sources
+# 2:21:08 Orality means less precision in transmission
+# 2:31:17 Extreme variation, early rapid mutation and distortion across the hadith corpus
+# 2:34:28 Artificial literary or narrative elements; Recurring topoi
+# 2:37:53 Hadith exhibit telltale signs of storyteller construction
+# 2:40:25 Exegetical reports about the context of the Quran are exegesis in disguise
+# 2:45:32 Recurring disconnect between the Hadith and the Qur'an in terms of historical memory
+# 2:50:30 There was no effective method for distinguishing between authentic and inauthentic hadith
+* 2:58:03 Conclusion
+In a separate video on the channel Sképsislamica, Joshua Little defends accepting a historical Muhammad as being the founder of Islam despite the issue's with hadith, called [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tm9QU5uB3To Did Muhammad Exist? An Academic response to a Popular Question], where from ~20:00 - 1:37:39, he elaborates on these, but this time focusing on biographical hadith, with the points raised adding even more weight to the arguments against their accuracy.
 == Additional Points ==