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This minority group rejects the Hadith altogether and are classed as heretics by mainstream Islam. This "Qur'an-only" approach to the Islamic faith is not without [[Qur'an Only Islam - Why it is Not Possible|its criticisms]], as in the absence of hadith, much of Islamic ritual and religious history lacks basis. | This minority group rejects the Hadith altogether and are classed as heretics by mainstream Islam. This "Qur'an-only" approach to the Islamic faith is not without [[Qur'an Only Islam - Why it is Not Possible|its criticisms]], as in the absence of hadith, much of Islamic ritual and religious history lacks basis. | ||
== Historians' views on the reliability of the hadith == | ==Historians' views on the reliability of the hadith== | ||
Ignác Goldziher (d. 1921), considered one of the "founder[s] of modern Islamic studies in Europe", wrote the following: | Ignác Goldziher (d. 1921), considered one of the "founder[s] of modern Islamic studies in Europe", wrote the following: | ||
{{Quote|{{citation|author=Ignác Goldziher|year=1971|publisher=Allen and Unwin|volume=II|page=148|ISBN=|editor1=C.R. Barber|editor2=S.M. Stern|ISBN=9780042900094|title=Muslim Studies}}|It is not at all rare in the literature of traditions that sayings are ascribed to the Prophet which for a long time circulated in Islam under the authority of another name. So-called ''ahadith mawqufa'', i.e. sayings traced back to companions or even successors, were very easily transformed into ''ahadith marfu'a'', i.e. sayings traced back to the Prophet, by simply adding without much scruple a few names at random which were necessary to complete the chain.}} | {{Quote|{{citation|author=Ignác Goldziher|year=1971|publisher=Allen and Unwin|volume=II|page=148|ISBN=|editor1=C.R. Barber|editor2=S.M. Stern|ISBN=9780042900094|title=Muslim Studies}}|It is not at all rare in the literature of traditions that sayings are ascribed to the Prophet which for a long time circulated in Islam under the authority of another name. So-called ''ahadith mawqufa'', i.e. sayings traced back to companions or even successors, were very easily transformed into ''ahadith marfu'a'', i.e. sayings traced back to the Prophet, by simply adding without much scruple a few names at random which were necessary to complete the chain.}} | ||
Robert G. Hoyland, Professor of Late Antique and Early Islamic Middle Eastern History at New York University and a leading historian of early Islam, writes: | |||
{{Quote|{{citation|author=Robert G. Hoyland|year=2015|publisher=Oxford University Press|url=https://www.google.com/books/edition/In_God_s_Path/i3LDBAAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=0|title=In God's Path: The Arab Conquests and the Creation of an Islamic Empire|pages=136-137|ISBN=9780199916368}}|Muhammad’s practice and legislation was of course important to his community: the Arabs “kept to the tradition of Muhammad, their instructor, to such an extent that they inflicted the death penalty on anyone who was seen to act brazenly against his laws,” says the seventh-century monk John of Fenek. But new laws, the Umayyads would argue, were the business of caliphs. Religious scholars soon began to challenge this view, as we have said, and some did this by claiming that the doings and sayings of Muhammad had been accurately transmitted to them. It was rare in the first couple of generations after Muhammad: “I spent a year sitting with ‘Umar I’s son ‘Abdallah (d. 693),” said one legal scholar, “and I did not hear him transmit anything from the prophet.” Not much later, though, the idea had won some grass-roots support, as we learn from another scholar, writing around 740, who observes: “I never heard Jabir ibn Zayd (d. ca. 720) say: ‘the prophet said. . .’ and yet the young men round here are saying it twenty times an hour.” A little later again Muhammad’s sayings would be put on a par with the Qur’an as the source of all Islamic law. In Mu‘awiya’s time, though, this was still far in the future, and for the moment caliphs made law, not scholars.}} | |||
==See also== | ==See also== | ||