CP session 5

Contrary to popular opinion, the bulk of Islamic law does not come from the Quran but from hadith,
first-hand reports of the Prophet Muhammad’s words and deeds, passed from generation to generation.
Jonathan A. C. Brown explores the collection and criticism of hadith, and the controversy surrounding its
role in modern Islam. The author tries to treat hadiths in a "neutral" or "objective" tone. Despite this
aim, authenticity remains an unspoken issue throughout the article. For instance, Abu Isma's conceding
to having invented traditions: how do we know if this tradition was indeed a confession of Abu Isma and
was not invented to discredit him? And how can we establish the story of Malik acknowledging that a
tradition was genuine but was unknown to him before, is true or devised in support of this tradition?
How many forgeries went unnoticed, and how many reliable missions were wrongly deemed to be
forgeries? Doesn’t this also imply that the genre’s status as a primary source of Islamic law has
motivated the creation of fraudulent hadith? Is it even possible to re-authenticate the collections such
as Bukhari today, considering that much of the information about the Isnad or context could have
potentially been distorted or lost due to time? Moreover, since ‘Mutawatir’ is a rarity, then do the
hadith we know are probably wrong? Does the rejection of Mutawatir hadith entail kufr?