Hadith: The Authority Issue and How the Hadith Affects Muslim Beliefs and Practices: Second Print

For centuries, the majority of Muslims have been revering the Hadith corpus as a second source of religious guidance and law in Islam, after the Quran. However, the Hadith never enjoyed unquestioned scriptural authority. The challenges to its authority were strong and widespread in early Islam and are even more pronounced in modern time. This book is a systematic attempt to chronicle these challenges in early Islam and introduce modern-day critics, summarizing their positions. It then provides theological underpinnings that call into question both the authority and the authenticity of the Hadith corpus. And, more importantly, the book provides a detailed analysis of egregious hadith from the collections that are considered by traditional Muslims as sahih, i.e., sound and authoritative. It is such hadith that contradict the Quran, science, or reason and negatively affect Muslim beliefs and practices. The disturbing content of the Hadith has made Islam a religion of ridicule and the staple of the Islamophobes, who use the most egregious hadith to paint Islam as a fanatic, violent, and misogynistic faith.