Rethinking Hadith Methodology

In the early centuries of Islam, Muslim scholars developed countless scientific disciplines in attempting to classify, investigate, and utilize the hadiths and the sunnah of the Prophet Muhammad. As none of these sciences evolved into a fully fledged hadith science, scholars began to implement the methodology of fiqh in examining the hadiths. After Imam al Shafii in the ninth century, hadiths were almost exclusively confined to the realm of legal studies. This new legalistic and literalist approach to the hadith created serious problems, primarily for two reasons, the Prophet did not intend that each of his words and utterances should form the basis of a legal system, and unlike the Quran, the Prophets statements were transmitted over generations and not always verbatim and therefore recorded hadiths could not be treated as immutable legal documents. The aim of this book is to demonstrate the necessity of creating a new hadith science.

The former president of Diyanet, a public institution in charge of Religious Affairs in Turkey, earned his Ph.D. degree from the Ankara University. The Turkish version of this book won the prestigious award of Islamic Studies by Turkiye Diyanet Foundation in 1996. Prof. Gormez carried out various research projects on the hadith and Sunnah as visiting scholar in different universities of Egypt and United Kingdom. He worked for years in the Faculty of Divinity of Ankara University and lectured in the Hacettepe University and Hoca Ahmed Yesevi University of Kazakhstan respectively. He is married with three children and speaks Arabic and English. He currently serves as the president of Institute of Islamic Thought in Ankara. He has published articles and books in Turkish, English and Arabic.