Sources of the Sunnah

TRADITIONS OF THE PROPHET

In a previous post, we explored the nature and status of the Sunnah.  The Sunnah is defined by our scholars as the actions, practices, sayings and tacit approvals of the Prophet Muhammad SAW.  The Sunnah of the Prophet is authoritative and a source of Shariah law in Islam because, like the Qur’an, it is founded on wahy or revelation.  As Aaisha RAA noted, the Prophet was a walking Qur’an, and his behavior was guided by Allah.  Both the Qur’an and the Sunnah make up the Kitab mentioned over and over in the Qur’an as a source of guidance to all mankind.

Al-Baqara 2:2. Thalika alkitabu la rayba feehi hudan lilmuttaqeena

2. This is the Book; In it is guidance sure, without doubt, To those who fear God;

(Please note I have been unable to cut and paste in the Arabic for the verses of the Qur’an, so I am using the transliteration and translation of A Yusuf Ali’s translation available on the Hypertext Qur’an website:  http://www.sacred-texts.com/isl/htq/index.htm.)

While there is no doubt that the Sunnah is authoritative, one must act how do we know the Sunnah today?  We have no direct experience of the Sunnah.  Unlike the Qur’an, which was recorded during the lifetime of the Prophet, and has been preserved for us in the musaahif, the Sunnah is not directly available.  All we have today are reports. 

The reports we have of the Sunnah come in a wide variety of forms.  We have hadith or traditional narrations, seerah literature (the biography of the Prophet SAW), tarikh or historical literature (such as at-Tabari), books of fiqh and law, and even folk tales.  These sources run the gamut from scholarly works with rigorous source checking to complete fantasies.  

So how can we access the Sunnah today?  Unfortunately we have to rely on these indirect sources of information.  Our understanding of the Sunnah is filtered by what people chose to record, what they felt was important in the past.  Our sources are also subject to the ravages of time, biases of opinion and corruption of bad memory.  

Obviously folk tales provide little in the way of certainty when it comes to reports about the Prophetic Sunnah, but what about the other sources?  Books of fiqh would seem to be a good source, but consider that the reports and narrations contained there in are being used to support a particular position in fiqh, and so the author has a vested interest in proffering the report.  Tarikh literature and seerah literature is also problematic in that it is not rigorously tested for authenticity.  

On thing is certain, when it comes to utilizing reports and narrations of the Prophetic Sunnah as a basis for Shariah Law, the reports and narrations must be unquestionably authentic.  They must be as certain as the Qur’an.  For this reason, the Hanafi madhdhab prefers only mutawatir hadith as valid for the purposes of deriving fiqh rulings.  Only reports that are narrated by numerous narrators, so numerous that they could not have agreed on a deceit, are accepted by the school of Abu Haneefah.  

What the Hanafi scholars then bring to the science of fiqh (usool al fiqh) is a position that only hadith literature is rigorous enough in sourcing and authenticity to be considered when deriving Shariah law.  Most of the other schools agree.  The most authentic source of the Prophetic Sunnah today is hadith literature.

That said, how do we know that a particular hadith is valid or sahih?  There are several minhaj or methodologies that scholars have posited.  One of the more modern criteria is that of Sheikh Albani (RA).  Although there are some who love to bash the Sheikh, this is unseemly in Islam.  He took on a great task, rahim Allah, and may Allah SWT reward him.  However, his minhaj is not the most complete.  

This is not only my own opinion, but was as the opinion of Sheikh Bin Baz and Sheikh Al-Uthaimin (RA).  Sheikh Albani used a sole criterion, the quality of the narrators, to judge whether a hadith was sahih.  He did not look at the matin or text, or any other aspect of the hadith.  If the narrators were adl or just, then the hadith was sahih.  

This is not an adequate criterion.  First, the list of narrators is as easily faked as is the matin.  Second, books of Rijal or narrators are biased.  Sunni books label all non-Sunni as liars, and Shia books label all non-Shia as liars.  Moreover, the matin may have defects or even contradict the Qur’an.  In short, many factors must be considered before labeling a hadith sahih.  Imam Al-Bukhaari looked at the narrators quality and whether they met one another, at whether the text contradicted the Qur’an, at whether the matin supported a sectarian position to too great an extent, whether there where hidden defects and other factors before including a hadith in his great book.  Imam Malik looked to agreement among the people of Madina before including a hadith in his Muwatta.  

In my humble opinion a narration must have the following characteristics to be sahih, and only a sahih hadith should be used for deriving fiqh.

1.      Reliable narrators – reliable as to character and as to memory.

2.      Narrators who actually met on another.

3.       If the hadith is regarding fiqh al-ibadaat (of worship), then the hadith should be narrated by many sahabi.  Things which should have been observable to many, should be reported by many.

4.      If the hadith is regarding fiqh al-mu’amalaat, then the hadith should be narrated by the number of sahabi one would expect to have observed or to have known about the issue given the nature of the issue.

5.      All the individuals involved in the hadith should be named by name.  In other words, it should not include hidden uncertainty, such as “fulan said” or “fulan asked.”  If the original narrator was actually there, he would know who “fulan” was.

6.      The matin should not conflict or contradict the Qur’an.

7.      The matin should be consistent with other accounts.

8.      The matin should make sense and be reasonable and realistic.

9.      Hadith promising huge rewards for miniscule efforts or huge punishments for minor infractions are automatically suspect.

10.  Matin that support particular sectarian groups, both Sunni and Shia should be rejected.

11.  Hadith predicting the so called khalifs are to be rejected, as are any predicting Imams.

12.  The hadith should be Prophetic hadith and not athar of the sahabi or tabi’in, being tauted as hadith. 

With these simple criteria we can wade through much of our hadith literature and have some comfort as to authenticity.  While there is no doubt that hadith are dzunni and not qati like the Qur’an, and so there is not the yaqin associated with the ruling derived from the Qur’an, it is still possible to utilize this source of Sunnah information to derive fiqh and aid our Ummah in putting our deen into practice. 

Sunnah is from wahy and is part of the Kitab of Allah.  We cannot abandon it, as some propose to do.  Those people who so propose ignore the revelatory nature of the Sunnah and the fact that our Prophet was a prophet.  

No doubt that the doors of ijtehad are not closed.  To close these doors is to kill our deen.  Our deen can only thrive in the light, the light of the present – nur al aan.  But those who exercise ijtehad understand that our law is derived from the wahy sent down by Allah SWT in His Kitab – the Qur’an and the Sunnah, and that if there is no express text, then we apply the due diligence of qiyas and mantiq under the guidance of the maqaasid al-Shariah to apply the law given the totality of our circumstances.

May Allah SWT forgive our faults and give us all guidance.