Hadith

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Elaine

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I've been reading the Quran the past couple weeks and have been struck by its greatness. It's packed with so much and I find myself able to take it much more seriously than the Bible which I spent a while trying to read. And, it's fairly straight forward, format-wise. Not necessarily EASY, but there you have it, the word of God right in front of you.
But then there's the hadith. I don't know much about it. It seems confusing. I've read the hadith is a lot longer than the Quran. How do you study the hadith? Is it typical for people to sit down and study it like the quran? I can't find hadith collections in my university library catalog, which has plenty of books on Islam, so I would guess this is at least less common.
I've also heard there was some complex process to authenticate the hadith. And that some people consider different hadith to be authentic? I feel somewhat despaired at how difficult it looks like it'll be for me to study all this.
How do you all typically approach the hadith?
 
Welcome Elaine. It is good to know that you're reading the Quran.: ) Although it will seem simple to you at first, but as you go on, and as many times as you read the book, you will learn something different.

As for hadith, I would advice you to go through Quran and hadith together, in a Tafseer, which is a scholarly explanation of the Quran with references from the hadith. You wont be able to understand many hadiths without the scholarly explanations, its a whole science and it requires a scholarly credence to even a quote a hadith with its authentic meaning. Although we, muslims do quote the well known ahadiths , which are established and well understood with their meanings, there are thousands of others that we may not understand well, and reading them might confuse us towards their meaning. Also, there are levels of authenticity of hadiths, which are learnt only when you are a student of hadith, the scholars study extensively before assigning any meaning to the hadiths, they are not in any way, self interpretations. So I can only advice you to read a detailed tafseer, of Ibne kathir, or any other that someone here might suggest.

As Islam was ordained a religion for all ages, there is continuing learning going on with every person's own journey towards undersating it, by employing the the help of knowledgeble people and scholars to clear up the confusions that we may have in our minds, since they spend all their lives reading thousands of books of tafseer, which contain very delicate details of the matters. Wish you best of it!
 
Qur'an is the pure word of God (swt).

While ahadeeth (plural) is collection of detailed sayings and actions of prophet Muhammad SAW; basically the best example of application of Qur'an in real life.
Alhamdulillaah great scholars in the past have collected and authenticated ahadeeth after subjecting them through extremely tough authenticating processes (verified isnads or chanins of tranmissions with impeccable reputation and mat'an or content that is not against al qur'an, etc). The two best authentic collections are hadith bukhari and hadith muslim.
Here's an online resource of authentic ahadeeth books http://www.searchtruth.com/hadith_books.php
 
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Well dear you need to read that again and again and then consult a teacher. but true to reach a good teacher.
 
Well, as you might already know, Islam is based on the Qur'an and the Ahadeeth.

The Qur'an is the word of God which was revealed over 1400 years ago to Prophet Muhammad (SallAllahuAlayhiWaSallam) by God through Arch-angel Jibreel (Gabriel - peace be upon him). Whereas Ahadeeth (singular - Hadith) has been very subtly defined by wikipedia as "The term Hadīth is used to denote a saying, act or tacit approval either validly or invalidly ascribed to the Islamic prophet Muhammad (SallAllahuAlayhiWaSallam)". So ahadeeth are all directly related to the Prophet. The acts that he commanded, did and approved are recorded in the ahadeeth collections. As far as I know, there have been 10 collections of Ahadeeth (there might be more) but only 6 of them contain authentic ahadeeth in majority. The six collections are:
  1. Sahih Bukhari
  2. Sahih Muslim
  3. Sunan Ibn Majah
  4. Sunan An Nasai
  5. Sunan Abi Dawood
  6. Sunan Tirmidhi

The Qur'an was prepared and completed during the lifetime of the Prophet as he would communicate the revealed verses to his companions and they would write it down and maintain a record. Whereas the Ahadeeth collections came into picture after more than a century of Prophet Muhammad's (SallAllahuAlayhiWaSallam) death. The companions refrained from maintaining a record of the Ahadeeth during the time of the prophet because of the fear that it might get mixed with the Qur'an and create unnecessary confusion. For all those years, the Ahadeeth were passed on only through memory.

Eventually, after century(s) the task of publishing them in written form started and scholars like Imam Bukhari (the collector of Sahih Bukhari) started the search of Ahadeeth. As they were passed on from people to people and generation to generation, every hadeeth had a long chain of narrators. And the authencity of a hadeeth is based on the credibility of the narrators. And as per the credibility, each Hadeeth is labelled such as Saheeh (Authentic), mawdouh (fabricated), daeef/zaeef (weak), Hasan (good) and others.

Popularly, the Qur'an can be found in every Muslim home and every Muslim gathering place but not so the collection of Ahadeeth. The Qur'an can be studied and understood without the help of a teacher to a considerable extent. The Ahadeeth need special teachings. In some cases, the narrations are short, in some are long, in some it is incomplete, in some it is pointless and other such scenarios. Hence, it is difficult to study them all by yourself. The ahadeeth are so because the narrators narrated them that way and to learn them well with their precise meaning, you have to search other Ahadeeth and find the context mentioned to understand the meaning behind it. If you find Sahih Muslim or Sahih Bukhari and you get enthusiastic and start reading it, there is a high chance that you won't understand a lot of it. Many hadeeth need further research and study to realize their aimed message. Although, there are plenty of narrations which are direct to the point and don't need any further search such as the one in my signature. It was realized only later (after the assassinations of Umar and Usman - RadhiAllahu Anhu) that it was a prophecy.

It was narrated that Anas ibn Maalik (may Allaah be pleased with him) said:
The Prophet (blessings and peace of Allaah be upon him) climbed up Uhud, accompanied by Abu Bakr, ‘Umar and ‘Uthmaan, and the mountain shook with them. He struck it with his foot and said: “Stand firm, O Uhud, for there is no one on you but a Prophet or a Siddeeq or two martyrs.”
Narrated by al-Bukhaari (3483)

I hope this answers all your questions. :)

P.s. - welcome to the forum

Also go through these links:
Conditions of a saheeh (sound) hadeeth
The authors of the Six Books
Definition of a mursal hadeeth
Definition of a ghareeb hadeeth
Who compiled saheeh ahaadeeth apart from al-Bukhaari and Muslim?
How can we tell the saheeh ahaadeeth from the fabricated ones?
 
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Tafseer...I had seen that term mentioned but didn't know what it meant, thank you. Are there any in English? The version I'm reading has footnotes referring to many scholars' opinions on ahadith, but I don't think the author is a hadith scholar himself.

Muslim Woman said:
Did u finish reading the Quran ? If not , then before studying Hadith , u may finish it first.
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No, I've got a looooong way to go; I'm only in the 5th surah. But I thought I should ask about ahadith early on because it seems to be so important to how muslims apply Islam.



Ramadhan said:
Alhamdulillaah great scholars in the past have collected and authenticated ahadeeth after subjecting them through extremely tough authenticating processes (verified isnads or chanins of tranmissions with impeccable reputation and mat'an or content that is not against al qur'an, etc).
Click to expand...
Ali_008 said:
As they were passed on from people to people and generation to generation, every hadeeth had a long chain of narrators. And the authencity of a hadeeth is based on the credibility of the narrators.
Click to expand...
Do people still critique the authenticity of the ahadith? I'm just thinking, with today's understandings of psychology, we know there can be issues in the integrity of remembered phrases if it had been passed like a long game of telephone(okay, that you don't need psychology for) or misremembering things after multiple retellings by filling in things with your own biases or after hearing other accounts(I couldn't find the experiment I was looking for, but I think this article works: "Remembrance of Things False" by Bruce Bower in Science News from August 24th 1996(sorry I'm not allowed to post links, but it is online)).
Were the ahadith only authenticated by how credible the people were, or were there other ways? I see Ramadhan has some other words in his description of authentication but I don't understand them.
 
Elaine said:
Do people still critique the authenticity of the ahadith? I'm just thinking, with today's understandings of psychology, we know there can be issues in the integrity of remembered phrases if it had been passed like a long game of telephone(okay, that you don't need psychology for) or misremembering things after multiple retellings by filling in things with your own biases or after hearing other accounts(I couldn't find the experiment I was looking for, but I think this article works: "Remembrance of Things False" by Bruce Bower in Science News from August 24th 1996(sorry I'm not allowed to post links, but it is online)).
Were the ahadith only authenticated by how credible the people were, or were there other ways? I see Ramadhan has some other words in his description of authentication but I don't understand them.
Click to expand...

The terms used by Brother Ramadhan are all part of the same authentication process. The evaluation of the chain of narrators can be called the most detailed and most comprehensive study ever conducted. The authentication process is very elaborate and scholars in the past have done it to the letter. They have left no space for doubts. There are no other ways of authenticating the Ahadeeth except the fulfilling of prophecies mentioned in them.
 

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