Hadith Criticism: Traditionalist and Modernist

Abstract

This research paper examines hadith criticism: traditionalist and modernist, illuminating and contrasting the claims and prominent starting points of both types. The study proceeds to expose in more details the basic tenets of hadith criticism of the traditionalists (muḥaddithīn) and the modernists; focusing on their methodologies in critiquing the text, and examining the evidence for using reason in the traditionalist criticism, whether concerning the narrator, the text, or the narration. The study reaches the conclusion that there is a huge difference in methodologies of hadith criticism between the two groups. The researcher can easily identify the features of the traditionalists’ hadith criticism, its basic principles, methodology, rules, and even its exceptions; while, on the other hand, this methodology and these rules disappear in the case of the modernists; only the criticism remains. For the modernists, criticism of hadith is confined to the text itself, excluding the chain of transmission, whereas for the traditionalists the two elements are included. To generalize, to ignore scientifically controlled methods, and to criticize the hadith if they do not like its content, are features of the modernist criticism of hadith. To the modernist, it suffices to criticize the hadith relying on his own thoughts, opinions, and objections. On the other hand, we see the traditionalist, whenever he distances himself from interfering in the criticism of the hadith, coming up with a purer and sounder criticism. The traditionalists depend on the work of early leading scholars in their criticism of the hadith; while the modernists fault that and consider it a deficiency that must be overcome.