Pre-Hadith Discussion

One of the major problems faced by liberal scholars is their attitude to ahadith because the ahadith in general are much more misognynistic and illiberal than the Quran. The focus of these scholars has thus been very much on the Qur`an, sometimes completely disregarding the sayings of the Prophet (SAW).

There must, however, be some recognition of the Prophet (SAW)'s life as the Qur`an itself tells us to obey the Prophet (as well as Allah) and what else could that mean? We cannot just ignore 10000s of reports about a period in history that is integral to the beginning of our faith.

At the same time, we cannot blindly look at these reports without framing them in the correct context, and this is what "reformist" scholars have tried to do by maintaining two important things when discussing traditions from the Prophet:

1. The hadith CANNOT in any sense, go against the essence of the Qur`an - its wordview - its Weltanschauung
2. Any hadith must be understood in the context of its time and culture

These two are supplemented by hadith analysis (authenticity question):
1. The chain of narrators (sanad) cannot have any person in it, who is not known to be trustworthy
2. The contents of the hadith (matn) must make sense as something that could come from the Prophet or Imam

What is very interesting, is that Ayatullah Saanei did not immediately go to the hadith analysis stage after discussing the Quranic ayat. He started by framing the discussion on the ahadith in the way that liberal reformists have been doing. He states that the Quranic view of women is positive (e.g. the usage of gender neutral terms such as Bani Adam (children of Adam), Ulul Albab (those of understanding), Insan (humankind)...etc.) and thus any hadith that goes against this and is unjust to the rights of women is against this Quranic worldview. Such ahadith must be understood in the light of the Quran (not the other way around - a vital distinction). In addition, he says that if they cannot be reconciled, then such ahadith (even if they have passed the authenticity test) must be cast aside or left for the Imams to consider.

After this, he does start looking at ahadith one-by-one, and I think that the analysis of a few ahadith, will give you a useful insight as to how critique of ahadith can and does take place.


I have written about this in more detail in the past so if you would like my article on what i consider to be a paradigm shift in Shii jursiprudence, please gimme a bell!