Arguments of the Critics of Texts of Some Ahadith of Al_Sahihayin and their Discussion

Abstract

There have been many writings in our time criticizing the ahadith al-Sahihayn, which are the two soundest books of the Prophetic hadith. Most of these criticisms focus on the criticism of the text. Arguments of those who weaken the ahadith are many, and some writings discuss such criticisms; however, they focus on Sanad (i.e., chains of hadith narrators), where many of them discuss the criticism of a particular hadith. To the best of my knowledge, I have not come across either a book or a research paper concerned with gathering and discussing all arguments of the critics of the text. Thus, what are the arguments in question? What are the scientific bases to be applied to their discussions? How can each of these arguments be refuted? This research aims to answer such questions by adopting the extrapolation, analysis, and criticism approaches, where I extrapolate the critics arguments, understand them, and then discuss them. I found the critics of the text using eighteen arguments, the most important of which are violating legal texts, reason, empirical science, reality, or that the hadith is borrowed from Israelites, the people of the book. In this research, I present the scientific principles for discussing such arguments wherever necessary, discussed each argument theoretically, and discussed an example for each argument. I have reached twelve conclusions, the most important of which is that the critics’ arguments result from a shortcoming in gathering the narrations, incorrect understanding of the legal texts, or the rational or scientific issue, or that some arguments have no evidence.