Prophetic Hadith and the Qur’ān-Only Movement: The Response of Muslim Scholars

Abstract

Abstract: This article explores the Qur’ān-only movement, which advocates for the exclusive interpretation of Islam based on the Qur’ān without reference to the Prophetic Hadith. This movement emerged in the nineteenth century and represents a departure from traditional Islamic scholarship. To shed light on the complex intersection between religious tradition and modernity, this essay discusses the influence of modernity and Westernization on the development of Qur’ānist thought. It then provides a succinct overview of two primary contentions maintained by Muslim scholars who oppose the Qur’ānist movement. The first argument concerns the authority of ḥadīth, while the second concerns their authenticity and historical reliability. With regard to the former, traditional Muslim scholars underscore the significance of the Prophet’s life for deriving Islamic belief and practice from the Qur’ān, knowledge which can only be acquired from the Hadith. The second argument examined here involves the ways in which Islamic scholars defend the authenticity of the Prophetic Hadith with probabilistic reasoning, suggesting that rejecting the Hadith solely based on the absence of absolute certainty is not reasonable or consistent with the broader Islamic intellectual tradition. They argue that accepting something that is probable but not certain is common in many fields of study, including ḥadīth scholarship. In the science of ḥadīth ( ‘ilm al-ḥadīth ), scholars have developed what they consider to be sophisticated methods to evaluate the authenticity of ḥadīth reports based on various degrees of probability. Therefore, they advocate for an approach that acknowledges the role of probability in ḥadīth scholarship while upholding the rigorous standards of authenticity and reliability that have been developed over centuries of Islamic scholarship.