RELEVANTIZING METHOD OF TARJĪH AL-ḤADĪTH IN TIMES OF COVID-19: A STUDY ON AL-SHĀFI‘Ī’S IKHTILĀF AL-HADĪTH

Abstract

With the emergence of the deadly COVID-19 pandemic in 2019, Muslim scholars have been going back and forth searching for Qur’anic and Prophetic injunctions on how to face this fatal virus. Prophet PBUH said, “If you hear about it (an outbreak of plague) in a land, do not go to it; but if the plague breaks out in a country where you are staying, do not run away from it.” With this injunction, Malaysia’s government implemented a nationwide lockdown known as Movement Control Order (MCO) from 18 March 2020 (first phase) until 3 May 2020 (fourth phase), with the latter marking the end of the total lockdown. It is during these phases that fake news started to develop in the middle of mass information regarding the outbreak of COVID-19, that fake news seems to be the truth, while the fact appears to contradict. This turmoil is not rare, as hadith scholars had been facing them early on with a handful of ahadith that seemed to contradict each other. Indeed, this contradiction will have a negative impact on the authority of hadīth as it is one of the primary sources of understanding Islam, especially to the public. Scholars of Islam had come up with the solution on how to solve the contradictions in hadīth through their writings from the early second century of Hijrah, in which the earliest writing that appropriately touches on the issues of contradictory hadīth is Ikhtilāf al-Hadīth by al-Shāfi‘ī. This study aims to analyze the approach used by al-Shāfi‘ī on identifying contradictory ahadīth by the method of al-tarjīh and use the same process in identifying credible information by using constant comparative technique, inductive and deductive methodologies. This paper concludes that the method of al-tarjīh used by al-Shafi‘ī when solving the contradiction in hadīth can also be used in identifying truth and credible information or news, especially during COVID-19.