What Makes a Hadith Authentic (Sahih)

Hadiths.  Very important in Islam.  Indispensable.  Some hadiths are just a few words; others run on for several pages.  They deal with esoteric issues such as the creation of the universe and the coming of the End Times, and they teach us how to pray, or inform us that Aisha, may Allah be pleased with her, used to forget about the bread dough sometimes so that the goats would come and eat it.  Through these snippets and tales, we have learned how our beloved Prophet Muhammad, may Allah’s peace and blessings be upon him, lived, prayed, fought, loved, and died.  If you are a Muslim and you truly want to know the personality and manners of the Prophet you claim to follow, you really need to read the major collections of hadiths.

The most authentic collection is Sahih al Bukhari. It is available online for anyone who cares to read it.  And before you even do that, you should read the biography of this Imaam, whose name was Muhammad, may Allah have mercy on him.  I can say with confidence that most people who criticize his collection don’t even know his given name!  If you read his biography, also available online, you will find a compelling story of a boy whose father died while he was an infant, a child who became blind but whose mother’s fervent prayers were answered so that Allah restored his sight, a young man of prodigious memory, an adult of great faith and erudition.  Read his biography, and then ask a critic of his work what their educational qualifications are.  Ask yourself which person should weigh heavier on the scales of truth.

I love reading the books of hadith.  They give me glimpses into the joys, heartbreaks, and challenges of daily life in Arabia 1400 years ago.  But they are not fossilized stories of the past.  Hadiths still teach us today.  The people of Quraish rode camels; we drive minivans.  But we still know that when we sit astride our riding beast / slide into the driver’s  seat, we make a certain supplication asking Allah to keep us safe.  We pray the way they prayed.  We eat the way they ate.  We know what to do and how to do it based on these hadiths that were collected so long ago.

So how did hadiths come down to us? Well, imagine you are someone who lived around the same time as Imaam al Bukhari, may Allah have mercy on him.  He was born in the year 194 after the hijrah, which corresponds to about the year 816 according to the Gregorian calendar.  When he grew up, he started traveling to collect these verbal and written recollections from people who were family members and companions descended from and related to those who had been the original Companions of Prophet Muhammad, may Allah’s peace and blessings be upon him.  So, he’d go to, say, Makkah, and listen and enquire.  He’d talk to someone, say, Ahmed, who would relate to him something passed down from his father and grandfather.  Then he would research to find out if it was authentic or not.  It was this meticulous research that sets the authentic collections of hadiths apart from others.

For example.  Let’s say I come to you and you tell me you heard a story that said “Joe Bob said that he has the answer to how to create cold fusion”.  Now, am I going to take you at your word?  No, I can’t.  So I write down your name, and I ask you where you heard the story.  You tell me, “Ralph down at the barber shop”.  So I walk to the barber shop and talk to Ralph.  He tells me he heard it from Joe Bob’s nephew Ernie, who sadly passed away in a freak accident involving a goat and a high cliff.  So I can’t talk to Ernie directly.  Instead, I can interview people who knew Ernie, and ascertain if he was trustworthy or not.  I find out from his friends that he was a nice guy but he had a terrible memory, so I can’t rely on his description of Joe Bob’s original claim, or even if Joe Bob ever made such a claim (Joe Bob died a long time ago while experimenting in his garage).  So Ernie breaks the chain, and even if Ralph and you are trustworthy people with good memories, I have to discard the information about Joe Bob because one weak link means the entire discussion is invalid.

Imaam al Bukhari, may Allah have mercy on him, used a process somewhat similar to this, but was even more painstaking and had such a high standard that my little example pales in comparison.  He would ensure that each person in the chain of narrators, called the isnaad, was reliable, trustworthy, had a good memory, and lived at a time and place where they actually came into contact with the other persons directly in their chain.  For instance, if he knew that narrator A lived in Makkah and never traveled, and narrator B lived in Cairo and never traveled, then this chain could not be authentic because the two people who supposedly formed this link could never have met!  Imagine how exhaustive this process was.

It is this attention to detail that makes me comfortable in reading the authentic hadith collections and relying on them in my everyday life.  Now, of course the caveat is that these scholars were men, human beings capable of making mistakes, and the collections of hadith are NOT scripture and do not have the same guarantee of never having been altered that we have with the Holy Qur’an.  But when all the scholars before and since, for 1400 years, verify the authenticity of a hadith, then who am I to come along, with my broken stumbling knowledge of Arabic and no formal training, and just throw out the baby with the bathwater when I find one comma out of place or one hadith referred to that has a couple of different interpretations.  Nope, not me, not gonna get the sin for that!

I urge anyone who has an “issue” with hadiths to ponder with humility the level of piety and scholarship of the original collectors, and to be honest with yourself as to why you don’t like the whole idea of hadiths or why you have a problem with a particular one.  It may be that you just are not ready to understand it yet, or you see a person or government taking a hadith out of context in order to make some oppressive rule, or you prefer to have a religion without rules and you find that having to actually do stuff and refrain from stuff rubs you the wrong way.  But as I mentioned in my previous post, do not approach this topic with a chip on your shoulder, and DO NOT listen to the pseudo-scholars on Facebook or the Qur’an only people on Youtube.

These people are misguided, and the funny thing is, if you listen to them, you are actually following THEIR “hadiths”, their stories, their interpretations, cut off from the rich scholarship of 1400 years.  So you are following someone who says “I SAID” rather than Prophet Muhammad, may Allah’s peace and blessings be upon him, said.  And I think that once you realize who these people are, common sense will kick in.  Stay with the majority.  Stay safe in your deen.  Question and learn, but with respect.  Ask Allah to guide you and protect you from every group that deviates from the correct path.  If you do that, you will safeguard your religion and save yourself from a million headaches.  And Allah knows best.