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Why Do We Need Hadith? with Dr. Jonathan Brown | DoubleTake S4 E6
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The most authentic and verified texts for Muslims, after the Qur’an, are the books of Hadith. They’re foundational to how we understand and practice our religion.
But if the Qur’an is complete and perfect, why do we even need the Hadith? What is the method that scholars use to determine if the Prophet ﷺ really said something? How can we be certain that we are understanding and applying the Prophet's ﷺ narrations correctly?
In this episode, host Mohamad Zaoud talks to Dr. Jonathan Brown, the Director of History and Islamic Thought at Yaqeen.
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This transcript was auto-generated using AI and may contain misspellings. Assalamualaikum wa rahmatullah. The most authentic and verified texts for Muslims after the Qur'an are the books of hadith. They are foundational to how we understand Islam and its practice. But if the Qur'an is complete and perfect, why do we even need the hadith to begin with? How can we be certain that the Prophet ﷺ actually said something? And what should we do if one of his narrations, peace be upon him, is deemed to be less than authentic? Welcome to a new episode of Double Take, a podcast by Yaqeen Institute about the questions and ideas around Islam and Muslims that give us pause. Remember to subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts, YouTube, Spotify or wherever you get your favourite podcasts. Check out the links in the show notes if you want to share feedback with the team or if you'd like to join our new email newsletter. Dr. Jonathan Brown is the Director of History and Islamic Thought at Yaqeen. He is Associate Professor and Chair of Islamic Civilization at Georgetown University and he's the Editor-in-Chief of the Oxford Encyclopedia of Islam and Law. Dr. Brown has authored several books including Misquoting Muhammad, The Challenges and Choices of Interpreting the Prophet's Legacy ﷺ. Enjoy the episode. Dr. Jonathan Brown, Salam Alaikum and welcome to Double Take. For the first time, may I add. Wa alaikum salam wa rahmatullah wa barakatuhu. Yes, thank you for inviting me and thank you for being very patient with my bizarre scheduling problems. You've always been very generous to me so I'm appreciative. Inshallah, it'll be very worth it by the end of this episode. Dr. Jonathan, in Surah Al-An'am, Allah says, wa tammat kalimatu rabbika sitqan wa adla. That the word of your Lord is complete in its truth and justice. That no one can change
His words. He is the all-hearing and the all-knowing. The Quran is the word of Allah as taught to us through the Prophet ﷺ and is the foundation of how we understand our religion. But we often hear that Islam is built on two primary sources, the Quran and the Hadith. The Hadith, as I understand it, is the recorded words and actions of the Prophet ﷺ. And so to start this conversation, I'm going to go really basic. What is Hadith? And if we have the Quran and the Quran is complete, do we really need the Hadith? Yeah. This is like a fundamental question that Muslim scholars have always acknowledged and dealt with since the beginning of the revelation of, essentially, the death of the Prophet ﷺ. You can start with two axioms, two fixed certainties that Muslims have always had since the beginning of our tradition. The first is that the Quran is the revelation. If not for the Quran, there would be no contact with the Divine. The Quran is the starting point of everything. It's like the epicenter of guidance. The Prophet ﷺ, his job is to deliver the message of the Quran. His job doesn't exist separately from the Quran. It is to deliver the message of the Quran. The first thing is that, and then you have things in the Quran like the Quran saying that it is, the Quran elucidates all things. I think
it's, where God says, we've not omitted anything from this book. So the Quran has, it contains complete guidance. It contains complete guidance. So that's one certainty, like one fixed point. And so you'll, by the way, it's interesting, you'll see, you know, all of the Sayyids of Muhammad, like you'll see Imam al-Shafi'i in the Umm, he talks about how there's every hadith, you can, he sees this is like, let's say, caused by this verse of the Quran or that verse of the Quran. So even all the hadiths are sort of generated by Quranic revelations, you know, that they kind of come out of them either by literally that was the circumstance that led the Prophet, peace be upon him, to say this, or like, that's the sort of idea, the usel, the basis behind that this hadith is sort of like a branch of or a ramification of. Or you have sayings like in Abu Ma'im al-Isbahani's Hilyat al-Awliya, Ibn Abbas's quote is saying, you know, jami' al-ulum fi al-Quran. How do I think it's in Hilyat al-Awliya? jami' al-ulum fi al-Quran. walakin taqasira anha afham alrijal. Right? So all knowledge, all sciences are in the Quran, but it's like human minds that don't see that, right? So that's why you'll see like if there's someone who's like, especially a Muslim scholar who's been kind of what's called like majdhub, they've been almost granted ilm ladunni by God, right? So that God has like, enlightened their hearts. You'll have instances where they're like, there'll be like a walimin awliya Allah, a saint, one of God's saints who like, they'll look at their hand and it's like they're reading the Quran in their hand. They'll look at, it's like their hand becomes a law, like a board that just where they can like read revelation.
So like, they can look at the Quran and they can see everything in it. So there's this idea and it goes back to this certainty that like the Quran says, it has not omitted anything. So there's, they go back to these two points. One, the Quran is the foundation of the sort of fount of guidance and it contains all guidance, right? It contains all knowledge that humans need. But on the other hand, what's the other sort of certainty is not debatable. Muslim scholars have never debated it, which is that there are things that we know are part of our religion that are not explicitly mentioned in the Quran. I mean, Imam al-Shafi'i's favorite example, five daily prayers, right? So there's no point in the Quran that no point in the Quran does it say there are five daily prayers. There's the Fajr prayer and the Dhuhr prayer and the Asr prayer and the Maghrib prayer and they do it. And by the way, when you pray, you stand up like this and you hold your hands and you raise your hands and you bow down and then you put your head on the ground, right? So this is all explained through the son of the prophet. So unless you're going to say that we don't actually, that's not really part of our religion, it's not really core to our religion, it's sort of some extra thing. Unless you're going to say that about the five daily prayers, both in their number, their timing and their actual physical manifestation, unless you're going to say that that's not really part of our religion, you have to say that there are things that are essentially part of our religion that are not explicitly mentioned in the Quran. And if you take these two things together, so they're both certainties, you have to reconcile them. And then what you get is the idea that the seed of all knowledge is in the Quran, the seed of all guidances in the Quran, but that the prophet, alayhi salam, kind of nurtures it or expands it or adds to it, explains it through his sunnah of the prophet, through his sunnah, right?
So his tradition, his explanation, his guidance. So the sunnah, as Shah Waliullah, the famous Indian scholar who died in 1762 of the common era, as he says that the sunnah of the prophet is an infallible explanation of the book of God. It's the book of God lived and explained by an infallible actor who's guided by God. So Dr. Jonathan, you're saying that there are two non-negotiables. If you're a Muslim, you've got to believe in both fundamentally. Question, what is a world without the Hadith? If we just had the Quran and just followed the Quran? Yeah, it's funny. So like there's, you know, we don't really, there's some reports that there are these, some early Muslims who don't accept Hadith, but it's, it's sort of hard to tell because like, for example, Imam al-Shafi'i will talk about some people who don't accept any Hadith at all, but we don't really know who these people, like we don't have their writings. We allegedly early Harajites didn't accept it. I just don't find, I don't believe that because we actually have some early Harajite writings and they do accept Hadith. So there's some, it's like, you know, it's sort of like some people say, I don't know, it's like Donald Trump. It's like, there are some people who say this. I don't know. It's like, there's, there's allegedly there were some people who said this, but I don't think we actually know who they are. And I don't think they actually existed. Right. Even the people who are like the rationalists that Imam al-Shafi'i was debating with like Mu'tazilites or another group that the Ahl al-Sunnah will call Jahmis. They might have theological differences with the Ahl al-Sunnah wa Jama'ah. They might have debates over to what extent you could accept, you should accept Hadiths in like theology, but nobody thought that you didn't accept Hadiths. I mean, it would be, it was just, it was that kind of incomprehensible state, incomprehensible arguments. The debate was,
what do you need? What kind of evidence do you need to accept Hadith? But to answer your question more, more specifically, the only time that you get people who say, we don't accept Hadith at all is actually in the, essentially the early 20th century with a group called the Ahl al-Quran, the people of the Quran in North India. Only some of them say this, but their arguments don't really work because what they do is either the ones who are kind of really honest, they'll say, yeah, like the five prayers, we don't have any basis for them. They'll just say, we don't. And once you say that, no one, no other Muslim is really going to accept you. Right. That's like, if you're not playing toward the Qibla with the, in the way that you see Muslims pray, like you might disagree. You might be a Maliki and you have your hands at your size or, you know, humbly and have them above your belly button, or you might be, you know, if not Sharia Shia and combine your Doha and Asr prayers every day. But, you know, I, I've been to Iran. I prayed in Iran. Like, you know, you can, everyone was sort of basically praying the same way. Right. So if you say that's not really part of religion, you're just out of the community. No one's going to accept you. The second thing is what you see is that the, the Ahle Quran, especially there's one movement, it's kind of popular in Pakistan. Some certain groups of people that call the Parvezia movement, some of you like me, people were like Parvezies. They followed it right into the sky, Ghulam Parvez, I think died in 1985. He was a Pakistani, like intellectual. And they'll say like, we, you know, we only follow the Quran, but then you read his writings and it's full of stuff about the seer of the prophet. So I've kind of confused, you know, you can't like the seer of the prophet, the life of the prophet is Islam is Hadith. That's how you know about it. There's no other way.
So if I was to summarize Dr. Jonathan, sorry, if I was to summarize the role of the Hadith then, you were saying that the two fundamental pillars of understanding our religion is the Quran and there's a Sunnah. And the Sunnah or the Hadiths, if I'm hearing you correctly, it's two things. One is to help us understand and interpret the Quran. And number two, it is practicing our religion. It's a prescription on how to follow the religion. Have I understood that correctly? Yeah, but I mean, those are, those are basically the same thing, right? I mean, the sense that we follow the religion we follow is the teachings of the Quran, right? So by explaining the Quran, we know what our religion is. Yeah, but the Quran doesn't say, the Quran, as you mentioned, the Quran doesn't mention five daily prayers. But the Hadith does. So how do you jump from one to the other? There is some interpretation or explanation. So the Quran tells us to follow the Prophet Alayhi Salaam, right? The Quran tells us that he's good, the exemplar, he tells us he doesn't speak from his own desires. It tells us that, you know, whatever he commands us to do, we're supposed to do it, right? Well, imagine this, like I tell my kid to go and, you know, vacuum the car or something like that, you know, vacuum out the car. And then I say, you know, anything you don't understand, just ask your brother about how to vacuum the car. And your brother will explain to you and do what he says. So I've given the command now I can go off and like, you know, drink coffee or whatever I'm going to do, you know, and watch TV, and they're going to vacuum the car. And I've given part of my order is for one of the brothers to listen to the other brother is going to tell him what to do. So that's
basically what what the Quran does. The Quran gives guidance. And then part of that guidance is to listen to the explanations of the Messenger of God. And so that's where that's why we're authorized to that's why we're required to follow the Sunnah of the Prophet. And by the way, all Muslims acknowledge this, right? So there's not really a debate about this. Yeah, I just, as a simple Muslim, I just want to understand the role of the Hadith. And I think that's that's relatively clear now. Well, I would say one thing I say this that there's Yeah. So we've talked about the Sunnah. So the Sunnah is like this. It's the authoritative precedent of the Prophet Muhammad, alayhi salam. And it's the infallible interpretation of the Quran. Now the question is, how do you know what the Sunnah is? And the Sunnah is basically known through three ways. One is through Hadith, right, which are reports about things the Prophet said, things the Prophet did, things that were done in his presence that he didn't object to, right? So his actions, his deeds, his words, his affirmations, those are Hadiths. And then the second source of the Sunnah is essentially traditions of reasoning, right? So the early companions, when they're coming to when they when they leave Arabia, and they go to southern Iraq or Syria or Egypt, and they come across new traditions and clothing and practices and communities and technologies and stuff like that. And you have to figure out well, how do we act? What How does God want us to act? A lot of times they especially see this with like Omar bin al-Khattab, or Ali, or Uthman or, you know, other senior companions, Ibn Mas'ud, Aisha, right, they'll, they'll come to rulings, they don't actually cite the Prophet, but they, they spent decades with him. And they learn how to think like
him. So they learn, it's like, the example I always give is, you know, my, like my parents, I for the life of me could not tell you maybe more than two or three things that my mom like actually quote things my mother said to me. But my whole way of dealing with life, I learned from my mom, like, how do we solve a problem? Like, let's say, you know, you, you're cooking and you burn something, and how do you fix it, right? So like, all this, like the way my personality was shaped by her. So the personalities, the problem solving of these early, especially the senior companions is actually is, is shaped by the Sunnah of the Prophet. So they're, they're like walking Sunnah machines, essentially, right? So they, that's why, especially in some books of early books of Islamic law and things like that, they'll talk about the Sunnah of the Prophet and the Khulafa ur-Nashideen, right? Or they'll talk about the Sunnah of the Prophet and the early Muslims. Why are they talking about the Sunnah of the early Muslims? It makes sense. Because for them, the Sunnah of the early Muslims is actually an extension of the Sunnah of the Prophet, alayhi salatu wasalam. Now the early Muslims can disagree on stuff, but they're all like using this method of reasoning they learned from the Prophet. So that's the second way of knowing the Sunnah is through this tradition of problem solving that the senior companions learned from the Prophet, alayhi salatu wasalam. The third way of knowing the Sunnah is communal practice. So how Muslims actually acted, like, you know, probably, you know, I'm a convert, I learned to pray from a book, but probably Muhammad, you learn to pray from like other older people, like your parents or your brothers, your family, someone like so there's, you actually become kind of acculturated into a community that has its own practices. And so that's how the early Muslims another way that they knew the Sunnah is just the way that the early Muslims practiced and transmitted that and that kind of living tradition. We're saying, okay, there are three, three sources to the Sunnah. We're focusing today on on Hadith. And I wanted to talk about the authenticity of Hadith. You've obviously covered
this topic very, very extensively. I hear about weak Hadith all the time I hear there are different, you know, levels of Hadith, assuming I haven't gone through the College of Hadith at one of the universities, help me understand how to navigate this space. How do I know that the Prophet actually did something or said something? Yeah. Um, well, okay, first of all, it's important to remember that, you know, Hadiths are their reports about the things that the Prophet said or did, right? So they're a piece of data that goes into a bigger machine, right? So the what Muslim scholars have always done, and by the way, the Prophet's own companions did this, right? So we have reports of them doing exactly what we're talking about, what I'm about to talk about, right, which is the Prophet's words are put into like a bigger system. And that system includes the Quran, right? It includes other things we know the Prophet said, it includes his Sunnah through communal practice, it includes his Sunnah through traditions of reasoning and problem solving that we talked about. And so, all any individual, any specific Hadith is going to get fit into a bigger framework. And this is, this is not something that, you know, Professor Brown is saying to satin or to, you know, try to prevent us having to deal with problematic Hadiths. No, this is what Muslim scholars have always done. There's no debate about this, right? So, um, that's the first thing to remember is that any Hadith, like even if you're entirely positive, the Prophet said this thing, it doesn't necessarily mean it has, it has to be put into a bigger system. So for example, you know, from all evidence we have, we know that the Prophet said that, you know, if it's, if it's Ashura,
and so, which is basically a continuation of Jewish Passover celebration, right in the middle of the day, if it's Ashura, then those people who have already eaten today, you should fast the rest of the day. And those people have not eaten, just keep fasting, right? So it, and this and other Hadiths suggests very, I mean, it doesn't suggest the Prophet is saying fast Ashura. But we don't consider it obligatory to fast Ashura because we know from other Hadiths and from the communal practice of the Muslims that after the fast of Ramadan was revealed in the Quran, that becomes the obligatory fast for Muslims. And Ashura is just if you want to, you can fast it, right? So either it was required, and then that gets replaced by the Ramadan fast, or it was just never required. And it was, it was like, for example, if I say to you, Muhammad, you know, you should you should drink Gatorade. Oh, you're like dehydrated, you should, you know, you should drink Gatorade. Like that might be means me saying, like, I, you know, I recommend you do this. Or it could be me ordering you to do this, right? So you would only know that if you kind of understood the context, understood like the way people speak in our amongst friends, or, you know, in a certain speech community, right? You have to know all that stuff. And then you, you if you know, for example, that I say, the only thing people really need to drink is water. And then you take that, like that, then you say, but he's also saying you should drink Gatorade. So then it's like, okay, maybe this is for some people, they should drink Gatorade. So then you can start figuring out like, what does he mean by this? The difference here is, Professor that I can ask you, and I can sit down and understand the context that that you're kind of ordering or asking me about the Gatorade. With the Prophet, you're asking me to do a lot like as a as a layman Muslim, I have to go and check the context.
When did he say that? Why did he say that? How did he say who did he say it to? Is there kind of like a cheat sheet? No, you don't have to do that. Okay, you don't have to help me navigate this space. Because, you know, my biggest fear is hearing something on the minbar or hearing it in a circle and not knowing whether or not it's true. Like how do I decipher what's true and what's not? Yeah, well, okay, there's a there's a couple of first of all, you don't need to go figure this out, because you have 1400 years of Muslim scholarship that's done that like that's what schools of law are. That's what the madhab are. The madhab are traditions of people who have figured out what, how a specific Hadith should be understood. And the extent to which Muslims disagree about, let's say, do you do you okay, I mean, like, in the Maliki, for example, the Prophet, alayhi salatu wa salam, says, you know, if you go in, if you come to Jumaa and the khateeb is giving the khutbah, pray two rakah and then sit down. Now, in the Maliki school of law, you don't do that. You just go into the Jumaa and you sit down. Now, the Maliki, they don't deny that Hadith. They say, no, the Prophet said this, but he was talking to that guy specifically. It wasn't a general rule. How do we know that? Because from the general Sunnah of the Prophet and the early Muslim community that kind of practice communal practice, people wouldn't go and pray two rakah and then sit down. So there's you can see there's a difference. So in the Hanbali school, you would pray two rakah and then sit down. In the Maliki school, you just sit down. And actually, both of them, they don't disagree about the Hadith. They just disagree about how you understand it. So you don't need to go and figure this stuff out for yourself because you have 1400 years of Muslim scholarship that has already done that.
If I was to ask you to summarize how someone might figure out if something is authentic or not, what that process would look like, how do you do it, for example? Yeah, I mean, for me, you know, once you if you know Arabic and stuff like that, or do, you know, you can probably you can you can find this information in books. Even you can look on. I mean, it's people make fun of like Sheikh Google and stuff like that. But actually, if you just look for stuff online, even in English, you can usually find pretty good explanations. Right. So the the what you would do, what I would do, right, is I would talk to a scholar that I respect. So that's that's what you know, that's why there's a there's a principle that Muslim scholars cite, like going back a thousand years, which is that the al-Ammi la madhhab lahu. Right. That the lay Muslim has no madhhab. What does that mean? They don't mean that the lay Muslim just does whatever. What they mean is that they're the lay Muslim isn't sitting around being like, I'm a Hanbali, I'm a Shafi, I'm a this. Like they they're or sometimes they'll say madhhab al-Ammi, madhhab al-Mufti. Right. That the madhhab of the lay Muslim is the madhhab of whatever the Mufti says. Right. So they're not you're not lay Muslims are not qualified to go and engage in this in this problem solving process I talked about. Right. So they're supposed to go to people who are specialized in this. Just like I don't know, like, you know, if my leg starts hurting, I don't know what the heck is wrong with my leg. I go to someone who is trained in what's how to deal with people's bodies. It's called doctor. Right. So same thing. Like we we should turn to scholars who are who we respect. So what would you say the the key the key factors to the authenticity of a hadith are?
Like when I'm looking, what am I looking for? This early Muslim hadith scholar Shoaib bin al-Hajjaj who dies around 773, I think he's from Basra. Right. He says three quarters of the hadiths I've come across are forgeries. Three quarters. So it's a huge problem. By the time you get to like 100, 150 years after the death of the Prophet, there's like an ocean of forged hadiths. A forged or mistaken errant hadiths. And so Muslim scholars have to figure out how to sort this out. So one there's two general methods they use. Right. One is to say, look, the Koran, we know kind of the message of the Koran. We know the general message of the Prophet. And if this hadith seems to be saying something that contradicts that message or goes against it, then it's not. We're not going to take it. Right. That makes sense. In theory, the problem is that. If that hadith could be explaining something in the Koran that you haven't understood properly. Right. So the Koran says you're prohibited from eating Maita, like, you know, dead animals, carrion. So if you find a hadith where the companions of the Prophet eat from this dead whale, which is washed up on the beach. So the Prophet said he didn't object to this, to them eating this whale from the ocean that was dead on the beach. So you could say, oh, this contradicts the Koran. So this can't be something the Prophet said. But or is it saying that the the prohibition on carrion is only land animals and not sea animals? And then you find another hadith, the Prophet, where he says, you know, the the ocean is pure and it's dead or pure. Right.
So the problem is, it's really it's hard to tell the difference between contradiction and explanation. Sometimes it's very hard. So we need to be careful about whether or not we think something's contradicting the Koran when it might actually be explaining it. Or it might be something that we don't have a capacity to even evaluate. Right. So because of that, they start develop a method where you look at the transmission of the hadith. You see, OK, is this transmission corroborated by other transmissions? Is the person who's narrating it generally when they narrate things to other people, narrate the same thing? Right. And or is somebody saying, ah, that guy is the only person who narrated this from his teacher or her teacher. Therefore, this is suspect. Right. So they start to engage in transmission criticism. And then they start to figure out who are the reliable transmitters. So that's the method they use now. So in theory, right. What would make a hadith sound sahih would be if there's a trustworthy transmitter who heard directly from another trustworthy transmitter, heard directly from another trustworthy transmitter back to the Prophet. That now that's sahih, isn't it? But. Unless it's like a very strong isn't it? Or unless it's not really a controversial issue that the hadith is dealing with, what would really make it sound is if there's multiple narrations, like you can imagine like a tree branching out like that, that's what makes something really strong, the tree branching out. It's called shuhra or like something being well-known or widespread. So the now that's the sort of general rule. Now, the bulk of the important hadiths in law, like so, you know, how do you do wudu? What makes water dirty so that you can't you can't use it for wudu. Right.
These these hadiths are not actually going to usually don't meet that like totally trustworthy person from totally trustworthy person from totally trustworthy person back to the Prophet. They don't. Are you saying they don't meet it? They don't. But they're there. What they are backed up, what makes them sound or what's called in this case, good or hassan, is that they are widely transmitted. Right. So they're like really widely transmitted or they're acted on by lots of Muslims. So with those hadiths that are like the kind of a lot of the major major hadiths for Islamic law, for like sharia, buying, selling, marriage, divorce, stuff like that, they're actually their main kind of the main argument or the main evidence for their reliability is their widespread transmission and their acceptance by Muslim scholars. So you're saying there's been centuries of work done by scholars way before us who would listen to all of these hadiths and categorize them into different categories in terms of sahih, hassan, etc. And they would generally use three criteria. One would be how trustworthy the narrator was and then the chain of narration all the way to the Prophet. That would be one major factor. The other one would be that the hadith is narrated several times or multiple times to the extent that it can be considered very reliable. And the third one is that there's a consensus about the practice of that hadith, if I'm not mistaken. So there are three kind of general. And so what happens then, Professor, if someone comes out and says, OK, that's great. I like that methodology and I accept that methodology. However, most of your hadiths come from someone like Abu Huraira.
And then he starts questioning the character of Abu Huraira. So first of all, like Abu Huraira doesn't narrate very many hadiths that are not narrated by other companions. So this idea that somehow like you can find, you know, if you get rid of the hadiths of Abu Huraira, you've gotten rid of like all this problematic, this problematic corpus. That's just not accurate because he doesn't narrate a lot of hadiths that are not narrated by other companions. What happens in the in the 700s and the 800s is there is a debate between what would become like the Shafi'i and Hanbali schools of law and what would become the Hanafi school of law. And one of the debates they have is whether or not the hadiths of Abu Huraira are like kind of legally binding. So there are certain hadiths that the Hanafi's early Hanafi's, they didn't kind of take them as evidence in legal discussions because they thought that, you know, they're like Abu Huraira didn't understand this material well enough. Right. So he wasn't like a faqih. He wasn't a jurist like like someone like Omar bin al-Khattab or Aisha was, right, or Ibn Mas'ud. So that's their criticism. And then, you know, other school, other scholars disagreed with them about that. Now, the point is that so Abu Huraira becomes and then there's another issue, which is a lot of the Shiite attacks on Sunni hadiths are also based on what they do is they'll go in and find this like inter-Sunni or inter-Sunni debates over Abu Huraira. And then they'll start like kind of inflating that, like blowing that up and making it look like look, even Sunnis don't trust Abu Huraira. Right. So there's an attempt to like kind of use that as a wedge to argue against Sunni understandings of the Sunni prophet.
So I want to change gears a little bit just to speak to a layman Muslim like myself here in Sydney. I'm very detached from, you know, the centers of power in the Muslim world. So I need some hand holding here. You spoke a lot about context, looking at the context of a hadith that Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam would say. You spoke about, you know, seeking some support from a scholar, following a school of thought that's already digested a lot of the hadiths to help interpret the Quran. What if I'm sitting there and on the minbar, the sheikh is saying something like a very big bold statement, the hadith of the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam where Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam says that I was ordered Umirtu an auqatil an nas hatta yaqulu la ilaha illallah, like that I was ordered to kill everyone until I say la ilaha illallah. To fight everybody. Yeah. Or fight everybody. Yeah. So I hear that big bold statement. There are many. There are many in our religion that you hear. Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam actually said that. And as a layman, I want to know the level of authenticity, the context, but I just don't know the process. I mean, I can ask people, but that will take me in a loop. Well, I mean, there's no way around asking people if you don't know, you have to ask people who know. Right. There's no way around that. There's no there's no replacement for expertise. There's just nothing you can do about that. But what I would say is that that's like that hadith is actually a very good example of the process that Muslim scholars go through. Right. Which is, you know, that that hadith is if you look at its change of transmission, it's very sound hadith.
There's no debate about amongst Muslims. They don't debate that. The prophet said this. Right. The prophet said this. But when you put it into that system, that bigger system. Right. So we know from the Koran that, for example, Muslims, if you Muslims fight or conquer non-Muslims like Jews or Christians or Zoroastrians or whatever. Right. So they don't have they can continue. They can continue practicing their religion. They pay Jizya. Right. So right there, they don't have to that hadith. It doesn't apply. Right. So we know that you don't have to fight people until they say, la ilaha illallah, because at least for people of the book, people practice other religions. And the prophet included, you know, says, like, treat Zoroastrians like you treat people the book. And then Muslim scholars extended that to Hindus and Buddhists, everybody they met. Right. That these people continue to continue practicing their religion. They just pay Jizya. Jizya tax. Then you you look at like other narrations of this hadith. So you there's different narrations of hadith. And you see, like some narration, Sunan Nasai says, Umirta anuqatil al mushrikeen. So it doesn't say I've been commanded to fight the people until they say there's no God but God. And Muhammad is a messenger of God. It says I was commanded to fight the polytheists. It's like, ah, this is interesting, because who is the group that the only group that the Muslims actually fight until they become Muslim is the polytheist Arabs in Arabia. That's the only group. Other groups, every other group Muslims encounter in history, they just they don't they allow them to continue practicing their religion. They don't care. They just say, OK, you guys keep practicing religion, pay Jizya, it's fine. So when you look at the like you look at that, you put this hadith in the context of the Quran. You put this hadith in the context of other narrations of that hadith. So you look at other instances of the Sunnah of the Prophet and then you understand what the Prophet meant by this.
Right. And that's actually what Islamic law says as well. So there's no way. Like, unfortunately, I wish like I wish. And actually, this is something that I'm working on. I'm still working on working on for like, I don't know how many years now, like seven years now or something, is we're doing a translation of the six books. We've done Ibn Majah, we've done Muslim, done most of Tirmidhi, we've done half of Bukhari. And so there's going to be online. But the crucial thing about this is every hadith has an explanation for it. It doesn't mean if a hadith is not really controversial, you know, it won't have an explanation. But if there's anything about the hadith that's hard to understand, then it will provide explanation and it will or direct you to like an essay that discusses this issue. I look forward to seeing it. Jazakallah khair for your for your efforts. I'm going to ask you one final question, 30 seconds or less, and then we'll wrap up. Dr. Jonathan Brown, my nine year old niece knocks on your door and says, I understand how important the Quran is. But how do I understand how important the hadith is? Can you help me decipher that? I would just say that the Quran tells you to follow the prophet, that the prophet, alayhis salatu wa salam, is an uswatun hasana. And he's a rahma, a mercy to humanity, to the world. And the hadiths are like an extremely important way to know about this person, right? To know what they're teaching and who they were. So if you believe that, you know, God wants us to know about this person and to gain wisdom and guidance from him, then there has to be a way, has to be some way. And hadiths are one of those main ways.
And I would also say to your niece, your nine year old niece, right, which is like, look, you're going to go to school and or they're going to go to the mosque and someone's going to say this hadith and you're going to be shocked or confused. Right. And that's that's just that's completely normal, because imagine that, you know, someone comes and tells me, you know, your uncle said this thing, you know, your uncle said, you know, this is the stupidest thing I've ever seen in my life. And now I'm so shocked that he said that. Like, how could he say that about me or something or something? I did. It's like you have to take that in context. Like, first of all, did your uncle actually really say this? That's the first thing you have to find out. The second thing is, if he said this, like, how does that what is the context? How does that fit into his overall personality, his overall teachings? Right. And so when I when I always tell my students, like people will come and ask me, like, oh, what do I do when I hear hadith that I don't understand or that shocks me? The first thing I say is, like, don't you don't have to have an opinion, like you don't have to do what anyone tells you. You can just suspend judgment, say, like, look, I need to look into this. And then you can ask scholars you respect. You can look it up online. I mean, for for all we know, there's a lot of great resources online. Right. So and that those are both, you know, terrific ways for at least finding out some information, you know. But a lot of people feel like they're kind of getting beaten, like Hadith or like rocks they got thrown at them and they don't know how to handle that. And they feel bad if they don't like kind of immediately submit to them. But that's not what we're taught to do as Muslims. We're taught to ask for evidence. You know, like the Korans, we don't believe things Muslims don't believe. That's why I'm Muslim. I'm not required to believe stuff without evidence. I don't have to change my life or accept the belief without some kind of evidence.
So, you know, if someone tells you a piece of information, you ask them, like, where did you learn this? This is what the Ibn al-Mubarak said, you know, the first foundation of, you know, Isnads or authenticating Hadiths is like, where did you get this information? Where'd you get this? OK, a lot of people can't answer that. The second thing is, how does this fit into the bigger system of our religion, of our values, of the teachings of God and his prophet, Alayhi Salatu wa Salam? And if that person can't give you the answer, then, you know, I would just not listen to them. And if I would look for somebody who can give you the answer, either a scholar you respect or you can find it in books or something like that. Right. There's all sorts of resources. Professor Jonathan Brown, Jazakallah Khair. This is your first episode on Double Take. Inshallah, first of many. I appreciate your time and Inshallah, see you next time. Wa alaykum as-salam, thanks for inviting me.
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