Hadith as Sunna, but it is not necessary that a Sunna would have a supporting hadith sanctioning it. Some sources (Khaled Abou El Fadl) limit hadith to verbal reports, with the deeds of Muhammad and reports about his companions being part of the "Sunnah", but not hadith. Joseph Schacht quotes a Hadith by Muhammad that is used "to justify reference" in Islamic law to companions of Muhammad as religious authorities — "My companions are like lodestars." According to Schacht, (and other scholars) in the very first generations after the death of Muhammad, use of hadith from "Sahabah" ("companions" of Muhammad) and
Criticism of Hadith "in the early Islamic centuries there could be no better way of promoting a cause, an opinion, or a faction than to cite an appropriate action or utterance of the Prophet." This gave strong incentive to fabricate hadith. According to Daniel Brown, the major causes of corruption of Hadith literature are: Other criticism made of ahadith include Orthodox Muslims do not deny the existence of false "hadith", but believe that through the work of hadith scholars, these false "hadith" have been largely eliminated. al-Shafi'i himself, the founder of the proposition that “sunna” should be made up exclusively of specific precedents