Hadith of the Ark ""perished whoever turned away from it"" also comes along." And in his another book, Al-Heithami indicates this hadith as authentic (sahih). According to Dahlan, the authenticity of this hadith is confirmed by different sources. The hadith implies the absolute priority of "Ahl al-Bayt" to all others, otherwise Muhammad would have forbidden to follow them. According to Shia scholars, the only path to salvation is by following the "Ahl al-Bayt", so they must be infallible ("Ma'sum"), otherwise they will mislead their followers. If they are infallible, they must be Imam definitely. According to this hadith, they are the criterion of distinguishing
Criticism of Hadith According to Racha El Omari, early Mutazilites believed that hadith were susceptible to "abuse as a polemical ideological tool"; that the "matn" (content) of the hadith -- not just the "isnad" -- ought to be scrutinized for doctrine and clarity; that hadith "supported by some form of "tawātur"", i.e. by a large number of "isnād" strands, each beginning with a different Companion, were valid. In writing about "mutawatir" (transmitted via numerous chains of narrators) and "ahad" (any ahadith that is not "mutawatir") and its importance from the legal theoretician's point of view, Wael Hallaq notes the medieval scholar Al-Nawawi argued