Criticism of Hadith Criticism of Hadith The criticism of "Hadith" refers to the critique directed towards collections of "ahadith", i.e. the collections of reports of the words, actions, and the silent approval of the Islamic prophet Muhammad on any matter. The criticism revolves primarily around the authenticity of "hadith" reports and whether they are attributable to Muhammad, as well as theological and philosophical grounds as to whether the "hadith" can provide rulings on legal and religious matters when the Quran has already declared itself "complete", "clear", "fully detailed" and "perfected". Because of Quranic injunctions to Muslims to follow the instructions of and to
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