Hadith speech of a person. In Islamic terminology, according to Juan Campo, the term "hadith" refers to reports of statements or actions of Muhammad, or of his tacit approval or criticism of something said or done in his presence. Classical hadith specialist Ibn Hajar al-Asqalani says that the intended meaning of "hadith" in religious tradition is something attributed to Muhammad but that is not found in the Quran. Scholar Patricia Crone includes reports by others than Muhammad in her definition of hadith — "short reports (sometimes just a line or two) recording what an early figure, such as a companion of
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