Why Do We Need Hadith

Salam aleikum wa rahmatullah. The most authentic and verified texts for Muslims after the Quran are the books of Hadith. They are foundational to how we understand Islam and its practice. But if the Quran is complete, and perfect, why do we even need the Hadith to begin with? How can we be certain that the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam 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 doubletake, a podcast by opinion 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 favorite podcast. 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

Mohammed, the challenges and choices of interpreting the prophets legacy sallallahu alayhi wa sallam, enjoy the episode, Dr. Jonathan Brown and Salam Alikum and welcome to doubletake for the first time my dad, I like Mr. Alma Mater, law, or Baetica to 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 you know, I'm appreciative challah, it'll be very worth it. By the end of this episode. Dr. Jonathan, in Surah, Allah Allah Allah Allah subhanaw taala says what then met Kelly met Rebecca, sit call con Weidler. 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 subhanho wa Taala as taught to us through the prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam, 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 sallallahu alayhi wasallam. And so to start this conversation, I'm gonna go really basic, what is Hadith? And if we have the Quran, and the Quran is complete, do we really need the Hadith?

Yeah.

Now this man or him, you know, this is like a fundamental question that Muslim scholars have always acknowledged and dealt with since the beginning of the revelation of an offense essentially, the death of the Prophet leaves us alone.

And there's so there's, you can sort of start with

to ask axioms, sort of two fixed

certainties that Muslims have always had since the beginning of our tradition. The first is that the the Koran is the revelation right. So if not for the Koran, there would be no, there would be no contact with the Divine Right. So the Koran is like the, the starting point of everything, it's like the epicenter of of guidance, right? It's the

so if the prophet lays out salaam His job is to deliver the message of the Quran, right? So his his job doesn't exist separately from the Quran is to deliver the message of the Quran.

So that the first thing is that and then you have things in the Quran, like the Koran saying that it is to be honored equally, shake the Quran, elucidate all things. You know, I think it will not forgotten if you could even shake right where God says, we've not omitted anything from this book. So the Koran has, it's it's a complaint, it contains complete guidance. It contains complete guidance.

So that's one certainty, like one fixed point.

And so you're buying by the way, it's interesting, you'll see, you know, almost a tsunami, like you'll see an Anna Shafi in the home, 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 versalift grant. So even all the deeds 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 basically to say this, or like that's the sort of idea that also the basis behind that this hadith is sort of like a branch of or ramification of,

or you have sayings like in ABA nameless behind these headaches that oh, yeah, the the bass is quoted as saying, you know, Jimmy or

Hello, I'm Phil core and I think it's in a little earlier gymea are looming for the Koran. Well, I can cause it or anha of hameau region right so all knowledge all scientists are in the Koran, but it's here 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 a specially a Muslim scholar who's been kind of which is called like much food, but they've been almost granted Elma Dooney by God, right. So their god has like, enlightened their hearts, they'll you'll you'll have instance where they're like, there'll be like a welcoming earlier, a lot of Saint of one of God's seem to like, they'll look at their hand. And they it's like

they're reading the Koran, and they're like they, they'll look at,

it's like their hand becomes a love, like a board that just where they can like read Revelation. So like, they can look at the Koran, and they can see everything in it. So there's this idea. And it goes back to the certainty that like the Quran says it has not omitted anything. So there's that go back to these two points. One, the crown 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, amount of Shafi say for example, five daily prayers, right, so there's no point in the Quran that no point in crying does it say, there are five daily prayers, there's the fajr prayer, and they'll do her prayer. And they also prayer and the motive, right, and they do it and and by the way, when you pray, you stand up like this, and you hold your hands and you raise your hands and you validate you do, you bow down and then you put your head on the ground, right. So this is all explained through this another 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, 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 a 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, you know, they're both certainties, you have to reconcile them. And then what you get is the idea that the kind of the seed of all knowledge is in the Quran, the seed of all guidances in the Quran, but that the Prophet lays out Islam kind of nurtures it or expands it or adds to it explains it through his sunnah of the

Prophet to his to his sunnah, right? So, his his tradition, his explanation, his guidance, so the Sunnah as sha Allah Allah, the famous Indian scholar who died 1762 of the commoner 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 was guided by God. So Dr. Johnson, you're saying that the two non negotiables if you're a Muslim, you got to believe in both fundamentally.

Question

What is a world without the Hadith, if we just had the Quran and just follow the Quran? Yeah, it's funny. So like, there's, you know, we don't really there's some

reports that there are, these are some early Muslims who don't accept Hadith, but it's, it's sort of hard to tell because, like, for example, the amount of Shafi we'll talk about some people who don't accept any edits at all, but we don't really know who these people are like, we don't have their writings, we allegedly early hard giants didn't accept it. I just don't find I don't believe that, because we actually have some early hard giant writings and they do accept anything. 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's some people who say it is, 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 amount of Shafi was debating with like more metabolites, or another group that had a sunnah will call jammies.

They might have theological differences with hallucinogens, or they might have debates over to what extent you could accept you should accept her deeds in like theology, but nobody thought that you didn't accept her deeds. 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 soccer

group called the helical Iran the people of Iran in north India

and he only some of them say this but their their arguments don't really work because what they do is either the ones were kind of really honest they'll say yeah like the five prayers we don't have any basis for them they 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 cupola with in the way that you see Muslims pray like you might disagree you might be a Maliki and you're have your hands or your show your size or you know, humbly and had them above your, your belly button. Or you might be you know, if Nasri Shia and combine your dollar and Ossur prayers every day. But, you know, I I've

been to Iran, I prayed in Iran, like, you know, you can, everyone was basically praying the same way, right? So if you say that's not really a party 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 Adicolor, and especially this one movement is it's kind of popular in Pakistan, some certain groups of people to call it the Parvizi movement, approach somebody like me, people were like power bases, they follow the drainage of the sky, Willem purveys, we think died in 1985. It 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 this year of the Prophet the life of the prophet the 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 Hadith? 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 have I understood that correctly? Yeah, but I mean, those are those are basically the same thing. 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 does mentioned five daily prayers.

But the Hadith does. So how do you jump from, from one to the other? There is some interpretation or explanation. So the Quran tells us to follow the Prophet have a sense of them, right of Quran tells us that he's good example. Or 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 anything you don't understand. Just ask your brother about how to vacuum the car. And you have 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 gonna do you know and watch TV, and they're gonna back in the car. And I've given part of my order is for the one of the brothers to listen to the other brother who's going to tell him what to do. So that's basically what what the Quran does a crown 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 acknowledges this right? So there's not really a debate about this. Yeah, I just as a as a simple Muslim. I just want to

understand the role of the Hadith and I think that's, that's relatively, you know,

well, I would say one thing is that there's Yeah, so we've talked about the Sunnah. So the Sunnah is like this. It's authoritative precedents of the Prophet Muhammad Ali Salam, and it's the infallible interpretation of the Koran. 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 that Prophet said to 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 predicates.

And then the second source of the Sunnah, is essentially

traditions of reasoning, right? So the early companions, when they're coming to an aid when they leave Arabia, and they go to southern Iraq or Syria or Egypt, and they come across new

Do traditions and clothing and practices and communities and technologies and stuff like that? And you have to figure out what how do we act? What how does God want us to act? A lot of times they especially see this with like, Oh, my rental house Bob or your loved one who are highly with nine or, you know, other senior companions. I've been messing Road, Ayesha, right, they'll, there, they'll come to rulings. They don't actually cite the prophet, but they, they've spent decades with him. And they learn how to think like him. So they learn. It's like, I 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, the, the, 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 soda machines, essentially. Right? So they that's why especially in some books of early books in Islamic law and things like that. They'll talk about the Sunnah of the

Prophet and the qualified Russia deed Right? Or they'll talk about the Sunnah of the Prophet and the early Muslims. Why are they talking about the son of the early Muslims that make sense? Because for them, the Sunnah of the early Muslims is actually an extension of the Sunnah of the Prophet they say Islam. 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 a second way of unknowing this one is through his traditional problem solving the Senior Companions learn from the Prophet there's also the third way of knowing the Sunnah is communal practice. So the how Muslims actually acted like, you know,

probably you know, I'm a convert I learned to pray from a book but probably Mohammed you learned 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 caught 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 was saying, okay, there are three three sources to the Sunnah. We're focusing today on Hadith. And I wanted to talk about the authenticity of Hadees, you've obviously covered this topic very, very extensively. I hear

about We hear this all the time I hear there are different levels of Hadith, assuming I haven't gone through the College of Hadith at one of the universities helped me understand how to navigate this space. How do I know that the process LM actually did something? Or said something? Yeah.

Well, okay, first of all, it's important. Remember that, you know, Hadith are the reports about the things that the Prophet said or did these so that 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 prophets own companions did this, right. So we have reports of them doing exactly what we're talking about it what I'm about to talk about, right, which is

the prophets words are put into like a bigger system. And that system includes the Koran, right? It includes other things we know the Prophet said. They said, it includes his sunnah through communal practice, it includes his son, not through traditions of reasoning and problem solving, and we talked about, and so all a 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 set, you know, to, to, you know, try to prevent us having to deal with problematic deeds. No, this is what Muslim scholars have always done. There's no debate about this, right?

So,

that's the first thing to remember is that any Hadith, like even if you're entirely positive, the Prophet said this thing they said salaam, 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 our Shura, and so, which is basically continuation of Jewish Passover celebration, right and the hijas if it's our Shura, then those people who have already eaten today, you should fast the rest of the day and most people have not eaten just keep fasting right. So in this and other heats, suggests very, it doesn't suggest it the Prophet is saying fast Assura

but we don't consider it obligatory to fast shoulder because we know from other ideas and from the communal practice of the Muslims, that after the fast of Ramadan was revealed in the Quran, that becomes the obligatory fast from

Muslims and Assura is just if you want to you can fast, right? So either it was acquired 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, Mohamed, you know,

you should you should drink Gatorade, oh, you're like dehydrated, you should 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 in you know, in a certain speech community, right? You have to know it, 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 you're kind of ordering or asking me about the Gatorade with the prophesy Salem. You're asking me to do a lot like 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 it? 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 case. Because, you know, my biggest fear is hearing something on the minbar or hearing it in 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, there's a couple. 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 mega high bar that have our 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 Malik, for example, the prophet lays out some says, you know, if you go in, if a guy, if you come to drama, and the fatigue, has given a culpa, pray to Raka and then sit down. Now, in the Maliki School of Law, you don't do that. You just go into the Jamaat and you sit down.

Now, the valley keys, 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 early Muslim community that kind of practice communal practice, people wouldn't go and pray two rakaat men sit down. So there's you can see there's a difference. So in order to humbly school, you would pray to rocket 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 shake 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 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 there's a bit of principle that Muslim scholars cite like going back 1000 years, which is that the army law llama tabula, right? The les Muslim has no matter. 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 humbly I'm a

Shafi I'm at this, like they their job, or sometimes they'll say med had been an army that had been 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 blameless, and they're not qualified to go and engage in this process. And 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's trained in what

Watch

how they deal with people's bodies. It's called Doctor right? So, same thing like 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 is early Muslim Hadith scholars shot but I've been on hijab dies around 773 I think he's from Missouri. Right? He says, three quarters of the Hadith 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, they said, salam, there's like an ocean of Fortunately, it's a forge or mistaken, air, air air into deets. 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 Quran, we know the general message of the prophet that is us.

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 Quran says you're prohibited from eating Mita like, you know, dead animals carrying. So if you find Hadith where the the, 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 can say, Oh, this contradicts the grant. So this can't be something that 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 of 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 grant 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 started developed a method where you look at the transmission of the head, you see, okay, 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 somebody saying, Ah, that guy is the only person who inherited this from his teacher, 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 Trent transmitters?

So that's the method they use now. So in theory, right, what would make a hadith sound so here could be if there's a trustworthy transmitter, who heard directly from another trustworthy transmitter who are directly for another trustworthy transmitter back to the prophet

that now that's so he is not but

unless it's like a very strongest net, or unless it's not really a controversial issue that the head is dealing with. What would really make it sound is if there's multiple narrations like if you can imagine like a tree branching out like that, that's what makes something really strong as a tree branching out. It's called the chakra or or like something being well known or widespread. So the the now that's the sort of general rule now the bulk of the important deeds in law like so

you know, how do you do who do what makes water dirty so you can't get you you can't use it for will do right these these idiots 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 they're 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 we those of you that are like the kind of a lot of the main your major needs 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

So you're saying, there's been centuries of work done by scholars way before us? Who would listen to all of these Hadees and categorize them into different categories in terms of sahih, Hasan, etc. And they would generally use three, three criteria. One would be, how trustworthy the narrator was, and in the chain of narration all the way through the process alone, 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 kinds of general. And so what happens then

professor, if someone comes out and says, Okay, that's great.

I liked that methodology. And I accept that methodology. However, most of you have these come from someone like Abu Hurayrah. And then he starts questioning the character of Abu Hurayrah. So first of all, like

I've already or doesn't narrate very many Hadith that are not narrated by other companions. So this idea that somehow, like you can find, you know, if you get rid of the headaches of Abu Huraira, or you've got rid of like all this problematic, this programmatic corpus, that's just not accurate because it doesn't narrate a lot of headaches that are not narrated by other companions. What happens in the,

in the seven hundreds in the eight hundreds, is there's a debate between what would become like the Shafi and humbly schools of law, and what would become the Hanafi school of law, okay. And one of the debates they have is

whether or not the hadith of Abu Huraira are like kind of legally binding, right? So the that there are certain Hadith that the HANA fees or the HANA fees,

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 fapy. He wasn't a jurist like like someone like oh my god, Bob or Aisha was right or even miss rude.

So

that's their, their their criticism, like so that and then, you know, other schools, other scholars disagree with them about that. Now, the point is that so I'm aware of becomes and then there's another issue, which is, a lot of the Shiite attacks on Sunday deeds are also based on what they do is go in and find just like interests in need or interest, Sunni, debatable, however, Herrera, and then they'll start like, kind of inflating that, like blowing that up and making say, look, look, 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 Sunnah of the Prophet. So I want to, I want to

change gears a little bit, just to 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.

You spoke a lot about contexts looking at the context of a hadith that process LM would say, you spoke about, you know, seeking some some support from a scholar following a school of thought

that's already digested a lot of the Hadith to help interpret

the Quran

what if I'm sitting there and on the mimbar the chef is saying something like a very big bold statement. The Hadith of the Prophet is seldom where pasa Selim says that I was ordered, or melatonin or quality of cotton in Neshat. I had to call Leila illAllah. Like that I was ordered to kill everyone. Until they say, Leila Hey, Lola, to fight. Yeah. Or fight everybody. Yeah. So I hear that big bold statement. There are many there are many in our religion that you hear my process. Lm 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 in a in a loop.

Well, I mean, there's no way around, asking people if you don't know you have to ask you, but who knows, right? There's no way around that. Like 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, right? There's no debate about multiple samskaras they don't debate that the Prophet said this right. The The Prophet said

This lays out to them

the

but what but when you put it into that system that bigger system right so we know from the Quran that for example Muslims if you Muslims fight or conquer non Muslims like Jews or Christians or Christians or whatever right so they don't have to take they can continue they can continue practicing their religion they pages you right so right there they don't have to that hadith doesn't apply right so we know that you don't have to fight people until they say Lai La La because these four people to book with practice other religions and the Prophet included you know says like treat Zoroastrians like you treat people to book and then Muslim scholars extended that to Hindus and

Buddhist everybody they met right

that these people continue to continue practicing the religion they just pages Yeah. And Jizya tax then you

you look at like other narrations of this hadith so you there's different narrations of the Hadith. And you see like some narration so necessity says, omitted anakata 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 the Messenger of God, you says I was commanded to fight the polytheists say, 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 you can you practice in your

religion, they don't care. They just say, Okay, you guys keep practicing religion pages? Yeah, it's fine. So when you look at the like, you look at you put this hadith in the context of the Quran, you put this idea in the context of other narrations of that hadith to 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 still working on and 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 had been magic we've done moslem, we've done most of Tirmidhi, we've done

half of Buhari. And

so this is going to be online. But the crucial thing about this is every Hadith has an explanation for it doesn't I mean, if it is not really controversial, you know, it won't have an explanation. But if there's anything about the Hadith, it'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 that go ahead 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 they said to them is a sort of an Asana. And he's a Rama and mercy to humanity to the world. And

the Hadith 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

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 deeds 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 gonna go to school and or they're gonna go to the mosque, and someone's gonna say, this hadith, and you're gonna 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, right? 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 personalities, overall teachings, right. And

so when when I when I always tell my students like, or 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

us. And then you can ask scholars you respect, you can look it up online. I mean, for all we know, and 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 Khadija like rocks, they get 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, right? We're taught to ask for evidence, you know how to put Hana calm and quantum sadaqa. And like the current, we don't believe things Muslims don't book.

That's why I'm Muslim. I'm not required to leave stuff without evidence. I don't have to change my life, or accept the belief without some kind of evidence. So, you know, the for if someone tells you a piece of information, you ask them like, where did you learn this? This is what the robotic said, you know, the first foundation of you know, this Nazareth, authenticating deeds is like, where did you get this information? Where did you get this? Okay, well, I think people can answer that. The second thing is, how does this fit into the bigger system of our religion of our values of RT of the teachings of God and His Prophet? They said to them, and if that person can't give you the answer,

then, you know, I would just not listen to them. And if Yeah, I would look for somebody who can give you the answer, either a scholarly respect or you can find it in books or something like that, right? There's all sorts of resources. Professor Jonathan Brown, because Aquila here. This is your first episode on doubletake and challah, first of many. I appreciate your time, and inshallah See you next time.

Bye Islam. Thanks for inviting me.