WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:02.180 Have you ever thought about where Islamic teachings 00:00:02.180 --> 00:00:05.419 really come from apart from the Quran? When Muslims 00:00:05.419 --> 00:00:07.980 talk about guidance from God, most people immediately 00:00:07.980 --> 00:00:10.880 think of the Quran. But in truth, the majority 00:00:10.880 --> 00:00:14.039 of Islamic law and daily practice comes from 00:00:14.039 --> 00:00:16.920 another collection of writings known as the Hadith. 00:00:17.140 --> 00:00:20.160 Now here is an important question. Are all Hadith 00:00:20.160 --> 00:00:23.480 collections the same? Not exactly. The Sunni 00:00:23.480 --> 00:00:26.039 and the Shiite branches of Islam follow different 00:00:26.039 --> 00:00:28.929 collections. Since more than 80 % of Muslims 00:00:28.929 --> 00:00:31.710 in the world are Sunni, we will focus here on 00:00:31.710 --> 00:00:35.350 the Sunni Hadith collections. Sunni Islam recognizes 00:00:35.350 --> 00:00:38.710 six main collections of Hadiths. These were gathered 00:00:38.710 --> 00:00:42.950 by Bukhari, Muslim, Abu Dawud, Ibn Majah, al 00:00:42.950 --> 00:00:46.570 -Tirmidhi, and al -Nasari. Among these, Bukhari's 00:00:46.570 --> 00:00:49.409 collection stands above the rest. It is considered 00:00:49.409 --> 00:00:52.350 the most authentic and respected by Sunni Muslims. 00:00:53.049 --> 00:00:55.590 Right behind it in authority is the collection 00:00:55.590 --> 00:00:59.149 made by Imam Muslim. But let's step back and 00:00:59.149 --> 00:01:01.909 think about how far these works came after the 00:01:01.909 --> 00:01:04.890 time of Muhammad. Imam Bukhari was born in the 00:01:04.890 --> 00:01:08.650 year 194 after the Hijrah. That is more than 00:01:08.650 --> 00:01:12.650 180 years after Muhammad's death, over a century 00:01:12.650 --> 00:01:15.569 later than the earliest biographer Ibn Ishaq, 00:01:15.750 --> 00:01:19.189 and around 28 years before the historian al -Tabari 00:01:19.189 --> 00:01:22.129 was born. So we are already talking about sources 00:01:22.129 --> 00:01:24.930 written many generations after the original events. 00:01:25.170 --> 00:01:27.930 And yet these sources became the foundation for 00:01:27.930 --> 00:01:30.769 Islamic tradition and law. Bukhari reportedly 00:01:30.769 --> 00:01:35.170 collected over 300 ,000 sayings or hadiths attributed 00:01:35.170 --> 00:01:38.790 to Muhammad. He personally memorized about 200 00:01:38.790 --> 00:01:41.829 ,000 of them. But even he admitted that many 00:01:41.829 --> 00:01:44.969 were unreliable. Bukhari lived in a time when 00:01:44.969 --> 00:01:48.049 false hadiths were being invented either to please 00:01:48.049 --> 00:01:51.549 political rulers or to influence Islamic teaching. 00:01:51.930 --> 00:01:54.930 Imagine the task before him. He had to separate 00:01:54.930 --> 00:01:58.209 genuine traditions from fabrications. After years 00:01:58.209 --> 00:02:03.510 of work, he ended up selecting only about 7 ,275 00:02:03.510 --> 00:02:06.430 hadiths that he considered completely trustworthy. 00:02:06.890 --> 00:02:09.490 Think about that for a moment. That means he 00:02:09.490 --> 00:02:13.389 rejected over 97 % of what he collected as questionable 00:02:13.389 --> 00:02:17.199 or false. So it is fair to ask, How much confidence 00:02:17.199 --> 00:02:20.599 can we place in these remaining 3 %? After all, 00:02:20.639 --> 00:02:23.800 Bukhari's standard of reliability was based mostly 00:02:23.800 --> 00:02:26.080 on the reputation of the people who transmitted 00:02:26.080 --> 00:02:29.099 each tradition. This link of transmitters is 00:02:29.099 --> 00:02:32.159 called the isnad. The moral integrity of each 00:02:32.159 --> 00:02:34.560 person in that chain is called their adalah, 00:02:34.860 --> 00:02:39.020 or reliability. Based on these isnads, hadiths 00:02:39.020 --> 00:02:41.680 are grouped into categories. A hadith called 00:02:41.680 --> 00:02:45.639 sahih means sound, or highly reliable. Hassan 00:02:45.639 --> 00:02:48.400 means good, but not as strong as Sahih. Daif 00:02:48.400 --> 00:02:51.060 means weak, often because of missing people in 00:02:51.060 --> 00:02:54.300 the chain or untrustworthy transmitters. And 00:02:54.300 --> 00:02:57.020 Maudu means a hadith that is suspected to be 00:02:57.020 --> 00:03:00.060 entirely fabricated. A hadith that appears in 00:03:00.060 --> 00:03:02.580 several different Isnad chains is considered 00:03:02.580 --> 00:03:05.599 more reliable and is called Mutawatir, meaning 00:03:05.599 --> 00:03:08.759 corroborated. But even those have the same human 00:03:08.759 --> 00:03:11.590 problems of transmission and memory. To give 00:03:11.590 --> 00:03:14.009 an example of how short or long these chains 00:03:14.009 --> 00:03:18.090 might be, Ibn Ishaq, the early biographer, often 00:03:18.090 --> 00:03:20.830 had only three or four names in a chain of narration. 00:03:21.610 --> 00:03:24.669 Tabari the historian often recorded five or more. 00:03:24.969 --> 00:03:27.849 Yet, at the end of the day, each person could 00:03:27.849 --> 00:03:30.150 only vouch for the one who told them the story 00:03:30.150 --> 00:03:32.849 directly. What happened further down the chain 00:03:32.849 --> 00:03:36.289 was never fully verifiable. And here we hit a 00:03:36.289 --> 00:03:39.310 serious problem. If most of Islamic law depends 00:03:39.310 --> 00:03:42.419 on these hadiths, then knowing who was a reliable 00:03:42.419 --> 00:03:45.580 Muslim becomes essential. And how much information 00:03:45.580 --> 00:03:48.060 does anyone really have about the honesty or 00:03:48.060 --> 00:03:50.280 memory of people who lived centuries before? 00:03:50.740 --> 00:03:53.319 The Quran itself even teaches that a woman's 00:03:53.319 --> 00:03:56.400 testimony counts as half that of a man. This 00:03:56.400 --> 00:04:00.240 is found in Surah 2, verse 282, as translated 00:04:00.240 --> 00:04:03.099 by Pickthall. It says that if two men are not 00:04:03.099 --> 00:04:05.620 available, then one man and two women may testify, 00:04:06.000 --> 00:04:08.759 so that if one woman forgets, the other can remind 00:04:08.759 --> 00:04:11.539 her. Now pair that with a hadith in Bukhari's 00:04:11.539 --> 00:04:16.199 collection in Book 1, Volume 6, Hadith 301. In 00:04:16.199 --> 00:04:18.579 it, Muhammad is reported to have told a group 00:04:18.579 --> 00:04:21.240 of women that most of those in hell would be 00:04:21.240 --> 00:04:24.319 women because they are ungrateful and that they 00:04:24.319 --> 00:04:27.480 are deficient in intelligence and religion. He 00:04:27.480 --> 00:04:29.720 explained that the witness of two women equals 00:04:29.720 --> 00:04:33.019 that of one man and that a woman cannot pray 00:04:33.019 --> 00:04:36.439 or fast during her menstrual period. When you 00:04:36.439 --> 00:04:38.980 put these teachings together, They describe women 00:04:38.980 --> 00:04:42.420 as spiritually and intellectually weaker. Yet 00:04:42.420 --> 00:04:44.399 when you look through early Islamic sources, 00:04:44.699 --> 00:04:47.819 many hadiths actually came from women, and in 00:04:47.819 --> 00:04:51.639 some cases, from a woman alone. Aisha in particular 00:04:51.639 --> 00:04:55.040 was the sole source for hundreds of hadiths that 00:04:55.040 --> 00:04:58.079 later shaped Islamic law. According to historical 00:04:58.079 --> 00:05:02.579 records, she transmitted more than 2 ,200 hadiths. 00:05:02.579 --> 00:05:05.639 About 300 of those appear in both Sahih Bukhari 00:05:05.639 --> 00:05:09.250 and Sahih Muslim. So if the system says that 00:05:09.250 --> 00:05:12.389 a woman's testimony counts as half, then logically 00:05:12.389 --> 00:05:15.629 those hadiths should be viewed as unreliable. 00:05:15.790 --> 00:05:19.089 But they are not. Instead, Aisha is treated as 00:05:19.089 --> 00:05:22.149 one of the most trusted transmitters. This creates 00:05:22.149 --> 00:05:25.230 a serious inconsistency inside the very structure 00:05:25.230 --> 00:05:28.589 of Islamic tradition. If gender invalidates one's 00:05:28.589 --> 00:05:31.449 reliability in court testimony, then how can 00:05:31.449 --> 00:05:34.089 the same gender serve as the foundation of countless 00:05:34.089 --> 00:05:37.230 sacred sayings? And this raises a final question 00:05:37.230 --> 00:05:40.509 for every listener to consider. If Muslims trust 00:05:40.509 --> 00:05:43.129 these complex chains of transmission created 00:05:43.129 --> 00:05:46.529 centuries after Muhammad's life, why do many 00:05:46.529 --> 00:05:49.689 of them outright reject the New Testament? The 00:05:49.689 --> 00:05:51.810 writers of the New Testament were either direct 00:05:51.810 --> 00:05:55.050 followers of Jesus or close associates of those 00:05:55.050 --> 00:05:57.709 who knew him personally. They lived in the same 00:05:57.709 --> 00:06:00.689 generation or the one immediately after. Their 00:06:00.689 --> 00:06:03.050 chains of transmission were much shorter and 00:06:03.050 --> 00:06:05.430 far more traceable than those of the Hadith. 00:06:05.769 --> 00:06:08.470 Ironically, even Imam Bukhari himself believed 00:06:08.470 --> 00:06:11.329 that the Bible had been given by God and was 00:06:11.329 --> 00:06:14.430 trustworthy in its original form. So we end up 00:06:14.430 --> 00:06:17.449 with this fascinating contrast. The Hadith with 00:06:17.449 --> 00:06:20.589 long and uncertain chains are accepted as the 00:06:20.589 --> 00:06:23.689 foundation of Islamic life, while the New Testament 00:06:23.689 --> 00:06:26.790 with short and verifiable chains is dismissed. 00:06:27.170 --> 00:06:30.170 For anyone studying religion seriously, this 00:06:30.170 --> 00:06:32.990 should make us stop and think. What standard 00:06:32.990 --> 00:06:35.009 of evidence do we truly follow and why?