Unreliability of Most Transmitted, Oft-Repeated, and Witnessed Hadith

adminsr December 25, 2023

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There are two predominant reasons why a devout adherent of the Quran and a follower of the Prophet Muhammad will solely rely on the Quran alone as their only source of religious law and dismiss all other Hadith.

No Authority

The primary reason is that the Hadith corpus has no authority in the religion and is condemned by name in the Quran.

[45:6] These are GOD’s revelations that we recite to you truthfully. In which Hadith other than GOD and His revelations do they believe?

تِلْكَ ءَايَـٰتُ ٱللَّهِ نَتْلُوهَا عَلَيْكَ بِٱلْحَقِّ فَبِأَىِّ حَدِيثٍۭ بَعْدَ ٱللَّهِ وَءَايَـٰتِهِۦ يُؤْمِنُونَ

[77:50] Which Hadith, other than this, do they uphold?

فَبِأَىِّ حَدِيثٍۭ بَعْدَهُۥ يُؤْمِنُونَ

[31:6] Among the people, there are those who uphold baseless Hadith, and thus divert others from the path of GOD without knowledge, and take it in vain. These have incurred a shameful retribution.

وَمِنَ ٱلنَّاسِ مَن يَشْتَرِى لَهْوَ ٱلْحَدِيثِ لِيُضِلَّ عَن سَبِيلِ ٱللَّهِ بِغَيْرِ عِلْمٍ وَيَتَّخِذَهَا هُزُوًا أُو۟لَـٰٓئِكَ لَهُمْ عَذَابٌ مُّهِينٌ

[6:114] Shall I seek other than GOD as a source of law, when He has revealed to you this book fully detailed? Those who received the scripture recognize that it has been revealed from your Lord, truthfully. You shall not harbor any doubt.

أَفَغَيْرَ ٱللَّهِ أَبْتَغِى حَكَمًا وَهُوَ ٱلَّذِىٓ أَنزَلَ إِلَيْكُمُ ٱلْكِتَـٰبَ مُفَصَّلًا وَٱلَّذِينَ ءَاتَيْنَـٰهُمُ ٱلْكِتَـٰبَ يَعْلَمُونَ أَنَّهُۥ مُنَزَّلٌ مِّن رَّبِّكَ بِٱلْحَقِّ فَلَا تَكُونَنَّ مِنَ ٱلْمُمْتَرِينَ

[6:115] The word of your Lord is complete, in truth and justice. Nothing shall abrogate His words. He is the Hearer, the Omniscient.

وَتَمَّتْ كَلِمَتُ رَبِّكَ صِدْقًا وَعَدْلًا لَّا مُبَدِّلَ لِكَلِمَـٰتِهِۦ وَهُوَ ٱلسَّمِيعُ ٱلْعَلِيمُ

Lack of Authenticity

The secondary reason is that Hadith are highly inauthentic, making the entire corpus incredibly unreliable. For example, there are numerous contradicting reports regarding the most basic facts about the prophet and the religion.

Traditionalists often accuse individuals who reject the authenticity of Hadith besides the Quran of cherry-picking Hadith and rejecting the authenticity of the entire corpus based on some fringe Hadith. To refute such a claim, let’s gauge the reliability of Hadith based on what should be considered the most reputable Hadith found in their entire Hadith corpus.

For this analysis, we will use three of the most cut-and-dry examples:

The most mass-transmitted Hadith
The most oft-repeated statement supposedly made by the prophet
The most widely witnessed Hadith ever stated in the prophet’s whole life

We will demonstrate that the Hadith corpus is still highly unreliable even among these three most notable cases.

Example # 1: The Most Widely Transmitted Hadith

Besides the Quran, one Hadith is considered the most widely transmitted Hadith in all the Hadith corpus. This Hadith has more narrators than any other Hadith and consists of only a single sentence. Yet, there is a dispute regarding the exact wording of this Hadith. In addition to minor differences in the various narrations, there also exists a major point of contention that has implications on the entire Hadith corpus based on which narration is accepted.

The Hadith has the basic structure that claims the prophet said, “Whoever lies about me should take their seat in the Hellfire.” This Hadith is supposedly transmitted by some seventy different companions and is considered the most widely propagated Hadith in the entire Hadith corpus.

As ibn al-Salah (d. 643/1245), the most famous scholar of hadith criticism in the later period, explained, at most one hadith [‘Whoever lies about me, let him prepare for himself a seat in the Hellfire.’] would meet the requirements for mutawatir.

Hadith Muhammad’s Legacy in Medieval and Modern World p. 109
Ibn al-Salah, Muqaddima p. 454

While this Hadith contains many subtle variations in syntax that are inconsequential to the overall meaning, there are two flavors of this Hadith that, depending on which one a person chooses to follow, will have significant implications for the overall validity of the entire Sunni corpus.

This is because some of the narrations claim the lie must be deliberate ( مُتَعَمِّدًا ), while others have no indication that this is limited to deliberate lies. This is not a subtle difference because if someone is to take the more conservative approach, then even if someone unintentionally lies about the prophet, attributing something to him that he did not say, they would be securing their seat in the Hellfire. Therefore, anyone who mistakenly attributes any inaccurate statement to the prophet would be condemning themselves to Hell. The reason this would be so highly problematic for all Hadith is that no scholar claims that the Hadith are verbatim statements from the prophet. This is perfectly encompassed in the following statement attributed to the most famous successor Hasan al-Basri:

The Companion Wathila b. Asqa‘ had admitted that sometimes the early Muslims even confused the exact wording of the Quran, which was universally well-known and well-preserved. So how, he asked, could one expect any less in the case of a report that the Prophet had said just once? Al-Hasan al-Basri is reported to have said, If we only narrated to you what we could repeat word for word, we would only narrate two hadiths.

Hadith Muhammad s Legacy in the Medieval and Modern World p. 24

This shows that the most widely transmitted Hadith in the entire corpus is not only not a verbatim speech of the prophet, but even the exact meaning is uncertain. Therefore, if the most highly transmitted statement in the entire corpus, which consists of only a single sentence, is unreliable, how less reliable are all other Hadith?

For a complete analysis of this Hadith and its variations, you can check out the following article.

Example #2: The Most Oft-Repeated Hadith

The Tashahhud ( تَشَهُّد ) is the testimony of faith which is to be recited during Salat while in the sitting position. It is derived from the shahadah ( ٱلشَّهَادَةُ ), which occurs in various forms throughout the Quran approximately thirty-plus times.

[3:18] GOD bears witness that there is no god except He, and so do the angels and those who possess knowledge. Truthfully and equitably, He is the absolute god; there is no god but He, the Almighty, Most Wise.

شَهِدَ اللَّهُ أَنَّهُ لَا إِلَٰهَ إِلَّا هُوَ وَالْمَلَائِكَةُ وَأُولُو الْعِلْمِ قَائِمًا بِالْقِسْطِ لَا إِلَٰهَ إِلَّا هُوَ الْعَزِيزُ الْحَكِيمُ

[Sura 47 “Muhammad”:19] You shall know that: “There is no other god beside GOD,” and ask forgiveness of your sins and the sins of all believing men and women. GOD is fully aware of your decisions and your ultimate destiny.

فَاعْلَمْ أَنَّهُ لَا إِلَٰهَ إِلَّا اللَّهُ وَاسْتَغْفِرْ لِذَنْبِكَ وَلِلْمُؤْمِنِينَ وَالْمُؤْمِنَاتِ وَاللَّهُ يَعْلَمُ مُتَقَلَّبَكُمْ وَمَثْوَاكُمْ

Let’s consider that the prophet made this statement multiple times daily and was heard repeatedly by hundreds if not thousands of companions throughout his prophethood. We can comfortably say that this is single-handedly one of the most oft-repeated statements of the prophet during his whole life. Therefore, we would expect that there should be an absolute consensus among all the companions regarding the exact wording for this most prolific statement from the prophet, yet when we search the Hadith corpus, we see this is not the case.

What else is interesting is that many of these narrations state that “The Messenger of Allah (ﷺ) used to teach us tashahhud just as he used to teach us a Surah of the Qur’an.” If this were true, one would expect to see every narration regarding how to state the tashahhud to be identical, as this is what we find in the Quran. However, this is not the case, as there are numerous variations of this statement. Below are some of the multiple narrations of the supposed tashahhud of the prophet:

Sahih Muslim 403a https://sunnah.com/muslim:403a Sunan Abi Dawud 974 https://sunnah.com/abudawud:974 Jami` at-Tirmidhi 290 https://sunnah.com/tirmidhi:290	‏ التَّحِيَّاتُ الْمُبَارَكَاتُ الصَّلَوَاتُ الطَّيِّبَاتُ لِلَّهِ السَّلاَمُ عَلَيْكَ أَيُّهَا النَّبِيُّ وَرَحْمَةُ اللَّهِ وَبَرَكَاتُهُ السَّلاَمُ عَلَيْنَا وَعَلَى عِبَادِ اللَّهِ الصَّالِحِينَ أَشْهَدُ أَنْ لاَ إِلَهَ إِلاَّ اللَّهُ وَأَشْهَدُ أَنَّ مُحَمَّدًا رَسُولُ اللَّهِ ‏	All greetings, all blessings, all prayers, all good deeds are for God. The peace upon you, O prophet, and God’s mercy and His blessings. The peace upon us, and upon the righteous servants of God. I bear witness that there is no god except God, and I bear witness that Muhammad is a messenger of God.
Sahih Muslim 404a https://sunnah.com/muslim:404a	التَّحِيَّاتُ الطَّيِّبَاتُ الصَّلَوَاتُ لِلَّهِ السَّلاَمُ عَلَيْكَ أَيُّهَا النَّبِيُّ وَرَحْمَةُ اللَّهِ وَبَرَكَاتُهُ السَّلاَمُ عَلَيْنَا وَعَلَى عِبَادِ اللَّهِ الصَّالِحِينَ أَشْهَدُ أَنْ لاَ إِلَهَ إِلاَّ اللَّهُ وَأَشْهَدُ أَنَّ مُحَمَّدًا عَبْدُهُ وَرَسُولُهُ	All greetings, all good deeds, all prayers are for God. Peace be upon you, O prophet, and God’s mercy and His blessings. Peace upon us, and upon the rightoues servants of God. I bear witness that there is no god except God, and I bear witness that Muhammad is His servant and His messenger.
Sunan an-Nasa’i 1164 https://sunnah.com/nasai:1164 Sunan Ibn Majah 899 https://sunnah.com/ibnmajah:899 Mishkat al-Masabih 3149 https://sunnah.com/mishkat:3149 Sunan an-Nasa’i 1170 https://sunnah.com/nasai:1170 Sunan an-Nasa’i 1171 https://sunnah.com/nasai:1171 Sunan an-Nasa’i 1277 https://sunnah.com/nasai:1277 Sunan Ibn Majah 900 https://sunnah.com/ibnmajah:900	التَّحِيَّاتُ لِلَّهِ وَالصَّلَوَاتُ وَالطَّيِّبَاتُ السَّلاَمُ عَلَيْكَ أَيُّهَا النَّبِيُّ وَرَحْمَةُ اللَّهِ وَبَرَكَاتُهُ السَّلاَمُ عَلَيْنَا وَعَلَى عِبَادِ اللَّهِ الصَّالِحِينَ أَشْهَدُ أَنْ لاَ إِلَهَ إِلاَّ اللَّهُ وَأَشْهَدُ أَنَّ مُحَمَّدًا عَبْدُهُ وَرَسُولُهُ	All greetings to God and prayers and good deeds. Peace be upon you, O prophet, and God’s mercy and His blessings. Peace be upon us and upon the rightoeus servants of God. I bear witness that there is no god except God, and I bear witness that Muhammad is His servant and His messenger.
Sunan an-Nasa’i 1174 https://sunnah.com/nasai:1174	التَّحِيَّاتُ الْمُبَارَكَاتُ الصَّلَوَاتُ الطَّيِّبَاتُ لِلَّهِ سَلاَمٌ عَلَيْكَ أَيُّهَا النَّبِيُّ وَرَحْمَةُ اللَّهِ وَبَرَكَاتُهُ سَلاَمٌ عَلَيْنَا وَعَلَى عِبَادِ اللَّهِ الصَّالِحِينَ أَشْهَدُ أَنْ لاَ إِلَهَ إِلاَّ اللَّهُ وَأَشْهَدُ أَنَّ مُحَمَّدًا عَبْدُهُ وَرَسُولُهُ	All greetings, all blessings, all prayers, all good deeds are for God. Peace be upon you, O prophet, and God’s mercy and His blessings. Peace upon us, and upon the rightoues servants of God. I bear witness that there is no god except God, and I bear witness that Muhammad is His servant and His messenger.
Mishkat al-Masabih 916 https://sunnah.com/mishkat:916 Sunan an-Nasa’i 1175 https://sunnah.com/nasai:1175	بِسم الله وَبِاللَّهِ التَّحِيَّاتُ لِلَّهِ وَالصَّلَوَاتُ وَالطَّيِّبَاتُ السَّلَامُ عَلَيْكَ أَيُّهَا النَّبِيُّ وَرَحْمَةُ اللَّهِ وَبَرَكَاتُهُ السَّلَامُ عَلَيْنَا وَعَلَى عِبَادِ اللَّهِ الصَّالِحِينَ أَشْهَدُ أَنْ لَا إِلَهَ إِلَّا اللَّهُ وَأَشْهَدُ أَنَّ مُحَمَّدًا عَبْدُهُ وَرَسُولُهُ أَسْأَلُ اللَّهَ الْجَنَّةَ وَأَعُوذُ بِاللَّهِ مِنَ النَّارِ	In the name of God and with God. All greetings are for God, and prayers, and good deeds. Peace be upon you, O prophet, and God’s mercy and His blessings. Peace be upon us, and upon God’s righteous servants. I bear witness that there is no god except God, and I bear witness that Muhammad is His servant and His messenger. I ask God for Paradise, and I seek refuge in God from the Fire.
Muwatta Malik https://sunnah.com/malik/3/56	التَّحِيَّاتُ لِلَّهِ الزَّاكِيَاتُ لِلَّهِ الطَّيِّبَاتُ الصَّلَوَاتُ لِلَّهِ السَّلاَمُ عَلَيْكَ أَيُّهَا النَّبِيُّ وَرَحْمَةُ اللَّهِ وَبَرَكَاتُهُ السَّلاَمُ عَلَيْنَا وَعَلَى عِبَادِ اللَّهِ الصَّالِحِينَ أَشْهَدُ أَنْ لاَ إِلَهَ إِلاَّ اللَّهُ وَأَشْهَدُ أَنَّ مُحَمَّدًا عَبْدُهُ وَرَسُولُهُ	All greetings to God. All purity to God. All good deeds, all prayers are for God. Peace upon you, O prophet, and God’s mercy and His blessings. Peace upon us and upon God’s righteous servants. I bear witness that there is no god except God, and I bear witness that Muhammad is His servant and His messenger.

Again, if this most oft-repeated statement made by the prophet, which was supposedly taught to his companions no different than the verses of the Quran, is unreliable, how less reliable are all other Hadith?

For a more in-depth look into these various narrations, check out the following article.

Example #3: The Single Most Widely Heard Hadith During the Prophet’s Life

Despite there not existing a single sermon from the prophet that is transcribed from start to finish in the entire Hadith corpus, the most widely heard sermon that he gave in his whole life would be the one he supposedly gave during what is known as the Farewell Pilgrimage, Ḥijjatu Al-Wadāʿ ( حِجَّة ٱلْوَدَاع ), in the Islamic year 10 AH, following the Conquest of Mecca.

It is believed that there were over 10,000 people in the audience for this sermon. This would make this the most widely heard statement from the prophet in his entire life. Yet not only did not a single person fully document what was said, but the Hadith is even unsure regarding the exact location of the sermon, with some narrations claiming Mina while others Arafat.

Instead, what we find regarding the sermon in the Hadith corpus, on top of the confusion regarding the exact location, are various narrations that conflict with one another regarding what was stated in this sermon. The critical difference between these narrations lies with what the prophet supposedly claimed to have left for the believers to keep them from being misguided. Depending on the narration, there are one of four options.

“I left for you what if you hold up to, you will never be misguided, the book of God.”
“I left for you what if you hold up to, you will never be misguided, the book of God and my Family, the people of the house.”
“I left for you what if you hold up to, you will never be misguided, the book of God and my Sunnah.”
- Ibn Ishaq, as quoted in Ibn Hisham’s Sirah an-Nabawiyah (with no isnad)
“I enjoin you to fear Allah, and to hear and obey (your leaders) even if it be an Abyssinian (Ethiopian) slave, for those of you who live after me will see great disagreement. You must then follow my Sunnah and that of the rightly-guided caliphs.”

As seen above, these are not minor differences but have significant implications based on which statement the prophet said, if any. The fact that there is no consensus regarding what the prophet stated regarding the single most widely heard sermon of his entire life again reinforces that Hadith are highly unreliable. If the Hadith is not reliable to inform us what the prophet said when potentially ten thousand supposedly witnessed such a sermon, how less reliable are all the other Hadith?

For an analysis of these four variations, check out the following article.

Conclusion

This shows that individuals who claim that the Hadith are unreliable are not doing this because they are cherry-picking questionable Hadith. Even among the most prominent examples where one should expect that if there is any authenticity to the Hadith, it should be visible in these examples, the Hadith literature repeatedly fails. It fails to determine the exact wording and meaning of the single sentence that is considered the most mass-transmitted statement in the entire corpus. It fails to provide the exact wording for the tashahhud which should be the most oft-repeated statement made by the prophet throughout his whole life. And it fails to give a consistent account regarding what the prophet supposedly stated during the most widely heard sermon of his life. So if the Hadith fails again and again on what should be its most ironclad narrations, how less reliable should one consider Hadith for all other matters?