First the Qur’an called into question, now the hadith

By Abdul Masih —

Five years ago, respected Muslim Yasir Qadhi made a huge admission publicly that vaporized a major sales point for Islam: The Qur’an is NOT perfectly preserved after all.

Now the Yale University PhD has done it again, this time bringing collapse to the other base of Islam, the hadiths. On July 9 of this year, he admitted publicly: “Nobody in the academy affirms the Muslim Sunni science of hadith. Nobody. It is considered to be completely discredited.”

“This whole hadith issue is a very, very big problem. It endangers Islam itself,” says Ridvan Aydemir, an ex-Muslim originally from Turkey. “In order to authenticate or verify the Qur’an, you have to rely on the hadiths. If the hadith science starts to fall apart and there is no real way to affirm their authenticity, they also have to call the Qur’an in question because the Qur’an is authenticated by the hadiths.”

Islam is like a suspended bridge held by two towers: the Qur’an and the hadiths. If neither is reliable, the bridge falls into the river.

“Without hadith, they don’t know how to walk, how to live, how to eat, how to pray,” says former Muslim Hatun Tash, of the U.K. “Muslims cannot be Muslim without hadith.”

For decades, Islam’s promoters insisted: the Qur’an was perfectly preserved by Allah to the letter, and the hadiths were verifiable sayings, actions and dispositions of the Prophet Muhammed. Their propaganda strengthened the faith of millions of Muslims AND persuaded non-Muslims to convert (they call it, “revert“).

Without the hadiths, core Islamic practices like ritual prayer and Hajj (pilgrimage to Mecca), which rely on hadith for details not found in the Qur’an, lack any foundation whatsoever. What is the believing Muslim left with?

Qadhi has provided Christians who reach out to Muslims with a windfall. Because he straddles two worlds — Western academia and devout Islam — Qadhi is in a difficult position. If he lies about academia, he discredits himself as a genuine scholar. But if tells the truth about academia, Muslims turn viciously against him (and others abandon Islam).

The hadiths are shored up (in the Muslim mind) by the isnads, the chains of oral transmission. They’re a list of names, reputed faithful followers, who related the prophet’s life and message from generation to generation.

Depending on the isnads and the copyist, hadiths are rated on a six-level scale of strong Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī (most assuredly authentic) to weak Sunan Ibn Mājah (dubious). This scale is according to the Sunnis.

The most authoritative hadiths (Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī ) were compiled by Imam Muhammad ibn Ismaʿil al-Bukhari from modern-day Uzbekistan in around 846 BC. That’s 214 years after the supposed death of Muhammed (632 BC). It’s also 2,150 miles away from the action, where Islam supposedly arose in Mecca.

That’s like asking what George Washington said without any recorded historical documents, just based on what your Great Great Great Great Grandparents told their kids who in turn passed in down. It’s also like asking an American to comment on the inner workings of politics in Britain.

“The hadith methodology is garbage,” said Dr. David Wood. “It’s considered completely discredited by actual historians. People who are trained historians look at that methodology and they think it’s a joke. Yasir Qadhi just admitted it.”

Wood got into debating Muslims when he tried to get his roommate in college saved. Nabeel Qureshi did in fact get saved and became one of the first and outspoken converts from Islam to start exposing it. Since that singular success, Wood studied Islam all the way up to PhD and continues to be a prominent debater and exposer of Islam on YouTube.

After a couple of decades of exposing the credibility problem of both the Qur’an and the hadiths only to have Muslims retort “You’re a liar,” Wood finds himself exhilarated with Qadhi’s unforced admissions. “Yasir Qadhi is the gift that keeps giving,” Wood says.

For his part, Qadhi says he just keeps compartmentalized the two worlds he walks in. In the academic world, he doesn’t accept the legitimacy of the hadiths. In the Muslim world, he completely accepts their authenticity. And that’s how Yasir Qadhi does it.

Related content: Muslims are converting because of dreams, he married a Hindu and became a Christian, for leaving Islam he was beaten with bats.