The acceptance of Hadith and its criteria among scholars of Hadith and theoreticians of the foundations of Islamic law

The acceptance of Hadith and its criteria among scholars of Hadith and theoreticians of the foundations of Islamic law, by Mutaz Alkhatib

Mutaz Alkhatib is professor of methodology and ethics at CILE. He followed a course in Islamic studies at Damascus Gicence, 1997) and Arabic literature at Al-Azhar University in Cairo (license, 1998). He obtained a doctorate in 2009 with a thesis on “Textual criticism of hadith: study of the methods of traditionalists (muhaddithün) and legal theorists (usôliyyän)”. He was guest professor at the ZMO in Belin (2006), guest researcher at the Forum Transegionale Studien, Berlin (2012-2013), 1 is a member of the Paris Forum for Critical Thinking. He has also been a guest lecturer at various academic institutions, including the University of California, Berkeley School of Law (Boalt Hal): Institute for Transregional Studies of the Contemporary Middle East, North Africa and Central Asia at Princeton University; Institute for the Near and Middle East of the Ludwig-Mavimilians University, Munich; and the University of Osnabrtick, Germany.

It is important to emphasize that the purpose of this book and the preceding one is to describe the methodology followed by the scholars of hadith and by those of the foundations of law in the acceptance and rejection of hadith, bringing together the various questions around the principles founders from whom they derive. This sometimes leads us to address questions that may seem far removed from the issue of acceptance and rejection and their respective criteria, within the framework of a more in-depth analysis taking into account the fact that an overall vision must bring together all the scattered questions and bring them back to the fundamentals. Furthermore, I am not in favor of one position rather than another; on the contrary, I sometimes try to explain a point of view to which I do not adhere. Indeed, the aim here is not to take a position but to clarify as best as possible the perspective of each category of scholars, starting from the principle that knowledge implies knowledge of all aspects of a question.