Gender Issues and the Search for a Hadith: A Journey in Scholarly Due Diligence

Abstract

Hadith are the second source of the Islamic way of life in general and of Islamic law and jurisprudence in particular. From a religious perspective, whether in matters of faith or practice, the details of Muslim life are shaped by hadith as the Qur’an, the revealed source of Islam, mostly provides guidance without relevant details. Thus, hadith play a key role in Islamic religious discourse. For this reason, the authentication of hadith has been a pivotal enterprise in Islamic history. From the earliest period, many hadith appeared that later came to be classified by hadith experts as spurious. One might expect that, by now, Muslims would have become sufficiently circumspect to prevent misattribution of sayings to the Prophet. Indeed, it might be thought that, since all the hadith collections are already in place, there is no room for accretions or distortion of hadith. However, this paper deals with the case of a modern accretion to an otherwise authenticated hadith. While this might not be common, it calls for further circumspection and due diligence by Muslim scholars and other experts.