Moulana Soldier (as you have come out from Patari)that you are a Mullah......I REJECT Bukhari and company as they were responsible to destroy true sense of Islam (probably it was not his intention, but result is unfortunate) I wish Bukhari and others should not collect any Hadith, WHY they did it??
Sahi bukhari is authentic book after Quran, It's rejection mean u directly rejecting the Sunna of Prophet
The Nature Of Hadith Collections Of Imam Al-Bukhari & Muslim
Intoduction
Over the years, Christian missionaries have solidified their reputation for embracing zealous new recruits. One fresh addition to this delegation of holy servicemen is the neophyte, Andrew Vargo. More often than not, the missionaries have overlooked the academic backgrounds of these fresh recruits, apparently intoxicated by their impassioned hatred for Islam. Mr. Vargo has recently tried his hand as a student of comparative religion, introducing some of the most fantastic ideas yet to the discourse. Among these ideas is a rather boastful claim concerning the collection of ahadith by the great Muslim scholar, Imam al-Bukhari (d. 256 AH). The highlight of Vargo's claim lies in the following:
In fact, it is difficult, in spite of the Muslim "science" of Hadith to know which traditions are strong or weak! For example, Bukhari collected over 600,000 reports, but kept only 7,397 as true!
This is one of the most popular claims concerning the vast collection of ahadith of al-Bukhari in the Christian missionary literature and comes with fanciful explanations. For example, Anis Shorrosh, a well-known Arab missionary, says:
... Bukhari, collected twenty thousand of them, of which he rejected ten thousand, accounting them untrue. Of the remaining ten thousand he accepted only 7,275, declaring the rest to be untrustworthy. Abu Da'ud accepted as authentic only 4,800 rules out 50,000.
Similarly we find Norman Geisler and Abdul Saleeb claiming that:
...Bukhari, considered to be the most reliable collector, admitted that of the 300,000 hadith he collected, he considered only 100,000 might be true. He then narrowed this number down to 7,275, many of which are repetitions so that the total number is in fact near 3,000. That means that even he admitted there were errors in over 295,000 of them!
Nearly a similar statement is repeated by Geisler in his Baker Encyclopedia Of Christian Apologetics to cast doubts on the miracles performed by the Prophet Muhammad. Abdiyah Akbar Abdul-Haqq, on the other hand, labels what al-Bukhari did not include in his collection as "apocryphal".
As to the abundance of the apocryphal traditions, we learn that the famous authority al-Bukhari choose only 7,000 out of a host of 600,000 traditions that were current in his on time.
Similar statements were made by John Ankerberg and John Weldon, who quoted a "Muslim scholar".[5]
Not surprising is the case of Rand Corporation, who have published an interesting report on Islam entitled "Civil Democratic Islam: Partners, Resources, and Strategies". The report has two fold agenda: firstly, to try to create a version of Islam that suits the post-9/11 Western agenda and secondly encouraging creation of divisions in the Muslim society at home and abroad. The Rand Report's recipe to achieve this aim is to encourage and promote the so-called modernist Muslims and play one section of the society against another to split the Muslim society. A small example of it can be seen when the report uses the material from the hadith-rejectors (not surprisingly!) to claim "objectively" that:
Even if that were not the case, objectively speaking, there is little doubt that hadith is at best a dubious, flawed instrument. Consider that Al-Bukhari is the compiler of what is generally considered to be the most authoritative and reliable collections of hadith. He collected 600,000 hadith, examined them for their authenticity, eliminated all but 7,600 of them, deleted some for redundancy, and was left with a collection of about 4,000.
As we shall see, feisty statements such as the above only prove to be self-defeating in the end. This article intends to examine missionaries' thesis in light of the scholarship of Imam al-Bukhari, and thereby ascertain the actual worth of their claim.
To appreciate the broader perspective, we will also include a discussion of Imam Muslim's ahadith collection, insha'allah.
2. Imam Bukhari & The Nature Of His Collection
Vargo, Shorrosh, Geisler, Abdul Saleeb, Abdul-Haqq and Benard have practically begged the question for us already - where exactly did Imam al-Bukhari mention that among the 600,000 ahadith in his collection, only 7,397 are to be accepted as 'true'? They maintains the missionary tradition of conveniently omitting any references that would not support their thesis; the mark of a true academicians, indeed! Once again, it is left to the Muslims to enlighten the ill-informed missionaries on this matter.
Imam al-Bukhari's actual words have been reproduced below:
* The two sahih collections did not gather the totality of the authentic ahadith as proved by al-Bukhari's testimony: "I have not included in my book al-Jami but what is authentic, and I left out among the authentic for fear of [excessive] length.(Footnote 2)"
Footnote 2 says:
He [al-Bukhari] meant that he did not mention all the turuq [parallel chains of transmission] for each and every hadith.
To reiterate this in elementary English, Imam al-Bukhari selected only a few authentic ahadith from his vast collection. However, he left out certain traditions, despite their authenticity, simply to avoid excessive length and repetition in his Al-Jami` (a discussion about which is given below). If anything, the privilege to make such a gesture is highly complimentary to the authenticity of the Islamic traditions. In another tradition, Imam al-Bukhari is also reported to have said:
He said, I heard as-Sadani say, I heard some of our companions say, Muhammad Ibn Ismail said: I selected/published [the content of] this book - meaning the Sahih book - from about 600,000 hadiths/reports. Abu Sad al-Malini informed us that Abdullah Ibn Udayy informed us: I heard al-Hasan Ibn al-Husayn al-Bukhari say: "I have not included in my book al-Jami but what is authentic, and I left out among the authentic what I could not get hold of."
The above quotation reflects Imam al-Bukhari's gallant honesty to admit that he was not able to collect each and every authentic tradition that existed in his day. Rather, his Al-Jami those that were authentic, and I left out many more authentic traditions than this to avoid unnecessary length." He had no intention of collecting all the authentic traditions. He only wanted to compile a manual of hadith, according to the wishes of his Shaikh Ishaq b. Rahwaih, and his function is quite clear from the title of his book al-Jami and retained what was void of defect, and left out what had some defect.
3. Imam Muslim & The Nature Of His Collection
Imam Muslim said: "I have not included in my present book any thing but with proof [regarding authenticity] , and I have not left out anything but with proof". He also said: I did not include everything that I judge authentic/Sahih, I only included what received a unanimous agreement, i.e., what fulfilled all the criteria of authenticity agreed upon [by the scholars].
And Muslim has presented [his collection] to the scholars of his time, like Imam Abu Zar and left out many authentic narrations from his vast collection for the fear of excessive length.
Again, according to the Vargo:
In fact, it is difficult, in spite of the Muslim "science" of Hadith to know which traditions are strong or weak!
We should wonder whether the neophyte is as quick to demonstrate the same puerile enthusiasm over the question of his own religious texts. Regardless, we will quote the famous trial of Imam al-Bukhari to show how maqlub[14] (changed, reversed) ahadith can be identified with ease by a scholar of hadith:
The famous trial of al-Bukhari by the scholars of Baghdad provides a good example of a Maqlub isnad. The traditionists, in order to test their visitor, al-Bukhari, appointed ten men, each with ten ahadith. Now, each hadith (text) of these ten people was prefixed with the isnad of another. Imam al-Bukhari listened to each of the ten men as they narrated their ahadith and denied the correctness of every hadith. When they had finished narrating these ahadith, he addressed each person in turn and recounted to him each of his ahadith with its correct isnad. This trial earned him great honour among the scholars of Baghdad.
Finally, it is worth citing a significant trend in modern Western scholarship of the Prophetic traditions of Islam. For the past several decades, criticism of these traditions has been the Orientalist's whipping post, an opportunity to invalidate the traditions of Islam, which culminated in the work of Joseph Schacht, mentioned earlier. However, this position has practically been reversed in recent times, with the advent of academic honesty on the part of Western scholars. Professor John Esposito of Georgetown University has made the following counter-criticism of Schacht's traditional position:
Accepting Schacht's conclusion regarding the many traditions he did examine does not warrant its automatic extension to all the traditions. To consider all Prophetic traditions apocryphal until proven otherwise is to reverse the burden of proof. Moreover, even where differences of opinion exist regarding the authenticity of the chain of narrators, they need not detract from the authenticity of a tradition's content and common acceptance of the importance of tradition literature as a record of the early history and development of Islamic belief and practice.[16]
The position of Esposito perhaps reflects the growing attitude among Western educational institutions that entertain any study of Islam and its traditions. This is simply evidenced by the fact that Professor Esposito has become one of the reigning authorities on Islam in the West, whose textbooks are considered university standards for courses on Islam.
Considering the missionaries' abuse of hadiths to denigrate the Prophet(P) of Islam, it would be too generous to assume that Vargo, Shorrosh, Geisler and Abdul Saleeb "misunderstood" the nature of the collection of Imam al-Bukhari. As for the Rand Corporation's report, their "objectivity" lies in the unverified use of source material. An honest misunderstanding entails at least some understanding of the issue, which doesn't even seem to be their case. Perhaps the Christian missionaries might consider beginning a genuine study of the science of hadith before they embarrasses themselves further.
Acknowledgements
We would like to thank Abu Hudhayfah for providing us necessary help and allowing us to use his material.
And Allah knows best!
