imaginary hadith

Section: Political Books

Number of pages: 264 pages

The scholars of the principles of jurisprudence have collectively identified nineteen sources of jurisprudential deduction, none of which were unanimously agreed upon in terms of their authority, reasoning, and the requirement that a jurist must know them in order to be qualified for ijtihad, except for two: the Holy Qur’an and the Noble Prophetic Sunnah. Although the scholars did not stipulate that the jurist must be fully proficient in the second source (the Sunnah), they were strict about the necessity for the jurist to be well-versed in the hadiths of rulings. Yusuf al-Qaradawi says: “They did not stipulate knowledge of everything that came in the Sunnah, but rather knowledge of the hadiths of rulings, not what relates to sermons, stories, and the conditions of the afterlife. However, reality requires the jurist to be widely informed about the Sunnah, as there may be hadiths that are apparently far from the scope of rulings, but the jurist derives rulings from them that others miss.” Al-Shawkani was surprised by those who said that there were five hundred hadiths, and said: “This is the most amazing thing to be said, as the hadiths from which legal rulings are taken are thousands upon thousands.”