What It Means - Day 337

"The most valuable kind of hadith report is known as mutawatir, or 'continuously narrated.' It has multiple and continuous isnads, or chains of transmission. One hadith scholar defines it thus: 'The mutawatir is a report that has so many narrators that it is conventionally impossible for them all to have agreed upon its fabrication. This multitude must be fulfilled on all the levels of generations of reporters.' Mutawatir reports confirm the basic beliefs and ritual practices which all Muslims concur.
   However, there are very few reports that qualify as mutawatir hadith. Our guide Ibn Hazm paid great attention to this issue and maintained that 'about 78 hadith reports reach the rare quality of reliability called mutawatir.' Other scholars think there are even fewer."
Scott Siraj al-Haqq Kugle, Homosexuality in Islam, (p. 79)

Again, I'm revisiting Kugle's book Homosexuality in Islam. This is essentially piggybacking on yesterday's discussion on the process by which Islamic scholars, at least traditionally, ascertain the validity of adhaith (the sayings of the Prophet). Whether or not you buy Kugle's argument - or even care about the argument - it's rather amazing to consider that by the strict standards there would only be around seventy-eight ahadith that would qualify as mutawatir as "continuously narrated."

Here is a picture of my collection of al-Bukhari's collection of ahadith, which is generally considered the most authentic collection. This collection contains, not surprisingly, thousands of ahadith. It's difficult to believe that only seventy-eight would qualify by the most stringent standards. It does give pause, however, when you think how we as Muslims will often unwittingly accept the validity of a single random hadith, without going to the trouble of thinking about its validity.