Ahadiths: Uncorrupted? Uncreated? Unfabricated? Non-Contradictory? Part I

”The Qur’an alone is useless or” or “how the Sunnah was created”

Because the Ahadith, as we will see, were collected late and their content left the scholars in confusion as to how at all fit together with itself and the Qur’an to form ‘the revelation’, this means that Islam, while striking out at the Bible because it is "like the Hadith, Sira, and Tarikh all together", in fact needed to sift through this very type of materials long after Muhammad’s time to try and find a comprehension of the Qur’an and the rest of its ‘revelation’ - in the Sunnah! In fact, as we are about to see, it had to collect all this long after Muhmmad died!

It is now obvious why Islam has found it ‘useful’ (indeed necessary!) to place everyone’s attention on a ‘Qur’an vs. Bible’ comparison! Only then could it hide its true need and still openly accuse the Gospel of ‘pollution’ because "it is like the Word of God, the Hadith, the Sirah and Tarikh all in one".
Only through such a presentation could it build up the Qur’an’s prestige by asserting "We keep the ‘Word of God’ separate from these other things, and so we have been kept pure - but look at you!" And all the while the Qur’an is admittedly meaningless and useless without these very materials.

Was There An Early And Continuous Collection Of The Sunnah?

In general there is a great emphasis laid upon the existence of early collections of Ahadith. Little statements declaring, for example, that a Companion preserved Ahadith in writing are ‘pulled out’ of their context in Islam’s history and given as ‘Proof’ that Ahadith have ‘always’ been collected and recorded. Small collections are even named and presented as if they tie into such a ‘history’.

Yet, this is not the truth. As we will see in what follows, the 2nd Caliph ‘Umar initially allowed the collecting of Ahadith, but then forbade it and ordered the burning of all such collections. This order was not rescindssed until ‘Umar II reigned, and he was not Caliph until 717AD

A Shi'ah book on the Internet under the subheading The Order of the Qur'an's Revelation and the Growth of the Qur'anic Sciences states:

"Secondly, it has been related with certainty that the early Caliphs strictly prohibited the recording and writing down of the narrations and, whenever a sheet of paper or tablet was found on which a saying had been written, it was burned. This prohibition lasted until nearly the end of the first century after Hijrah, that is, for a period of about ninety years. The effect of this prohibition was that the narrators and scholars of sayings were free to make small additions or changes during oral transmission of the saying. These additions gradually accumulated until the original meaning of the saying was lost." (http://www.al-islam.org/quraninislam/index.htm )

Another statement on the matter of the collecting of Sunnah states:

"A clear proof that the fatwa of the leader overrules but does not invalidate the opinion of the Companions even if it directly contradicts it, is the fact that when `Umar ibn al-Khattab proposed to have all the hadith collected and written down he consulted the Companions and they unanimously agreed to his proposal; later he disapproved of it and ordered that everyone who had written a collection burn it. Yet `Umar ibn `Abd al-`Aziz later ordered that hadith be collected and written. Al-Hafiz al-Baghdadi relates it in his "Taqyid al-`ilm" 49, 52-53, 105-106, and Ibn Sa`d in his "Tabaqat" 3(1):206, 8:353." (http://ds.dial.pipex.com/masud/ISLAM/misc/ikhtilaf.htm )

Since 'Umar ibn 'Abd al-'Aziz ('Umar II, the nephew of 'Abd al-Malik) was only the twelfth caliph beginning his rule in 717 AD (97 AH), it would seem that indeed the act of collecting the Ahadith was illegal even after the end of the first century AH.

Since the earliest collection of Ahadith mentioned by those in Islam seems to be that of Hammam ibn Munabbih it could in fact be the FIRST of those ‘allowed’ since the collector died in 99AH/719AD.

Further, it only contains 138 Ahadith, which is not many when compared with the 5000+ which are said to have been related from only Abu Hurraira, let alone the vast numbers known later to be in circulation.

Finally, we note the following which seems to indicate that the collection of Ahadith was not even immediately universally accepted:

"An aside about the writing of traditions: during the second century AH, a controversy raged about whether it was permissible to put hadiths in writing. The pro-permissibility side won the argument in all centers of learning except for Basrah, though at an earlier time the pro-prohibition stance had been dominant. As for Basrah: throughout most of the second century, the majority view there was that it was not permissible to write down hadiths. For the details about the second-century controversy on the writing of hadiths, see the truly excellent article: Cook, Michael, "The opponents of the writing of tradition in early Islam," Arabica, vol. XLIV, no. 4, October 1997, pp. 437-530." (Re: Was The Sunnah Preserved?, Behnam Sadeghi, Aug 6, 1999; URL unavailable)

Quite naturally, anyone would wonder at a ‘Final Book’ which was totally dependent upon possessing the ‘correct’ Sunnah, when such were only first recorded as very small collections which only began to be set down in writing some 90 years after the one declared to be the originator of these teachings died!! All the more when it must be added to this knowledge that by the time the really large collections were made, the scholars were having to sort out some hundreds of thousands of Ahadith, and many of them spurious! These later problems, some of which we will examine in this section are mentioned as follows:

"But confronted with the enormous body of hadiths, which had been scattered in various forms and narrations throughout the length and breadth of the Islamic world following the migrations of the Companions and Followers, the Sunnah sometimes proved difficult to interpret. Even when the sound hadiths had been sifted out from this great body of material, which totalled several hundred thousand hadith reports, there were some hadiths which appeared to conflict with each other, or even with verses of the Quran." (http://ds.dial.pipex.com/masud/ISLAM/ahm/newmadhh.htm )

How ‘Preserved’ Are The Sources Of The Sunnah?

Everyone knows that the major accepted collections of Ahadith are known as the Sahih Sitta (the authentic six) being the Sahihs of al-Bukhari and Imam Muslim, the Sunan of Abu Da’ud, Al-Nisa’i, At-Tirmidhi and Ibn Maja. It is impossible to read up on these and find anything other than assertions that these are absolutely authentic having been selected through meticulous application of the Science of Hadith by which each and every one has been certified truthful.

The Sahih of Bukhari is touted as being, next to the Qur’an, the most valuable of Islamic books and is that which is most useful for Shari’ah purposes. When a Hadith is contained in both the Sahihs of Bukhari and Muslim it is termed ‘Agreed upon’, being the greatest attestation any Hadith can attain.

When we look for confirmation of the ‘Preservation’ of these collections of Sunnah, we find one Islamic scholar who, like most others, is not convinced that there is a ‘Divine Protection’ upon the extra-Qur’anic sources, asserting that what others would rather not hear:

"We Muslims, on our own, are duty bound towards Allah and his last Prophet to make a continuous and thorough checking of the Hadith-books at our disposal in the same way as the Mohaddeseen did in their own times. As the extra-Quranic literature including the Hadith books is not being divinely guarded there is in every age a continuous attempt to introduce suspicious material therein and delete useful matter therefrom. In our own extra-Quranic literature numerous references are available throwing light on these facts. For the sake of example I mention one of them:
The Prophet said: ‘Beware! after me you will have abundance in traditions associated with me. So do apply a check of the Qur’an on these traditions. Whatever confirms the Qur’an you may accept it but whatever goes against the Qur’an you must reject it outright’.
The book At-talweeh-wat-tawzeeh has quoted the above tradition from Saheeh Bukhari but the various versions of Bukhari’s collection available today do not include this tradition!!¹ It is because of this tampering with the books of Hadith that we do not get any uniformity in the bulk of this literature. To give another example, the Muwatta which is said to be Hadith-collection of Imam Malik is not one uniform Muwatta. There are more than one Muwatta-books and they drastically differ from one another. Similar is the case with Sahih Bukhari, as well as with Kitab-ul-Aasaar which is regarded as the Hadith-collection of Imam Hanifa.
Bukhari himself has written a book on the life-history of the narrators. This book called Zuafa-us-sagher condemns certain individuals like Ata bin abi Maimoona, Ayyub bin Aiz, Ismail bin Aban, Zubair bin Muhammad, At-Tayyimi, Saeed bin Urwa, Abdullah bin Abi Labeed, Abdul Malik bin Ameen, Abdul waris (sic.) bin Saeed, Ata bin As-Saib bin Yazeed, and Khamsan bin Minhal as unreliable and hence rejected. But the Hadith-collection of Bukhari in the present day includes many traditions narrated by these very individuals! This is a crystal clear proof of the fact that whatever Bukhari has rejected was later on re-introduced in his book after his death. Bukhari has named his collection as As-Saheeh wherein he has mentioned that he has included only saheeh traditions. But the copies of Saheeh Bukhari available today contain many such traditions which are termed moallaq by the Mohaddessen and are not at all saheeh. Hafiz Ibn-e-Hajar Asqalani who is famous as a shareh of Saheeh Bukhari has pinpointed such weaknesses in the preface of his sharah named Fath-ul-Bari. Bukhari’s collection is divided into kitabs and baabs but in many cases the title of the kitab or baab has no relation whatsoever with the Hadith quoted under it, for example, see the baabs of Tool-e-qiyam and Qaza-e-salat-ul-Eid. Similar is the case with baab Ghazva-e-Badr in Kitab-ul-Jihad. In some baabs either there is only a title without any Hadith whatsoever or a Hadith without any authority of narrators." (Deep into the Qur’an, Dr, Kamal Omar, p. 285ff).

Indeed, one publication of Muwatta here in the U.K. - that of Islamic Academy U.K. - has notes relating how this one was chosen from among 50 ‘versions’ of the Muwatta, and only 16 were considered "best transmitted"

Yet the seriousness of this is really only understood when we consider that Muwatta and Sahih Bukhari are considered the most important collections on Legal matters [next to the Qur’an!] which means that this affects the Sunnah relating to the Shari`ah of the 4 Madhabs! "Kitab-ul-Aasaar which is regarded as the Hadith-collection of Imam Hanifa" must also be seen in that light, for Imam Abu Hanifah is attributed with the founding of the Hanafite school of Fiqh! What was the content when he used it, and who altered it, his later followers?

Not only so, but the Saudi scholars who are publishing the ‘Summarised Sahih Bukhari’ have not only congratulatory notes to the translator for having ‘chosen’ the ‘accepted’ translations of the hadith(!), but the notes also state which particular ‘version’ of Sahih Bukhari they used:

"Compilation: Al-Imam Zair-ud-Din Ahmad bin Abdul-Lateef Az-Zubaidi." (p. 1), and again, "the text of Summarized Sahih Al-Bukhari used for this translation is taken from At-Tajrid As-Sarih by Az-Zubaidi." (Summarized Sahih Al-Bukhari, p.10).

Furthermore, in keeping with the fears of Dr. Omar, the notes admit:

"Some materials concerned with Arabic grammar and etymology have been excluded from the Arabic text." (Summarized..., Notes)

This ‘editing’ is also upheld in that the all important Hadith relating Caliph `Uthman’s burning of the ‘original’ texts of the Qur’an, which was cited earlier in this present writing (Sahih Bukari, Vol. 6, p. 479), has also been ‘expunged’ in keeping with the Saudi cover up of the `Uthmanic errors in their false Mushaf al-Madinah!! Thus we see the motivation is that Islam is "made to appear" to be ‘perfect’ and ‘protected’ when it is not.

In the same way, the Sirat un-Nabi of Allamah Shibli Nu`mani (p. 140) declares that Hadith #4403 of Sahih Muslim Vol. 3, in the chapter on the Treaty of Hudaibiya says "Muhammad rubbed out and replaced" the words "Muhammad the Messenger of Allah" because Quraish objected to them. However when one looks at the English version translated by Abdul Hamid Siddiqi (proclaimer of truth?), such a wording has been almost entirely replaced with Ali writing the initial text, Muhammad erasing his name, "and Ali wrote: Ibn `Abdullah"!! Is this a case of ‘editing’ the Arabic (or the English), or finding another Arabic ‘version’ of Sahih Muslim? Although all the ‘tampering’ we have just noted is the work of the various Sunni factions, it is the very thing of which the Sunnis accuse the Shi’a! We read:

"It is all the more difficult to write the bibliography of Shia books. The reason being that Shia publishers have consistently altered the sequence and also the contents of their original books. Two recent publications of the same book often have two different sets of information. Strange enough, when a Shia publisher reprints a certain book, he often rearranges the contents. Thus two editions of the same book by the same publisher may also have two different sets of information." (Bibliography, The Sunni and Shi’a Perspective of The Holy Qur’an, p. 26).

The same type of behaviour seems to be prevalent today, and it is recognised by those on the outside of Islam that nobody on the inside seems to be giving us the same story!

Whole Collections Of Sunnah Were Given ‘Authority’ Much Later?

And yet two of the collections now called ‘sahih’ were not even accepted until very late:

"During the fourth and fifth centuries, no importance was attached to Ibn Maja. Ibn al-Sakan (Abu ‘Ali Sa’id b `Uthman, d. 353 A.H./964 A.D.) and Abu Manda (Abu `Abdullah Muhammad b Ishaq, d. 396 A.H./ 1005 A.D.) had mentioned four books only i.e. Bukhari, Muslim, Abu Dawud and Nasa`i. Till that time Ibn Hazm (Abu Muhammad `Ali b Muhammad, d. 456 A.H./1063 A.D.) declined to recognise Tirmidhi. Abu Tahir (`Imad al-Din Ahmad b Muhammad al-Silafi, d. 576 A.H./ 1180A.D.) added Tirmidhi to the above-mentioned four works of Hadith.
During the sixth century, as we shall discuss later, ibn Maja’s position was consolidated by Muhammad b `Uthman al-Hazimi in his Shurut al-A`imma al-Khamsa and Ibn Salah (`Uthman b `Abd al-Rahman, d. 642A.H./1244 A.D.) in his Muqaddima confined themselves to the five books. Ibn Karrat (Abu Muhammad `Abd al-Haq al-Azadi, d. 581A.H./1185A.D.) offered no place to Ibn Maja in his al-Ahkam al-Sha`iyya al-Kubra.
Later Nawawi (Yahya b Sharaf al-Din, d.676A.H./1277A.D.) in his explanation to Muqaddima Ibn al-Salah followed suit. Ibn Khaldun (Abu Zaid, `Abd al-Rahman b Abi Bakr, d.808 A.H./1405 A.D.) speaks of al-Ummahat al-Khams² only.
Muwaatta of Imam Malik was considered as the sixth by Razin b Mu`awiya al-`Abdari al-Sarqasti (d.525 A.H./1130 A.D.) in his book Al-Tajrid bi`l Sihah wa`l-Sunan and later by Mubarak b Muhammad ibn al-Athir al-Jazari (d.606A.H./1209A.D.) in his book Jami` al-usul. But the first one to declare Ibn Maja as the sixth book was Abu`l-Fadl Muhammad b Tahir al-Maqdisi (d. 507 A.H./1113 A.D.) in his book Atraf al-Kutub al-Sitta followed by `Abd al-Ghani b `Abd al-Wahid al-Maqdisi "(d.600 A.H./1203 A.D.) in his book al-Kamal fi Asam`i al-Rijal. ...[2 paragraphs omitted]
Ibn Taymiya (Majd al-Din b ‘Abd al-Salam, the grandfather of Ibn Taymiya, the famous scholar, (d. 652 A.H./1254 A.D.) compiled a book on legal issues based on a selection of Hadith from six books including Ibn Maja. Ibn Khallikan, in his Wafayat al-A’yan and Shams al-Din al-Jazari (d. 711 A.H./ 1311 A.D.) recognised Ibn Maja as sixth as well.
...but as late as the twelfth century we find traditionists like `Abd al-Ghani al-Nabulusi (d.1143A.H./1730A.D.) who talked of the general opinion held by the people in the Maghrib (countries west of Egypt) in favour of Muwatta, saying: "A difference of opinion is held about the sixth one. The people of the East (Countries in the Middle East) consider the Sunan of ibn Maja as the sixth but the people of the West give this position to the Muwatta of imam Malik." .

3. Its position in comparison with other collections
Though Ibn Maja is regarded as one of the six Sihah to many traditionists it is less-authenticated compared to the Muwatta. Shah Wali Allah (d.1176A.H/1762A.D.) has supported this view in his explanatory book known as Musaffa Sharh al-Muwatta.
However preference was given to Ibn Maja because of his additional Hadith, as pointed out by al-Sakhawi:
"They have given it (al-Sunan) preference to Muwatta because of the great number of additional Hadith which are not found in the five books, unlike Muwatta."
To some traditionists like Salah al-Din Khalil al-`Ala (d.761A.H./1359A.D.) Darimi’s Musnad deserved more to be included among six Sihah because it has very few weak authorities, Munkar and Shadh Hadith.
Sahih of Ibn Hibban is well recognised among the traditionists. Ibn al-`Imad (Abu al-Falah, `Abd al-Hayy b Ahmad (d.1089A.H./1678A.D.) preferred it to Ibn Maja by saying:
"Most of the critics hold the opinion that his book (Sahih) is more authentic than Ibn Maja." "
(Criticism of Hadith..., Abdul Ghaffar, p.139f)

Thus we find that Islam seeks its ‘Divinely Protected Sunnah’ from books whose content is constantly changing.

And, to the number of these collections, from time to time, they added new ones because there were "a great number of additional Hadith which are not found" in the previously accepted ‘sound’ books!³ And, as we expect, everywhere one looks one finds Ahadith cited from ibn Maja, at-Tirmidhi, and many others.

As to the matter of the number of new Ahadith, we are told that:

"According to Fu’ad ‘Abd al-Baqi, the total number of Hadith in this collection amounts to 4341 of which 3002 Ahadith are recorded by the five other traditionists as well." (Criticism of Hadith..., Abdul Ghaffar, p.139).

This means that 1339 NEW Ahadith (Sunnah!) were accepted when ibn Maja’s Sunan was accepted!

The trouble, though, is not solely that the Islamic leadership is constantly shifting the ‘content’, or that it has added ‘new’ collections from time to time. Further to this, there has been obvious disagreement among the top Islamic scholars as to how much of these ‘sahih’ Ahadith collections is admittedly not ‘sahih’ (sound/authentic). The book Criticism of Hadith Among Muslims With Reference to Sunan⁴ Ibn Maja, documents the vast difference of opinion among Islamic scholars as to just how much of it was fabricated and false:

"In spite of all the admiring words associated with al-Sunan, it has a good number of weak and spurious Ahadith. Ibn Zur’a was the first to point out this fact. After giving praiseworthy remarks quoted above, he said:
"I hope that there will be no more than thirty Ahadith with weak isnad." Dhahabi⁵ added: "Abu Zur’a by saying this, might have meant such Ahadith as totally abandoned because there might be about one thousand Ahadith in al-Sunan which are not valid for argument." He further says: "Ibn Maja was a preserver of Ahadith (Naqid) with a vast amount of knowledge but the Sunan became low in position because of a lot of Makruh and spurious Ahadith in it." Ibn al-Jauzi (d. 597) pin-pointed thirty four Ahadith in al-Sunan as spurious in his book al-Maudat. But Suyuti took great pains to defend all such Ahadith as declared to be spurious..." (Criticism of Hadith Among Muslims With Reference To Sunan Ibn Maja, Suhaib Hasan Abdul Ghaffar , p. 144f).

Which ‘point of view’ shall we accept as being most truthful?

"More Material Which Missed these Prominent Scholars"?

On top of this, it is admitted that many collections were only made much later, and are composed of material said to have been ‘missed’ by the earlier great collectors:

"The collections of Hadith made it easier for the coming generations to have a clear picture of the science of Hadith and enabled them to base all legal issues upon them and to find out more material which missed these prominent scholars, resulting in collections like Sahih Abu `Uwana (316 A.H./ 928 A.D.), Mustadrak al-Hakim (d. 405 A.H./ 1014 A.D.) and Sunan al-Baihaqi (458 A.H./1065 A.D.)." (Criticism of Hadith..., Abdul Ghaffar , p. 126; emphasis added)⁶

Confusion reigns! Yet this type of thing reminds one of Shafi noting that no Ahadith existed in his time on a certain topic, but the same were in plentiful supply much later! How many were ‘missed’, and how many were ‘new creations’?

Could the early collectors have only found a few Ahadith through their efforts to preserve the religion of Muhammad, but five (5) centuries after Muhammad’s death others ’found’ masses of ‘other’ Ahadith!?

This, then, is the admitted condition of the "preserved Source" for the understanding of Islam’s Qur’an, as well as for ‘the rest of the revelation’ - ever shifting, ever evolving!

How Reliable Is The Wording Of The Sunnah?

It is obvious that the ‘pure’ religion which it is claimed came through Muhammad is only determinable by examining the Ahadith in the collections, as well as in the sira, tarikh, etc., and after trying to sort truth from falsehood, deciding what the ‘Word of Allah’ ⁷ it claims to possess is supposed to be. And so is defined the true importance of the need for absolutely pure extra-Qur’anic records. It is well stated that:

"To declare these sources of knowledge unreliable, false or fictitious would mean shutting the door on practical adherence to the Qur’an.⁸ Moreover, the superiority that Islam and the Muslims enjoy over all other faiths and religious communities would also be destroyed. For it would necessarily mean that the Muslims had no history, no intellectual or practical achievement to their credit, since there is no dependable way of knowing those achievement. Surely no Muslim could accept such a position." (The Sunnah..., Azami, p.24)

Although "no Muslim could accept such a position", yet such a realisation has driven many followers of Islam away from an acceptance of the sources, and in fact they are the audience to which the maulana’s booklet was written. This too was the reason behind the writing of the 1934 booklet Islam at the Crossroads by M. Asad.

Yet, it is no wonder that people have found themselves distrusting the Ahadith, for, according to the "principal early grammarians", even the Arabic they were recorded in is extremely dubious:

"However, it is interesting to note that the principal early grammarians, though they dare not say that the hadith were not authentic, asserted that the Arabic in which they were written was so bad that they could not be held to transmit the actual words of the prophet, though doubtless they conveyed his meaning. Their argument was that it is impossible that the prophet, the exponent of perfect Arabic, could have violated the rules of grammar."" (Islam, Guillaume, p. 91f)

Thus because of its poor Arabic, the Ahadith, the only record of Muhammad’s words (Sunnah), [i.e. the only record of his illumination of the Qur’an as well as ‘the rest of the Word of Allah’], is already admitted to be uncertifiable even on the grounds of its grammar!

This actual condition of the Arabic of the Sunnah disavows the worth of Qadi Iyad’s (d. 544/1149) assertion that the Sahaba "knew... the exact pronunciation of the Prophet’s words", for even if they did it has not been transmitted!! What false encouragement!

Source:  http://www.answering-islam.org/PQ/ch18-index.htm#top

Continues in Part II

IHS

Did Ibn Abbas (Muhammad’s first cousin) believe that the Bible was Corrupt? Part II, Addendum

”We start touching here about the authenticity of the ahadiths (Tradition, Sunna) ”

From Part I  

Postscript

Muslim polemicist Bassam Zawadi takes a shot at refuting (*) al-Bukhari’s citation from Ibn Abbas regarding the incorruptibility of God’s revealed books. Let us see how well he does.

He writes:

This could be answered in more than one way.

First of all, WHERE IS THE FULL CHAIN OF TRANSMISSION? We can't find any full chain of transmission for this statement attributed to Ibn Abbaas. Famous hadith scholar Ibn Hajar Al Asqalani said regarding this narration...

I did not find it with continuous chain of reporters (mawsoul) on authority of Ibn 'Abbaas in spite of the fact that what is said before it is from his words as well as that is after it....
Many of our folks (ashabena) have explicitly declared that the Torah and the Gospel has been corrupted (hurrifat) in contradiction with what Al-Bukhari mentions here [on authority of Ibn 'Abbaas] (Ibn Hajar Al Asqalani, Fath-ul-Bari fe Sharh Sahih-el-Bukhari, Book of "Oneness of God", Chapter 55, Number 6223)

Here is the specific part of Ibn Hajar’s comments that Zawadi somehow overlooked:

… in spite of the fact that what is said before it IS FROM HIS WORDS as well as that is after it…

Ibn Hajar’s comments are rather confusing. Is he saying that the statements which appear both before and after this specific part are definitely the words of Ibn Abbas? Or is he referring to something else? If he is referring to this specific report then how did he know that what appeared before and after Ibn Abbas’ statements regarding the incorruptibility of God’s books are from him when the entire narrative lacks a continuous chain?

Be that as it may, there were other scholars who disagreed with Ibn Hajar and acknowledged that Ibn Abbas did make these comments. Throughout his article Zawadi references Dr. Muhammad Abu Laylah’s book, The Qur’an and the Gospels – A Comparative Study. In this very source the author cites another Muslim scholar who appealed to Ibn Abbas’ statements regarding the textual incorruptibility of the Torah and the Gospel:

… The Andalusian interpreter Ibn ‘Atiyya stated that Tahrif means "to change or transfer something from its original character to another" and that Ibn ‘Abbas held that the Jewish (and possibly the Christian, by implication) corruption and change was to be found in exegesis, the letter of the Torah surviving intact, although a second school of scholars maintained that the letters themselves had been changed on the basis that although the Jews had been asked to safeguard the Torah, unlike the Qur’an it was not safeguarded by God Himself. (Laylah, The Qur’an and the Gospels – A Comparative Study [Al-Falah Foundation for Translation, Publication & Distribution, Third edition, 2005], pp. 145-146; source)

Moreover, we had earlier cited Ibn Kathir who quoted Ibn Abbas’ words as reported by al-Bukhari. Here is his reference once again, this time with some additional context:

Mujahid. Ash-Sha'bi, Al-Hassan, Qatadah and Ar-Rabi' bin Anas said that,

means, "They alter (Allah's Words)."
Al-Bukhari reported that Ibn 'Abbas said that the Ayah means they alter and add although none among Allah's creation can remove the words of Allah from His books, they alter and distort their apparent meanings. Wahb bin Munabbih said, "The Tawrah and Injil remain as Allah revealed them, and no letter in them was removed. However, the people misguide others by addition and false interpretation, relying on books that they wrote themselves." Then,

As for Allah's books, they are still preserved and cannot be changed." Ibn Abi Hatim recorded this statement. However, if Wahb meant the books that are currently in the hands of the People of the Book, then we should state that there is no doubt that they altered, distorted, added to and deleted from them. For instance, the Arabic versions of these books contain tremendous error, many additions and deletions and enormous misinterpretation. Those who rendered these translations have incorrect comprehension in most, rather, all of these translations. If Wahb meant the Books of Allah that He has with Him, then indeed, these Books are preserved and were never changed. (Tafsir Ibn Kathir – Abridged, Volume 2, Parts 3, 4 & 5, Surat Al-Baqarah, Verse 253, to Surat An-Nisa, verse 147 [Darussalam Publishers & Distributors, Riyadh, Houston, New York, Lahore; First Edition: March 2000], p. 196; source)

Ibn Kathir disagrees with both Wahb and Ibn Abbas that the previous revelation remained intact. And on what basis does he disagree? On the basis that Arabic versions of the Holy Bible showed textual tampering in the form of additions and deletions! This is equivalent to someone today claiming that the Qur’an has been corrupted due to the fact that there are additions and omissions among the various English versions (*) or that a specific English translation made by Rashad Khalifa omits Q. 9:128-129 (1, 2)!

The scholarly thing to do is to examine the original languages of the Scriptures and see if the text has remained intact. Once this is done one will discover that the Holy Bible, much like the Qur’an (*), has come down to us with variant readings. However, these variants do not prove that wholesale corruption to the Biblical text has taken place since the great bulk of these readings are inconsequential and do not affect the meaning of the text. To claim otherwise would actually imply that the Qur’an along with the Holy Bible, and all other books that were hand copied, have been completely corrupted seeing that such books have come down to us with textual variations. The fact is that, after carefully examining the variant readings, textual scholars have been able to reconstruct roughly 99% of the original text of the NT and it is therefore purely wishful thinking on the part of Muslims to claim that the original reading of the Bible books have been lost or corrupted beyond restoration.

Returning to the issue at hand, how strange that scholars such as Ibn ‘Atiyya and Ibn Kathir could approvingly cite al-Bukhari’s quotation from Ibn Abbas despite the lack of a chain of transmission! Could it be that these scholars realized that for al-Bukhari to even include it in his collection was proof enough for them that the quotation in question must have passed his very strict standard of authentication? After all, don’t Muslim scholars assert that al-Bukhari’s hadith collection is the most authentic book after the Qur’an? More on this point below.

And all scholars of hadith have agreed that you cannot judge a narration to be authentic unless you have the complete chain of transmission to examine and then conclude if it is authentic or not. Here we see that Imam Tabari just simply quotes Mujahid ibn Jabr Al Makhzumi (d. 104 A.H.) who then quotes the statement. However, there is a 200 hundred-year gap between Imam Tabari and Mujaahid! Where are the two or three people who should have come in the middle of the chain? …

Imam Al-Badr al-'Aini notes in his commentary on Sahih al-Bukhari...

Al-Bukhari frequently relates reports and sayings of Sahaba and others without isnad (chain of transmission) (Al-Badr Al-'Aini, Umdat-ul-Qari, Volume 1, page 9)

Here we can see that this alleged statement from Ibn Abbaas is one of those examples, therefore it must be rejected.

There are several problems with Zawadi’s assertions. In the first place, this attempt of evasion will not solve the problem for Zawadi but only compound the difficulties for him since all of al-Bukhari’s reports which contain an unbroken chain (isnad) were written over two hundred years after Muhammad’s death. Despite this long gap in time Zawadi erroneously assumes that just because a report provides a chain of transmitters this means that Muslims are able to accurately trace back the origin of a specific report. The circularity of such a position can be easily seen when we bear in mind this late dating of al-Bukhari.

To highlight the circularity of Zawadi’s reasoning note that:

- Muslims like Zawadi assume the veracity of a specific narration because of the authenticity of its chain.
- Yet these chains are contained in sources which were written over two hundred years after the events in question.
- This is the major problem that Zawadi faces. This huge time gap shows how unfeasible it is for Muslims to claim that a specific report is authentic due to its chain since, apart from a written trail, there is absolutely no way of verifying whether the people mentioned in that chain were reliable, were capable of passing down accurate information, or whether such individuals even existed! In other words, there is simply no possible way for someone writing two hundred years after an event to be able to completely guarantee that all the names of the chain which goes back over a two hundred year period are entirely correct, or that the men listed within these chains were completely honest.

Secondly, as Imam Al-Badr al-'Aini in the above quote from Zawadi noted, the hadith collection of al-Bukhari is filled with subheadings and quotes of specific Muslims without a chain of transmission, just as the following English version amply testifies: http://bewley.virtualave.net/bukhcont.html

If we were to therefore take Zawadi’s criticism seriously this means that a great bulk of al-Bukhari’s collection must be omitted, specifically the quotations that appear under the subheadings that precede the so-called sound reports.

This leads us to our third point. It is often claimed that al-Bukhari was the most careful collector of Muslim traditions, omitting thousands of hadiths that did not meet his strict specifications of authenticity. To help illustrate this fact we quote from the Muslim translator of Al-Bukhari's hadith collection:

It has been UNANIMOUSLY AGREED that Imam Bukhari's work is the most authentic of all the other works in Hadith literature PUT TOGETHER. The authenticity of Al-Bukhari's work is such that the religious learned scholars of Islam said concerning him: "The most authentic book after the Book of Allah (i.e., Al-Qur'an) is Sahih Al-Bukhari." …Before he recorded each Hadith he would make ablution and offer two Rak’at prayer and supplicate his Lord (Allah). Many religious scholars of Islam tried to find fault in the great remarkable collection- Sahih Al-Bukhari, BUT WITHOUT SUCCESS. It is for this reason, they UNANIMOUSLY AGREED that the most authentic book after the Book of Allah IS Sahih Al-Bukhari. (Translation of the Meanings of Summarized Sahih Al-Bukhari, Arabic-English, translated by Dr. Muhammad Muhsin Khan, Islamic University, Al-Madina Al-Munawwara, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia; compilation: Al-Imam Zain-ud-Din Ahmad bin Abdul-Lateef Az-Zubaidi [Maktaba Dar-us-Salam Publishers & Distributors, Riyadh-Saudi Arabia, 1994], pp. 18-19)

The following citations are taken from the Islamic Awareness team's response to Andrew Vargo's criticism of Imam al-Bukhari's collection:

* The two sahîh collections did not gather the totality of the authentic ahâdîth as proved by al-Bukhârî's testimony: "I have not included in my book al-Jâmi^c but what is authentic, and I left out among the authentic for fear of [excessive] length.(Footnote 2)"

Footnote 2 says:

He [al-Bukhârî] meant that he did not mention all the turuq [parallel chains of transmission] for each and every hadîth.^[1]

To reiterate this in elementary English for the neophyte, Imâm al-Bukhârî selected only a few authentic ahâdîth from his vast collection. However, he left out certain traditions, despite their authenticity, simply to avoid excessive length and repetition in his al-Jâmi^c (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, Imâm al-Bukhârî is also reported to have said:

He said, I heard as-Sa^cdânî say, I heard some of our companions say, Muhammad Ibn Ismâ^cîl said: I selected/published [the content of] this book - meaning the Sahih book - from about 600,000 hadîths/reports. Abû Sa^cd al-Mâlînî informed us that ^cAbdullâh Ibn ^cUdayy informed us: I heard al-Hasan Ibn al-Husayn al-Bukhârî say: "I have not included in my book al-Jâmi^c but what is authentic, and I left out among the authentic what I could not get hold of."^[2]

And:

Imâm al-Bukhârî's collection of ahâdîth was maintained to be authentic on account of his authority, and it has been maintained as authentic ever since. The neophyte's assertion, that Imâm al-Bukhârî regarded almost 99% of his own collection as spurious, is among the most rash and foolhardy statements ever dared by a Christian missionary. On the contrary, the 7,397 refers to the number of hadîths that Imâm al-Bukhârî chose to include in his al-Jâmi^c and left out many authentic narrations from his vast collection for the fear of excessive length.

…Regardless, we will quote the famous trial of Imâm al-Bukhârî to show how Maqlub^[8] (changed, reversed) ahadîth can be identified with ease by a scholar of hadîth:

The famous trial of al-Bukhârî by the scholars of Baghdad provides a good example of a Maqlûb isnâd. The traditionists, in order to test their visitor, al-Bukhârî, appointed ten men, each with ten ahâdîth. Now, each hadîth (text) of these ten people was prefixed with the isnâd of another. Imâm al-Bukhârî listened to each of the ten men as they narrated their ahâdîth and denied the correctness of every hadîth. When they had finished narrating these ahâdîth, he addressed each person in turn and recounted to him each of his ahâdîth with its correct isnâd. This trial earned him great honour among the scholars of Baghdad.^[9] (On The Nature Of Hadith Collections Of Imam Al-Bukhari & Muslim; source)

With the foregoing in perspective it should be abundantly clear that al-Bukhari would not include anything which he suspected was fraudulent or that didn’t meet his criteria for authenticity.(1) Thus, for al-Bukhari to include this quotation from Ibn Abbas means that this report must have met his very strict specifications and was fully convinced of its reliability. This further explains why both Ibn ‘Atiyya and Ibn Kathir could quote this narrative without questioning its authenticity.

And yet Zawadi wants his readers to actually believe that al-Bukhari was less stringent at this specific point since he decided to quote a questionable report!

Interestingly, Zawadi agrees with us that one should reconcile this specific narrative with the other narrations that claim that Ibn Abbas seemingly questioned the authority of the Holy Bible:

Secondly, it contradicts the authentic narrations and well-known position of Ibn Abbaas on the matter and that is that he believed that the Jews and Christians textually corrupted their scriptures…

Thirdly, Ibn Abbaas's statement could be reinterpreted in order to be reconciled with the other statements that he has made. And that is that Ibn Abbaas intended to say that they changed what was in their hands of the text which was with them, but they could not change the original true text which is with Allah on al-Lawh al-Mahfudh (preserved tablet) since the speech of Allah is eternal and no one can ever make it go lost completely and removing the words from the books here on earth does not mean that God's words have become totally lost but lost here on earth only.

This is precisely what we have done here. We carefully analyzed all of what Ibn Abbas is reported to have said, both here and in this article, comparing his statements in light of the teachings of the Qur’an and concluded that the only plausible way of harmonizing these conflicting reports is to assume that Ibn Abbas wasn’t speaking of textual corruption of the Holy Bible. Rather, Ibn Abbas was referring to the Jews and Christians corrupting the Bible through their misinterpretations of their holy Scripture and by writing books that they took to be inspired by God (such as the Talmud) but which further corrupted the plain meaning of the inspired text of God’s Word.

Endnotes
 
(1) Now this doesn’t mean that just because this report satisfied al-Bukhari’s criteria for authenticity that this somehow makes it a genuine saying of Ibn Abbas. It simply means that those Muslims who do hold al-Bukhari’s collection in very high esteem must contend with the fact that this narrative met his strict and rigorous standards of reliability and cannot simply dismiss it. Yet as we stated al-Bukhari’s stringent method of authentication cannot guarantee that a narration was passed down accurately for over two hundred years, nor can it guarantee that the names of those who transmitted it actually existed or were reliable preservers of that specific tradition in question

Source: http://www.answering-islam.org/Qur’an/Bible/ibnabbas_bukhari.htm

IHS