THE REAL STATUS OF SUNNAH: A CRITIQUE OF DANIEL BROWN’S VIEWS
Abstract
This article addresses to the questions about the status of Sunnah, raised by a contemporary orientalist Danial W. Brown. In the first Chapter of his book „Rethinking Tradition in Modern Islamic Thought‟, he has divided the Muslims‟ views about Sunnah into two groups; before al-Shafiʻ i and after him, and then tried to show that there appeared a remarkable change in Sunnah‟s status with alShafiʻ i. According to him, the early Muslims (before al-Shafiʻ i) neither differentiated various sources of Islamic law i.e. Quran and Sunnah, nor gave Sunnah of Muhammad (SAW) precedence over the Sunnahs of the Companions, notably the early Caliphs. He thinks that the ranking of revealed material only aimed at justifying the point of view of one‟s liking. He also claims that main cause of the isnad system was to discredit authorities of the opponent and to tear apart his isnads and that legal reasoning before al-Shafi„ihad been hadithfree. This study tries to clarify such ambiguities created by Daniel Brown and indicates the real status of Sunnah among the Muslims of all ages.
Keywords: Quran; Sunnah; Hadith; before al-Shafiʻ i; after alShafiʻ i; modern Muslim
Metadata Record
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