You are now reading Part 4 (d). There may be one more part. The same disclaimer applies. I am commenting on this article found at this website :
http://asharisassemble.com/2014/05/27/have-you-been-blackmailed-by-bukhari-yet/
Big big disclaimer : This is not my article. I did not write this. I may or may not agree with any part of this article.
My comments are in blue.
Abu Dawood: 4723: It was narrated from Al- WalId bin Abi Thawr, from Simak, from ‘Abdulläh bin ‘Amirah, from Al-Ahnaf bin Qais, from Al-‘Abbãs bin ‘Abdul-Muttalib, who said: “I was in Al-Batba’ with a group of people, among whom was the Messenger of Allah . A cloud passed over him, and he looked at it and said: ‘What do you call this?’ They said: ‘As-Sajãb (a cloud).’ He said: ‘And Al-Muzn (rain cloud)?’ They said: And: ‘Al-Muzn.’ He said: ‘And ‘Anãn (clouds)?” They said: ‘And Al-‘Anan.” – Abu Dãwud said: I am not very certain about Al-‘Anãn – “He said: ‘How much (distance) do you think there is between heaven and earth?’ They said: ‘We do not know.’ He said: ‘Between them is (a distance of) seventy-one, or seventy-two, or seventy-three years, and between it, and the heaven above it is the same (and so on)’ – until he had counted seven heavens. ‘Then above the seventh heaven there is a sea, between whose top and bottom is a distance like that between one heaven and another. Then above that there are eight mountain goats’ The distance between their hooves and their knees is like the distance between one heaven and the next. Then on their backs is the Throne, and the distance between the bottom and the top of the Throne, is like the distance between one heaven and another. Then Allah is above that, may He be blessed and exalted.”
This is a particularity embarrassing hadith for the Salafis, especially as Ibn Taymiyyah graded it as ‘acceptable’
but the idea of God being carried on wild goats (or carried at all) is heretical – the hadith, despite being narrated in many collections and graded as Sahih by at least Ibn Khuzayma and Ibn Taymiyya, is rejected for naked anthropomorphism and for sounding eerily familiar to God riding a cherub in the Old Testament.
Are we to accept this bizarre and faith busting narration merely because it is graded as ‘sahih’ by some Hadith scholars?
11. My comments : From my own reading of such material, animals (especially strange hybrid animals) play a large part in religious literature. There was a pegassus like animal with wings that flew a passenger to heaven, here goats carried 'god's' throne, a whale carried the earth etc. I think village story tellers were behind these village stories.
Sometimes the ‘explanations’, which are outright lies in the cases presented, make the problem worse: (Original Arabic here: http://futureislam.files.wordpress.com/2013/07/sunan-abu-dawud-volume-5-ahadith-4351-5274.pdf A deliberate mistranslation where they interpolate ‘angels’ for ‘goats’ and truly awful and confusing explanation here: http://islamqa.info/en/88746)
Sunan Abu Dawood and Musnad of Ahmad: from Abu Huraira – ”The illegitimate child is the most evil of the three’, meaning more evil than his parents”
Once again, this is a confusing narration and there are others like it of various degrees of authenticity. Shall we follow it because some (including Salafis like Albani) say that it is ‘sahih’?
Obviously not, as it clashes with the Quran and seems to promote the idea of ‘Original Sin’ – however, the explanation of Hadrat Ai’sha (namely that the hadith does not mean what Ahmad and Abu Dawood are narrating but warns the child against replicating the actions of his parents) was not included by the Muhaditheen, either for their own reasons or because it did not meet their conditions.
Obviously, foisting this narration on someone and then telling them it is ‘sahih’ is going to cause major confusion – Hanafis and Malikis rejected it and muhaditheen who wanted to retain it were forced to offer their own explanations instead. But none of these explanations are in front of you when you read this narration – so what happened to following all Sahih narrations?
This narration is very useful in illustrating the Salafi mentality – after demanding that one accepts hadith, when a difficult one comes along, they resort to gymnastics and other sources to try and explain it: a funny strategy of theirs is to say that Albani did not accept so and so hadith or Ibn Baz rejected it in fiqh, as if their latter day 20th century Imams had to be awaited before clearing up important issues. And once again – they will try to give Muhaditheen exclusive rights to critique hadith for fear that the jurists would reject them – as indeed jurists were justified in doing so.
Sahih Muslim Book 19, Hadith Number 4322.
Chapter : Permissibility of killing women and children in the night raids, provided it is not deliberate.
It is narrated by Sa’b b. Jaththama that he said (to the Holy Prophet): Messenger of Allah, we kill the children of the polytheists during the night raids. He said: They are from them.
Here is an interesting counter example – an effort has been made by Imam Muslim to explain the narration which could be misconstrued. He also takes care to put it after the section denouncing the killing of non-combatants. But once again, not knowing that no-one in Islamic history took this literally and that it was merely an understanding that accidental civilian deaths due to cavalry damage occurred due to mingling of civilians with combatants and were unavoidable but extremely regrettable, could lead the one who has been ‘blackmailed’ by hadith to conclude that ‘they are from them’ means it is licit to kill them as opposed to ‘they are mixed up with them’, which would have been a better translation.
One can see how those of the ‘party of hadith’ predisposed to violence can easily be led astray by narrations without fiqh.
Then there is this flagrantly confusing narration in Bukhari (which is again a favourite of Shia): ”Narrated Nafi’: Whenever Ibn ‘Umar recited the Qur’an, he would not speak to anyone till he had finished his recitation. Once I held the Qur’an and he recited Surat-al-Baqara from his memory and then stopped at a certain Verse and said, “Do you know in what connection this Verse was revealed? ” I replied, “No.” He said, “It was revealed in such-and-such connection.” Ibn ‘Umar then resumed his recitation. Nafi added regarding the Verse:–”So go to your tilth when or how you will” Ibn ‘Umar said, “It means one should approach his wife in …”
The ‘dot dot dot’ is not mine: it is in fact in the text of Sahih Bukhari: if we are to ‘follow all sahih hadith’, what do we make of this confusing narration? How do we act on this, especially as the narration exists in a full form with the same chain, that Imam Bukhari neglected to mention – thus the bit he missed out is: “Approach the woman in her anus” (xiv)
This narration is rejected by all Sunnis, and in any case, what is the point of narrating an incomplete and confusing passage such as this? Did Imam Bukhari mean for us to ‘follow it’ as Salafis and Ahl Al Hadith claim? Obviously not.
Sahih Bukhari, Kitab Al-Jihaad Narrated Abu Huraira: ”Allah’s Apostle said, “Once Solomon, son of David said, ‘(By Allah) Tonight I will have sexual intercourse with one hundred (or ninety-nine) women each of whom will give birth to a knight who will fight in Allah’s Cause.’ On that a (i.e. if Allah wills)but he did not say, ‘Allah willing.’ Therefore only one of those women conceived and gave birth to a half-man. By Him in Whose Hands Muhammad’s life is, if he had said, “Allah willing’, (he would have begotten sons) all of whom would have been knights striving in Allah’s Cause.”
Are we really expected to believe that Imam Bukhari expects us to believe in this shocking incident?
In any case, how is it reconciled with a merciful God that Solomon, a Prophet, is punished for not saying ‘If Allah wills’ (which isn’t a sin in the first place) so severely by God? Then what chance do any of us stand? and why is God punishing the mother of the child and the child itself for something Solomon did? Does Imam Bukhari expect us to become Christians? Of course not – this narration was never meant by him to be ‘accepted’ in the manner Salafis and Ahl Al Hadith are doing.
Obviously, examples can be multiplied ad nauseum, but this should be sufficient: the next time people demand that you act on a hadith because the muhaditheen graded it as ‘sahih’, ask them about ‘acting’ on these narrations.
It can be seen that it is clear that (hopefully) the Muhaditheen were not collecting these for the purpose of acting on them or believing them but rather for the purposes of historical interest: none of them have any relevance to this life or the hereafter and if pursued lead to misguidance and confusion. But be warned – Salafis and Ahl al Hadith will nonetheless challenge you with outlandish explanations as seen for the hadith of ‘the Goats’, where they resorted to actually changing the words in translation and adding a whole sentence about angels that is not in the text.
You will also be constantly harangued with ‘show me anyone (they mean anyone they approve of) who rejected Sahih hadith': be careful as they are playing with you – no-one rejected the hadith as not being Sahih, as in having an authentic chain. They did indeed reject them in meaning, application or truth, because contrary to what Ahl Al Hadith would like you to think, a Sahih hadith, having a perfect chain, can be rejected for it’s meaning. There is no reason to denounce it as ‘not Sahih’, as the chain never gave it certainty in the first place. These people have misguided many with this piece of sophistry and deception: it is not necessary to grade as hadith as ‘not sahih’ to reject it, in fact no-one ever did, since a hadith sahih in chain may be rejected by suitably qualified people for a valid reason.
Sahih does not mean ‘true’ or ‘definitely said by the Prophet’, so there is no need to tackle the hadith by saying ‘not sahih = not true’, since sahih did not mean true in the very first place (as explained by, as well as all other Sunni Muslims, Ibn Hajar in his introduction to his magisterial commentary on Sahih Al Bukhari).
Further, those who decide the rejection on content are not the Imams of hadith, who are experts in chains only (somewhat akin to modern day archaeologists or forensic historians), but rather the doctors of law such as Malik and Abu Hanifa, and they do indeed frequently reject Sahih narrations, some of which were shown above.
We also unfortunately need to combat here in more detail the nonsensical assertion that no hadith in Bukhari has ever been critiqued or challenged: this is utter sophistry, especially coming from Salafis whose Imam of hadith Albani actually not only questioned but despite his latter day status and numerous documented gaffes in hadith sciences, actually rejected a shocking number of hadiths from Bukhari and Muslim.
Recalling that the Imams of Sunni Muslims usually had no need to overtly reject Sahih hadith since they did not consider them to be anything other than probabilistic in the first place, their willingness to attack narrations in Bukhari would have perhaps pleased the academic in Imam Bukhari himself:
Not only do the Imams of Sunni Muslims question and indeed reject some narrations of the Sahih, so do the Mujassim Imams of the Salafis – Ibn Taymiyya and Ibn Quyyum themselves – so what is the point of haranguing lay Muslims with ‘the Hadith is in Bukhari! How dare you question!’ – these arch-deacons of Salafism not only question but reject sahih from Bukhari:
Imam al-Bukhari writes:
“Abu Hurayra reported that the Prophet (may Allah bless him and grant him peace) said, ‘On the Day of Judgement when Allah Most High throws the people into the hell fire, it will say, “Give me more.” Then Allah Most High will create a nation and then throw them into it. The hell fire will again complain, “I want more”, and again Allah Most High will create a nation and throw them into it. The hell fire will again say, “I want more” and then Allah Most High will put His feet onto the hell fire and it will be full”
[Bukhari, Kitab at-Tawhid, chapter on ‘Tawhid’]
Doctor Maximus of Hadith, Ibn Hajar al-‘Asqalani writes:
“Imam al-Bukhari has written this hadith in his tafsir of Sura Kahf. In this narration when the hell fire asks for more, Allah Most High puts His ‘feet’ onto it and then it will be full. Allah Most High is never cruel and yet in Abu Hurayra’s above narration it says that Allah Most High will create a nation and fill Hell with it. Hafiz Ibn Qayyim, Abu Hasan Qubsi and other groups of scholars of Hadith say that the narrator of this hadith has fabricated this by saying that Allah Most High will create a nation to fill Hell. They say that Allah Most High created Hell for those people who follow Satan, and that the new creation would never have sinned, so how could Allah Most High put them in Hell? Allah Most High also says in the Qur’an that He never does injustice to anyone (Sura al-Kahf verse 49).
[al-‘Asqalani, Fath al-Bari, chapter on ‘Tawhid’]
Hafiz ibn Taymiyya writes:
“An authentic narrator sometimes makes mistakes, but knowledgeable scholars of Hadith find these mistakes straight away. For example, Imam al-Bukhari writes in Kitab al-Tawhid that Allah Most High will create a new nation and fill the hell fire with it. A master of Hadith will find out straight away if a narrator has made a mistake. These mistakes by narrators are also found in other Hadith books. Imam Muslim writes that when the Prophet (SAW) married his wife Maymunah, after he had taken off the ihram from himself, the Prophet (SAW) did not perform two rakat nafila inside the Ka’ba. A person with deep knowledge of Hadith will straight away know the narrator of this hadith has made a mistake because it is proved from another authentic hadith that the Prophet never performed ‘umra in the month of Rajab. When the Prophet married his wife Maymunah, he was wearing the ihram and he did perform two rakat nafil inside the Ka’ba.
[Ibn Taymiyya, Usuli Tafsir, chapter ‘Ijma al-Muhaddithun’]
Ibn Taymiyya writes also about Imam Muslim:
“Imam Muslim has written those types of narrations to which scholars of Hadith have objected e.g. Allah Most High made the skies and Earth in seven days and Abu Sufiyan asking our Prophet (may Allah bless him and grant him peace) to marry his daughter after becoming Muslim. Another narration in the ‘Book of Salat’ indicates that our Prophet (SAW) had two sons called Ibrahim [when we know that our Prophet (SAW) had only one son called Ibrahim]
[Ibn Taymiyya, at-Tawassul, ‘Ulum al-Hadith and Fatawa Ibn Taymiyya, vol.18, chapter on ‘Maqam Bukhari wa Muslim’]
Of course, Ibn Taymiyyah is as indirect and unclear as he always is but it seems that he has criticized Imam al-Bukhari’s and Imam Muslim’s narrations as well as Ibn Quyyum – and they are to be praised for their honesty and academic vigour in criticising a hadith that in fact supports their anthropomorphic beliefs.
Imam al-Bukhari writes:
“After the death of the Prophet (may Allah bless him and grant him peace), Umm al-Mu’minin Sawda (may Allah be pleased with her) was the first to die”
[Bukhari, Chapter of Zakat]
Hafiz Ibn Hajar al-‘Asqalani writes that this is wrong, and that Umm al-Mu’minin Zaynab died first.
Imam Ibn al-Jawzi says this narration is not correct and it is very strange that Imam al-Bukhari wrote this.
Imam an-Nawawi also says that Imam al-Bukhari has made mistakes [Fath al-Bari, ‘Zakat’]
Bukhari: ‘Umar ibn Maymun said: “I saw a monkey who had just committed adultery with another one. Other monkeys then stoned them both, so I also started to throw stones as well”
[Bukhari, “Ayyam al-Jahiliya”]
Hafiz al-‘Asqlani writes: “Allama Ibn ‘Abdi’l-Barr says: ‘This narration is wrong because enforcing an Islamic law on an animal regarding any matter would be wrong.’
Humaydi says that this account was not actually in the original Bukhari, but someone has added it later.
**Nusqi wrote the second version of Bukhari, and this narration was not written in it**.
If we were to say that Hafiz Humaydi and Ibn ‘Abdi’l-Barr are right, then what about the scholars who say that all the ahadith written in Bukhari are correct?”
”[Fath al-Bari, “Ayyam al-Jahiliya”]
My comments : Monkeys committing adultery?? Isnt that just village idiot stuff?
Imam al-Bukhari and Imam Muslim have said that the War of Mustalaq happened in 4 AH as Musa ibn ‘Uqba has said. Ibn Ishaq has said that it happened in 6 AH. Mustalaq was in the war when ‘A’isha was falsely accused of a sin she did not commit.’
A’isha has said that when she was falsely accused, the ‘Verse of the Veil’ was revealed. One day our Prophet (may Allah bless him and grant him peace) was talking to some people and he said, “Some people have falsely accused my wife, but I can only see goodness in her.” From the evidence, Sa’d ibn Mas, stood up and said, “If the person who has falsely accused your wife is from our tribe, I will kill him”
[Bukhari, Magazi; Muslim, Tawba]
Hafiz al-‘Asqalani writes:
“Imam al-Bukhari has said that the war of Mustalaq happened in 4 AH. Imam al-Bukhari has made a mistake, because the War of Mustalaq happened in 5 AH. I feel that Imam al-Bukhari wanted to write down 5 but he wrote down 4, because Imam al-Bukhari also wrote a hadith in the chapter on Jihad which proves that the war of Mustalaq happened in 5 AH.
Secondly, the narration where Sa’d ibn Mas has said that he would kill the slanderer is also wrong. This is because Sa’d ibn Mas was martyred in the Battle of Khandaq (which happened before the War of Mustalaq). ’A’isha has said, ‘When I was falsely accused, the Verse of the Veil was revealed and it was revealed after the Battle of Khandaq’ “
[al-‘Asqalani, Fath al-Bari, Magazi]
It is very interesting that the same, very understandable confusion with numbers, if it is applied to the issue of the age of Ai’sha, namely that the ages given in the Sahih collections do not add up and she was older than nine at the time of betrothal, send Salafis into a rage of ‘modernist’ and ‘hadith rejecter’ – but here is Ibn Hajar saying that Bukhari and Muslim have their dates wrong – what of it?
People have not only felt free to fault the Sahih collections on their matn (recall the anger that Salafis feel on anything but criticism of the chain of transmission, but Ibn Taymiyyah and Ibn Quyyam were happy to critique the content or matn in the above narrations) but also even in the chains of narrations.
Before we get into that, it is important to know why people try to blackmail Muslims into accepting muhaditheen as the main authorities in Islam – namely to facilitate their heretical views on hadith. To this end, they will often point out that narrators such as Abu Hanifa and Malik are considered weak by certain muhaditheen (they mean their favourites of course) and for this reason they do not narrate hadith from them – this is a gross deception.
But assuming it is true, why are we to accept the views of the opponents of the fuqahah, in this case the muhaditheen as being correct? One does not take the information from one side of a dispute only.
In fact, Hadith narrators such as Imam Bukhari and even earlier ones had serious problems with the Imams of fiqh, often making shocking statements about them – so when the Salafis tell you that Abu Hanifa and the Muwatta of Imam Malik are ‘weak’ in hadith, they do not tell you the following pertinent facts:
Imam al-Bukhari has stated:
“Imam Abu Hanifa was a Murji’i” (*Murjis were a sect who believed that believing in God guaranteed paradise just as not believing it guaranteed Hell and thus actions were not of any benefit apart from those. The accusation of course, is false)
[Al-Ta’rikh al-Kabir, under the ‘Biography of Numan ibn Thabit’]
Imam al-Bukhari also writes:
“When Sufyan ath-Thawri heard news about the death of Imam Abu Hanifa, he said: ‘Praise be to Allah that such a man had died as he was gradually destroying Islam. There could not be a worse person born in Islam’ “
[Ta’rikh Saghir, Biography of Imam Abu Hanifa]
Imam al-Bukhari also writes:
“On two occasions Imam Abu Hanifa was ordered to repent from making blasphemous statements”
[al-Bukhari, Kitab ad-Daufa Walmat Rukin; Ibn ‘Abdi’l-Barr, Al-Intiqa]
Imam al-Bukhari informs us that he had taken these statements from his tutor Na’im ibn Hammad [Ta’rikh as-Saghir]
Imam al-Bukhari was so convinced by his tutor, that he never mentioned or used Imam Abu Hanifa as a reference for his book Sahih al-Bukhari, and accused him of only knowing a handful of hadith (a bizarre assertion).
So Imam Bukhari is not at all saying that Abu Hanifa is ‘weak’ but rather that he is an apostate (times two).
Imam ‘Abdullah ibn Mubarak (another noted Muhaddith) said, ‘I don’t consider Imam Malik to be a scholar.’
So before the lay Muslims are led to believe that they should doubt Malik or Abu Hanifa on hadith, it should be known that Ahl Al Hadith accept these kinds of narrations from individuals such as Na’im Ibn Hammad: One often finds both praiseworthy and very scathing statements about narrators and scholars – whereas Imam Bukhari (and Salafis) are happy to take Hammad’s word on Abu Hanifa, there is this about him, amongst other alleged calumnies:
“Na’im ibn Hammad was a famous scholar from a region called Marau. He had sight in one eye only. During the later part of his life he went to live in Egypt. At first, he belonged to a sect called the Jahmites, and was an active member. He then later left this sect and wrote a book, which was the first book to use the science of Musnad. These were a compilation of narrations by the Sahahba, which were placed in an alphabetical order, according to whom they had narrated the hadith. During this particular period, the Umma used to question whether the Holy Qur’an was makhluq (created). When this question was put forward to Na’im ibn Hammad he did not give an explanation. He was then sent to prison along side Yaqub Faqia. He died in 228 AH. It was noted that no janaza [funeral prayer] was prayed over him and he was buried without a kaffan [shroud]”
[al-Baghdadi, Tadhkirat al-Huffaz; adh-Dhahabi, Tahzib al-Tahzib; al-‘Asqalani and al-Baghdadi, Biography of Na’im ibn Hammad]
So it is these kinds of tricks that are used by the Ahl Al Hadith to confuse converts and lay Muslims – if Muhaditheen are reluctant to narrate from Malik or Abu Hanifa due to doubts about them what about the doubts about less senior scholars from much after their time such as Hammad? Why are they not doubting them? The reason is obviously that they are in the ‘hadith’ gang and Abu Hanifa is persona non grata to them. So there is no need to give them final say on who Abu Hanifa or Malik are or are not.
In reality, we should not be fooled by the Salafi movement into being too partial to the ‘people of hadith': scholars are human beings – they can get angry and they can err – this even happens to the Sahabah. In fact it is because of the power struggle between the narrators of hadith and the scholars of Islam that the former refuse to narrate from them and accuse and belittle them. It is indeed a great loss for Islam and it’s authenticity if we discard the two earliest Imams because some Muhaditheen had a problem with them. And as seen above, we cannot reconstruct Islam and fiqh and creed from the books of hadith alone. Or if we can, it is a very strange Islam, full of wild goats and inapplicable stories.
Further, it can be seen that the Muhaditheen not narrating hadith from the earliest collectors such as Malik is not due to scholarly rigour but animosity:
For example, we saw Imam Bukhari narrate a hadith from Imran Ibn Hattan above: but he was the head of the Khawarij sect and his poem exalting Ibn Moljam who assassinated Ali is famous. Yet Bukhari often narrates from him – but not from Hanafis. It may be, as some have said, that he does this from before the time he became a khawarij – but he certainly seems more accommodating of such people than might be considered proper given his harshness against Abu Hanifa, based on what a similarly unreliable person had claimed about him. Further, does not the fact that someone became a Khawarij render his earlier narrations suspect? At what stage did he become a Khawarij? And does Imam Bukhari give the same leeway to other deviant sects?
Imam Bukhari also narrates, as do other muhaditheen from Hariz Ibn Uthman who was known for cursing Ali (RA) seventy times before leaving the mosque. Ismail Ibn Ayyash narrated: “I accompanied Hariz from Egypt to Makkah. On the way he kept cursing Ali. I said to him: How can you curse someone about whom the Prophet (SAW) has said: “You are to me as Aaron to Moses?” Bukhari, Tirmidhi, Nasai and others have narrated from him.
Imam Bukhari narrated over fifty three narrations from Uthman Ibn Abi Shaybah – who many Muhaditheen were willing to give the benefit of the doubt, unlike Malik or Abu Hanifa despite his being well known for making fun of the Quran and narrating “Our Prophet attended a festival of non-believers and respected their idols the way they respected them. This is the reason why two angels refused to pray behind our Prophet”. But this situation would never arise with our Prophet. Ibn Abi Shayba also used to interpret the Qur’an incorrectly and disrespected it by changing its words (xv). Zakariyya ibn Yahya ath-Thani Daraqutni claims he had no knowledge of Hadith and he used to tell unknown narrations. Hakim had said that he was weak and made many mistakes in narration. Al-Bukhari admits the scholars of Hadith have ignored him and did not take narrations from him at all. But Imam al-Bukhari has taken narrations from him regardless (xvi).
Accepting such a person and not accepting Abu Hanifa does not do wonders for Imam Bukhari’s partiality.
The Muhaditheen that the Salafis want you to judge Malik and Abu Hanifa by are also willing to narrate from Imam Zuhri and Sufian Ibn Ouyana – who claim that some part of the Quran was lost in the battle of Yarmuk. Of course, that is their right, but it is not then a necessity for you to defer to them as to who is and is not Sahih vis-a-vis the Imams of Fiqh and aqeeda. With all of these people, you find good and bad narrations – the Muhaditheen do not deny that these people for example made fun of the Quran, but their sciences allow then to narrate from them. Likewise, the sciences of the Islamic logicians and jurists such as Malik allow him to reject such ‘Sahih’ narrations. If anything, the latter is the safer path.
Of course, our intention here is not to disparage the noble Imams of hadith, but rather to maintain the correct balance or ‘Al Qistas al Mustaqeem’ as Imam Al Ghazzali might say; the efforts of the Imams of Hadith are immense, but to put them above the fuqaha of the tabaeen and Salaf and allow them to insult them is incorrect and offensive, especially when the methodology of deviant sects today is to play into the hands of Shia, modernists and missionaries by asserting that hadith has primacy over Fiqh or that Bukhari has primacy over Malik or Shafi or worst of all, Abu Hanifa. This is manifest stupidity.
Despite these very harsh statements and apparently strange narrations and narrators by the Imams of Hadith, Hanafis, Malikis, Shafis and others have been tolerant and rightly give the Imams of Hadith their due rank and respect.
At the same time, they reserve the right, due to their seniority and superiority in knowledge, to reject hadith (sahih or not) that clash with the Quran, or the noble character of the Prophets.
Malikis reject freely those hadith which clash with the practices of Medina at the time as they question how a single chain narration could go against what all of the Companions and Successors were doing.
Shafis reject any that do not meet their five conditions or clash with reality.
Hanafis have a big list of conditions, over a dozen, and thus reject ahad that clash with Quran, Seera, observable reality, analogy and a big list of others (xvii).
It is the fact that Hanafis and Malikis are most strict when it comes to attributing statements to the Prophet and that the Muhaditheen indeed had the most antagonism with them and they have paradoxically been accused by them of hadith rejection (and much worse as the quotes Bukhari etc show).
As I hope is obvious by now, people like Isa Ibn Abban and Abu Hanifa and Malik have very good reasons for rejecting the hadith they do, quite apart from their followers being accused of hadith denial or modernism (ironically it is the Ahl Al Hadith and the Salafis who hold honours for innovation and modernism with their ‘any hadith goes as long as it’s Sahih’ policy).
The real meaning of tolerance of different opinions is to not start accusing people when they have a different methodology to oneself – after all, everyone is wiling to tolerate those who agree with them. Thus the madhabs must be free to apply their methodologies of hadith as they have from the very earliest days, indeed, from long before Bukhari, without fear of marginalisation or harassment.
The next time a man or woman with a scowl comes up to you, starts hurling hadith and insisting the hadith is ‘Sahih’ and you must follow it, tell them ‘the hadith that women are bad luck is sahih, do you accept it? Why do you look for a way out with narrations of Imam Ahmad? Do you accept that God rides seven wild goats? Why not, hadith is Sahih!’.
Or ignore them and follow the correct methodology of the Madhabs and the greatest of Imams, Abu Hanifa (RA)