Do Muslims Cherry-Pick From Islamic Literature?

Question

Why do Muslims cherry-pick information from the oldest Islamic literature?

Answer

There is science of hadith based upon which hadith are categorized. The Sahih Bukhari & Sahih muslim have the most authentic collection of hadith. However there are authentic hadith in other hadith collections as well and the correctness or soundness of hadith can be found by applying the science of hadith.

To ensure that only the correct information passes to the future generation, during the time when hadith were being collected & compiled science of hadith was devised which made it impossible for anyone to concoct something and propagate it as hadith of prophet (salallaahu ‘alaihi wa sallam).

So obviously there is a need to cherry pick because we cant rely on information which is not authentic, and there are many narrations which have been concocted by enemies of islam and an attempt was there to adulterate the authentic narrations with these concocted narrations.

However the questioner seems to have laid a trap for muslims by mentioning in the description: “….. Works of earliest scholar-authors like ibn Ishaq, Sahih Bukhari, Sahih Muslim, Abu Dawud, Tabari, ibn Saad etc, are the most authentic Islamic history. …These works are the busiest information source for Muslims. Yet Muslims debunk these very works when unpleasant history, they document, comes up….”

This is highly misleading to say the least. You cant club Ibn Ishaq which is full of false and israeli narrations and Sahih bukhari together. also you should note that book of history is different from book of hadith as the level of due diligence which was involved in the process of compiling hadith which is documenting the fundamental aspects of religion was very different from that of compiling historical narrations only.

There is a science of hadith which if applied to these historical narrations makes them unfit and that’s the reason why Imam bukhari and other hadith compilers rarely used any material from ibn ishaq though his books preceded theirs.

Some of the problems with Ibn Ishaqs biography of prophet are as below:

That his Isnads (chains of transmissions) were defective, ie not ‘iron’ tight by naming all the reporters, which is important because this determines whether the transmitter of the story is trustworthy or not. Ibn Ishaq was not an eye witness to any of the events of Prophet Muhammad’s life. Ibn Ishaq was writing about 150 years after the Prophet’s death so this is very important. In Islamic sciences in order for a report of the Prophet (peace be on him) to be true is if the isnad is solid or not. He used reports of traditions gathered from Jewish sources. Jews made up a lot of false stories/legends of Prophet Muhammad There are several stories in Ibn Ishaq which are never found in the hadith. The reason why is because several hadith collectors such as Bukhari— did not trust Ibn Ishaq. Malik bin Anas Bin Malik bin Abu Amir Al-Asbahi (715-801 C.E.) or Imam Malik— lived cloest in the time to the life of Prophet Muhammad of all the collectors of the hadith (Bukhari, Muslim, Abu Dawud, etc). He was born more than 80 years after the death of the Prophet. Imam Malik was a complier of a respected hadith collection, called Muwatta. Imam Malik was a hadith scholar. Imam Malik called Ibn Ishaq a liar and an imposter for writing false stories about Prophet Muhammad. Imam Malik has said that Ibn Ishaq “reports traditions on the authority of the Jews”. Shaykh ibn Taymiyyah said: “Allah has provided evidence (i.e. Isnad) establishing the authenticity or lack thereof of the narrations that are necessary in matters of the religion. It is well known that most of what was reported in aspects of Tafsir (commentaries on the Qur’an) is similar to narrations reporting Maghazi (or Seerah) and battles, promoting Imam Ahmad to state that three matters do not have Isnad: Tafsir, Mala’him (i.e. great battles), and Maghazi. This is because most of their narrations are of the Maraseel (plural for Mursal) type, such as narrations reported by Urwah Ibn az-Zubair, ash-Sha’bi, az-Zuhri, Musa Ibn Uqbah and Ibn Ishaq ” So all the leading imams and scholars of Islam rejected the seerah written by Ibn Ishaq however the enemies of Islam who have problem accepting Quran which is considered by muslims as 100% word of Allah, and who have problem in accepting hadith which has gone through rigorous analysis and evaluation using the science of hadith are very quick to quote concocted stories from books which are dubious and have been written by authors who are considered unreliable.