Accept Only Hadith That Align with Quran

Christopher Melchert, The Theory and Practice of Hadith Criticism in the Mid-Ninth Century, pp. 85-86

Ahmed El Shamsy has drawn attention to some brief comments on how to identify reliable hadith preserved near the beginning of Siyar al-Awzāʿī, apparently a polemic by Abū Yūsuf (d. 182/798?) against the Syrian jurisprudent al- Awzāʿī overlaid by polemics from al-Shāfiʿī.42 Abū Yūsuf quotes advice from the Prophet through the Shiʿi imam Muḥammad al-Bāqir (d. 114/732–733?), “Hadith will spread from me (yafshū ʿannī). What comes to you from me that agrees with the Qurʾān, it is from me. What comes to you from me that disagrees with the Qurʾān, it is not from me.”43 This is hadith criticism by content alone. More elaborately, Abū Yūsuf says himself,

The evidence for what our party (al-qawm) has brought forth is that hadith from the Messenger of God … and narration has increased in quantity. Some of what has transpired is unknown: it is unknown to qualified jurisprudents (ahl al-fiqh) and disagrees with the Book and the sunna. Beware of aberrant (shādhdh) hadith. Incumbent on you is widely-accepted hadith (mā ʿalayhi al-jamāʿa), what the jurisprudents recognize, and what agrees with the Qurʾān and sunna. Draw analogies from that. What disagrees with the Qurʾān is not from the Messenger of God …, even if there is a narration of it.44

43: Al-Shāfīʿī, al-Umm, ed. Rifʿat Fawzī ʿAbd al-Muṭṭalib, 11 vols (al-Manṣūra: Dār al-Wafāʾ, 1422/2001; 2nd printing 1425/2004), 9:187.

44 Shāfiʿī, Umm, 9:188–189. Cited in support of caution regarding hadith-based law today by Fazlur Rahman, Islamic Methodology in History, Central Institute of Islamic Research (Pakistan) 2 (Karachi: Central Institute of Islamic Research, 1965), 35.