The pre-hadith discussion is worth reading to give a bit of background as to hadith study! The hadith that is chosen by Saanei is one that is from Hasan al-Askari from Ali ibn Abu Talib. It is relatively long so I will only translate the relevant bits:
"A woman stopped in front of the Messenger of Allah and said: '....what is the issue with two women being equal to one man in testimony concerning inheritance?' So the Messenger of Allah said: '...because you are deficient in religion and intellect.'. She replied: 'What is the deficiency in our religion?' He said: 'Women spend half their life not praying due to their period, and you curse a lot*, and are ungrateful to the grace of Allah. If one of you spend 10 years or more with a man and he is good to you but if one day, he does not give you what you want, or is antagonistic towards one of you, she would reply: 'What good have I seen from you ever!'...then the Prophet said 'There is no evil man except that there is a woman who is more evil. There is no good woman except one such that there is a better man than her.." (Tafsir al-Burhan 1:263)
* not 100% sure of the translation here
It is clear how this shows that the reasoning is not forgetfullness but the deficiencies in woman. Saanei begins his critique by studying the chain of narrators:
1. There is no chain of narrators to the book in which this was quoted. For famous books such as the 4 Shii collections (al-Kafi, al Tahdhib, al-'Istibsar, and Man la yahduruhu al-faqih), we don't need a chain of narration TO the book because they were well known. However, for a book such as this, we need to be sure that there has not been any changes made to the book, as there are examples in history where books have been altered or falsely attributed to people
2. The chain of narrators (from the book to Hasan al-Askari) is mursal - this means that there are gaps in the chain and thus we cannot rely on it. The danger in relying on such a hadith is that:
A. The chain may have had someone untrustworthy in it, and the narrator thus chose to omit him
B. The narrator of the hadith may have wanted to attribute something to Hasan al-Askari without any proof
Thus from this discussion, the chain of narrators (sanad) is not something that can be relied on. This by itself is enough to disregard a hadith. However, to understand Saanei's thinking, it is worth looking at how he discusses the matn (content) of the hadith.
My father (quite rightly) questions why Saanei brings this hadith as the first example, when it is flawed in so many ways! My reading into this is that:
ReplyDelete1. It is a well-known hadith
2. It is an example that shows every way a hadith can be criticised and is useful in showing the methodology and approach to each hadith (sanad, then matn....etc.)
Both of these make it useful to learn HOW to approach others which are only flawed in one way...