Sunnah
[7][8][9] Sunnah provides a basis not only for major laws and rituals in Islam like how to pray salat, but for "even the most mundane activities", such as the order in which to cut fingernails or the proper length of a beard.
[11] During the early Islamic period, the term referred to any good precedent set by people of the past, including both Muhammad,[11] and his companions.
[13] The classical meaning that now prevails was introduced later in the late second century of Islam, when under the influence of the scholar Al-Shafi‘i, Muhammad's example as recorded in hadith was given priority over all other precedents set by other authorities.
[citation needed] In al-Ṭabarī's history of early Islam, the term "Sunnah of the Prophet" is not only used "surprisingly infrequently", but used to refer to "political oaths or slogans used by rebels", or "a general standard of justice and right conduct", and not "to specific precedents set by Muhammad", let alone hadith.
[36] An early theological writing by Hasan al-Basri (Risala fi'l Qadar) also is "empty of references to specific cases" when mentioning "Sunnah of the Prophet".
[36] Daniel Brown states that the first extant writings of Islamic legal reasoning were "virtually hadith-free" and argues that other examples of a lack of connection between sunnah and hadith can be found in: According to one source (Ahmad Kazemi Moussavi and Karim Douglas Crow), early Sunni scholars often considered sunnah equivalent to the biography of Muhammed (sira).
[40] The golden age, starting with the creation of the Hanafi, Maliki, Shafi'i, Hanbali, and other schools of fiqh in the second century of Islam, limited sunnah to "traditions traced back to the Prophet Muhammad himself" (sunna al-nabawiyyah).
The ancient regional schools of law, located in several major cities of the new Arab empire of Islam, including Mecca, Kufa, Basra, and Syria,[41] had a more flexible definition of sunnah than is now commonly used.
[47][b] Al-Shafiʿi "forcefully argued" that the sunnah stands "on equal footing with the Quran" (according to scholar Daniel Brown), both being divine revelation.
[56][57] Hadith was now systematically collected and documented, but several generations having passed since the time of its occurrence meant that "many of the reports attributed to the Prophet are apocryphal or at least are of dubious historical authenticity" (according to Abou El Fadl).
Muhammad is al-insān al-kāmil, the perfect man, labib-Allah beloved of God,[64] an intercessor, a "channel of divine light".
I do not say this only in relation to requirements of religion [ʿibādāt], for there is no escaping these; rather, this includes every area of behavior [ʿādāt].In the 19th century, "social and political turmoil" starting with the decline of the Mughal Empire, caused some Muslims to seek a more humanized figure of Muhammad.
The miracle-performing "larger than life" prophetic figure was de-emphasized in favor of "a practical model for restoration of the Muslim community", a virtuous, progressive social reformer.
[68] This era of rapid social and technological change, decline of Muslim power, and replacement of classical madhhab by Western-inspired legal codes in Muslim lands,[69] also suggested a turn away from the "detailed precedents in civil and political affairs", called for by traditional hadith, "for if worldly matters require detailed prophetic guidance, then every age will require a new prophet to accommodate changing circumstances".
He argued that Muhammad had come as a "moral reformer" and not a "pan-legit", and that the specifics of the sunnah would be agreed upon community of his followers, evolving with changing times as a "living and on-going process".
[83] Instead these collections of ahadith of al-Bukhari and al-Muslim's were ijma (consensus or agreement of the Muslim scholars—which is another classical source of Islamic law).
Modern Sunni scholars have examined both the sira and the hadith in order to justify modifications to jurisprudence (fiqh).
[106] The minority argument against the sunnah of Muhammad being divine revelation (waḥy) goes back to the ahl al-Kalam who al-Shāfiʿī argued against in the second century of Islam.
[107] Specifically because According to John Burton, paraphrasing Al-Shafi'i, "it must be remembered that the Quran text are couched in very general terms which it is the function of the sunnah to expand and elucidate, to make God's meaning absolutely clear.
"[110] There are a number of verses in the Quran where "to understand the context, as well as the meaning", Muslims need to refer to the record of the life and example of Muhammad.
[17] It is thought that verses 16:44 and 64 indicate that Muhammed's mission "is not merely that of a deliveryman who simply delivers the revelation from Allah to us, rather, he has been entrusted with the most important task of explaining and illustrating" the Quran.
And We have sent down to you ˹O Prophet˺ the Reminder, so that you may explain to people what has been revealed for them, and perhaps they will reflect.We have revealed to you the Book only to clarify for them what they differed about, and as a guide and mercy for those who believe.For example, while the Quran presents the general principles of praying, fasting, paying zakat, or making pilgrimage, they are presented "without the illustration found in Hadith, for these acts of worship remain as abstract imperatives in the Qur'an".
[4] According to scholar Gibril Fouad Haddad, the "sciences of the Sunnah" ('ulûm as-Sunna) refer to:[115][116] the biography of the Prophet (as-sîra), the chronicle of his battles (al-maghâzî), his everyday sayings and acts or "ways" (sunan), his personal and moral qualities (ash-shamâ'il), and the host of the ancillary hadîth sciences such as the circumstances of occurrence (asbâb al-wurûd), knowledge of the abrogating and abrogated hadîth, difficult words (gharîb al-hadîth), narrator criticism (al-jarh wat-ta`dîl), narrator biographies (al-rijâl), etc., as discussed in great detail in the authoritative books of al-Khatîb al-Baghdâdî.Shia Muslims do not follow the Kutub al-Sittah (six major hadith collections) followed in Sunni Islam, therefore in Shia and Sunni Islam, the sunnah refer to different collections of religious canonical literature.
