Hadith: What orientalists and modernists get wrong - with Dr Jonathan Brown

Dr Jonathan Brown joins us this week to engage in an in-depth discussion about the Hadith corpus and why contemporary arguments forwarded by orientalists and modernists lack rigour. He takes us on a journey of informed exploration of some of the key personalities and thinkers of early Islam and the lengths they went through to determine the veracity of a tradition attributed to the Messenger of Allah (saw). His books include The Canonization of al-Bukhari and Muslim: The Formation and Function of the Sunni Hadith Canon, Hadith: Muhammad’s Legacy in the Medieval and Modern World (Oneworld, 2009) and His most recent book, Misquoting Muhammad: The Challenges and Choices of Interpreting the Prophet’s Legacy (Oneworld, 2014), was named one of the top books on religion in 2014 by the Independent. He is the Alwaleed bin Talal Chair of Islamic Civilization in the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University. As always, you can comment your thoughts below. You can donate to the show here: