The Truth about the Alleged Punishment for Apostasy in Islam — Page 115
115 A ha d i th. There are other criteria, too, to decide about the authenticity of A ha d i th. One of these criteria is to judge the credibility of its narrator. The other is to find out whether it is reported by a single narrator (whose credentials are doubtful) at any step of its Isn a d * or there are other narrators who support him in the same Sanad or there are other more reliable Isn a d of the Hadith than the one in question. When we look at this Hadith on the basis of the above two criteria we find that the renowned scholars, who had dedicated their lives to researching the credibility of A ha d i th , had passed the judgement on this Hadith that it is ghr i b (i. e. reported by only one narrator, who in the present case happens to be extremely unreliable i. e. ‘Ikrama) and that it belongs to what are technically known as A ha d i thi Ah ad (that is the A ha d i th in the Sanad of which at one are more steps there are three or less than three narrators—in the present case there is only one narrator at the second step of the Sanad —that is the step following the Disciple ra of the Holy Prophet sa ). The opinion of Maul a n a ‘Abdul H ay i Lakhnaw i ra is that because Imam Bukh a r i had reported it from ‘Ikrama, other Mu h addith i n 111 accepted the Hadith on the authority of Imam Bukh a r i —because of his high * A Sanad or Isnad , is the chain of narrators which, starting with a Disciple ra of the Holy Prophet sa , comes down to the collector of Hadith e. g. Bukh a r i. There are obviously various steps in this chain. Some times sanad starts with a T a ba‘ i , or Taba‘ T a ba‘ i. [Publisher] 111 The collectors of A ha d i th. [Publisher]