Hadith Qudsi Proves Hadith Inauthenticity

When we look up the word “authentic,” we get the following definition.

In the context of Hadith, “an authentic narration” means a report or narration that is verified to be sound, correct, and reliable according to rigorous authentication standards. This implies that the statement should be accurate, unchanged, and without distortion. If someone claims that this is “an authentic statement,” one would assume that the person actually said the exact statement specified. This expectation should be even higher if one claims certain statements to be the most authentic, second to the Quran.

This is precisely what Sunni Muslims claim regarding the books of Sahih Bukhari & Muslim. For example, Al-Nawawi wrote:

“The scholars, may God have mercy on them, have agreed that the most authentic book after the dear Quran are the two Sahihs of Bukhari and Muslim.”1

Siddiq Hasan Khan (died 1890) wrote,

“All of the Salaf and Khalaf assert that the most authentic book after the book of Allah is Sahih al-Bukhari and then Sahih Muslim.”2

So, we should expect that the statements being attributed to the prophet are verbatim statements from him, and unsurprisingly this is what many Sunni Muslims falsely believe. With such high conviction towards the authenticity of these works, it is not a surprise that if you ask a Sunni Muslim if the Hadith are actual verbatim statements made by the prophet, they will vehemently argue that they are. Yet, if you ask them regarding the statements that are in the Hadith that are attributed to God, their tone will change.