Bukhari's Methods: Can We Trust His Selection?

Introduction

This article examines Bukhari's methods: can we trust his selection?, providing critical analysis based on Islamic sources and historical evidence. Sahih Bukhari is considered the most authentic hadith collection in Sunni Islam, with Muslims often claiming it is "the most authentic book after the Quran." Yet examination of Imam Bukhari's selection methodology, the historical context of his work, and the theological biases that influenced his choices reveals serious reasons to question whether his collection deserves such unqualified trust.

Historical Context

Muhammad ibn Isma'il al-Bukhari (810-870 CE) lived approximately 200 years after the Prophet Muhammad's death. According to Islamic tradition, Bukhari traveled extensively throughout the Islamic world collecting hadiths, examining approximately 600,000 traditions before selecting roughly 7,275 (with repetitions) or about 2,602 unique hadiths for his "Sahih" collection. This means he rejected approximately 99.6% of the hadiths he encountered.

Bukhari compiled his collection during a critical period in Islamic history. The Abbasid Caliphate was consolidating power, various theological schools were competing for influence, and the Mu'tazilite rationalist movement was challenging traditional beliefs. This political and theological environment inevitably influenced which hadiths Bukhari considered authentic and which he rejected.

Selection Criteria

Bukhari claimed to use rigorous criteria for hadith selection:

• Complete Chain (Isnad): The hadith must have an unbroken chain of narrators back to Muhammad
• Narrator Reliability: Each narrator must be considered trustworthy and have a good memory
• Contemporary Transmission: Narrators in the chain must have been contemporaries who could have met
• No Obvious Defects: The hadith must be free from clear problems in content or chain

However, these criteria contain significant subjective elements. Who determines narrator reliability? How do we verify that narrators actually met? What constitutes an "obvious defect"? Bukhari's personal judgments about these questions determined which hadiths entered his collection—judgments that cannot be independently verified and that other scholars sometimes disputed.

Political Context

Bukhari's collection emerged during politically charged times. The Abbasid dynasty had specific theological positions they favored, and scholars who wanted patronage and acceptance needed to align with acceptable views. While there's no evidence Bukhari was directly pressured, the political environment inevitably influenced which traditions were preserved, transmitted, and deemed acceptable.

For example, hadiths favoring Ali and his descendants were viewed suspiciously in Sunni circles dominated by Abbasid influence. Bukhari's selection reflects this bias—his collection includes relatively few hadiths elevating Ali, despite Shia sources containing numerous such traditions. This suggests political and sectarian considerations influenced what Bukhari considered "authentic."

Theological Biases

Bukhari belonged to the traditionalist school of Islamic thought, opposing the rationalist Mu'tazilites. This theological position influenced his hadith selection. He favored traditions supporting traditionalist views on free will, divine attributes, and other contested issues, while rejecting hadiths that might support rationalist positions—not necessarily because of problems with the isnad, but because they contradicted his theological framework.

Islamic scholar Jonathan Brown, in "The Canonization of al-Bukhari and Muslim" (2007), notes that Bukhari's theological commitments shaped his collection. Brown writes: "The process of determining which hadiths were authentic was not purely mechanical but involved substantive theological judgments." This means Bukhari's collection reflects his theology, not just objective historical assessment.

Rejected Hadiths

If Bukhari examined 600,000 hadiths and selected only about 7,275, what happened to the 592,725 he rejected? Were they all fabrications? Unlikely—other respected collections (Sahih Muslim, the Sunan collections, etc.) contain thousands of hadiths that Bukhari rejected. Different scholars using supposedly similar criteria reached different conclusions about which hadiths were authentic.

This disagreement among hadith scholars reveals the subjective nature of the authentication process. If the methodology were truly scientific and objective, scholars should reach consistent conclusions. The fact that they don't suggests that personal judgment, theological bias, and subjective criteria play major roles in hadith authentication.

What Islamic Sources Say

Islamic sources themselves acknowledge problems with Bukhari's collection and methodology:

Key Evidence

• Al-Daraqutni's Critiques: The hadith scholar al-Daraqutni (918-995 CE) wrote "Al-Ilzamat wal-Tatabbu" identifying approximately 200 hadiths in Sahih Bukhari that he considered problematic. He argued that these traditions had defects in their chains or content that Bukhari missed or ignored. If even 200 of Bukhari's "authentic" hadiths have problems, how many others might be flawed?
• Ibn Hajar's Defenses: Ibn Hajar al-Asqalani had to write extensive defenses of Bukhari's collection against various critiques. His massive commentary "Fath al-Bari" spends considerable effort explaining away problems that critics identified. The very need for such elaborate defense suggests that Bukhari's collection contains questionable material requiring sophisticated justification.
• Different Manuscript Traditions: Sahih Bukhari exists in multiple manuscript versions with variations in content and numbering. While most variations are minor, their existence shows that even the "most authentic" collection has textual uncertainties. We don't possess Bukhari's original manuscript, only later copies that may contain copyist errors or additions.
• Scholarly Disagreements: Muslim scholars have debated specific hadiths in Bukhari's collection for centuries. Some hadiths that Bukhari accepted as authentic were rejected by other scholars, and vice versa. If experts cannot agree using the same methodology, the methodology itself must be subjective and unreliable.
• The "Two Sahihs" Concept: Muslims often refer to Bukhari and Muslim together as the "Two Sahihs" (Sahihain), suggesting both are equally authentic. However, the two collections don't entirely agree—each contains hadiths the other rejected. This proves that even the two most trusted hadith scholars made different judgments about authenticity.

Problems and Contradictions

Bukhari's methodology and selection raise serious problems that undermine confidence in his collection:

The Unverifiable Claims Problem

Bukhari's authentication depends on claims that cannot be verified:

• Did he actually examine 600,000 hadiths? We only have his word.
• Did narrators really meet as claimed? We cannot verify meetings from 200+ years earlier.
• Were narrators truly reliable? Reliability judgments were subjective and made centuries after the narrators died.
• Were chains really unbroken? Gaps could easily have been hidden or forgotten over generations.

Bukhari's entire enterprise rests on unverifiable claims about events and people from centuries before his time. There is no way to independently check whether his judgments were correct.

The Circular Reasoning Problem

Bukhari used his theological understanding to judge which hadiths were authentic, but that theological understanding was itself based on hadiths. This creates circular reasoning: hadiths are used to establish theology, which is used to judge which hadiths are authentic, which establishes theology, and so on. There's no independent, external standard to break this circle.

For example, if Bukhari believed certain theological propositions about Allah's attributes, he would favor hadiths supporting those propositions and reject hadiths contradicting them—even if the latter had equally strong chains of narration. The theology determines the authentication, and the authentication confirms the theology.

The Selection Bias Problem

Rejecting 99.6% of hadiths while accepting 0.4% raises obvious questions about selection bias:

• What if Bukhari's selection criteria were flawed?
• What if he missed authentic hadiths while accepting fabrications?
• What if his theological biases caused him to reject authentic traditions?
• What if some of the 592,725 rejected hadiths were actually authentic?

The massive rejection rate doesn't inspire confidence—it raises questions. How could anyone reliably sort authentic from fabricated hadiths when fabrication was so widespread? If 99.6% were unreliable, what confidence can we have that the 0.4% Bukhari accepted are genuinely authentic?

Implications

1. Sahih Bukhari Is Not Infallible: If Bukhari's methodology was subjective, influenced by theological bias, and based on unverifiable claims, his collection cannot be considered infallible. Muslim claims that "every hadith in Sahih Bukhari is authentic" cannot be sustained. Some may be authentic, some may not—but we cannot know with certainty which are which.
2. Other Hadiths May Be Equally Valid: If Bukhari's selection process was flawed, hadiths he rejected might be as authentic as those he accepted. This means Islamic theology and law might be based on an arbitrary selection of hadiths rather than the genuinely authentic traditions. Different selections would produce different versions of Islam.
3. The Hadith Enterprise Becomes Uncertain: If we cannot trust Bukhari's selection—and he was considered the best hadith scholar—then the entire hadith authentication enterprise becomes uncertain. No hadith collection can be fully trusted, leaving Muslims without certain knowledge of Muhammad's teachings.

Muslim Responses

Muslim apologists offer several defenses of Bukhari's methodology, but each has weaknesses:

Response 1: "Bukhari was extraordinarily careful and pious." While Bukhari may have been sincere and careful, sincerity doesn't equal accuracy. A sincere person can be sincerely wrong. Furthermore, Bukhari was human and therefore fallible. Piety doesn't grant supernatural ability to identify authentic hadiths from 200 years earlier.

Response 2: "The Muslim ummah has accepted Bukhari's collection for over 1,000 years." Widespread acceptance doesn't prove accuracy. Many things have been widely accepted and later proven wrong. Moreover, earlier hadith scholars like al-Daraqutni critiqued Bukhari's collection, showing that universal acceptance is a myth. Consensus doesn't create truth.

Response 3: "Bukhari used scientific methodology." This claim is anachronistic and false. Bukhari used subjective judgments about narrator reliability based on reports from centuries earlier. This is not scientific methodology—it's subjective historical judgment that cannot be empirically verified or falsified.

Response 4: "Critics haven't found major problems with most hadiths in Bukhari." This response misses the point. The question is not whether we can prove specific hadiths are false, but whether we can prove they're genuine. The burden of proof is on those claiming authenticity, not on skeptics. And given the unverifiable nature of Bukhari's claims, that burden cannot be met.

Response 5: "Allah preserved the authentic hadiths through Bukhari." This response appeals to faith, not evidence. It assumes what needs to be proven—that Allah guided Bukhari's selection. But if Allah was preserving hadiths, why did He allow 600,000 fabrications to circulate in the first place? And why do scholars disagree about which hadiths are authentic if Allah is guiding the process?

Christian Perspective

Bukhari's methodology highlights important differences between Islamic and Christian approaches to authoritative texts:

Written vs. Oral Tradition: Christianity depends on written documents (the New Testament) produced within the lifetime of eyewitnesses, not oral traditions collected 200 years later. The Gospels were written approximately 30-60 years after Jesus's death by apostles and their associates, not compiled from oral reports by someone living two centuries later.

Multiple Independent Sources: The New Testament contains multiple independent accounts (four Gospels, Paul's letters, other epistles) that can be compared and cross-checked. We don't depend on one person's subjective selection (like Bukhari's) but have diverse sources providing multiple perspectives on the same events.

Manuscript Evidence: We possess thousands of New Testament manuscripts allowing scholars to reconstruct the original text with high confidence. Islam has no comparable manuscript tradition for hadiths—scholars must trust oral transmission over generations and one man's selection from hundreds of thousands of traditions.

Divine Inspiration vs. Human Collection: Christians believe the biblical authors were inspired by the Holy Spirit (2 Timothy 3:16, 2 Peter 1:20-21). Bukhari makes no claim to inspiration—he merely claims to have selected carefully. One involves divine authorship; the other involves human judgment about oral traditions.

Sufficiency of Scripture: Christianity affirms that Scripture is sufficient for doctrine and practice (2 Timothy 3:16-17). Islam requires hadiths to interpret the Quran, making Islamic faith dependent on Bukhari's subjective selections. This difference makes the hadith reliability problem far more serious for Islam.

Questions to Consider

1. If Bukhari rejected 99.6% of hadiths as unreliable, why should we trust that his 0.4% selection is accurate? What if his selection criteria were flawed or his sources deceived him?
2. How can we verify Bukhari's claims about narrator reliability and chain continuity when these involve people who lived 200+ years before him? Isn't this fundamentally unverifiable?
3. If Bukhari's theological biases influenced his selection (as scholars acknowledge), how can we know we're getting authentic Muhammad rather than Muhammad filtered through Bukhari's theology?
4. Why do different hadith scholars (Bukhari, Muslim, Abu Dawud, al-Tirmidhi, etc.) reach different conclusions about which hadiths are authentic if they're all using the same "rigorous" methodology? Doesn't this prove the methodology is subjective?
5. If Allah wanted to preserve Muhammad's teachings, why did He allow such massive hadith fabrication that one scholar had to sort through 600,000 traditions? Why not preserve the teachings clearly from the beginning?

Conclusion

Examination of Bukhari's methodology reveals that his hadith collection, far from being unquestionably authentic, rests on subjective judgments, unverifiable claims, and theological biases. While Bukhari may have been sincere and careful, sincerity doesn't guarantee accuracy when dealing with oral traditions from 200 years earlier circulating among hundreds of thousands of fabrications.

The fact that Bukhari had to reject 99.6% of hadiths he examined shows the massive scale of fabrication in early Islam. The fact that other scholars disagreed with some of his selections shows that hadith authentication is subjective, not scientific. The fact that his theological commitments influenced his choices shows that Sahih Bukhari reflects Bukhari's Islam, not necessarily authentic historical Islam.

Muslims are taught that Sahih Bukhari is "the most authentic book after the Quran," but this claim cannot be sustained. Bukhari's collection is one man's subjective selection from an ocean of fabricated traditions, influenced by his theological biases and based on unverifiable judgments about people and events from centuries before his time. While some hadiths in his collection may be authentic, we cannot know with certainty which ones—leaving Muslims without certain knowledge of their prophet's actual teachings and practices.