Gender Issues and the Search for a Hadith : A Journey in Scholarly Due Diligence

Hadith are the second source of the Islamic way of life in general andof Islamic law and jurisprudence in particular. From a religious perspective,whether in matters of faith or practice, the details of Muslim life are shaped byhadith as the Qur'an, the revealed source of Islam, mostly provides guidancewithout relevant details. Thus, hadith play a key role in Islamic religiousdiscourse. For this reason, the authentication of hadith has been a pivotalenterprise in Islamic history.From the earliest period, many hadith appeared that later came to be classifiedby hadith experts as spurious. One might expect that, by now, Muslims wouldhave become sufficiently circumspect to prevent misattribution of sayings tothe Prophet. Indeed, it might be thought that, since all the hadith collectionsare already in place, there is no room for accretions or distortion of hadith.However, this paper deals with the case of a modern accretion to an otherwiseauthenticated hadith. While this might not be common, it calls for furthercircumspection and due diligence by Muslim scholars and other experts