The Sunnah: Hadith in Legal Theory

The Sunnah — the body of prophetic traditions — occupies the second position in the hierarchy of Islamic legal sources, functioning simultaneously as an independent source of law and as the primary means of explaining, elaborating, and implementing Quranic commands. Kamali's treatment of the Sunnah in legal theory is one of the most thorough available in English, covering its authority, classification, authentication, and the relationship between Sunnah and Quran.

The authority of the Sunnah as a legal source is grounded in Quranic commands. The Quran instructs: 'Take what the Messenger gives you and refrain from what he forbids.' 'Obey Allah and obey the Messenger.' 'And whatever the Messenger has given you, take it, and whatever he has forbidden you from, refrain from it.' These instructions make obedience to the Prophet a direct Quranic obligation, establishing the Sunnah's legal authority from within the primary source itself.

Kamali distinguishes three types of Sunnah according to their form. The verbal Sunnah (Sunnah qawliyyah) consists of the Prophet's statements, instructions, and prohibitions. The practical Sunnah (Sunnah fi'liyyah) consists of his actions as observed and reported by his companions. The tacit Sunnah (Sunnah taqririyyah) consists of his silent approval of acts performed in his presence — what he did not prohibit when prohibition would have been expected. Each type carries legal force, though scholars have debated the weight of tacit approval relative to explicit statement.

For a hadith to function as a legal source, it must satisfy the conditions of authenticity (sihha) established by the science of hadith criticism (mustalah al-hadith): continuity of the chain of narrators (ittisal as-sanad), the trustworthiness (thiqah) of each narrator, the precise memory (dabt) of each narrator, the absence of hidden defects (shudhudh and 'illah), and the absence of contradiction with stronger evidence. These rigorous conditions reflect the Islamic legal tradition's seriousness about evidentiary standards — a ruling derived from a weak or fabricated hadith carries no legal authority.

Kamali also examines the important question of how the Sunnah relates to the Quran. The Sunnah performs three functions relative to the Quran: it confirms what the Quran has established (ta'kid); it explains and elaborates what the Quran states generally (bayan); and it establishes rulings on matters not directly addressed by the Quran (tashri'). The third function is the most theoretically significant: it affirms that the Sunnah is an independent source of law, not merely a derivative one. Many rulings essential to Islamic practice — the precise forms of prayer, the rates of zakah, the complete procedures of Hajj — depend primarily on the Sunnah for their detailed implementation, not on explicit Quranic specification.