A Look into the Methodology of Understanding Hadith Heritage

Ali Al-Alawi

Abstract

In this study, we aim at looking into the methodology that experts in this field rely on in understanding religious texts, a fixed and defined methodology that jurists use to deduce a religious ruling, and also the propositions that religion has presented in revealing the meaning of understanding the text. We have presented the instruments the jurist relies upon for understanding, as it includes the process of understanding religious texts, even though what concerns us here in this study is the hadith heritage. What we concluded with is that this process of understanding is taken from a series of principles and laws that must be observed, and if it was not for them, there would be no correct and precise results that have a binding nature. The reader would also be able to use it as proof, due to the understanding he has of the text. We then looked into the necessary pre-assumptions in the procedure of understanding, that cannot be avoided, as they are within the necessary principles that must be activated within it and form the framework of how the process is followed. There are also harmful pre-assumptions that must be avoided in the process of understanding a text, as they form the basis of multiple understandings of one text, and the reader falls very distant from what the text really aims at saying.

Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0)