Juynbolliana, Gradualism, The Big Bang, And Hadith Study in the Twenty-First Century (Report)
The Journal of the American Oriental Society 2010, July-Sept, 130, 3
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Publisher Description
I. INTRODUCTION There is something about hadith studies that seduces its students. The sheer mass of the field--the commentaries, biographical dictionaries, supplementary studies, its seemingly precise terminology, seeming specificity and facticity--draws scholars to it like a giant gravitational field, and keeps some of them there for their entire careers. Too often it is a black hole from which no light escapes. Sometimes this is because the scholar is sucked into the world of the ashab al-hadith and loses critical distance. Or sometimes it is because the critical distance itself becomes an event horizon that radiates only suspicion, disdain, and hyper-criticism as scholars position themselves against the forces of religious irrationality and tradition.