Early version. Transcripts and tags are labelled by accuracy tier. A position is shown only after two independent reviews have found it in his own words.
Mufti Abu Layth ArchiveBeta
Subscribe on YouTube Support on Patreon

Recordings › Monday Nights with Mufti #199 | Q&A Unscripted & Unrestricted! 😉 | Mufti Abu Layth · 26 Jan 2021 › Segment 28 of 36

machine

Should we throw away hadith altogether?

hadeeth ahadith ahaadeeth hadis hadees ahaadith imam bukhari sahih al-bukhari sahih bukhari saheeh al-bukhari saheeh bukhari imam al-bukhari muftis iman imaan eemaan eeman

Is hadith a cancer? Filtering the tradition, not discarding it

QuestionLive chat · questioner not identifiedAnswered 26 Jan 2021Monday Nights with Mufti Abu LaythSegment 28 of 36 in the recording2021-01-26b-S28

Play from 2:22:31 The video loads from YouTube only when you press play. Click a time in the transcript to seek.

Watch the answer

Open on YouTube at 2:22:31

The player starts at 2:22:31, where the answer begins.

This segment2:22:31 to 2:25:08 · 2 min 37 sGeneral teaching

The answer in brief

machinesummary, machine-written

No: he says the hadith tradition is a beautiful, unparalleled record of the Prophet that should be filtered for corrupted reports, not discarded.

In more detail

After joking that a viewer asking whom to listen to should listen to him, Mufti Abu Layth responds to a comment that hadith is cancer by correcting it and completing his point about his agenda: his aim is simply to filter. He says he is against speaking rudely of the heritage as a whole, since some elements may be infected but the whole need not be thrown away, and condemns Arab secular channels that swear at Bukhari, saying he does not believe in any conspiracy by al-Bukhari or that anyone was a double agent. He says it is wonderful that so many descriptions and details of the Prophet have reached us, that some became corrupted along the way but it remains a beautiful tradition other religions would be overjoyed to have for their figures of faith, and that binning everything would be reductionist and naive.

Question as read aloud · questioner not identified

Mufti, hadith is cancer.

Position stated

correctedChecked by two independent reviews, not by the channel

Mufti Abu Layth says the hadith tradition is a beautiful and unparalleled record of the Prophet that should be filtered for the reports that became corrupted, not thrown away.

In his words

“some infection crept in and it's our job to to to clean it but that's it i i don't say that you need to throw hadith away”

▶ 2:23:25Open on YouTube at 2:23:25

Category: method

Report an error

Kind: general teaching

Transcript

machine2:22:31 to 2:25:08 · click a time to seek · dotted terms open the glossary
2:22:19

ages ago that i did that i did people let's take a few quick questions uh all right you need to take uh yep akbar who do you recommend to listen to a cha cha cha you're coming on my show and asking people who do you recommend i should listen to you

2:22:46

listen to me so what is going on somebody said mufti hadith is cancer no look i want to correct i know i began earlier on saying look my agenda i don't know if i finished that my agenda is simply to filter through i am against people and against this idea of being an entire heritage or to speak rudely about it as in generally it is not you know the heritage isn't like that but yes some elements in there may be infected but you don't

2:23:25

need to chuck the whole thing away and you don't need to i know you get these people that come on some of these arab secular these kind of channels and they just insult you know just swear at bukhari and they just swear at this and they just this is never i condemn that and i've always made it clear that's not been my purpose and i don't believe there was some conspiracy by people like bukhari or some double agent and things like this it's it's just that look some some infection crept in and it's our job to to to clean it but that's it i i don't say that you need to throw hadith away

2:24:04

in fact it's wonderful you know when you think about it it is amazing that seriously that we have so many different descriptions and you know little details about the prophet because if they hadn't reached us we would have wondered today i wonder what the prophet would have been like i wonder what you would have said i wonder if there are some stories i wonder what and they've come to us but yes with it some have got corrupted along the way but it's still a beautiful kind of tradition and i tell you it's a tradition that wallahi it doesn't matter how many what people say

2:24:41

if other religions had even announced comparable to what we have in as you know as the legacy describing the profit if they even had an ounce of it they they would be over the moon i'm telling you they don't have anything like that dating back to the um you know figures of of faith so yeah but so yes by all means we clean things and we filter things but we don't you know it would be so it's so kind of reductionist and naive to say look let's bin

Paragraphs overlapping 2:22:31 to 2:25:08. Full text on the recording page.

Cite this segment

Stable id, transcript version and tier are part of the citation. Every change to a transcript is logged.

Mufti Abu Layth Archive, segment 2021-01-26b-S28, auto-transcribed, may contain errors. https://muftiabulayth.org/r/eokcnwggiba/s/28/ (accessed 1 November 2026)

APA 7 
Mufti Abu Layth. (2021, January 26). Should we throw away hadith altogether? [Video, segment 2021-01-26b-S28, auto-transcribed, may contain errors]. Mufti Abu Layth Archive. Retrieved November 1, 2026, from https://muftiabulayth.org/r/eokcnwggiba/s/28/
Chicago author-date 
Mufti Abu Layth. 2021. "Should we throw away hadith altogether?" Video, segment 2021-01-26b-S28, auto-transcribed, may contain errors. Mufti Abu Layth Archive. Recorded January 26, 2021. Accessed November 1, 2026. https://muftiabulayth.org/r/eokcnwggiba/s/28/
BibTeX 
@misc{abulayth-2021-01-26b-S28,
  author = {Mufti Abu Layth},
  title = {{Should we throw away hadith altogether?}},
  year = {2021},
  month = {1},
  date = {2021-01-26},
  howpublished = {\url{https://muftiabulayth.org/r/eokcnwggiba/s/28/}},
  url = {https://muftiabulayth.org/r/eokcnwggiba/s/28/},
  organization = {Mufti Abu Layth Archive},
  urldate = {2026-11-01},
  note = {Segment 2021-01-26b-S28, auto-transcribed, may contain errors}
}
Something wrong here?

Tell us what is wrong and it will be checked against the recording. Nothing changes until a person has reviewed it.

Sending a note needs JavaScript, which is off or unavailable in this browser. Nothing has been sent.

No name, email address or account is asked for or stored, and the inbox does not store your IP address. For rate limiting it keeps an unreadable fingerprint of your connection for 48 hours, and our database provider's own logs record connections as every website's do. Only your note, its kind, the page and the moment in the recording are kept, for review.