The Authority of the Qur’an and the Status of the Sunnah clarifies the relationship between the Sunnah, the sayings and actions of the Prophet, and the Qur’an. This relationship has been described in a variety of ways, giving rise to varied forms of knowledge and expertise, thus, impacting how Hadith scholars examine the Sunnah. Consequently, Islamic schools of thought – both juristic and philosophical – acquired different stances to Sunnah narratives reflecting the concrete life context of the scholars in question. Similarly, differences over whether to categorize a given narrator as trustworthy or untrustworthy reflected disparate juristic, theological or philosophical principles that might lead some to reject a narrator while approving another, to accept a hadith while rejecting or reinterpreting those that contradict it, or to accept or reject the criteria for criticizing the content of hadith narratives.
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