Reddit reply in r/AcademicQuran: what do you think of icraas response to joshua — June 29, 2024 | Ali Shukri Amin

Thanks for this link. I've only recently been exposed to Little's work and the idea of ICMA, so I'm still learning myself. I have pretty extensive background in hadith studies outside of academia.

I can't comment on Little's interpretation until I read that article.

Muslim cited this quote in his introduction to his Ṣaĥīĥ compilation where he is outlining his methodology in collecting, organizing, and criticizing ĥadīth generally along with commenting on some of the controversies in the field - particularly his disputes with his teacher Bukhārī.

Muslim puts this quote in context and that's why he interprets it like that. He brings a series of quotes about "qaṣāṣīn" i.e. story-tellers. Qaṣāṣīn are described as essentially religious entertainers who motivate people to be more righteous but themselves are untrained in Islamic sciences, so are prone to misremember or make things up.

The term "righteous" here is clearly a euphemism for "story-teller" which is harsher and more straight to the point. Just like the similar word "ahl al-khayr".

The hadith scholars would often use euphemisms to criticize people they otherwise respected, such as called someone "ṣadūq" (very honest) to emphasize that they are missing the other component of reliability, a good memory.

If you go back to the series of narrations Muslim brings up it's very clear that qaṣāṣīn, ṣaliĥūn, and ahl al-khayr are the same group being mentioned by several early hadith critics. It's not clear to me that people who intentionally make up hadith would ever be called "righteous" due to the famous hadith that says such people should take their seat in Hellfire.

It's pretty common knowledge that this refers to folk religion storytellers as opposed to hadith scientists or scholars.