Reddit reply in r/MuslimAcademics: the prophets wish to burn people due to their not — July 8, 2025 | Ali Shukri Amin

1. I didn't shift the goal posts. I provided an obvious stress test to your theory that this hadith is a fabrication because it literally requires Sunnis to burn down people's houses. Since that's your thesis, please substantiate it with historical examples of Sunnis doing so since they took this hadith as sahih since at least the 4th hijri century and more probably starting around the mid 2nd hijri century by your own metrics.

2. This is your own guess and interpretation which again you have provided no framework for. As you well know, there are various schools of Sunni thinking - including hardline literalists such as the Karramiyyah, some stains of Hanbalism, and Dhahirites. Some of these groups don't believe in metaphor at all and would therefore have taken the hadith literally. Where are the examples of burning people's houses down?

3. Please provide some evidence that not taking something according to the literal definition is a "soft rejection." Is it a soft rejection of the Quran as well to interpret certain words or Ayat with metaphors? Did Western literary scholars engage in soft rejection of books in their tradition due to not using the literal meaning in every instance? What makes a metaphorical interpretation less true than a literal one and why?

4. What does the prophet raiding his own follower's caravans have to do with the argument I'm making about your 2-dimensionality? My argument wasn't predicated on his followers, yours was. I was demonstrating the rational limits of your argument. There are other hadith of the prophet having some of his followers executed, such as for adultery - do we reject those as well?

5. Balagha is not a justification for a hadith. It's rhetorical devices. I didn't argue for the historicity of a hadith based on rhetorical devices. You argued for unrestricted matn criticism with no discernible methodology.

6. Again, you need to develop some kind of systemic thinking or methodology. You cannot as a serious critic go about cherrypicking which hadith you like or dislike without some formal system that you evaluate things. Handwaving towards academic criticisms of hadith doesn't give you this license. If you want to adopt the latest research in secular academic thinking, then all hadith are assumed false until proven true - and the kinds of arguments you're sharing in this post are absolutely irrelevant.

7. I have advised you repeatedly in the past to do more robust methodological thinking in our previous encounters and I am hoping you take that advice more seriously in the future.