Quora Answer: Is Swahih al-Bukhari Biased?

بِسۡمِ ٱللهِ ٱلرَّحۡمَـٰنِ ٱلرَّحِيمِ 

The following is my answer to a Quora question: “Is Swahih al-Bukhari biased?” 

Swahih al-Bukhari is a jami’, a listing of narrations, arranged according to subject matter.  It provides no commentary, no exegesis, no context.  It is meant as a resource.  There are a multitude of other books that comment on individual narrations, and their suitability as supporting evidence for various legal positions and opinions.  The problem we have, in this current age, is that much of Sunni Islam has sacralised Swahih al-Bukhari, and treat narrations recorded within as beyond reproach.  That is problematic, and it was never the case.  Numerous other scholars have rejected various narrations found in Swahih al-Bukhari on various grounds. The most notable of them are the Hanafi scholars, especially Imam Abu Manswur Muhammad ibn Muhammad al-Maturidi (r.a.). 

There is a certain bias in our time, but it is not the book, but the scholars, particularly of the Shafi’i and Hanbali schools of jurisprudence.  They have sacralised these books, and found themselves bound by the numerous problematic narrations.  Like any book, we should take what it suitable, and leave that which is problematic.  But if we raise it almost to the status of Revelation, when we are bound to defend all manner of problematic narrations, which was never meant to be the case.