Volume V: Economy, Politics, and Environmental Governance

Ḥadīth as an Epistemological Authority and the Challenge of the Politicization of Religion: A Critical Reading of Fouad Zakariyya’s Critique of Islamism in Myth and Reality in the Contemporary Islamist Movement

  • Hendri Waluyo Lensa UIN Sunan Gunung Djati Bandung, Indonesia

Keywords

Hadīth; Fouad Zakariyya; Social movement; Islamism; Hadīth Epistemology; Islamic Politics.

Abstract

This article offers a critical analysis of Fouad Zakariyya’s thought as articulated in his work Myth and Reality in the Contemporary Islamist Movement, employing analytical frameworks derived from ḥadīth studies. Zakariyya argues that contemporary Islamist social movements function as ideologically constructed bridges that exploit and instrumentalize religious symbols and texts, including ḥadīth, to legitimize particular political agendas. Through an epistemology of ḥadīth that encompasses naqd al-isnād and naqd al-matn (chain and content criticism), as well as historical contextual analysis, this study contends that Zakariyya tends to epistemologically oversimplify religious texts, including ḥadīth, by reducing them to mere ideological instrsuments, without adequately recognizing ḥadīth as a normative Islamic scholarly discourse endowed with a well-established internal critical tradition. Ḥadīth and Islamic religious texts are not instruments for justifying authoritarian governance that is resistant to critique; rather, they constitute normative ethical values that remain open to moral evaluation and contextual interpretation. This study argues that the core problem in the phenomenon of Islamism does not lie in ḥadīth as a source of normative Islamic teaching, but in the selective and ideologically driven socio-political reception of ḥadīth. These findings underscore the importance of drawing a clear distinction between the epistemological authority of religious texts, including ḥadīth, and their actualization, appropriation, and interpretation within socio-political dynamics that are inherently subject to change over time.

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