All of the levels of study in the Hadith department are part of the college’s larger synthesis project. Where, we’re trying to prove that there is harmony between all forms of revelation and to show an internal cohesiveness between the Qurʾān and the Sunnah, empirical knowledge, reason, etc. This is sort of our civilizational goal. We want to be able to use the department to help recreate a confidence in Islamic civilization and its past, showing people that the traditions and empires that ran Muslim history, like the Mughal Empire and the Ottoman Empire, were based off of the Hanafi school. Those empires and systems were actually in harmony with Hadith.
Journey with Mawlana Bilal Ali Ansari, department chair of Hadith Studies, as he offers us a glimpse of this larger project and how it gives life to creative and methodologically rigorous curricular exercises like the ‘Anatomy of a Hadith.’