Authoritative Scriptures

Islam teaches that throughout history, from the time of the Prophet Adam and Hawwa (Eve), the first humans, Allah has sent revelations to help people to live according to his will. The last of these revelations was received by Muhammad. The earlier ones were:

-Sahifah revealed to the Prophet Ibrahim (Abraham)
-Tawrah, Torah, the Law revealed to the Prophet Musa (Moses)
-Zabur, the book of Psalms revealed to the Prophet Dawud (David)
-Injil, the Gospel revealed to the Prophet Isa (Jesus)

Sunnah (Hadith): After the Qur’an, the second textual source for Islam is the record of the sayings and doings of the Prophet. These are known as the sunnah, the trodden path. Individual verbal records of what the Prophet said or did are known as hadith – a saying (plural: ahadith).

There are two types of ahadith; the Prophetic (sayings and advice from the Prophet) and the Qudsi or Sacred – insights about Islam in the words of Muhammad (pbuh). The number of ahadith reached thousands and some seem to be contradictory. A Muslim scholar, Bukhari made a list of 600,000 Hadith. He then rejected all those which could not be traced back to the companions of Muhammad (pbuh).Others were rejected because they contradicted the principles of the Qur’an. His final collection numbered 2762. He died in 870 CE.