Application of fuzzy logic in evaluating the authenticity of hadith and narrators

Hadith in Islam is the Arabic word used to represent the traditions and sayings of the prophet. These traditions are normally categorised into four levels depending on their degree of authenticity. This accepted ranking system ignores the categories that might fall between these four ranks. Traditionally, hadith scholars apply a multi-criterion to conclude the degree of authenticity, which mainly depends on their training, experience, and various information reported about the hadith narrators. The research aims to use an arithmetic decision-making approach to judge the degree of validity and degree of authenticity of hadith, considering all factors utilised by hadith scholars such as the reliability and accuracy of the narrator as well as the chain of transmission. The proposed approach will also consider different opinions in the literature about narrators’ accuracy, reliability, and memorisation capabilities. The arithmetic method was applied to three hadiths ranking: true, good, and weak, and then the weighted arithmetic mean was calculated for each of them which represent the degree of validity of each hadith. The obtained results agree to a high degree with judgment reported by hadith scholars.