A Critical Examination of Authoritativeness of Solitary Report according to Wahhabism

The validity of a solitary report (khabar al-wahid) transmitted by a just person is a point of ‎contention and debate among Muslims. Ahl-e Hadith and Wahhabis mostly maintain that not ‎only acting upon a solitary report is permissible in matters of belief; but some contemporary ‎scholars have as far as to say that acting upon a solitary report is obligatory in beliefs. To ‎authenticate their claims, this group has taken recourse to Quranic verses and prophetic ‎traditions. There is no doubt that the arguments presented by these people are deficient and ‎cannot prove their point. Likewise, some Wahhabi scholars have claimed consensus over the ‎authoritativeness of a solitary report but the discrepancies existing among religious scholars ‎over this issue quite well indicate that the alleged consensus does not exist. In fact what is ‎claimed to be authoritative with regards to reports passed on by just single reporters is only a ‎theory. When it comes to practice, they even consider weak reports as authoritative and, ‎therefore, act upon them. ‎This article seeks to study the views of proponents and opponents of the authoritativeness of ‎solitary reports in the area of beliefs focusing on viewpoints of Wahhabism. It concludes that ‎the assertion of some Salafis, especially Wahhabi scholars, on the authoritativeness of solitary ‎reports is not correct and does not prove their claim. Therefore, it is wrong to use solitary and ‎single reports in establishing divine attributes or in matters appertaining to divine decree, ‎seeing God and some other ideological tenets, and such reports cannot lead to formation of ‎beliefs‎.