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Why is the Sunnah not like the Noble Qur’an in lacking different narrations for a single Hadith? What is the difference between them? And is the Sunnah a revelation?

1 min readAlso available in العربية

It must be firmly established in the mind and heart of every Muslim that the Sunnah is the second part of divine revelation after the Holy Quran, and Allah has guaranteed its preservation from distortion, deficiency, and loss. The importance of the Sunnah lies in its role as an elucidator and clarifier of the Quran, and it may even add to its rulings. The Quran differs from the Sunnah in that the Quran is the word of Allah, verbatim, whereas the Sunnah may be a revelation in meaning but not in the exact wording. The multiplicity of narrations for a single Hadith does not indicate weakness in preservation; rather, it is due to reasons such as the recurrence of an event, narration by meaning, the narrator's abridgment of the Hadith, or the occurrence of an error that can be identified and reviewed by scholars. The Sunnah is a characteristic unique to prophethood, preserved by Allah, and the Ummah remains unanimously agreed upon its authoritativeness.

Summarized from the full answer at Ftawy · reviewed Sep 2, 2026

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