Pretensions of Postmodernism and the Ḥadīth of Umm Waraqah

The appropriation of the ḥadīth of Umm Waraqah as proof for the permissibility and validity of a woman’s leading ṣalāh in Amina Wadud’s recent episode in New York throws up some interesting considerations.
Responses have varied. There has been the tendency to question the authenticity of the ḥadīth; another approach looks at the applicability of the ḥadīth to the case in question; while a third approach surveys the views and opinions of the scholars of Islam. While none of these approaches lacks individual merit, it should not be lost to the observer that there is another side to the issue―a side that none of us can afford to lose sight of in the present global climate.
The present paper seeks to touch upon each of these various approaches, whilst not omitting to set the issue within the framework of contemporary affairs.

1. AUTHENTICITY

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The ḥadīth of Umm Waraqah has been documented in Sunan Abī Dāwud, Musnad Aḥmad, al-Ḥākim’s Mustadrak, and al-Bayhaqī’s Dalāʾil al-Nubuwwah.[1] Its chain of narrators in all of these sources leads up to a single strand: al-Walīd ibn ʿAbdillah ibn Jumayʿ, narrating from his grandmother and ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Khallād, both of whom narrate from Umm Waraqah.
Authenticity rests, to a great (though not exclusive) degree upon the narrators. As a rule, a ḥadīth will only be accepted as authentic and reliable basis for law when it meets the requirements of acceptance. In the present ḥadīth the focus comes to rest upon three narrators: al-Walīd, his grandmother, and ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Khallād.
Al-Walīd ibn ʿAbdillah ibn Jumayʿ