Review of The Height of Prophet Adam: Towards

a universal framework for resolving conflicts

between science and scripture
Abu Hurayra1

Abstract

In his recently published book The Height of Prophet Adam: At the Crossroads of
Science and Scripture, Mufti Muntasir Zaman comprehensively addresses the putative
conflict between, on one hand, Prophetic hadiths stating that humans on Earth started
off ninety feet tall and then gradually decreased; and on the other, what modern science
deems possible on the matter. The scope of the book is wider than just this one putative
conflict, however: even for those who do not think this is an issue worth taking seriously,
it is still valuable as a demonstration of how to systematically address conflicts between
science and hadith. In this review, I attempt to first provide what I think is an improved
version of the Mufti’s solution to the problem, relying almost exclusively on the
resources and analytic tools presented in the book itself. I then comment on aspects of
the Mufti’s treatment that require modification, particularly his handling of a Divine
intervention explanation of giant humans on early earth. Finally, I briefly comment on
how the Mufti’s approach can be modified into a tentative universal framework for
handling science-hadith conflicts in general.

1
I am grateful for substantive and editorial comments by Sharif Randhawa, Sarah Batoule, and an
anonymous reviewer on earlier drafts of this work.

1
 Table of contents
Section no. Section title Page
1 Introduction 3
1.1 Significance of the book 3
1.2 Structure of the review 4
2 The proposed framework and implementation 5
2.1 Framework for resolving science-scripture conflicts 5
2.2 The book’s implementation of the framework 6
3 Evaluating the narrations 7
3.1 Epistemic categories of hadiths 7
3.2 Evaluating the epistemic weight of the hadiths 8
3.2.1 The hadiths in question 8
3.2.2 Disclaimers about the assessment of hadith probability 9
3.2.3 Four issues with the narrations reporting Adam’s height being 10
sixty cubits
3.2.4 Two additional issues with the narrations reporting humankind 11
gradually decreasing in length
4 Constructing a Solution 13
4.1 Harmonization – Can the hadith be interpreted differently? 13
4.2 Maybe the decreasing height narration is unreliable? 14
4.2.1 Reasons for considering the narration unreliable 14
4.2.2 Reasons for considering the narration reliable 16
4.3 “Reliable” hadiths are reliable to a probabilistic degree 17
4.3.1 Hadith narrations as probabilistic reports 17
4.3.2 Some low-probability “reliable” hadiths might not have been 18
Prophetic
4.3.3 Completing the solution 19
4.4 Suspending judgment and taking stock of evidence base 20
5 Points of disagreement 21
5.1 Prioritization as a strategy to solve science-hadith conflicts 21
5.1.1 What is prioritization? 21
5.1.2 Why this type of prioritization is inadequate 22
5.1.3 Comparison between prioritization and appealing to 24
probabilistic nature of narrations
5.2 Problems with “settling the science” 24
5.2.1 Scientific impossibility of “human giants” 24
5.2.2 How would an Earth with giant humans look? 25
5.2.3 Miracles as refuge 26
5.2.4 How to move forward 28
6 Future prospects 28
6.1 Unanswered questions 28
6.2 A universal framework for science-hadith reconciliation 29

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 1. Introduction

1.1. Significance of the book

Mufti Muntasir Zaman’s recent book The Height of Prophet Adam: At the Crossroads of
Science and Scripture (Beacon Books, 2022) is one of the most important works in
modern Muslim intellectual discourse. The book is a comprehensive treatment on how
to reconcile what scripture and science say on the height of early humans on Earth.
Authentic prophetic hadiths indicate that the earliest humans on Earth were ninety feet
tall with humanity’s height continually decreasing since, something deemed impossible
by modern science. While the focus of the book is on resolving this particular conflict, its
significance is much broader: as one of the first book-length treatments of a difficult
case of science-religion conflict in English, it can be viewed as a blueprint for all such
attempts going forward. Indeed, I doubt the Mufti could have chosen a better case study
for this purpose. The hadiths in question are found in the most authentic hadith
collections, but their patterns of transmission have unique features – leading us down a
rabbit hole of how to assign epistemic weight to narrations. The science-side of the
conflict might look solid as far as it goes, but there are interesting conversations to be
had about when it is justified to invoke a miracle. None of the usual options of solving
science-scripture conflicts can be applied in a straightforward way, which pushes the
Mufti to explore all possible resources and analytic tools relevant to this enterprise.
Even for those who are satisfied with the more “popular” solutions to this problem, the
book will still be instructive as a display of the entire arsenal of options for addressing
problems like this one.

The book is also useful from a da‘wa perspective. The project of reconciling reason and
revelation is a perennial one, relevant as new potential conflicts arise. Short of
producing an exhaustive encyclopedia addressing all such conflicts – which should
definitely be a long-term scholarly goal – a useful “quick fix” is to produce demonstrative
case studies to show how such conflicts can be addressed, and the resources we have
to address them. Again, from that perspective, the Mufti could hardly have chosen a
better example: considering how difficult the height of early humans-conflict can be, one
gets the impression that if this can be solved, all conflicts can all be solved. In that way,
this book continues the trend of showcasing competent solutions to hard problems,
recently started by Jonathan A. C. Brown with his book Slavery and Islam.2 It is for this
reason that I think it is important to review the book’s approach and arguments carefully
and critically, which is the purpose of this essay.

The most obvious feature of the book is its incredible erudition. It is evident that the
Mufti has exhaustively scoured the corpus of Islamic scholarship to bear on this
treatment. In his survey of pre-modern and modern views on the height of early
humans, for example, the author lists every way the hadith has ever been interpreted –
including bizarre attempts like interpreting “cubit” to mean five centimeters (p. 54).
Another highlight is his discussion of the science of human height. That humans were

2
Brown, J. A. (2020). Slavery and Islam. Simon and Schuster.

3
never, and in fact cannot be, much taller than we are today is a widely accepted
scientific fact, so I thought the Mufti would just vaguely gesture at the scientific
consensus and move on, as people writing on science and religion often do. On the
contrary, he goes into significant detail not only about the “missing fossils” aspect of this
discussion, but also the physiological problems with humans being very tall and still
retaining human biology. This latter issue is hardly ever discussed in this context. In
addition, the Mufti does not always obediently take scientific consensus at its word, but
inquisitively explores – and rebuts – conspiracy theories about scientists “hiding”
evidence of giant humans. I did not expect the Smithsonian Conspiracy, something
discussed almost exclusively in the seedy corners of the internet, to have made its way
into a serious, mainstream book like this. On the other hand, the Mufti resists the
temptation to casually dismiss the epistemic authority of science by adopting a strong
form of scientific antirealism, which demonstrates his careful handling of philosophy.
Indeed, the fact that he responsibly manages to avoid all the common “traps” in this
genre of literature is a feat unto itself. Of course, what takes the cake is the author’s 30-
page analysis of the transmission of four hadiths and their different narrations, which we
will have occasion to explore in this review.

Taken together, the book exhibits an almost overwhelming degree of scholarly

excellence. Every move the Mufti makes in building his arguments is always backed up
by explicit precedent. It is clear that he understands exactly what he is doing in
mentioning them – the point is not just to reference for the sake of referencing, but to
show that his interpretive strategies are natural to, and continuous with, the Islamic
scholarly tradition, not “modernist” ad hocisms.

1.2. Structure of the review

This essay is meant to be a constructive review of the book – specifically, of the

solution(s) offered by the Mufti to the putative science-religion conflict about the height
of Adam (peace be upon him) and his progeny. I first provide an outline of the science-
religion reconciliation framework adopted in the book (section 2). From this point, the
essay will deviate from how reviews are usually written: instead of providing an
evaluation of the Mufti’s arguments, I will construct what I think is a convincing solution
to the conflict (section 4), based exclusively on the data and analytic resources provided
by the Mufti (summarized in section 3). This will help me avoid charges of
misrepresenting his arguments, since the goal is not to improve his case per se, but
take the resources he provides as a starting point to build the best case possible
(“steelmanning” the Mufti’s case). This would entail exploring four approaches –
borrowed with modifications from the book – which jointly comprise the complete
solution.

With the solution signifying the success of the Mufti’s project, I will enter the evaluative
part of the review to make two observations (section 5). First, the “prioritization” strategy
– at least the way it is framed in the book – comes up short as a convincing solution to
science-religion conflicts in the contexts where they usually arise (section 5.1). The
second observation is arguably more important, and has to do with the genuineness of

4
the conflict itself. Before we even begin the review, it is important to convince the
readers that the putative science-scripture conflict on the height of early humans is one
worth taking seriously. Indeed, it is not immediately obvious why this might even
constitute a conflict: after all, God – Omnipotent that He is – could have foregone our
familiar laws of nature and supernaturally made and sustained giant humans on Earth.
The Mufti realizes this and spends two chapters in the book demonstrating why such
seemingly accessible “solutions” are inadequate (hence the need for the elaborate
conflict resolution framework). Despite the centrality of this issue, however, this is not a
discussion we will enter until the penultimate section of the review (section 5.2) –
primarily because it comes with its own suite of philosophical problems that might
detract from our main point. After all, the book is meant to be a case study, so
regardless of the significance of this particular conflict, the more important question is
whether our solutions can be applied more generally to other cases. Therefore, for most
of this essay, I will take for granted that the conflict is indeed worth taking seriously and
requires a solution. I will, however, return to this question at the end and argue that
establishing a ‘genuine’ science-scripture conflict is a thorny philosophical problem with
no universally shared premises to build a case on. This applies all the more to the
height of Adam question, as will hopefully be evident after examining how the Mufti
attempts to establish his case. I will end this excursion on a note on how to present
universally acceptable solutions in such a dialectic context.

Overall, the essay attempts to make the point that with some modifications, the analysis
offered in the book can serve as the blueprint for all science-scripture (or at least,
science-hadith) conflict resolution attempts going forward. I will end the essay with
reflections on an updated model of conflict resolution, informed primarily by the success
of the Mufti’s solutions, but also taking its putative shortcomings into account (section
6).

2. The proposed framework and implementation

2.1. Framework for resolving science-scripture conflicts

In the first chapter of the book, the Mufti offers a three-tiered strategy for resolving any
putative conflict between science and scripture. Before this strategy even gets off the
ground, we first need to evaluate the epistemic weight of all the relevant evidence. This
evaluation may show that there is no “conflict” to resolve to begin with: perhaps the
science is not definitive, or the hadith is weak or otherwise unreliable. If, however, the
hadith and the science both turn out to be reliable, we can then move on to conflict
resolution. The three tiers of this strategy are:

1. Harmonization: Analyze the text’s wording to see if an alternative interpretation

is possible;
2. Prioritization: If the propositions under consideration are of unequal epistemic
weight, adopt the side with higher evidence;
3. Suspend judgment on the matter.

5
The overall framework looks like this (modified from the one the Mufti presents in p. 7):

Figure 1. Framework for solving putative conflicts between science and religion. The yellow boxes
represent the different endpoints this approach might reach.

It is important to note that the motivating questions in the workflow above might not
have simple yes/no answers. For example, it might not be clear whether both sides of
the conflict are “reliable”. In a footnote in p. 15, the Mufti cites examples of scholars
proposing solutions to conflicts involving “unreliable” (i.e., weak) hadiths. This is
because the hadith’s reliability might either be subject to scholarly disagreement, or
even be an open question (i.e., future research might unearth an authentic route of
transmission for the hadith). This is a situation where the question of a conflict’s
existence remains unsettled, and the scholars might provide more than one possible
solution (e.g., X is (i) not a conflict at all, or even if it is, (ii) there are other ways of
reading the text). Similarly, scholars might disagree on whether there can be reasonable
alternative interpretations of a text, i.e., whether the harmonization strategy can work in
a given case. As such, this framework might not always yield just one unambiguous
endpoint, but multiple ones with differing probabilities. This of course is perfectly
reasonable – even outside of theological contexts, a phenomenon might have multiple
explanations of differing probabilities, with no one explanation being decisive.

2.2. The book’s implementation of the framework

The “conflict” at our hands is between authentic hadiths that purportedly state that early
humans on Earth were sixty cubits (ninety feet) tall, with the height of humanity
decreasing ever since; and empirical reality to the contrary. The hadith-side of this
conflict is somewhat complicated: as the Mufti’s detailed analysis would show, different
transmissions of each hadith differ in their information content on the issue. As such, the
conflict does not necessarily involve entire hadiths, but some transmissions thereof (as
few as just one). The empirical side of the conflict is interesting in its own right, and the

6
Mufti devotes two chapters in the book to establishing why this side is worth taking
seriously.

Following a survey of how classical and modern scholars attempted to understand the
hadith, the Mufti presents his detailed evaluation of the three tiers of conflict resolution
as they apply in the present case. In the first of these chapters, the Mufti evaluates the
different ways of reinterpreting the hadith (harmonization). He then provides an
extended case for prioritization, to opt for which one must show that (i) both “sides” of
the conflict – the hadith and the scientific information – are reliable, but that (ii) one has
an epistemic weight higher than the other (Figure 1). The Mufti argues at length that
both of these conditions have been met. Finally, the Mufti suggests that someone
unconvinced by either of these solutions can opt for the next tier and suspend judgment.
In the book, no explicit preference is stated for any of the proposed solutions.

3. Evaluating the narrations

In this section, I will summarize the Mufti’s analysis of the transmission of the relevant
hadiths, which will inform the epistemic weight we attribute to them. Before entering this
discussion, it is first important to understand the categories and terminology used in the
book to characterize hadith reports.

3.1. Epistemic categories of hadiths

At the most general level, the hadith corpus can be divided into two groups: the reports
that are epistemologically certain, and reports that are probabilistic. The former category
consists of reports that are massively transmitted, while the latter includes those with
more limited transmission (pp. 6-7). Importantly, probabilistic reports form a spectrum in
terms of their evidential weight: they can range from being very probable to very
improbable. In contrast, as the name suggests, epistemologically certain reports seem
to be of the same warrant – certainty (or at least, their warrant varies within a very
narrow range). Furthermore, these two categories are subject to different types of
pragmatic treatment, in terms of whether they should be accepted as basis for important
theological or legal issues (Figure 2). It should be noted that certainty here does not
refer to mathematical or analytic certainty, rather to a more commonsense notion of
definitive knowledge (i.e., the “certainty” we ascribe to widely reported testimony).
“Probable” or “probabilistic” likewise means anything less than definitive.

7
 Figure 2. Two categories of hadith in terms of epistemic weight.

This initial categorization, however, is not informative about the origin of the reports. For
example, a massively transmitted – epistemologically certain – report is one that can
reliably be said to have originated from the Prophet (peace be upon him). However,
what does it mean for the origin of a report to be probabilistic? Depending on its degree
of probability, such a report may or may not be reliable – i.e., having reliably originated
from the Prophet – in the way massively transmitted ones are. This is the second
distinction the Mufti offers between hadiths, based on reliable traceability to the Prophet.
All epistemologically certain reports are therefore reliable, but not all probabilistic ones
are; so the category of reliable reports is larger than that of certain reports. Put
differently, a hadith report can be either certain and reliable, probable and reliable, and
probable and unreliable (Figure 2).

Finally, there is a distinction to be made between a “hadith” and a “narration/report”.

Hadiths can be narrated by different transmitters, and each such instance of
transmission is called a narration or report. A hadith can therefore have different
narrations or ways in which it has been related, with the narrations differing in their
content or wording.

3.2. Evaluating the epistemic weight of the hadiths

3.2.1. The hadiths in question

According to the Mufti, there are three reliable but probabilistic hadiths which, at least in
some of their variations, mention either Adam being sixty cubits tall and/or the height of
humanity decreasing since then. These are the hadiths as he quotes them in the book:

8
 “The first batch will enter Paradise in the image of the full moon . . . in the image
of one man, the feature of their father Adam, sixty cubits in the sky.” (p. 59)

“Allah created Adam with a height of sixty cubits. He said, “Go and greet that
group of angels and hear how they return your greeting: that is the greeting for
you and your progeny.” [Adam] said, “Peace be upon you,” and they replied,
“Peace be upon you and Allah’s mercy.” Thus, they added “and Allah’s mercy”.
Everyone who enters Paradise will be in Adam’s image, and people have been
decreasing until this day.” (pp. 60-62)

“Those destined for Paradise will enter Paradise without body hair or beards,
bright, with wavy hair and eyes anointed with kohl, thirty-three years of age, in
the image of Adam, sixty cubits [in length] and seven cubits in width.” (p. 66)

All three of these hadiths report propositions to the effect that Adam was created in sixty
cubits, while just one contains the clause that the height of humanity has been
decreasing ever since. There are other hadiths which also mention Adam being
extremely tall, but they are either unreliable and therefore inadmissible as evidence, or
do not attribute a specific height to Adam. Importantly, what is in contention here are not
the hadiths themselves, but the narrations that specifically report these two
propositions.

In his assessment of their epistemic weight, the Mufti presents several considerations
about (i) the pattern of transmission, (ii) the transmitters, and (iii) the content of the
narrations – which, taken together, reduce the probability of the narrations. Before we
enter this discussion, it is important to discuss two caveats.

3.2.2. Disclaimers about the assessment of hadith probability

First, we should emphasize that in this section, we are not judging the reliability of the
narrations – rather, we are asking how “probable” they are (i.e., where they fall in the
“probabilistic” spectrum in Figure 2). It could be that the analysis shows that the
narrations are not as probable as we initially thought, but this reduction in probability is
not significant enough to render it unreliable. In such a case, the narration would remain
reliably traceable to the Prophet, just with a lower probability than before. This reliable
vs. unreliable question, therefore, is separate from the attributing probability question.
This section is involved in the latter, and remains neutral towards the former – which will
be revisited in a later section.

Second, we should also note that the Mufti’s analysis here is continuous with pre-
modern hadith transmission scholarship, which had little axe to grind about the scientific
validity of scripture (at least in its modern form). Indeed, the very nature of how the
hadith literature is compiled and transmitted admits the possibility of the same hadith –
even reliable ones – being narrated in different ways, with not all of the narrations being
equally reliable. By analyzing these routes and patterns of transmission, it is sometimes

9
possible to separate out reliable from unreliable (or less reliable) “versions” of a hadith.
This shows that the considerations raised by the Mufti against the reliability of the
narrations are not ad hoc, but have independent motivations from the scholarly
tradition.3

With these caveats in place, the issues the Mufti identifies with the narrations are
detailed below.

3.2.3. Four issues with the narrations reporting Adam’s height being sixty cubits

(i) Narration exclusive to one companion: While a number of companions

transmitted the hadiths under study, only one companion’s (Abu Hurayra)
narrations contain the reference to the height of Adam being sixty cubits.
Narrations of the same hadiths by other companions do not contain this clause.
(ii) Omission from most narrations: Of the narrators who transmitted the hadiths from
the companions, more often than not they omitted the reference to Adam’s height
being sixty cubits. In addition, such “truncated narrations” (without the sixty cubits
reference) are transmitted through students who are considered “weightier”
sources of testimony in the hadith/rijal literature. This is the case for all three of
the hadiths under consideration.
(iii) Narrated exclusively by a companion who narrated Isra’iliyyat: Narrations of the
pattern in (i) – related by Abu Hurayra to the exclusion of other companions who
related the same hadith – have, at least in some cases, been postulated to
contain contamination from non-Prophetic Isra’iliyyat material. This is because
Abu Hurayra is reported to have narrated sayings both from the Prophet and the
Jewish convert to Islam, Ka‘b al-Ahbar. A successor has also reported that Abu
Hurayra’s students sometimes conflated these two genres, and scholars have
deemed certain hadiths narrated by Abu Hurayra to be unreliable on this ground.
What adds more plausibility to this view is that Ka’b al-Ahbar is reported to have
said “a grain of wheat in the time of Adam was the size of an ostrich egg, and
then it continued to shrink over time until it became the size it is today” (p.101) –
suggesting that he subscribed to beliefs about giant humans and their continual
decrease. It is important to note, however, that the Mufti goes out of his way to
demonstrate how this one consideration does not affect the integrity of the rest of
Abu Hurayra’s hadith corpus.

3
It is helpful to mention in this connection that in cases of “texts” with complex origin, this type of scrutiny
to separate reliable wheat from unreliable chaff is done in non-religious fields as well. For example, in
their recent paper on the origins of SARS-CoV-2 (unpublished at the time of this writing), Pekar et al.
(2022) conduct a painstaking review of early viral sequences that do not match their scientific
expectations. In the process, they identify different “defects” found in each report of such non-standard
sequences, either the sequence not cohering with other, well-established ones identified from that period,
or the use of unreliable methods to generate the data. This leads them to conclude that all such non-
standard sequences are unreliable and cannot be used to inform downstream analyses. This process is
inevitable when working with a mixture of historical “texts” with varying degrees of reliability, and not an
ad hoc standard applied specifically to religious/Islamic contexts. Pekar, J. E., Magee, A., Parker, E.,
Moshiri, N., Izhikevich, K., Havens, J. L., ... & Wertheim, J. O. (2022). SARS-CoV-2 emergence very likely
resulted from at least two zoonotic events.

10
(iv) Content found in Isra’iliyyat: The reference to Adam’s towering height is found in
Isra’iliyyat literature, in a Talmudic passage in reference to Psalm 139:5 in the
Bible.

3.2.4. Two additional issues with the narrations reporting humankind gradually
decreasing in length

(v) Narration exclusive to one successor: Of the different narrations of the three
hadiths, only one narration contains the clause “humans have been decreasing
[in height] ever since”, which is the only explicit piece of evidence for the earthly
height of Adam being sixty cubits. Like the other three, this hadith not only has
“one companion exclusivity” (Abu Hurayra), but also “one successor exclusivity”
(Hammam b. Munabbih); none of the other narrations from Abu Hurayra contain
this clause (Figure 3).
(vi) Narrator warrants scrutiny in case of isolated reports: “Hammam is universally
accepted as a reliable transmitter, but ‘Ali b. Al-Madini notes that in several
instances he conflicted with other reliable transmitters from Abu Hurayra. Imam
Ahmad mentions that he was isolated in some of his reports. Due to Hammam’s
occasional conflict with other transmitters and isolated transmission, the
contemporary hadith scholar Salah al-Din al-Idlibi opines that one is encouraged
to scrutinize hadith that Hammam solely transmitted.” (p. 85)

Table 1. Summary of issues with narrations about Adam’s height or subsequent decrease
Topic Factor that might potentially Adam’s Humanity’s
reduce reliability of narration height height
being sixty decreasing
cubits since Adam
Transmission Found in just one companion’s Yes Yes (only one
pattern narration, in exclusion to others companion
narrated it)
who narrated same hadith
Transmission Omitted more often than not, and Yes Yes
pattern by more reliable narrators
Narrator Narrated exclusively by a source Yes Yes
susceptible to Isra’iliyyat
contamination
Content Content alluded to in Isra’iliyyat Yes Yes
Transmission Found in just one successor’s No Yes
pattern narration, in exclusion to others
who narrated same hadith
Narrator Narrator warrants scrutiny in case No Yes
of isolated reports

11
 Prophet Muhammad
Narrations without
(s)
decreasing height clause

Narrations with
Abu Hurayra decreasing height clause

Non- Sa’id Al- Abu Abu Hammam

Prophetic Maqburi Yazid Salama
Abu Salih Sha’bi ‘Uthman

Ma’mar

Other routes
‘Abd al-
Razzaq

‘Abd Allah Muhammad

‘Abd b. Bukhari Muslim

Nasa’i
Humayd

Figure 3. Transmission routes of the hadith containing the “decreasing height” clause (simplified from
Figure 6 in the book, p.65)

In summary, the fact that the narration about humanity’s decreasing height is not only
omitted more often than not in transmission, but only reliably transmitted through a
solitary companion-successor route that has been scrutinized by scholars on
independent grounds, all the while being susceptible to the possibility of Isra’iliyyat
contamination – seems to suggest that this could possibly have been a piece of
Isra’iliyyat misattributed to the Prophet (or more general “narrator insertion” by the
successor). Furthermore, something akin to the “decreasing height” clause has been
located in both the Isra’iliyyat literature as well as in its most possible conduit to Abu
Hurayra (Ka’b al-Ahbar), suggesting a viable path for such contamination. Such a
possibility is acknowledged by the modern scholar Yunus Jawnpuri. This could also
explain why the majority of transmitters, including the more reliable ones, universally
exclude this clause from their narrations, with the exception of Hammam b. Munabbih,
who has been scrutinized by scholars for his isolated narrations. With the exception of
the last one, these considerations apply to a lesser degree to the clause about Adam’s
height being sixty cubits as well. Based on these considerations, the narrations are now
rendered less certain and even more probabilistic. As mentioned in the caveat
preceding this section, however, this does not mean that the narration is now unreliable
– that is a separate question that requires additional appraisal.

With this evaluation behind us, we are now in the position to construct a possible
solution to this conflict.

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 4. Constructing a Solution

In this section, I evaluate four promising approaches to address the conflict, at least two
of which have been adopted with modifications from the Mufti. I suggest that each
approach succeeds in addressing one piece of the conflict and comprise a satisfactory
solution when taken together.

4.1. Harmonization – Can the hadith be interpreted differently?

In the chapter on harmonization, the Mufti reviews the different ways scholars have tried
to reinterpret the relevant statements. The most promising of these is to interpret sixty
cubits as being Adam’s height on Paradise, not on Earth. The Mufti has this to say in
favor of this move:

“That the description of sixty cubits refers to Adam’s height in Paradise can be
inferred from the fact that the relevant hadiths mention his height in relation to
Paradise.” (p. 48)

Indeed, as can be seen from the three hadiths above, all of them are describing
Paradisical events, not earthly ones.4 However, the problem is with the last clause in the
second hadith above – “[P]eople have been decreasing until this day.” Since this is said
in the context of Adam’s height, it is most naturally interpreted as saying humans on
Earth have been decreasing in height since the sixty-cubit days of old. This presents a
problem for the Paradisical height explanation. The Mufti reviews scholarly attempts to
reinterpret this clause but finds them wanting on linguistic grounds.

The appropriate conclusion to draw from this analysis is as follows. Of the two
propositions under consideration, the one solely about Adam’s height can be
reasonably reinterpreted to avoid a conflict with science. The effort runs into trouble,
however, when we let the second proposition – that of humanity’s decreasing height –
qualify the meaning of the first one. It is important not to conflate the failure of
harmonization for the latter with the former, since if these two propositions differ in their
transmission histories and epistemic weights (sections 3.2.3 and 3.2.4) – we can opt for
different strategies of conflict resolution for each. In other words, perhaps we are
dealing with not just one instance of science-scripture conflict, but two separate ones,
involving two different propositions. As things stand now, the harmonization attempt
succeeds with the statement about Adam’s height being sixty cubits, so the only
problematic part left is that of humanity’s decrease in height. The remaining approaches
need only concern themselves with this proposition and the narration that contains it. In
his recent interview on the topic on the YouTube channel Blogging Theology, the Mufti
agrees with this position:

4
The Mufti has more to say on this – for example, he criticizes an unwarranted linguistic move to reach
this conclusion. But the paradisical height interpretation can be warranted even without that particular
argument.

13
 “I would side with what Shaykh Yunus Jawnpuri said, the famous commentator
on Sahih al-Bukhari, and that’s a hybrid model. And the hybrid model is – we
interpret the first part of the hadith, and we say that was the height of Prophet
Adam in Paradise, and the second part of the hadith, we say the scientific and
archaeological concerns are more compelling, hence we dismiss it and say they
were an interpolation, they were inserted by narrators who may have
misunderstood.”5

We will have more to say about the second part of the hadith in later sections, but this
demonstrates that the Mufti is comfortable with a “harmonization” approach as far as the
first clause is concerned.

Before we move on to the next section, there is one other point that bears mention. In
his assessment of scholarly interpretations of the statement “people have been
decreasing until this day”, the Mufti thinks the most probable (but still implausible)
explanation is to posit that the narration was paraphrased (as opposed to being
transmitted verbatim), and the original wording might have meant “humankind is
continuously born with decreased height [relative to Adam’s height in paradise]”. The
connotation here is that Adam’s paradisical height was sixty cubits, but all humans on
Earth maintain a decreased height. In other words, the “decrease” in this proposition is
not between earthly generations of humans, but between Adam in paradise and him
and his children on earth. The Mufti finds this implausible for two reasons: first, all
routes of this narration contain the exact wording, which is untenable if it were merely
paraphrased. Second, there is a non-Prophetic report attributed to ibn ’Umar on the
gradual decrease of humanity’s height, which means the “decreasing height” idea was
prevalent in the first century AH. However, as we saw in section 3.2.4 above, this
particular part of the hadith has only been narrated through one companion and one
subsequent successor, meaning this phrasing had no corroboration for at least two
generations. Since Hammam was also living in the first century AH, could it have been
that the “paraphrasing” happened in one of these two generations (with ibn ’Umar
narrating the paraphrased version), and in subsequent ones the exact wording was
maintained? I think it would be useful to see an investigation of this possibility.

4.2. Maybe the decreasing height narration is unreliable?

With the first of the two contentious propositions taken care of, what remains is the one
narration transmitted through Hammam and Abu Hurayra about the height of post-
Adamic humans being on a decline. Given the considerations in section 3.2, the most
tempting option at this point might be to deny the reliability of this solitary narration.
Would that be a plausible choice?

4.2.1. Reasons for considering the narration unreliable

To maintain the narration’s reliability, one would need to posit something like the
following: Abu Hurayra heard the narration from the Prophet, all but one his students

5
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rE7IxCCvxvc from 1:04:26 onwards.

14
who narrated from him omitted the clause, and the one student that did narrate the
clause, did so without significant paraphrasing. There are at least three alternative
scenarios to this view:

A) Hammam heard this clause from Abu Hurayra, but mistook it as a saying of the
Prophet while in reality it was a saying of Ka’b al-Ahbar (Figure 4A)
B) Hammam, who related isolated reports in other occasions, inserted this clause
into the narration (Figure 4B),
C) Abu Hurayra and Hammam transmitted the hadith while paraphrasing the
relevant words (Figure 4C).

Decreasing height clause Decreasing height clause prior to

Hadith without decreasing height clause
paraphrasing

Prophet Prophet Prophet

Ka’b al-
Muhammad Isra’iliyyat Muhammad Muhammad
Ahbar
(s) (s) (s)

Abu Abu Abu

Hurayra Hurayra Hurayra

Hammam Hammam Hammam

Ma’mar Ma’mar Ma’mar

‘Abd al- ‘Abd al- ‘Abd al-

Razzaq Razzaq Razzaq

‘Abd ‘Abd ‘Abd

Muhammad Muhammad Muhammad
Allah Allah Allah

(A) Intrusion of Isra’iliyyat (B) Narrator insertion (C) Narrator paraphrasing

Figure 4. Non-exclusive ways the “decreasing height” clause could have been erroneously attributed to
the Prophet.

If the combined probability of these three scenarios is high enough, we can say that the
narration is not reliable, and the conflict dissipates. Interestingly, the Mufti does not
pursue this approach in the book. On a plausible reading, he suggests that these
considerations do not render the narration unreliable, but does not justify this decision in
the book.6

6
On my reading, the Mufti seems to remain ambiguous on whether undercutting the narration’s reliability
in this way – without appealing to extra-scriptural considerations – is a valid strategy. Some of the
ambiguity is contributed by the way the chapter on prioritization is structured: he presents the first four
considerations in Table 1 about the height of Adam, states that these considerations do not render the
narrations unreliable, but then proceeds to provide additional considerations about the narrations’
reliability. Importantly, both of the issues unique to the second proposition about Adam’s decreasing
height, as well as the possibility of Isra’iliyyat contamination, come after his initial assessment. He does
not explicitly present another assessment of the narrations (at least, one unmotivated by the scientific
issues as part of the prioritization strategy) after introducing these further considerations.

15
 4.2.2 Reasons for considering the narration reliable

In his Blogging Theology interview, the Mufti makes two comments that can be
construed as justification for this reservation. In response to a question on whether the
absence of the contentious clause in certain reports render it unreliable, the Mufti
explains:

“We need to weigh the reports, not count the reports – because you can have a
hadith transmitted through ten routes, nine of them say X, and the tenth one says
Y, but we still give more preference to the tenth, because that particular student
of that common source is a more reliable student. . . So it’s not only a sheer
debate on numbers, it’s also the value attached to each report that either
includes or excludes the contentious words.”7

Applied to the “decreasing height” clause, the argument here seems to be: even though
the clause is only narrated through one route to the exclusion of others, the weight of its
particular narrator makes it reliable. However, as seen in section 3.2.4 – the sole
student of Abu Hurayra to narrate this clause is Hammam, whose isolated reports have
been scrutinized by scholars on independent grounds. It is not clear, therefore, that the
Mufti’s argument applies to this case.

In the same interview, the Mufti mentions another point that might keep us from
rejecting the narrations. In reference to the students of Abu Hurayra occasionally
confusing the words of the Prophet with that of Ka’b al-Ahbar, the Mufti says:

“If anybody opens up one book [by Al-Daraqutni], multi-volume collection – [the
author] is like a detective pointing out, ‘these are the words of Abu Hurayra
confused for the words of Prophet (s). These are the words of Ka’b al-Ahbar, not
the words of Abu Hurayra, [nor] the words of the Prophet (s)’. So there’s a very
surgical precision in how [the scholars] have done this - which doesn’t exclude
the possibility that maybe a few have escaped their attention.”8

This seems to suggest that the Isra’iliyyat intrusion hypothesis (Fig 3A), even when it
comes to hadiths narrated exclusively by Abu Hurayra on topics mentioned in
Isra’iliyyat, cannot be used without qualification. Rather, there are ways of teasing apart
which narrations do and do not originate with Ka’b al-Ahbar – and the fact that Al-
Daraqutni does not mention the “decreasing height” clause in his list might give us
pause in accepting such a possibility.

As the Mufti points out, it is possible that some narrations have escaped Al-Daraqutni’s
analysis, so the roadblock is not absolute. But the more general point here is that
traditional scholars had mechanisms for distinguishing between parts of a narration that
can be reliably attributed to the Prophet and “narrator insertions”. This suggests that in
principle, any narrator insertion hypothesis can be falsified by data. Whether the

7
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rE7IxCCvxvc from 56:12 onwards.
8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rE7IxCCvxvc from 59:26 onwards.

16
“decreasing height” clause can pass such a falsification test is, of course, a technical
question requiring scholarly expertise.
Another issue to consider is that belief in the decreasing height of humanity was present
in the first century AH. Ibn ’Umar is reported to have said that “people have been
decreasing in size, age, and character since the era of Noah” (quoted in p. 64). If he
heard this from Abu Hurayra (or other students of his), it becomes doubtful whether the
“decreasing height” clause was indeed transmitted through a lone successor. As with
the previous consideration, however, the report’s impact on the reliability of the clause,
if any, requires scholarly evaluation.

To summarize, the foregoing discussion outlines possible ways in which the “unreliable
inference” might be blocked, but it is impossible to evaluate their merit without further
expert analysis.9 Ultimately, the question is whether the criteria listed in Table 1 can
survive these and other possible objections, and constitute sufficient grounds to reject
the reliability of a narration. However, this might be a tall order for a different reason: by
saying these conditions alone render the narration unreliable, we are positing that
conditions similar to those in Table 1 constitute sufficient grounds to reject any
narration. This would seem to imply that narrations with these features are to be treated
the same as “weak hadiths”, and as a non-expert, I do not know whether such an
epistemological standard for hadiths can lead to other problems down the line.

At this point, we remain ambiguous on whether the narration can be considered

unreliable – which makes conceptual room for the next piece of the solution.

4.3. “Reliable” hadiths are reliable to a probabilistic degree

4.3.1. Hadith narrations as probabilistic reports

As mentioned in section 3.1, narrations can be placed in two epistemic categories –

certain (corresponding to the set of massively transmitted narrations) and probabilistic,
with probabilistic ones being either reliable or unreliable (Figure 2). This means any
judgment about the reliability of a solitary narration has a probability attached to it. This
fact alone has little epistemic consequence, since virtually all of our judgments are
based on probabilistic considerations. My belief that it rained this morning based on a
wet road (if no other explanations are forthcoming – no cars being washed nearby or
children playing with super soakers, for example) is hardly fazed by pointing out that this
inference is probabilistic, and not definitive. For practical purposes, we rarely need to
differentiate between definitive and high probability knowledge.

9
Some examples the Mufti gives in the footnotes seem to suggest, at least in the context in which they
appear, that scholars sometimes rejected hadiths on much weaker grounds. In his analysis of the same
narration about the decreasing height of humanity, for example, Mufti Taqi Uthmani suggests rejecting the
verbatim wording of the hadith to instead say that it was paraphrased. While the Mufti criticizes this move
on other grounds (although see the end of section 4.1 in this essay for a possible response), the move
itself is not written off as invalid. To my untrained senses, this does not seem qualitatively different from
reaching for a “narrator insertion” explanation for certain parts of a hadith, especially when it shows
patchy distribution across narrations. However, these are questions best addressed by a hadith scholar
like the Mufti himself, and this seems like the next natural step to this analysis.

17
That said, the fact that judgments about hadith reliability are probabilistic suggests that
there are some hadiths, marked as reliable, which might not have been uttered by the
Prophet. As the Mufti demonstrates, it is this understanding of the probabilistic nature of
narrations that allowed traditional scholars to occasionally criticize even reliable hadiths.
Hadith authentication, after all, is an exercise in evaluating fallible human testimony, so
even the pool of “reliable” narrations might contain a limited number of non-Prophetic
contaminants.

To see this, consider the case of unreliable or weak hadiths: here too, our judgment
about the hadith’s weakness – unless the chain of transmission has serious problems –
is probabilistic. That is to say, we admit that while standards of testimony render the
report unreliable, there is still some probability in favor of the Prophet having said it.
This is why certain classes of weak hadiths are utilized by scholars for either exhortative
or even legal purposes. It seems therefore, with the exception of massively transmitted
and outright fabricated narrations, the “probabilistic” narrations in the middle form a
spectrum, not a binary: even “reliable” narrations might contain a limited number of
unreliable ones, and vice versa (Figure 5).

100
Fraction of narrations (%)

“Decreasing
height” clause Uttered by the Prophet

Not uttered by the

Prophet

Certain Probability decreases

Epistemologically
Probable
certain

Reliable Unreliable

Figure 5. A model showing fractions of narrations uttered and not uttered by the Prophet in the different
epistemological categories of hadith. The fractions are arbitrarily drawn for illustrative purposes and do
not reflect actual data.

4.3.2. Some low-probability “reliable” hadiths might not have been Prophetic

In the previous section, we came up short in the attempt to make a convincing case for
the rejection of the “decreasing height” clause. However, even the reduction of the
narration’s probability (section 3.2) has an interesting epistemic consequence: it is now

18
rendered less likely that the Prophet uttered it. Put differently, while we might not be
able to reject the narration based on its chains of transmission alone, we know that a
higher fraction of narrations with such features are not reliably traceable to the Prophet.
For all we know, the “decreasing height” proposition might just be such an example
(Figure 5). If that is the case, we should not be surprised that this narration contains a
scientific error, since there is a not insignificant possibility that the Prophet never uttered
it.

It is important to note, however, that this fact alone does not render the entire pool of
“reliable but probabilistic” narrations suspect. While some fraction of these hadiths might
be unreliable, the probability that any particular hadith is unreliable is low. All other
things being equal, epistemological prudence would therefore suggest we side with
higher probability and accept such narrations at face value.

The situation can be illustrated with the following analogy. Let us assume that we are
presented with a large pile of apples, with the important disclaimer that a small fraction
of these apples might have gone bad. Since the ratio of bad-to-good apples in the pile is
low, the odds of us randomly picking a bad apple are also low. We therefore feel little
reservation in eating apples that otherwise look good. However, let us say we are told
that apples with certain features – say the ones on the right side of the pile – have a
higher probability of having gone bad. In this situation, will we be surprised if we happen
to pick a bad apple from the offending side? No, because some apples had to have
been bad, and it might as well have been the one we picked.

The situation is roughly analogous to the case of “reliable but probabilistic” hadiths, with
an important difference. In the apple analogy, the prudent course of action should be to
avoid picking bad apples to the extent possible, since there is a negative consequence
associated with eating an apple that has gone bad. However, when it comes to reliable
but probabilistic hadiths, the situation is reversed: our priority is to accept as many of
the Prophetic hadiths as possible, even if that means picking up a few unreliable ones
along the way. From a Muslim perspective, the consequence of not accepting and
acting on a reliable hadith is far worse than that of accepting an otherwise “harmless”
unreliable one.

4.3.3 Completing the solution

To bring this full circle: Muslim expectations about science-hadith conflicts can be
cashed out in the following way. If the relevant science is solid, it is:

- Impossible that a massively transmitted narration would contradict it;

- Unlikely that a reliably solitary narration would contradict it; and
- The likelihood decreases as the narrations become more improbable, even if
they cannot be classified as being unreliable.

As such, the existence of any one reliable but solitary hadith conflicting with established
empirical reality should not be an issue, especially if additional analysis shows the

19
hadith to be a low probability one. Based on our understanding of narrations as
probabilistic, we can expect this to happen with some frequency. This is exactly the
situation we find ourselves in when it comes to the “decreasing height” clause, which
completes the solution.

Crucially, however, while we might expect some low probability narrations as being
unreliable and containing false information, we do not expect many such cases. The
premise is that reliable narrations are true by default with some exceptions. As such, by
placing a narration in the exceptional “reliable per criteria, but still wrong” group, we are
using up a slot from the number of cases in which such an approach can be utilized
sustainably. This means this approach does incur an epistemic cost. However, since the
narration under study has already been demonstrated to have relatively low probability,
it stands to reason that the cost is negligible.

4.4 Suspending judgment and taking stock of evidence base

To my mind, the three sub-sections above together provide a compelling solution to the
problem we have been discussing. However, what if someone does not find the solution
convincing? Or more importantly, what if these solutions do not work for a different case
of science-hadith conflict? In such cases, we need to, to use the Mufti’s words,
“suspend judgment” on the matter and take a decision based on total evidence base.

There are two questions one might ask about a science-hadith conflict:

- What is the solution to this specific conflict?

- Given that there is no solution in sight, what is the appropriate epistemic attitude
towards the text?

We have been confining our discussion to the first question, and within that scope, a
prescription to “suspend judgment” is no solution – just an acknowledgement of the
conflict. However, it is a viable route to take when one asks the broader question of
epistemic attitude towards Islamic scriptures.

For any theory with a sufficiently large scope (even secular ones), there are almost
always facts it struggles to explain. This is not necessarily a shortcoming of the theory
itself, but might simply reflect our epistemic limitations. A theory is to be evaluated not
on the mere presence or absence of uncomfortable facts, but whether its explanatory
virtues outweigh potential problems. Applying these principles to the present case – it
might be that one is utterly unsure as to how to solve the Adam’s height issue, but that
problem is outweighed so substantially by the positive reasons to believe in Islamic
scriptures that it should not change one’s overall epistemic attitude towards Islam at all.
In this case, one’s suspension of judgment on the specific issue is justified by broader
considerations about Islam as a whole. One might flesh out this move by pointing to
relevant epistemic limitations about, e.g., the early events on Earth, the transmission of
hadith and whether paraphrasing took place, possible alternative meanings of some
terms (cf. al-Hasan al-Basri is quoted in the book as saying “God knows best which

20
cubit [is intended]” (p. 95)), etc. Framed this way, suspending judgment might not
provide an immediate solution to the problem, but it becomes an important part of the
broader project of combatting religious doubt.

This brings us to the end of our discussion on solving the conflict we started with. The
entire section took the resources and analytic tools provided by the Mufti as the starting
point, and so could be seen as an attempt to build on or “steelman” his initial case. At
this point, we leave the predominantly constructive part of the review to provide
evaluative feedback on some of the important claims made by the Mufti. Based on our
foregoing solution and the forthcoming evaluation, we will be appropriately placed to
consider a broader framework to address any conflict between science and hadith.

5. Points of disagreement

5.1. Prioritization as a strategy to solve science-hadith conflicts

5.1.1 What is prioritization?

In the longest and most substantive chapter in the book, the Mufti presents a detailed
case for prioritization as a potential solution to the conflict. In order for this strategy to
succeed, two things must first be established: the reliability of the relevant empirical
fact(s), and the comparatively lower, but still reliable, epistemic probability of the
conflicting narration(s) (Figure 1). Over a span of three chapters, the Mufti makes an
extended case that both of these conditions have been met. We will discuss his
evaluation of the science in the next sub-section, and we have already seen how his
detailed analysis of all the transmission routes of the hadith (summarized in section 3.2)
reduces the probability of the narrations at hand. Despite this reduction in probability,
the Mufti nonetheless concludes that the narrations remain reliably traceable back to the
Prophet. This neatly positions us to employ the prioritization strategy: first, the relevant
scientific facts are reliable ex hypothesi; second, so are the narrations; and third, the
latter is less reliable than the former. This is the exact situation where we are meant to
opt for prioritization: we reject the narration, and accept the scientific fact. We have
reached an endpoint in the conflict resolution workflow (Figure 1) and have done so on
convincing grounds.

In his Blogging Theology interview, the Mufti lays out the prioritization strategy in even
clearer terms, and it is worth quoting him at length:

“[T]his is something I want to emphasize and say in no uncertain terms. My

argument here is not – ‘because the narrators have differed, therefore it is
untrue’. That’s not my argument. Some people have quoted me as saying that, I
just want to set the record [straight] here – my argument . . . is – on the one
hand, you have this overwhelming evidence from science and archaeology that
give us a degree of certainty on the questions against this hadith. That’s on the
one side. On the other side, you have these hadiths. How much confidence do
we have on these hadiths, even if they were transmitted in Sahih al-Bukhari and

21
 Sahih al-Muslim? And the argument is, through a detailed analysis of its various
routes of transmission, we can safely conclude that there is legitimate
disagreement on their inclusion. Therefore, we don’t dismiss the hadith, but we
lower its epistemic certainty, we lower the amount of confidence we have in it.
And when we lower the confidence, and then we take a step back and compare
the two sides of the conflict, now you can meaningfully say: ok, I am siding with
the science in particular reference to these words in the hadith, not even the
entire hadith.”10

The Mufti demonstrates that this strategy of prioritization has explicit scholarly
precedence in our tradition: regardless of the source of knowledge, the definitive should
be given priority over the probabilistic (or at least, the more probable should take priority
over the less probable) (pp. 57-58). Clearly, if there is a criticism to level against this
strategy, it is not that it is “modern” or lacks justification from our scholarly tradition.

5.1.2 Why this type of prioritization is inadequate

My criticism against the strategy of prioritization is not about whether its internal logic is
sound, or whether it has been vetted by our scholars – the answer is yes on both counts
– but rather, whether its application to solve science-hadith conflicts is contextually
appropriate. Whether prioritization works as a solution depends on the perspective we
bring to this discussion. There are two perspectives from which one could ask for
potential solutions to a science-hadith conflict:

- “Devotional” – I know there can be no genuine conflict between revelation and

empirical reality. When I see a seeming conflict between them, what epistemic
stance should I adopt?
- “Doubtful” – I am in doubt about whether there is a conflict between revelation
and empirical reality. How can I resolve such seeming conflicts?11

One would be led to think from the Mufti’s approach that his attempt at science-scripture
conflict resolution, especially the last two tiers of his framework (prioritization and
suspending judgment), is directed at the first perspective, not the second one. As
mentioned above, while the transmission analysis might have reduced the probability of
the narrations about Adam’s height and subsequent decrease, they nonetheless remain
reliable. Faced with this impasse between reliable scripture and reliable science, the
prescription of prioritizing one side over the other would make perfect sense from a
devotional perspective. After all, such a person would reason, God is the one who
created reality, and He also sent scripture – so as a matter of logic, these two things
cannot contradict. Applied to the case of a putative conflict between reliable science and
reliable (but less probable) hadith, the logic of the prioritization strategy is

10
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rE7IxCCvxvc from 39:15 onwards.
11
The air quotes exist around the labels to show that these are caricatures of actual believers’
perspectives. Even an otherwise faithful Muslim might feel themselves aligning with the second approach
if a cognitive dissonance results in a feeling of spiritual unease. A person experiencing doubts is not
bereft of devotion, so the labels function as short hands for two complex states of mind.

22
straightforward: given that – as a matter of faith – the Prophet could not have said
things contradicting empirical reality, it is clear that the Prophet is not the source of this
reality-contradicting narration.12

On the other hand, such a strategy would be cold comfort to the person coming to this
conflict from the perspective of doubt. This is because, unlike the previous example,
such a person is open to the possibility of scripture and science contradicting (i.e., such
a person might not subscribe to the “no conflict” conviction). This in turn might lead
them to an epistemic option that was not available to the devoted Muslim: the scripture
is wrong. Put differently, the logic of deprioritizing a piece of scripture below science can
only be supported on the “no conflict” premise. Without that conviction, there is nothing
in the prioritization strategy itself that can block a deepening of the doubt.13 As we saw
above, the status of the narrations remain unchanged after the analysis – going from
reliable to reliable, but less probably so. This means for someone who is open to the
possibility of genuine science-religion conflicts existing, such an adjustment is simply ad
hoc, if not circular: the premise of “no conflict” is exactly what such an individual might
be doubtful about.14 For the doubtful Muslim, then, nothing about the prioritization
strategy can change their doxastic stance; including their level of doubts, cognitive
dissonance, or even propensity to leave the religion.

In brief, our evaluation of this solution would depend on what premises we are bringing
to the putative science-scripture conflicts. If we start with the firm conviction of no
possible conflict between science and religion, then the Mufti’s approach succeeds –
but then again, to a person with such a conviction, such conflicts would not have been
particularly bothersome anyways. However, absent such conviction, as is the case with
people with doubts about religion, prioritization would be circular and unhelpful. This
would amount to re-stating the problem, not solving it.

I think we would agree that efforts at science-scripture conflict resolution are most
usefully aimed at the latter group, not the former. The reason we consider such conflicts
important is not just because of a passing curiosity, but because of deep-seated
spiritual unease at the possibility of the conflict being a genuine one. The only
individuals to whom such conflicts or their resolution hold any weight are those for
whom that possibility is open. The Mufti acknowledges this at the beginning of the book:

12
Of course, this approach would be valuable in contexts other than science-hadith reconciliation – for
example, recording the authentic Prophetic Sunnah would start from the assumption of “no conflict”.
13
This is not to say that for the doubting person, leaving the religion is now epistemically justified. The
most common consequence of these problems is the spiritual unease that comes from trying to hold
conflicting beliefs. On one hand, such a person might be convinced of Islam for other reasons. But on the
other, they might see no way out of a particular instance of science-scripture conflict. They might persist
or even thrive in this state by mentally “shelving” the problem (what the Mufti calls “suspending
judgment”), but the point is – this would not resolve the specific point of doubt.
14
As an example, consider a case where the fate of a congressional bill is determined by a simple
majority. If 75% of the congress are opposed to the bill, it would hardly be cause for celebration for its
proponents if the fraction goes down to 70%. At the end of the day, the bill is still getting rejected.
Similarly, regardless of whether the probability of a report is lower than it was before is irrelevant, if the
lowered probability does nothing to change how we view the origin of the report. We went from it “the
Prophet said it” to “the Prophet said it”.

23
 “The conflict between scripture and science is a common source of anxiety for
people of faith, and Muslims are no exception. The inability to justify certain
matters of Islam in light of current scientific consensus has led some Muslims to
doubt their faith.” (p. xvii)

To sum up, the prioritization strategy has an airtight logic if we start from certain
premises, and it is one backed by scholarly precedence. However, it has limited utility in
the specific context in which it is being applied – and indeed, where it is most frequently
applied.

5.1.3 Comparison between prioritization and appealing to probabilistic nature of

narrations

There is a point of commonality between prioritization and the solution suggested in

section 4.3: both approaches cite the probabilistic nature of narrations as grounds for
rejection. The important difference is that the former – prioritization – makes appeals to
extra-scriptural sources (science) to address the conflict, while the latter exclusively
uses considerations intrinsic to the nature of hadith literature. For reasons mentioned
above, I suggest that the external appeal to science is superfluous and unhelpful, and
the issue can be solved satisfactorily without such an appeal. The structure of
prioritization, however, has one advantage that the other one does not: it allows us to
specifically pinpoint an unreliable narration, based on its conflict with established
empirical reality. On the other hand, the approach detailed in 4.3 only says that it is
probable that a given narration is unreliable, based on the fact that a small but
unspecified fraction of narrations in the same epistemic category might be unreliable. I
do not think this is a steep epistemic cost, especially given the independent problems of
making an extra-scriptural appeal that is required by prioritization.

5.2. Problems with “settling the science”

In this section of the review, I return to the question that was set aside in the beginning:
whether the impossibility of giant earthly humans is a reliable empirical fact.
Establishing this is very important for the Mufti’s purposes, because his prioritization
strategy requires the empirical side of the conflict to be reliable. We saw above that the
prioritization strategy has independent problems, but even outside that scope, it is still
important to evaluate how serious the empirical challenge to scripture is. I will first
demonstrate that the book does not provide enough resources to reliably establish the
relevant empirical facts about giant humans on earth, partly because establishing such
a thing requires significant philosophical heavy lifting – something beyond the scope of
the book. I will then suggest a way out of this dilemma.

5.2.1. Scientific impossibility of “human giants”

In the book, the Mufti makes a two-chapter case for the fact that early humans could not
have been ninety feet tall. The first of these two establishes that it cannot be reconciled

24
with our best and most definitive scientific knowledge. Two such points of contradiction
are identified: first, the fossil record is absolutely bereft of any remains of human giants
approaching anywhere close to ninety feet, and the record invariably demonstrates
humans getting taller, not shorter. Second, and perhaps more importantly, human
anatomy and physiology simply could not have accounted for a ninety feet tall creature.
That is to say, if “humans” were indeed that tall and still functioned according to laws of
biology, every aspect of our biology would need to be completely overhauled, to the
extent we would not have been “human” in any meaningful sense of the word. The
Mufti’s presentation of this case is patient and thorough: he not only presents evidence
from published literature, but also explores and debunks conspiracy theories about giant
human skeleton “cover-ups”.

In his second chapter on the topic (“Miracles and laws of nature”), the Mufti explores
possibilities which entail some form or other of antirealism about science. These options
would happily accept the premise that science as we know it cannot account for ninety
feet tall humans, but then argue that science as we know it is either too limited, too
unstable, or too restrictive to tell us the actual facts of the matter in this case. While
scientific antirealism is an interesting topic, it does not have much utility when the points
of conflict are with readily observed reality, like general facts about human biology and
its capacities – so appealing to the limited or unstable nature of science hardly helps
this case. This leaves only one other refuge: miracles, which the Mufti finds problematic
on various theological grounds.

I find the Mufti’s case compelling against all but the “miracle” explanation, which is
significant – because this is by far the most common Muslim response to the problem. 15

5.2.2. How would an Earth with giant humans look?

In building his case against miracles as a possible explanation, the Mufti asks us to
consider what such giant human-permitting miracles would entail. If giant humans
sufficiently similar to us did indeed exist, their existence would have to be sustained by
a continuous suspension of the laws of nature, since human biology as we know it is
incompatible with heights approaching ninety feet. Since the hadith mentions a gradual
decrease of human height since the time of Adam, extreme gigantism – and therefore
the suspension of laws of nature – would involve not just Adam, but many individuals in
post-Adamic generations as well. It is also reasonable to think that humans would not
be the only thing affected in such a scenario. For example, the Mufti cites Ibn Hubayra
speculating on how the Earth would look with giant humans on it: presumably, their
food, clothes, resting places, and other sources of sustenance would all be abnormally
large (p. 101). Depending on how large the giant human populations were, this seems
to suggest that parts of the Earth were completely different from how it is today.

What renders the situation even stranger is the fact that the hadith mentions a continual
decrease in human height until the Prophet’s time. In other words, we should expect to
find giant human fossils – and depending on how big their populations were, traces of a

15
See for example https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_U-vr_XYp4k

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different Earth – pretty recently in the fossil and archaeological records. As a response
to this, the Mufti recounts a possibility suggested by Zakariyya Kandhlawi, according to
which the height decrease did not necessarily have to be gradual. It might have instead
been the case that in the early years of humanity’s existence, the decrease in height
was most rapid, and humans achieved “regular” height by the time history started being
recorded. The remains of the giant humans can then be chalked up to being lost
because of their extreme antiquity (or perhaps a global cataclysmic event, like Noah’s
flood). The Mufti does not comment on whether such an interpretation can be allowed,
especially given that the hadith mentions the height decrease to have been happening
“until now”, i.e., the Prophet’s time. But if this interpretation succeeds that challenge, we
are left with a possible scenario where giant humans inhabited an Earth that looked
completely different from the present one, with all such remains being lost to time.

5.2.3. Miracles as refuge

Can a Muslim be justified in believing such a scenario by appealing to Divine miracles?

Clearly, the relevant question to ask here is not “whether God could have done it” – the
answer to which is obviously yes – but whether there are other epistemological and
theological considerations that weigh against it. The mufti makes references to some
such considerations in the book, like belief in a miracle requiring a certain degree of
independent reliability, but he himself admits such a discussion is too complex to be
accommodated in the book:

“A detailed study on resorting to [a break in the habitual course of nature] to

resolve conflicts between hadith and empirical realities is imperative but beyond
the scope of the present study. The decision to opt for this route was based on a
wide array of considerations, such as the epistemic value of the hadith in
question, the weight of the objection, and the implications of such an
interpretation.” (p. 102)

This aside, a much easier escape from possible theological objections would be to say
that since, on the “miracle” model, human existence on Earth was continually sustained
in a way different from what we are familiar with, this would not be a “break” in the
habitual course of nature at all, but just how things were back then. The considerations
present in the book itself seem to fall short of convincingly rebutting this possibility.

To be sure, there are good reasons to be hesitant in accepting that the early history of
Earth and its inhabitants were radically different from what we are familiar with today.
Especially the suggestion that all the evidence of such an era has been completely
erased for seemingly no reason, strikes one as ad hoc. We can posit miracles, but there
must be some degree of independent motivation for such a move, which we seem to
lack in this situation. However, one might respond to this by saying: the Islamic account
of sacred history shows there are certain contexts where we can expect God to allow
miracles, even grand and continuous ones. Perhaps the creation of humans and
sending them on Earth was a momentous enough occasion that it might have

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necessitated larger-scale miracles, which count count as independent motivation for
reaching for a miracle explanation.

In his interview with Paul Williams, the Mufti explicitly lays out the stakes on both sides:

“If we are to assume that this was a miraculous event, what are the broader
implications of this hadith? The broader implications are, our understanding of
the physics, our understanding of human science, everything – need to be
upended. Because not only was Adam (as) that tall, his progeny was equally tall,
and their progeny, and beyond that – the animals, the food, the trees, the
dwellings, and we don’t have evidence of that. . . You can go down that route but
it’s not that convincing. . . But more importantly, at what expense are we doing
this? If there’s an explicit verse or a hadith stating that Moses parted the sea, I’m
going to go with that because it was a one-off occurrence that happened, and it’s
definitively established in the Qur’an, there’s no questions, no doubts about that.
But in this case, there’s a hadith – granted, it’s found in the Sahihayn – but in
terms of its certainty, there is a difference about the inclusion of the contentious
passages, so there’s some cloud over there, because of that I’m going to
completely revisit our science and archaeology?”16

As we saw above, the appeal to external scientific evidence is problematic, but leaving
that aside, the suggestion seems to be that positing a miracle has a steep epistemic
cost, especially since it makes us revisit core tenets of scientific knowledge. While there
might be a host of other potential scientific problems raised by this type of re-writing of
science, without an independent investigation it is difficult to see how a stretch of
miraculous events – by definition not bound by laws of nature in operation – would
require such a drastic revision in the sciences. In fact, one might argue that the
miraculous creation of Adam and his progeny on Earth itself incurs a similar cost. How
did humanity start from just two individuals? How did they survive the harsh challenges
of nature, raise children, and pass on religious and survival knowledge? These and
other questions suggest the possibility that on the Islamic creation account, the origin of
humans on Earth was accompanied by other miraculous phenomena. To what greater
an extent does an altogether different earth, where giant humans were miraculously
sustained for a period, strain credibility over and above what we already know from the
Qur’an about human origins?

Personally, I do agree with the Mufti that the epistemic cost of such a rewrite of human
history is significant and should be avoided. More so than an early earth, the idea that
all the evidence of that era disappeared without a trace for no reason, and that early
giant humans led to the birth and spread of humans that we know today seem difficult to
accept. However, this excursion is meant to demonstrate the fact that it is very difficult
to convincingly establish such a genuine “conflict”. This is because more often than not,
the scientific facts under question happened in the distant past, and one can escape the
charge of contradiction by appealing to miracles. Ruling out the possibility of miracles
would require delving into epistemology and philosophy of religion, in which case it is

16
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rE7IxCCvxvc from 48:45 onwards.

27
hard to see how those premises would be universally convincing. Also, and perhaps
more importantly, this question can often have a strong sociological component to it. For
example, Muslims living in the West by and large believe in the scientific consensus
about the age of the universe. This is in stark contrast to Christian Young Earth
Creationists, who believe the universe was created several thousand years ago. The
fact that the Islamic account of origins has significantly fewer conflicts with modern
science is often used, perhaps justifiably, as a rhetorical point in favor of Islam. In this
dialectic context, Muslims might be understandably reticent to accept an early Earth
occupied by giants that probably looked drastically different from anything allowed by
modern science.

5.2.4 How to move forward

When addressing a religious audience, establishing a reliable scientific fact that

happened in the distant past is mired with epistemological and possibly sociological
problems. However, the way out of this might not be very difficult, and the rudiments of
this are already present in the Mufti’s book. Instead of trying to provide a universally
convincing anti-miracle argument, it would serve our ends much better if we just
evaluate each option independently by exhaustively listing their pros and cons, without
providing any settled conclusions. This is a strategy analytic philosophers use: in
evaluating possible solutions to a problem, they critically assess all possible options,
including the ones they personally find to be unconvincing (and they might even indicate
as such). Such an approach would be particularly effective in a science-scripture conflict
resolution context, where people bring different premises and assumptions to their
evaluations and might not universally agree on any one solution. Since the Mufti uses
the reliability of the relevant scientific facts as a premise in his prioritization strategy, this
option is not available to him in the context of the book’s arguments.

6. Future prospects

6.1. Unanswered questions

The Height of Prophet Adam breaks new grounds in advancing Islamic intellectual
discourse, and the painstaking scientific and scriptural analysis provided by the Mufti is
enough to solve the problem at hand. For the next steps in this project, these might be
important and promising avenues to pursue:

1. As per the suggestion of Taqi Uthmani, can one maintain that the “decreasing
height”-containing narration was transmitted by paraphrasing (as opposed to
verbatim) in the first one or two generations (i.e., at the levels of Abu Hurayra
and Hammam)?
2. What are the necessary conditions for considering a narration unreliable, and do
the six issues against the “decreasing height” narration suffice? Why or why not?
3. Can material from e.g., al-Daraqutni, or other resources within the broader field
of hadith studies, falsify “narrator insertion” hypotheses or Isra’iliyyat
contamination?

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 4. What impact does the non-Prophetic report (from ibn ’Umar) on the decreasing
height of humanity have on the reliability of this clause? Did he hear this from the
Abu Hurayra, Hammam, or even other successors, if not other companions? Is it
possible to know the relative likelihood of these scenarios?
5. Does admitting that a fraction of solitary narrations is unreliable open the
floodgates to hadith skepticism? How did traditional scholars who critiqued
reliable hadiths deal with such a charge?
6. Does the “suspending judgment” stance entail anything more than brute non-
commitment? Does it also involve admitting a degree or kind of epistemic
limitation?
7. Can one seriously accept the miracle explanation for early giant humans on
earth? What are the intellectual and theological costs for such a position?

6.2. A universal framework for science-hadith reconciliation

Beyond this immediate project, the Mufti’s framework can also be modified into a more
universally applicable blueprint for science-hadith conflicts. While the originally
proposed framework has some limitations, maybe a considerably more simplified
decision tree can be used (Figure 7A).

No
Is the underlying scientific data solid? No conflict Examples

Yes Is the underlying No Population genetics-based

scientific data objections that humans could not
No solid? have emerged from a single couple
Is the hadith authentic? No conflict
Yes

Yes Is the interpretation No Neuroscience-based experiments

of the data that claim to show there is no free
No reasonable? will
Is that the only plausible interpretation? Harmonize
Yes
Yes Is it robust against No Assessment of human evolution
limitations of 21st ignores evidence for mind-body
Is the hadith free from other defects in
No Reject as century science? dualism
transmission which might render it unreliable
(e.g. patchy narrations, isra’iliat unreliable
contamination)? Yes

Yes Is it inappropriate No The Prophet’s night journey

to invoke a miracle
Is the hadith massively contradicting laws of physics
No Possible non- as an explanation?
transmitted/reliable with a high Prophetic
probability? contamination Yes

Yes
Reliable
Suspend judgment: There might be empirical fact
other solutions we do not know of
(Divine action, different interpretation)
A B
Figure 7. Tentative framework for addressing science-hadith conflicts. A. The complete framework. B.
Framework for assessing reliability of scientific data.

This, however, is where the real work begins. Each step in the broader science-
scripture reconciliation program contains a significant degree of inner complexity. As the

29
Mufti demonstrates, for example, assessing the probability of a hadith’s being reliable or
understanding its semantic import (steps 3 and 4 in 7A above) employ a systematic
methodology. It would be very useful for experts to produce more fine-grained
workflows for “hadith interpretation” or “hadith reliability assessment”. If the goal is to
demonstrate that the Islamic scholarly tradition has the resources to produce consistent
solutions to these problems, that point can certainly be made stronger by showing the
method in full.17 As a toy example, Figure 7B shows a tentative workflow for assessing
the reliability of relevant empirical facts.

In the English-speaking community, we have consistently had a contingent of Muslims

engaged in so-called “negative apologetics” (i.e., answering objections against Islam)
especially in the online space. Answering scientific objections was, and continues to be,
a large part of this effort. Notable examples in this field include Waqar Akbar Cheema18,
Hamza Tzortzis19, Farid20, Mohammad Hijab21, and many others. However, these efforts
are disjointed and, to a large extent, do not follow a consistent methodology for
systematically dealing with objections. Mufti Muntasir Zaman’s book is the first example
where we see the presentation and defense of a detailed general methodology by an
expert in the field, followed by its application to a particularly hard conflict to resolve. My
hope is this blueprint will be discussed, modified as needed, and replicated broadly,
leading to a streamlining of the Muslim community’s efforts.

17
Of course, it might be difficult to produce an exact “decision tree” or algorithm as there are always
subjective judgments in scholarship in any field. However, a workflow can have room for ambiguity or
exceptions, and still be extremely useful.
18
https://www.icraa.org/
19
See for example https://sapienceinstitute.org/does-the-quran-say-the-earth-is-flat/
20
https://www.youtube.com/c/FaridResponds
21
See for example https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M6gKNtKoAOM

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