Methodology and Sources: How the Tawakoul Blog Articles Are Written and Verified

Why this page

On the Internet, a false hadith circulates as fast as an authentic one. A blog about everyday Islam is only worth anything if every reference can be trusted. This page describes, without jargon, how we work: what we cite, how we verify it, and what we refuse to do.

The Qur’an itself asks us not to follow what we have no sure knowledge of, and to verify a piece of information before passing it on:

Our sources

• The Qur’an: the Arabic text of the standard (Uthmani) edition and the French translation by Muhammad Hamidullah, as distributed by alquran.cloud. The same translation is used in Tawakoul’s Qur’an reader.
• The hadiths: Sahih al-Bukhari, Sahih Muslim, Sunan Abi Dawud, Jami‘ at-Tirmidhi, Sunan an-Nasa’i, Sunan Ibn Majah, and Riyad as-Salihin by an-Nawawi, in the sunnah.com numbering. The grades of authenticity come from the scholars who have assessed these collections: al-Bukhari and Muslim (whose collections are recognized as authentic by consensus), al-Albani, Ahmad Shakir, Zubayr ‘Ali Za’i, among others.
• The stories of the prophets rely on the Qur’an and authentic hadiths; accounts of Israelite origin (isra’iliyyat) or of a legendary kind are flagged as such or left aside. Our stories of the prophets follow the same rule.
• The books cited (tafsir, fiqh, sira) are cited with their author; when a web page is cited, its address is tested.

How a reference is verified

Before publication, a program re-reads each declared source:

The date of this verification appears under each article (“verified on”). When an article is modified, the update date is shown.

Grades of authenticity, in a nutshell

A hadith is a saying, an action or an approval attributed to the Prophet ﷺ and transmitted through a chain of narrators. Hadith scholars have classified these transmissions:

• صحيح sahih (authentic): an unbroken chain of reliable narrators, without anomaly;
• حسن hasan (good): a reliable chain, but with a slight weakness of memory in one narrator;
• ضعيف da‘if (weak): the chain has a flaw; it is not attributed to the Prophet ﷺ with certainty;
• موضوع mawdu‘ (fabricated): an invented hadith, which it is forbidden to spread as authentic.

The Prophet ﷺ warned against attributing words to him carelessly:

That is why, when a weak hadith is mentioned in an article (for example because it is very widespread), its grade is clearly stated. To understand how to read a reference, see Understanding a hadith: chain, grade and collections.

What we do not do

We avoid controversy, judgments about people and political subjects. The tone we aim for is that of a kind teacher speaking to the whole family.

Artificial intelligence and proofreading

The drafts of this blog are prepared with the help of an artificial intelligence assistant (Claude, by Anthropic), from a strict editorial line and a bank of references that have already been verified. It is only a writing aid: each reference is then checked by the program described above, and articles with a problematic source are read by a person before any publication. We deliberately publish few articles per day: a reliable text is better than a continuous flow.

The Prophet ﷺ encouraged the transmission of knowledge, provided that it is faithful:

Accessibility

Each article offers a “Key points” summary, an “Explained simply” version for children and complete beginners, a glossary of Arabic words, reading aloud, and respects Tawakoul’s display settings (large text, high contrast, dark mode). Arabic words are always accompanied by their meaning in English.

Reporting an error

Despite these precautions, an error is still possible. If you spot an inaccurate reference, an awkward translation or an ambiguous wording, write to us from the Contact page, giving the address of the article. Corrections are made quickly and the update date is displayed.

To go further

• Sources and transparency: the sources for the whole of Tawakoul.
• Riyad as-Salihin and Hisn al-Muslim, readable directly in the app.
• The blog glossary.