I heard of a profound experience that one student who had studied there in the early 1900s had recorded in his memoirs.41 The student had strayed from the madrasa curriculum and submerged himself in books of philosophy and the modernist arguments of Hadith skeptics. Sitting in class at Deoband, the student’s mind was flooded with the most profound doubts about the reliability of Hadiths. He even questioned Muhammad’s prophethood. Instead of being open to possible explanations for reports like the Hadith of the Fly or the Devil Farting, the student felt he was falling into an abyss of
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