The Principle of Dealing with Texts That Appear to Contradict One Another

Question:
May Allah keep you safe. The truth is that students of knowledge truly need an important principle, Your Eminence the Shaykh. It is that when texts appear to conflict, or when a text has more than one meaning, perhaps Your Eminence the Shaykh has a comment?

Answer:
Yes. It is obligatory for the student of knowledge to look at the hadiths, look at their abundance, and look at the later ones in case of conflict, so that he may prioritize what deserves to be prioritized, either by abrogation or by preference. If reconciliation is possible, he reconciles between them; otherwise, it is abrogation. In the end, abrogation abrogates the earlier text. This is the relied-upon position. As for when reconciliation is possible, it is done either by making one specific and the other general, or one absolute and the other restricted. This is a known matter. For example, the hadith that a donkey, a woman, and a dog invalidate the prayer, and in another wording, a black dog. The narration of the black dog restricts the other narration. This is from the category of reconciling between them by restricting the absolute with the restricted. Likewise, the menstruating woman indicates that a young girl does not invalidate the prayer, but rather it is the woman of legal age. Yes.