Explaining the Reality of the Preachers with the Science of Hadith in Egypt

The student: With our Shaykh.

The Shaykh : Yes.
The student: With our Shaykh.

The Shaykh: I am asking you, you are not speaking.
The student: I came to benefit.

The Shaykh: It is not permissible for you to speak.
The student: I do not intend to ask for a fatwa.

The Shaykh: I understand your intention, and I am not asking you for a fatwa, but for an opinion.

The questioner: An opinion.

The Shaykh : Yes.

The questioner: I see no harm in it.

The Shaykh: You see no harm in it, well, and is there still a benefit in saying "we see no harm in it"? Well, do you see any harm in the one who prays saying to his brother after the prayer: "May Allah accept it"?

The questioner: It was not transmitted.

The Shaykh: Well, was the better one transmitted?

The questioner: It was not transmitted.

The Shaykh: But, I mean, if...

The questioner: Allah knows best. I give what I have, and our Shaykh corrects it.

The Shaykh: That is what we want, to take what you have, and then perhaps we will give you what we have, perhaps we will give you.

The questioner: I mean, regarding the prayer, for example, what I have is that...

The Shaykh: This is a benefit, and why do you not want to bestow it upon us, but rather are you stingy?

The questioner : May Allah reward you with good.

The Shaykh: So, this means that acting upon the principle established in the Shari'ah, whether as a general or absolute text, is permissible, whereas adhering to it becomes a ritual practice and a custom; if a person leaves it off, it is said he left off a recommended practice. This is the difference. May Allah bless you. And you rambled around that, and this is what I wanted to benefit from you.

The questioner : May Allah bless you. May Allah reward you with good.

The Shaykh: So that you do not waste your time on something you do not intend, so give us what you have.

The questioner: Praise be to Allah, we praise Him, seek His help, and seek His forgiveness, and we seek refuge in Allah from the evils of our souls and the badness of our deeds. He whom Allah guides has no one to mislead, and he whom He misleads has no one to guide. And I bear witness that there is no deity but Allah alone, with no partner, and I bear witness that Muhammad is His slave and His Messenger, may Allah send blessings and peace upon him and his family and his Companions. And after that: We praise Allah - Mighty and Majestic - for making it easy for us to meet our Shaykh, may Allah preserve him, our Shaykh and our father, the Imam Muhammad Nasir al-Din al-Albani, may Allah preserve him.

The Shaykh: Beware of exaggeration, you Muslims.
The student: There is no exaggeration.

The Shaykh: O Muslims, every student of knowledge among you has become an Imam.
The student : May Allah reward you with good.

The Shaykh: We are students of knowledge.
The student : May Allah reward you.

The Shaykh: All of us.
The student : May Allah preserve you.

The Shaykh : If Allah wills.
The student: So, we mean to announce to you that the da'wah in Egypt, praise be to Allah, despite the pressures, despite the trials and restrictions in it, praise be to Allah, the number is increasing, and by the grace of Allah - Mighty and Majestic - and then by the efforts of our Shaykhs and their knowledge, the prevailing methodology is the Salafi methodology, praise be to Allah. And we clarify to you that the preachers are of three categories: The first category are those who are engaged with hadith and have exerted effort in it over periods that are long and short, meaning most of them for about fifteen years or so, and less than that. Among them are those who exerted effort and achieved, meaning they work, most of them work with verification or by teaching the sciences of terminology or the like. Then another category are those who combined hadith and fiqh, meaning they have some knowledge of hadith and collecting the chains of transmission, and with verification and judging hadith, and with that, they study their brothers in the books of fiqh, so they have some knowledge of hadith, and with that, they study, so sometimes they judge hadiths themselves, and sometimes time is tight for them, so they take the verification of the scholars of knowledge, like al-Hafiz Ibn Hajar and our contemporary scholars like your excellence. And the third category is a category that specialized in knowing the rulings with their evidence from the Book and the Sunnah, so they memorized the hadiths and the disagreement of the scholars and the evidence of each group of scholars, and they preferred one over the other and benefited... but they are not specialists in hadith, so they rely on the verification of the scholars of knowledge, as we said, like al-Hafiz Ibn Hajar and the like, and from the contemporaries, especially our Shaykh Muhammad Nasir al-Din al-Albani, may Allah preserve him. So the matter is easy in that up to these recent years, until a group from the first category, meaning the rules became confused for them, the hadith rules, so they began to weaken, meaning they doubt these hadith rules established with the scholars of knowledge, and among them especially the hasan hadith, and they also went to the issue of hearing, meaning Muslim's condition in hearing and the like. We think that something of that has reached you.

The Shaykh: Yes.
The student: So these people, meaning they built upon these principles, meaning they began to weaken many of these hadiths, so they caused doubt among the students of knowledge who attend the other two sections, and they did not stop at that, until some of them, meaning in his lesson which a group of students attends, after the lesson is finished, he judges, meaning his students present several hadiths, for example seven or eight hadiths from al-Silsilah al-Sahihah, and he judges them as weak without explicit statement, meaning without him explicitly stating it.
The student: Peace be upon you.

The Shaykh: Please, peace be upon you and the mercy of Allah and His blessings. Welcome, yes.
The student: So, this has become, meaning, a doubt in the work of others, so the conditions became confused because of this matter, and even they themselves, even they themselves, meaning some of them have completed, for example, about fifteen years in the customary... known way, so it became, meaning, it was reported to me by one of the trustworthy people that one of them said to him: that he washes his hands from the work of fifteen years.

The Shaykh : Allah is the Greatest, Allah is the Greatest
The student: So for this, meaning, I have exerted effort in collecting what they have of doubts in this matter, and we wanted, if your time permits, to present the important of them, meaning, may Allah reward you with good. And we know the work that you are in and the responsibilities you are in and the great burdens upon you, and we ask Allah to preserve you and to bless in your knowledge, but due to the seriousness of this matter, meaning, we hope from your excellence that you allow us to present as much of that as possible, and may Allah - Glorified and Exalted is He - guide us and you. We ask Allah - Mighty and Majestic - to guide us and you to what He loves and is pleased with, for guiding the youth. And something we want to point out is that many of this category that you described, the first category, respect you, even though they differ with you in the rules of verifying hadiths and judging them, but we, meaning, we have not known from them, and I have seen some of them and discussed with them and sat with them, and I have seen from them respect and reverence for you, and they appreciate your efforts, so this is, meaning, more worthy that your excellence, meaning, opens the way with more clarification... and their doubts and what confused them, and it has confused others...

The Shaykh: We ask Allah - Mighty and Majestic - to guide us to answering what you raise of questions and difficulties regarding the scientific hadith rules, and to guide us in that to choosing the correct from what people have differed in.