What is our position regarding one who weakens a hadith in Sahih al-Bukhari, and what is your opinion of Ibn al-Salah's statement on closing the door of authentication and weakening?

The questioner : What is our position regarding one who comes and weakens a hadith in Sahih al-Bukhari, and how valid is Ibn al-Salah's statement that the door of authentication has been closed in our time?

The Shaykh : This is, of course, rejected based on the statement of Imam al-Nawawi—may Allah send rain upon those who sent rain upon me. As for weakening a hadith in Sahih al-Bukhari or Sahih Muslim, this may be accepted from one who is proficient in this knowledge. However, from one who flails about blindly in the dark night, if his research were correct, he would strike his own face with it, because it is not his specialty and he has no right to speak about what he has no knowledge of, as He the Exalted said: But if he is from the people of knowledge, then his argument and his evidence for what he claims are examined. In that case, the ruling is either in his favor or against him. As for closing the door of authentication and weakening, as Ibn al-Salah inclined to, this is entirely similar to closing the door of ijtihad and taqlid among the jurists and those who follow them. Just as a correct Islamic scholarly life does not stand with the closing of the door of ijtihad, so too, and even more so, does that life not stand with the closing of the door of authentication and weakening. This is because knowledge, as we all know, is established on the foundation of the Book and the Sunnah. The hadiths of the Sunnah number in the tens, indeed hundreds, indeed thousands. Not every hadith has been discussed by the early scholars of hadith. If that were the case, it would not have been permissible to close the door of ijtihad, because the later scholars have the right to look into what the earlier scholars differed on. How much more so, when the earlier scholars of hadith did not speak on every known hadith in the six books, let alone others. Therefore, the student of knowledge, especially if he wants to prefer one of the statements of the earlier jurists on a certain issue, must look into the chains of evidence for those statements. That is, he must weigh them with the scale of hadith knowledge. So, the statement of what Ibn al-Salah went to, that the door of authentication and weakening is closed and his statement is final, is in reality, along with what it contains of certainty and blocking the door of mercy upon the scholars of Muslims, and upon their students, means that sound fiqh cannot remain. Because this fiqh is based on authentication and weakening. What does the student of knowledge do if he is told that there is, for example, a hadith that is authentic and another that is weak, and one contradicts the other? When you read the science of terminology, you find them saying, in the way of reconciling the two conflicting hadiths: You must first look at them to see if they are from the category of accepted or if one or both are from the category of rejected. If they are from the category of accepted, it is obligatory to reconcile them by one of the ways of reconciliation, which exceeded one hundred ways, and which al-Hakim Zayn al-Din al-Iraqi enumerated in his marginal notes on the Introduction to the Sciences of Hadith by Ibn al-Salah. This is if both are from the category of accepted, so reconciliation is obligatory if it is facilitated; otherwise, it is referred to considering the abrogating and the abrogated. That is, if it is possible to establish that one is earlier and the other is later, and the later abrogates the earlier, this is a type of combining. And if the date is not known and it is not possible for one to abrogate the other, then the researcher moves to the third level, which is the level of preference (tarjih). The point here is: the meaning of preference is to say: one of the hadiths is hasan li ghayrihi (good for other reasons) and the other is hasan li dhatihi (good in itself), so the hasan li ghayrihi is left for the hasan li dhatihi because it is stronger. If one is hasan li dhatihi and the other is sahih li ghayrihi, the hasan li dhatihi is left and the sahih li ghayrihi is taken. And so on, until it is said: if one is sahih and the other is mashhur (famous) or mustafid (widely transmitted), the mashhur or mustafid is preferred over the sahih. And if one is mashhur or mustafid but the other is mutawatir (mass-transmitted), the mashhur or mustafid is left and the mutawatir hadith is taken. How can the student of knowledge judge all these levels if the door of authentication and weakening has been closed? Then this will remainThe student : in a labyrinth where he cannot know how to reconcile between the hadiths. And they established this rule in terminology: Reconciliation between the two hadiths is necessary if they are from the category of accepted, as we mentioned just now. And so on. So, the statement of Ibn al-Salah is in reality from the slips of the scholars. For that reason, Imam al-Nawawi came after him and weakened his statement, and he explicitly stated that the door of authentication and weakening remains open until the Hour.