A Principle Regarding Generality and Specificity.

The Shaykh : So this is a principle among the principles of reconciling the texts, which is referred to as the general and the specific. If a specific text contradicts a general text, the general text is specified by the specific text. It is not a condition here, as some schools of jurisprudence state, that it is not permissible to specify a definitive or mass-transmitted general text with a limited-chain specific text. This is not a condition, even though some of them mention it in their books of legal theory. However, we see that they contradict their own principles in some of the detailed applications and in some of the branches, including the one we are discussing now.
The principle they stated is: It is not permissible to specify a general text whose authenticity is definitive, and the Qur'an is among such texts, with a limited-chain hadith whose authenticity is probable. Nevertheless, they agreed with the majority of Muslims on the permissibility of the carrion of fish and locusts, even though the hadith on that matter is, at the very least, not mass-transmitted. They specified what is definitively established with what is probably established. Accordingly, it is necessary to reconcile the contradictory texts.