Causes of Disagreement Among Hadith Scholars in Authenticating and Weakening Hadiths

The Shaykh : So here we arrive at a conclusion: the fact that a hadith is weak because its chain of narration is weak, or that it is good or authentic according to some because they traced its various routes, is a relative matter. Therefore, a student of knowledge should not be troubled by the disagreement among the early hadith scholars, let alone those engaged with hadith today, where one deems a hadith good and another deems it weak. This is because the causes that necessitate disagreement in this matter are more numerous than the causes that necessitate disagreement among jurists regarding legal rulings. A single ruling may be based on a single text from the Book or the Sunnah, and yet opinions and independent legal reasoning will still differ. However, disagreement regarding the authentication or weakening of a hadith is far more complex than that juristic disagreement, because, as I mentioned earlier, some scholars stop at criticizing a hadith based on a single chain of narration and thus weaken it, while others look at other chains of narration for that hadith and judge it to be good based on the totality of those chains.
And I told you, I believe, recently that the scholars of hadith explicitly stated in their terminology that if a student of knowledge sees a hadith with a weak chain of narration, he has no right to say, "This is a weak hadith." Rather, he should express the reality of its chain by saying, "Its chain of narration is weak." This is part of their precision in their criticism and terminology, because there is a very clear difference between saying, "This is a weak hadith," which gives a ruling on the hadith itself, and saying, "Its chain of narration is weak," which limits the ruling to the chain of narration. This ruling does not contradict the statement of someone who might say, "The chain of narration of this hadith is good" or "The chain of narration of this hadith is authentic," because it does not refer to the same chain that the first person weakened. A fortiori, if someone says, "This is a good hadith" or "This is an authentic hadith," it does not contradict the statement of someone who said, "Its chain of narration is weak," because the former means it is good or authentic based on the totality of its routes.