Clarifying the error of some young students in the science of hadith who believe that a hasan hadith should not have any defect in its narrators

The Shaykh : However, there is something that must be pointed out, because many of our young student brothers in this great science, the science of hadith, believe that a hasan hadith should not have any defect or criticism in any of its narrators. This is a mistake, because if a narrator’s hadith is described as hasan, as we are currently discussing regarding Ibn Ishaq, it is only because there is some weakness in his memory, precision, or accuracy; otherwise, they would have classified his hadith as sahih. Therefore, whenever we see a ruling by some of the meticulous hadith scholars that a particular hadith is hasan, we must remember that there is some weakness in one of its narrators. It is not permissible for a young student in knowledge to then say: “So-and-so hadith was graded hasan by al-Hafiz Ibn Hajar, for example, or al-Iraqi, or al-Zayla’i, and it contains so-and-so, and so-and-so said about him: he is weak in hadith, or he narrates munkar reports,” or similar phrases. This kind of criticism or censure should not be clung to and made a reason to invalidate this hadith that was graded hasan by an imam of the imams of hadith, as we mentioned earlier. Otherwise, for such a young student, there would be only two grades: sahih and da’if, while the middle grade would be abolished by this hasty and rapid criticism that was not based on gathering all the opinions said about this narrator, and then sifting from these opinions what is indicated by the knowledge of hadith terminology in the well-known rule: “When censure and vindication conflict, censure is preferred over vindication”. And this rule is also not absolute and comprehensive, but it has a condition and a criterion: “Censure is preferred over vindication if the censure is explicit in its reason”. And this is also not sufficient to be a justification and a valid reason for accepting the censure after the reason has been made explicit, but it is necessary to study this reason to see if it is suitable to be a reason for censuring the narrator, so that it is relied upon and his hadith is considered a weak hadith. This is because many of the reasons narrated in censure have no value in censure.