The hadith of 'Ali (may Allah be pleased with him): "The covering between the jinn and the private parts of the children of Adam is that when he enters the place of relief, he says: Bismillah (In the name of Allah)"

The questioner : The hadith of 'Ali ... : , and you mentioned that this hadith is valid and is documented in "Al-Irwaa'." I have difficulty accepting the validation of this hadith; because in all of its chains, there are either unknown narrators or weak narrators, and indeed some of its chains are suspended. So we hope you will be kind enough to resolve this difficulty, and mention a general rule regarding the detailed analysis of a hadith through the totality of its chains, and may Allah reward you with good?

The Shaykh : As for the answer to this question, it is not possible except after presenting these chains of narration, one by one. This is, of course, not possible for me in the situation you see me in. As for the rule, it is—praise be to Allah—known among the scholars of hadith; and it is that a weak hadith is strengthened by the multiplicity of its chains. However, scholars may differ regarding the degree of weakness of a hadith; some may view the weakness as severe such that it is not suitable to be cited as evidence or to be strengthened by it, while others view the weakness as not being of that severity, so it can be strengthened by it. Therefore, such a question must be placed on the table of research, and there must be a practical lesson, and we must have a blackboard or board where we write the chain, and we conduct a verification of every narrator. There is no doubt that most of the narrators will be authenticated, and there will remain a narrator among the narrators who is the defect of that chain, and the number of a second and third chain, and so on. Then we look at the result: do these chains give this hadith strength or not?
And on this occasion, I referThe questioner : to the words of Shaykh al-Islam Ibn Taymiyyah (may Allah have mercy on him) in his great, large book "Majmu' al-Fatawa." He will find words of his there in which he goes to the strengthening of a weak hadith, even if the weakness in some of its chains is severe; that is: it departs from the general rule known among the scholars of hadith; because he views it as unlikely that these narrators would agree to narrate this hadith if the weakness differed in the levels of these hadith scholars, these weak narrators; for example, if there is, as we said in the previous research when speaking about the man who is a liar; if the unknown narrator is a Tabi'i (successor) and another chain comes in which the unknown is below the Tabi'i, and a third chain comes in which it is weak ... .