A discourse on how to distinguish the authentic Sunnah from the weak, and that this is not achieved except by learning two fundamental sciences

The Shaykh : And the Sunnah, as we mentioned, is what is authentic and what is not authentic; so there is no way to distinguish the authentic from the weak except by studying two sciences. It is obligatory for everyone who wants to return to the correct Islam to study these two sciences. There is no doubt that this study is specific to the people of knowledge and is not easily accessible to everyone who knows some reading and writing; that is because these two sciences are the science of hadith terminology, the principles of hadith and the rules of hadith science, and the second science is the science of the biographies of the men of hadith and the narrators of hadith. The science of terminology, without a doubt, is a facilitated and smoothed-out science in which dozens, indeed hundreds, of books have been written, both old and new, in terms of foundational principles and branches, length and summary, and the like. However, this science does not yield the expected benefit unless it is combined with the science of al-jarh wa al-ta'dil, the science of knowing the narrators of hadith; in terms of their precision, memorization, truthfulness, and lack of truthfulness, and the like. These narrators number, at the very least, approximately fifty thousand narrators. It is obligatory for the one who wants to care for the Sunnah and know its authentic from its weak to know this science, the science of al-jarh wa al-ta'dil, in addition to the science of the principles of hadith, the science of hadith terminology.