Is it obligatory for one who reads a hadith from Sahih al-Jami' to refer to the source to which I referred?

The Shaykh : Please go ahead.

The questioner : As for the hadiths in Sahih al-Jami', you generally attribute them to one of your books in which you have traced the hadith.

The Shaykh : Yes, exactly.

The questioner : Such as al-Silsilah al-Sahihah and ... So if a student of knowledge wants to act upon a hadith from these hadiths in al-Jami' ... Sahih al-Jami', is it obligatory for him to refer to the book from which the hadith was traced, or ... the authentic one?

The Shaykh : This varies according to the student. This example can be illustrated or developed in another way: Is it obligatory for every Muslim to know the difference between an authentic hadith and a weak hadith, or not? There is no doubt that the answer will be that he must know the difference between the authentic and the weak.
The second question, which is the crux of the matter, is: Is it obligatory for this questioner to refer to the means of knowing whether this statement—i.e., whether the hadith is authentic or weak—by tracing the original sources and the methods by which a Muslim is usually able to know an authentic hadith, or is it not obligatory? The answer is very obvious: if he is one of the people of this knowledge and this discipline, it is obligatory; otherwise, it is not. The answer in this and that case is like many jurisprudential issues. Our Lord, Mighty and Majestic, says in the Noble Qur'an: The verse divides people into two categories: the knowledgeable and the ignorant, and it obligates each of them to do something that it does not obligate the other to do. It obligates the one who is not knowledgeable to ask the people of knowledge, and it obligates the scholars to answer. So the questioners in every era, even in the era of Prophethood and the Message, are mostly unable to know the authenticity of the answer they received from the scholar. One wonders: Did he take it from the Book of Allah, or from the Sunnah of the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him), or from scholarly consensus? And then one wonders: Is this consensus of the first type, in which the Ummah does not differ, namely what the Ummah has agreed upon as authentic, or of the second type, which is the consensus of the scholars of the Ummah, where it is not required that the entire Ummah agrees, up to all the definitions of consensus by which the argument is established? There is no doubt that most people cannot reach these details. These people are content with the scholar's answer: permissible, not permissible, obligatory, recommended, etc. Likewise, this type of person is content with the statement of a scholar whose knowledge is trusted: this is authentic, this is good, this is weak. But it may be that this questioner or that reader in Sahih al-Jami' finds that this hadith is authentic. He may be able to refer to the source to which I referred, or he may not be able to. If he is unable to refer to the source, he may be able to refer to the methods I followed, for example, in reaching the judgment of authenticity for this hadith. If he is able to do so, he is not in need of referring to a source that is beyond his reach, especially since the reality is that some of the sources to which I attribute the authentication or weakening are still in the realm of manuscripts and have not yet been printed for us. This is the answer to what you asked.

The questioner : May Allah reward you with good.

The Shaykh : And you as well.