The Shaykh’s remarks on ahad hadiths and arguing with them

The Shaykh : This leads us to another topic that some skeptics or doubters have long touched upon regarding the Sunnah of the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him), due to their ignorance of it, its principles, and the biographies of its narrators. That is what is called ahad hadith and mutawatir hadith. Ahad hadith is of no benefit to anyone but the individuals and specialists among the scholars of the Ummah, namely those specialized in the science of hadith and Sunnah. As for the general Muslims, they gain nothing of note from this detail; rather, it serves as a cause for them to doubt what has come to them from their Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) in the form of hadiths that the minds of some skeptics and doubters may not be able to accept. A hadith is what is authentic from the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) by any path known to the scholars of hadith. As for the details, the general Muslims do not need them. The classification of hadith into "hasan, sahih, hasan in itself, hasan due to other evidence, sahih in itself, sahih due to other evidence, sahih ghareeb, sahih mustafid, sahih mashhur, sahih mutawatir"—this is for the people of knowledge. As for the general Muslims, it is sufficient for them to know from the people of knowledge that the hadith is sahih, and then they must believe in and accept it. As for those who cling to these details, which are fitting for the people of knowledge and not for the general Muslims, they cling to them to lead the masses of Muslims to disbelieve in many authentic hadiths. Why? Because it is an ahad hadith.
The meaning of ahad hadith, in brief, is that it has not reached the level of tawatur. They mean by tawatur that it is narrated from the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) by a large and abundant number of people whose collusion in lying is impossible. They have differed greatly on this; and in my opinion, this is from the mercy of Allah, because disagreement about something indicates that it has no value. Some say that the number for tawatur is one hundred people, and some say such and such, until they reached the number of ten. That is: if one hundred people, according to the highest opinion, or ten people, according to the lowest opinion, do not narrate the same hadith from the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him), and then from these Companions one hundred or ten from the Tabi'un, and so on until the matter is recorded in the pages of the books of hadith, the hadith is not mutawatir. And what is the consequence of a hadith being mutawatir or not being mutawatir? They have established that an ahad hadith that is not mutawatir is not permissible to act upon in matters related to the unseen, which they express as matters of creed. So any hadith that relates to matters other than rulings and only relates to the unseen, if it is not mutawatir, is not to be acted upon. This is the claim of those who clung to the aforementioned detail, which is a detail that corresponds to reality. But who discovers it? Only a very few individuals in every era among the specialized scholars of hadith discover it.
Let us give an example: It is agreed upon by all scholars of hadith that the clearest example of a mutawatir hadith is his saying (peace and blessings be upon him): This is a truly mutawatir hadith. Why? Because more than one hundred narrators from the Companions were found for it, and so on as you go down the chain. But who among you has now collected these paths so that the hadith becomes mutawatir for you? If I tell you: this hadith is mutawatir, then the tawatur is broken for you from me. You must follow or trace the hadiths as I and others before me did, until the hadith becomes mutawatir for you.
What does such a detail matter to you, which is more like philosophy that is of no benefit whatsoever to the general Muslims?! So making tawatur a condition for hadith is a denial of the Prophetic hadith. Therefore, we have found many people today, some of whom are partisan and some of whom may not be partisan, rejecting authentic hadiths on the pretext that it is not in the rulings, but rather in matters of the unseen or in matters of creed. So they are ahad hadiths, and they cast them aside like a stone.