The Shaykh’s remarks on how to distinguish the authentic Sunnah from the weak, and that this is not achieved except by learning two fundamental sciences: the science of hadith terminology and the science of biographical evaluation

The Shaykh : And the Sunnah, as we have mentioned, is what is authentic and what is not authentic. There is no way to distinguish the authentic from the weak except by studying two sciences. It is necessary 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 scholars and is not easily accessible to everyone who knows some reading and writing. This 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 men of hadith and the narrators of hadith. The science of terminology is undoubtedly a science that is made easy and facilitated. Dozens, or even hundreds, of books have been written on it, both old and new, foundational and detailed, lengthy and summarized, and so on. However, this science does not yield the expected benefit unless it is coupled with the science of al-jarh wa al-ta'dil (the critique and vindication of narrators), which is the science of knowing the narrators of hadith in terms of their precision, memorization, truthfulness, and lack of truthfulness, and so on. The number of these narrators reaches, at a minimum, approximately fifty thousand. 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.