What is the ruling on raising the index finger between the two prostrations? And what is the authenticity of the hadith reported regarding this?

The questioner : What is the authenticity of the hadith reported in the Musnad of Imam Ahmad that the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him) said: What is the authenticity of this hadith?

The Shaykh : My brother, this hadith, my brother, in the terminology of the hadith scholars, is anomalous and not authentic. And this is, in reality, one of the problems of the hadith scholars, the students of hadith knowledge in this age. As they say, one of the most precise sciences in terminology is knowing the defects of hadith, because a person who has mastered the terminology of hadith to some extent is able, when he studies the chain of a hadith, to judge it as authentic or weak. But... his judgment is based on his looking at the specific chain of this hadith. However, if he were well-versed in the books of the Sunnah and the routes of the hadiths, and he gathered the routes of this hadith or that one—we are speaking generally now—perhaps these routes would reveal to him a defect in this chain, and he would return from his previous judgment of authenticity to the judgment of weakness, which is anomaly, in its best state. Likewise, when he judges the chain of a hadith as weak, and this naturally entails judging the hadith with the same weakness, but if he were well-versed in the corroborating narrations, supporting chains, and routes, perhaps he would find in those routes something that strengthens that weak chain. This is what led some hadith scholars to ask in their terminology: if a student of knowledge finds a hadith with a weak chain, is it permissible for him to say "this is a weak hadith," or should he say "the chain of this hadith is weak"? They said two things, meaning both are permissible, but they qualified the permissibility for one who is well-versed in the routes of the hadith, the corroborating narrations, and the supporting chains, such that it is unlikely that a corroborating narration for this hadith would escape him, which would strengthen the text even if its chain is weak. For this reason and that, it is not easy for a novice in this science to authenticate and weaken based on a specific chain. And this is what happened to some of the alert ones today, some of the alert Shaykhs today. I do not say the young people, but some of the alert Shaykhs today, due to the importance of hadith in jurisprudence, and that this inherited jurisprudence is not sufficient unless it is accompanied by the scriptural evidence. And they know that there are only two evidences around which two other evidences revolve: scholarly consensus and analogical reasoning. The two evidences are the Book and the Sunnah. They know that any jurisprudence that is not based on the Book and the Sunnah will not have standing or stability. So some of these novice Shaykhs, who have become aware of the necessity of hadith knowledge, took up the study of hadith knowledge in their later years, but they do not have that far-reaching study and delving into the depths of the books of hadith, especially those that are in manuscript, let alone those that are printed but not well-known among people. The important point is that he stopped at the chain of this hadith regarding pointing with the finger between the two prostrations in the Musnad of Imam Ahmad, and he returned to the books of men and found that the chain is all trustworthy, with no problem at all. And this study certainly requires someone like him to judge that this chain is authentic. But he misses something, because this is the natural state for a novice in this science, whether he is young or old. He misses something, which is the completion of the definition of an authentic hadith in terminology. They said: "What is narrated by a just, precise narrator from a like him, from a like him, to its end, and it is not anomalous or defective." And they said in the study of defects that this science is one of the most precise sciences of hadith, because this science, in my critique and understanding of hadith knowledge, is what kept the scholars of the Muslims in these long centuries from engaging with hadith. Why did we not find this engagement with this science as they engaged with exegesis, jurisprudence, grammar, and morphology, and so on? Because it requires tremendous efforts. So he judged the chain as authentic because its men are trustworthy, there is no concealment of defects, and there is no disconnection, but there is anomaly. And here something appears: this anomaly could have been discovered even from the same book that narrated this anomaly, without delving deeply into studying the other books, especially those that are in manuscript. The same book, the Musnad of Imam Ahmad, has several narrations of this hadith with several chains, and all these chains end with Asim ibn Kulayb from his father from Wail. Then the routes branch out below Asim. If the one who authenticated this hadith and spread the practice of it among people had returned to the routes of this hadith from Asim in the same Musnad of Ahmad, he would have found that all the narrations agree on mentioning the movement in the tashahhud. It is known in all the hadiths from other than Wail, as is the case in the other hadiths that narrate the movement of the finger from the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him), such as the hadith of Abdullah ibn Umar in Sahih Muslim, and Abdullah ibn al-Zubayr in Sahih Muslim. All these hadiths mention the movement in the tashahhud. So if the researcher or this authenticator of this chain and this hadith had returned to these routes narrated from Asim, he would have found that all agreed on mentioning the movement in the tashahhud, and not between the two prostrations. Then he would have found that one of the narrators of this anomalous hadith made two mistakes. He made a mistake when he mentioned the movement between the two prostrations and did not mention the movement in the tashahhud. So the hadith was inverted upon him, and we can include this as an example of an inverted hadith, because instead of mentioning the movement in the tashahhud, he mentioned it between the two prostrations. Whereas if he had mentioned the movement in both places, in the tashahhud where he agreed with the trustworthy narrators, and between the two prostrations where he contradicted the trustworthy narrators, it could have been said here that the addition of the trustworthy narrator is not acceptable, because a trustworthy narrator contradicted the trustworthy narrators in this. But he did not mention it in the tashahhud, and he mentioned it between the two prostrations, so it seems the matter was inverted upon him, and he mentioned what should not be mentioned, and did not mention what should be mentioned. With this, the answer ends.

The questioner : ... To what extent is this hadith authentic, and what is its meaning?

The Shaykh : This is something I mentioned in the series of authentic hadiths, and then I stopped from it, and I still have not found a definitive answer on the subject.