Are the hadiths prohibiting gold rings abrogated or anomalous?

The Shaykh : Now, when you mentioned Ibn Baz, I understood that your question is not a general one; your question, as Abu 'Abdullah told you, is about gold rings. You mumbled it—we would say you lost it.

The questioner : But I am convinced of the...

The Shaykh : Be patient, may Allah guide you; I said generally, I am thinking generally, what is there generally? There is nothing abrogating or abrogated. So when you mentioned Ibn Baz, I knew that the research is about gold rings, not generally.

The questioner : Shaykh...

The Shaykh : Listen, so now I tell you that in the hadiths related to gold rings, there is nothing abrogated, and there is nothing anomalous. But unfortunately, when a person lives, even if he is a noble scholar, in an environment that is first of all a regular academic atmosphere, a specific routine, a specific study, and his practical life interacts with his academic life, it is difficult for him to conduct a free study that would make him change his ideas and then change his social life. So Ibn Baz, like other scholars, lived in the Hanbali school, along with the other schools; in this specific issue, all of them say that all gold is permissible for women. So when the book "Adab al-Zafaf" (Etiquette of the Wedding) came out to the people—this is from what? From... this is—when the book "Adab al-Zafaf" came out to the people, they were surprised by a new jurisprudence that perhaps had not reached their ears in their entire lives, and even if it had reached their ears, they did not comment on it; it slipped from here and came out from there. Because what they studied, as it came in the hadith: .

The questioner : But they were content with that.

The Shaykh : They sat down and started thinking about what the solution is to these hadiths that Al-Albani brought? The position of some biased scholars regarding these hadiths differs from the position of others. Some, like "Ismail al-Ansari," ride every difficult and easy path in order to uncover a defect to weaken these hadiths, and there is no way to do so from a scientific perspective. And Shaykh Ibn Baz passes quickly over these hadiths with the word: "Anomalous." There are many hadiths that are anomalous in the science of hadith, and it has a specific definition. Today I traced a hadith in "Al-Silsilah al-Sahihah" and gave it the number . I think its text is: . It is a valid hadith. What does it mean? Fasting three days of every month is thirty good deeds; so it is as if he fasted a month of thirty days. But the point is that he fasted and broke the fast, so he combined in the fasting of the three days the fasting of the whole year legally in terms of reward, but he broke the fast in terms of reality; because most of the month he is not fasting, he fasted what? Three days.

The questioner : Does that mean he has the reward of the fasting person while breaking the fast?

The Shaykh : Yes.
The point is: Ibn Hibban narrated this hadith with a valid chain, then he presented the same hadith with the same chain from one sheikh named Yahya ibn Sa'id al-Qattan, with the same chain as the first sheikh who narrated the first wording. But what did Yahya ibn Sa'id al-Qattan say? There he said: the whole year, did we not say? What did this one say? : , here the meaning differs. If this were correct, he would be given the reward of fasting and standing in prayer. What does Ibn Hibban say? He says that Waki', who narrated it with the first wording, and Yahya ibn Sa'id al-Qattan, who narrated it with the other wording, are both trustworthy memorizers, and he remains silent. So what do we understand from the speech? That both wordings are established. I turned to investigating this issue because at first glance I rejected Ibn Hibban's statement that these two wordings would be correct in one hadith from one path, but two people differed: one: , and the other: . I set out to search and found five memorizers along with Waki' who narrated the first wording, among them was the same Yahya ibn Sa'id al-Qattan who narrated it to Ibn Hibban with the other wording. So it means: we have six trustworthy narrators; one of them, Yahya ibn Sa'id al-Qattan, narrated it with the first narration, contrary to the other narration that Ibn Hibban narrated from him. I spoke at length here in "Al-Silsilah." Now it is said about the second narration of: that it is anomalous. Why? Because one person contradicted five trustworthy narrators, and indeed, two people differed on this one person himself; one narrated it with the second wording and one narrated it with the first wording. So taking the narration of the one who agrees with the five is preferred over taking that other narration. So I put for the first wording: "Valid," and for the second wording: "Anomalous."

The questioner Anomalous?

The Shaykh : Yes; is preserved and valid. This is an example of an anomalous hadith. Shaykh Ibn Baz—may Allah preserve him—throws out this easy word that this is an anomalous hadith. What is an anomalous hadith? First, we have several hadiths regarding the prohibition of the gold ring, or what we call gold rings for women. Which hadith among them is anomalous? Second: Where is the anomaly? The anomaly is only in his mind, not in the science, which is the science of hadith terminology. The science of hadith terminology requires following the narrators, as we gave the example earlier; so-and-so from so-and-so one, so-and-so from so-and-so two, three, four, five, all of them , and one deviated and said: ; so this is anomalous.
There is no anomalous hadith in the hadiths of gold rings, but there is a hadith: , this permits all gold, but the hadith: and so on; because this hadith contradicts the first hadith, he calls it anomalous. It is not permissible to call it anomalous, neither in the science of hadith terminology nor in the science of usul al-fiqh. Rather, the first hadith is called: general, and this hadith is specific. This is the point that Shaykh Ibn Baz revolves around when he says: hadiths are abrogated or anomalous. It is not correct that a specific text is abrogated by a general text.