Are there any hadiths in Sahih al-Bukhari and Sahih Muslim that are not authentic or are fabricated?

The questioner : But, I mean, this issue today, the scholars in the Islamic world, the Prophetic hadiths, they enter the six books, not exactly like authentic hadiths, I mean, this issue is very important, are there Prophetic hadiths in al-Bukhari and in Muslim that are not authentic hadiths, I mean

The questioner : Three weeks ago in their city, and I heard from, and I heard from the students of knowledge there, a rumor saying that in Sahih al-Bukhari there are fabricated hadiths, and another rumor saying take the Qur'an and leave the Sunnah, what is in the Qur'an is sufficient for us, we do not want the Sunnah, only the Noble Qur'an. These two rumors are being spread now in Turkey, and the first rumor is widespread among the students of the Faculty of Theology in Konya. They say Sahih al-Bukhari is not all authentic hadiths, but it contains fabricated ones, not weak ones, fabricated ones. I hope you will clarify this, my master.

The Shaykh : I say that every science has its measure, every science has its measure. And the scholars of the Muslims all agreed that the rulings of the Islamic Shari'ah are taken first from the Book of Allah and what is authentic of the hadith of the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him). Then they also agreed that these rulings found in the Book of Allah and in the authentic hadith of the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him) are divided into two categories in terms of whether their meaning is rational or not rational. What is not rational in meaning, the scholars of jurisprudence call it matters of worship. Do you understand this, Professor?

The questioner: Understood

The Shaykh : Matters of worship in which the human mind has no entry, and there are many examples of that, but by way of approximation, we give an example of the five prayers. They are in three forms: two-unit, three-unit, and four-unit, from one aspect. From another aspect, some are secret and some are loud, and some are eaten, like this, secret and loud, and so on. The question does not arise here now, why? Why are these two units and those three, and so on? These are matters of worship, there is no room for the mind to enter and go into them and reach the knowledge of why Allah prescribed for His servants the Fajr prayer as two units, and so on. This is not rational in meaning, this is a matter of worship. Another category, from the Book and the authentic Sunnah, is rational in meaning from the jurisprudential aspect, such as , , , and so on. These are rational in meaning, because gharar and najsh lead to social harms, there is nothing else behind this for the Islamic methodology. What is established in the Book and the authentic Sunnah becomes Shari'ah, and then the mind can sometimes judge that this is rational, and sometimes it says no, this is a matter of worship, not rational. As for authenticating a hadith, it is not done by the mind, but by knowledge, and as I said earlier, every science has its principles and its methodology. So the science of hadith, as you know, returns to the science of al-jarh wa al-ta'dil (the critique and vindication of narrators). But here is a point I want to draw attention to, because books of terminology may not address it, let alone dwell on it, and that is that the scholars of hadith, the scholars of al-jarh wa al-ta'dil, when they authenticate a man or weaken another, that authentication or weakening, its reference is either transmission, for example, transmission fromThe Shaykh : the one who associated with the narrator and knew his integrity and knew his memory and knew his truthfulness, or to transmission from thatThe Shaykh : , or to transmission from thatThe Shaykh : , but there is another method, and here is the precision of the science of hadith, which is that some scholars of hadith study the hadiths of the narrator, that is, the texts of the hadiths of the narrator, they study them and compare them with the hadiths of the trustworthy memorizers who do not need to have their integrity and trustworthiness known due to the fame of that among the memorizers and hadith scholars. But others of these trustworthy ones are not in that position and are not in that rank, and it is not known about them whether they are among the trustworthy, the upright, and the memorizers? So what do they do? They trace their hadiths hadith by hadith, one by one, and they compare this group of hadiths with the hadiths of the trustworthy memorizers. So there appears something of confusion or disturbance in the texts of these hadiths narrated by this narrator who was not famous for integrity and trustworthiness. At that time, they judge him, sometimes they say about him that he is a trustworthy memorizer. Why? Because his hadiths are on the right path, in agreement with the hadiths of the trustworthy ones. Sometimes they say about him that he is truthful, because the material of his hadiths is not of that quantity that would place him among the trustworthy memorizers. Sometimes they say he is truthful but makes mistakes, truthful who errs sometimes. Where does this come from? Because they found in some of those texts what contradicts the texts of the trustworthy memorizers. For example, the hadith may be with the trustworthy memorizers as mawquf (stopping at a Companion) on the Companion, and they find this specific narrator has raised it to the Messenger (peace and blessings be upon him), and another hadith also he raised it to the Messenger (peace and blessings be upon him), while it is with the memorizers as mawquf on the Companion. I hope this is understood, as I think?

The questioner: Understood

The Shaykh : Good. So, they rule that he is truthful but prone to error. However, if his errors become numerous, they say he has poor memory and makes many mistakes. The difference between this and the previous category is that for this one, they discard his narrations and do not use them as evidence. For the first category, those who said, for example, that he is truthful but prone to error or makes mistakes, they say his narrations are in the rank of *hasan* (good); they are neither *sahih* (authentic) nor *da'if* (weak). Then, with this research and scrutiny of the narrations of these narrators, they may find narrations where the mind of the Muslim— the Muslim mind, and I mean what I am saying because the mind of the Muslim is not the mind of the disbeliever, as is clear to you— and I do not mean just the Muslim mind, but the mind of the Muslim scholar. And I do not mean just the scholar in general, for he may be a *mufassir* (exegete), a *faqih* (jurist), a grammarian, or a linguist. Rather, I mean the mind of the Muslim scholar who is a *muhaddith* (hadith scholar). As Ibn al-Qayyim al-Jawziyya (may Allah have mercy on him) said in some of his valuable writings, when he was asked whether a Muslim can know a fabricated hadith attributed to the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him) without referring to the chains of narration and "so-and-so narrated to us, and so-and-so," which most people cannot bear, he answered with a response that included both affirmation and negation, which is part of his precision in expression. He said, "Yes, if the hadith has flowed through his body like blood, then he can distinguish a fabricated hadith from an authentic one." But where is this? Where is this scholar in whose memory the hadith flows as blood flows in the body? In reality, this is a characteristic that distinguishes only individuals among the *huffaz* (memorizers) of hadith. I do not mean all *huffaz*, but individuals among them. These are those who combined knowledge of the trustworthy and upright narrators in terms of narration (*riwayah*) with knowledge of these trustworthy narrators in terms of understanding (*dirayah*), understanding and jurisprudence. We find, for example, in the book *Mizan al-I'tidal* by al-Hafiz al-Dhahabi on the critique of men, a narration from a man who is not a liar and not a fabricator, but he is weakened. Yet he says this hadith is *batil* (invalid). Why? Because the man, with his knowledge and memorization of the Shari'ah and its rules scattered in the Book of Allah and in the hadith of the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him), which he is saturated with, can rule on a hadith whose chain is weak but whose text is invalid. But how many are they among the *huffaz* of the Ummah, let alone among the scholars of the Ummah, let alone among the students of knowledge, let alone among the individuals of the Ummah, who are in the millions, or even billions, and so on? So, the rule in transmitting hadiths, whether in terms of the chain or the text, is not for the entire Ummah or a selected group from this Islamic Ummah among all Muslim scholars, but rather for the scholars of hadith, such as Imam al-Bukhari, Muslim, and Imam Ahmad, Abu Hatim al-Razi, and their like among the *huffaz* and critics. Once this is known, what is the position of students of knowledge and those studying the science of hadith in this time? What is the position of these students and these researchers regarding the hadiths that the scholars of the Sunnah and the scholars of hadith have authenticated? Undoubtedly, as is clear to everyone, every science has its specialists, and every group, in what they wish to learn, does not ask themselves but asks the specialists in what they need to know. This is very clear. If you want to know the authenticity of a hadith, you do not ask Sibawayhi, or his equivalent in our time, if he has an equivalent, and vice versa. So, if students of knowledge in this time want to distinguish authentic hadiths from weak ones, they have only to verify a verse in the Noble Qur'an, which is the saying of the Lord of the Worlds: The people of knowledge are the people of the Qur'an, those who know the Qur'an. And the word "Qur'an" now reminds me of the question of the brother there who quoted some quotes, which he heard there.