Some people believe that there is something in the Sunnah that should be corrected and that the errors that occurred in it should be rectified, on the grounds that the Sunnah has been subjected to much disparagement due to what

Abu Malik: Our Shaykh, may Allah preserve you, you must know that this is an old and new issue, like other issues that knowledge has addressed. Many or some people see in the Prophetic Sunnah something that should be corrected and that the errors that occurred in it should be rectified through a path that these people consider not to be strange, to the point that they criticize those who follow it. This is because, in their opinion, the Prophetic Sunnah has been subjected to much disparagement due to the factors the Ummah has gone through. Therefore, they turn their attention away from a large part of the Prophetic Sunnah and hold fast to a little or some of it, because they believe that this is the best way to act and adhere to the Sunnah. We ask you to clarify and explain this matter thoroughly, as we have come to expect from your many answers to the questions presented to you, and may Allah reward you.

The Shaykh : The imams of narrating the Sunnah, whether it be in words, actions, or approvals, have efforts and hardships that no other nation or group on the face of the earth, even among the Muslims, shares with them. If we say that we must adhere to a madhhab, that madhhab did not serve the hadith in terms of transmission as the four imams, may Allah have mercy on them and be pleased with them, did. They have statements, but their followers did not care about narrating these statements as the imams of hadith cared about narrating the Sunnah in general. Therefore, the one who abandons the verbal Sunnah—and let us leave aside the practical Sunnah, in which he believes, and may Allah increase him in faith and conviction—the verbal, practical, and approval-based Sunnah, when the imams of hadith transmitted it, they transmitted it with rules, standards, knowledge of the narrators, and biographies of their lives from the beginning of their pursuit of knowledge until their deaths. Then, is he truthful or a liar? Is he a memorizer? None of this exists at all in the books of fiqh and in the athar narrated by the followers of the madhahib from their imams. Therefore, the one who abandons this Sunnah in its general meaning, under the suspicion that there is doubt in the narrators, and continues to hold fast to the statements of those who narrated the statements of the imams, is like one who builds a palace and demolishes a city. So this, in reality, comes from two things, or at least from one of two things: one is ignorance of the efforts of the imams of the Sunnah, such as al-Bukhari and Muslim and their like, who are well known.