The story the Shaykh mentioned with the weak hadith texts (Fear the insight of the believer, for he looks with the light of Allah).

The Shaykh : As some people do with me, arguing with falsehood. Once in Damascus, and one thing reminds one of another, in a benefit containing knowledge. A middle-aged man came to my shop; I later learned he was an officer in the Turkish army named Najm al-Din Pasha. He gave me a watch and said, "Look at it; I complained about it and about repairing it at many watchmakers, and none succeeded." While I was opening the watch to examine it, he started joking, saying, "You are good people, and so on..." I was young at the time, and my beard was a bit patchy here and there. I said to him, "My brother, you have never dealt with us before, so this is a recommendation and praise, meaning you are being hasty." He said, "No, the Muslim has a look, and the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him) said: ." And I said to him at the time, and I remember clearly, "Do not be deceived by this—the beard—until you have tested us." He said, "No," and gave me the answer. I said to him, "This hadith is weak, and I want to say it is a guarantee regarding him." He was surprised by that word.

The questioner : Perhaps in his life he had never heard that word?

The Shaykh : By Allah, truthfully, unfortunately, it is weak. How can you say it is weak? We read it recently in...The Shaykh : In al-Risalah al-Qushayriyyah. I said to myself, "What Allah willed..." Al-Risalah al-Qushayriyyah is a treatise on the etiquette of the Sufis, meaning, but the real difference is that al-Qushayri mentions hadiths with chains of narration, unlike the later Sufis. So I insisted on my position. He started saying, "Who did you study under? Under..."The Shaykh : Ali al-Dakir,The Shaykh : Ali al-Dakir at the time, whose fame reached the sky among the people because he was the Shaykh of the Tijaniyyah order. I said to him, "No..."

The questioner : He knows this methodology. He says this hadith is weak. Correct.

The Shaykh : What does he know? But he did not see me... Among the scholars... when... they say his knowledge is greater than his intellect, and sometimes they say his intellect is greater than his knowledge, and so on. And I saw that my knowledge was greater than my age. Who did I read under?The Shaykh : Ali al-Dakir? No, then under...The Shaykh : Badr al-Din al-Husayni. He was a hadith scholar of that time in Damascus al-Sham. I said, "No, it did not enter his mind that I was saying something from here or there. In the end, he said to me, 'If Allah wills, I will bring you the chain of the hadith.' We agreed on the watch that he would leave it with me for a week and then take it, if Allah wills. After two or three days, and I was in the shop—our shop had a western facade, and in summer when the sun hits it, it becomes hot. I would lower the iron shutter and leave a small opening. If someone had a request for me, I would give it to them. I did not feel anything until a paper landed in my lap. That man threw the paper and left. I opened the paper, and indeed he had copied the hadith from al-Risalah al-Qushayriyyah with the chain, saying, 'So-and-so narrated to us, so-and-so narrated to us,' and so on. I said to myself, "I wish he had stopped here so I could give him the answer." The time came to take the watch. "Peace be upon you." "And upon you peace." I finished with the watch. Yes, we said to him, "Please." He said to me, "Did you read the paper?" I said to him, "Yes." He said, "What did you see?" I said, "I saw that the author says it is weak, as I told you." He said to me, "No, there is nothing of that." I said, "Yes, there is." He said, "My brother, I copied the hadith in my own handwriting." I said, "Yes, but it seems you are not a student of hadith knowledge." He said, "How do you mean?" I said, "Look, what does it say? 'So-and-so narrated to me' to 'from 'Atiyyah al-'Aufi from Abu Sa'id al-Khudri, who said, the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him) said: ' and so on. I wrote on my palm, certainly. At that time, these pens did not have quick-drying ink; they were called 'kubbiyyah.' This 'kubbiyyah' writes lightly, but if you darken it, it does this. I wrote 'al-'Aufi' with two slashes, meaning it is weak according to hadith scholars. The man's astonishment increased over the previous astonishment. The point is, days passed and days came. I moved from my father's shop to my own shop. And I was surprised by his arrival. He was with... two years and...The Shaykh : His name is...The Shaykh : Muhammad al-Dairani. This...The Shaykh : Muhammad al-Dairani. Unfortunately, in verification of his saying (peace be upon him): . This man used to study hadith under the dome of the Umayyad Mosque. Who studies there? The great scholars, among them...The Shaykh : Badr al-Din al-Husayni, and this was one of his students. He inherited from him, so he used to study hadith there. And what does studying hadith mean? He would recite the hadith with the chain and the text, but he did not understand its meaning... Just as we did with this Najm al-Din Pasha. We told him that this 'Atiyyah al-'Aufi is weak. So he surprised me by coming after about two years with this...The Shaykh : Muhammad al-Dairani. And glory to Allah, meaning the decrees of Allah are very strange. That day was Friday, and my habit on Friday is to open the shop but not work. But I open the shop to receive customers who want to leave a watch or take a watch, because the shop is on a main road... Farmers from the Ghouta pass by it. And on that day only, if a customer came to take his watch, but I did not work. I was reading in al-Targhib wa al-Tarhib, the same copy that is with me now, and we had divided it into authentic and weak, and so on. When...The Shaykh : ...and with him Najm al-Din Pasha, I stood up to them and welcomed them, and this is rare for me to do, and I seated them.

The questioner : Was al-Dairani known to you before?

The Shaykh : Yes, I know him by appearance. The point is, they had barely sat down when Najm al-Din Pasha immediately directed the question—apparently a planned scheme—he said, "Is it true, Shaykh, that the hadith: is a weak hadith?" He said, "No, this is an authentic hadith. Abu Dawud and so-and-so and so-and-so narrated it. His tracing of the narration was authentic; he did not err. And this is the proof that he memorizes texts and tracings. But I said, this is the answer of a scholar regarding the hadith. He is asking, 'Is the hadith authentic or weak?' He said, 'No, so-and-so narrated it.' We say in our language, 'And indeed, if so-and-so narrated it...' And he did not say to him, 'Al-Bukhari and Muslim narrated it.' He said, 'Abu Dawud and so-and-so and so-and-so narrated it.' Well, these people narrate like this and narrate like this. So it was supposed that if he had to mention the narrators, he should conclude with a sound chain, a good chain. And I did not hear anything of this speech. I judged immediately that the man was empty; he had no knowledge. How should I deal with him? Immediately the divine computer started working. I wanted to find a hadith that has no basis and ask him about it. I assumed this, and here is the point: he ruined my work, he ruined my plan... Excuse me, before this, when he mentioned to me that so-and-so and so-and-so narrated it, I said to him, "Shaykh, but these people narrated it from the route of 'Atiyyah al-'Aufi, and 'Atiyyah is weak according to hadith scholars." What did he answer me? He said, "If it were weak, the jurists would not have mentioned it." This... in my mind, I wanted to mention to him a hadith that the jurists mentioned. What is his opinion about it? If he has knowledge, he will say it has no basis. And these jurists mentioned it, so... it has no value... it has no basis. He gave it a basis. Meaning, it is like when we say, "We were under the rain, then we were under the eaves." It occurred to me at that time a famous hadith: . I said to him, "Professor, what is your opinion of this hadith?" He said, "The hadith is established." Glory to Allah, certainly. If we assume the best, he is mistaken; and if we assume the worst, he is a liar. I said to him, continuing to follow my soul in the discussion: "Who narrated it?" As he added a straw to a camel's load, as they say, he said, "Imam Ahmad narrated it." A liar again. Imam Ahmad does not have a report of this... of this type. The point is, he narrated it. Imam Ahmad. The Musnad of Imam Ahmad, you all know, is in six volumes. It contains forty thousand hadiths with repetitions. With the removal of repetitions, thirty thousand hadiths. This...The Shaykh : ...who speaks this speech, meaning he read, meaning the entire Musnad of Imam Ahmad. If he read it as they say, quickly, with blessings. I said to him, "Did you read the Musnad?" He said, "No." I said to him, "Then who attributed it to Imam Ahmad—Allah wants to expose him—