The Shaykh’s remarks on al-Kafi by al-Kulayni, which the Shi'ah rely upon.

The Shaykh : Let us give some examples. For instance, the greatest book among the Shi'ah is the book called al-Kafi by al-Kulayni, which consists of several large volumes here. First, this book is, in the terminology of Sunni hadith, mostly mursal and the best of them are mursal, and most of them are muqta'at, meaning they are mawquf and have no connection to the Messenger (peace be upon him), but rather are attributed to Zayn al-Abidin or al-Sadiq or similar Imams of the Ahl al-Bayt. So, first, these books are not exclusively composed of the hadiths of the Messenger. Second, and this is the most important point for them, because some of them explicitly state that al-Kafi by al-Kulayni is, among the Shi'ah, in the position of Sahih al-Bukhari among the Sunnis. Yet, if you compare this authentic book of the people of the Sunnah with that so-called authentic book of the Shi'ah, you will find a very vast difference between them, as it was said long ago: "Where is the constellation from the dust, and where is Mu'awiyah from 'Ali?" You will find that all the hadiths in al-Bukhari are authentic, with connected chains from him to the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him), except for a few individual ones that some hadith scholars criticized, and the consensus is on the authenticity of all of them for Imam al-Bukhari except for a few of them. As for al-Kafi by al-Kulayni, those who purified it and prepared it in some editions explicitly stated that I will not mention now the very, very large quantity of narrations in it, whether from the Messenger or from the Ahl al-Bayt, that are not authentic. And yet, it is in their view in the position of Sahih al-Bukhari. We compare such a book, which deals with narration from the Messenger (peace be upon him) and from the Ahl al-Bayt, so what are the books they have for knowing the men of the Shi'ah who narrate the hadiths from the Messenger (peace be upon him)? They have very small books, consisting of one or two volumes. And when you study them, you do not find explicit authentication, nor do you find there Imams like the Imams of the people of the Sunnah, whose authentication and criticism we are eager to study, such as Imam Ahmad, al-Bukhari, Yahya ibn Ma'in, 'Ali ibn al-Madini, al-Razi, and similar ones, and Ibn Hibban among the Imams. Imams like these do not exist among the Shi'ah at all. So they are poor in two aspects: the first aspect is the means to know the authenticity of the hadith, which is the chain, and the other aspect is the means to critique the chain by knowing the men. They are poor in both of these means. Therefore, they cannot, for example, I am al-Albani, whose origin is non-Arab, and now I have two series: the Series of Authentic Hadiths and the Series of Weak Hadiths. So far, he alone, let alone al-Bukhari and Muslim who preceded him, has about two thousand authentic hadiths. So where are the books of the Shi'ah in distinguishing the authentic from the weak? There is absolutely no such thing. And if we leave the Shi'ah—may Allah have mercy on you—aside, and they are undoubtedly, and the truth must be said, in the second position after the people of the Sunnah in terms of their engagement with the sacred and rational sciences and similar matters among the other sects, we take, for example, after them, the Zaydiyyah. So where are the books of the Zaydiyyah? The same previous question arises: their books that narrate the hadiths from the Messenger (peace be upon him), their books that speak about the narrators and their ranks in criticism and authentication. Personally, up to now, I do not know a book of the Zaydiyyah in criticism and authentication. I know some books of the Shi'ah, but they do not narrate nor satisfy. As for the Zaydiyyah, up to now, I do not know a book of theirs in knowing the narrators of their hadith books.