Is the adhan called into the ear of the newborn?

The questioner : The question is whether there is an established hadith regarding the adhan for the newborn. I have heard that it is weak?

The Shaykh : Yes, exactly.

The questioner : So, is it acted upon?

The Shaykh : No.

The questioner : So, what do you advise us?

The Shaykh : My advice is that this is a clarification for the people. We used to say previously that the adhan in the ear of the newborn is a recommended practice (sunnah), knowing that the hadith specifying the recommendation of the adhan in the ear of the newborn is narrated in Sunan al-Tirmidhi with a weak chain of narration. However, we follow the methodology of strengthening weak hadiths with corroborating narrations (shawahid). We had found a corroborating narration for this hadith in the book of Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyyah, known as Tuhfat al-Wadud fi Ahkam al-Mawlood. At that time, he attributed it to the book Shu'ab al-Iman by al-Bayhaqi. Although he explicitly stated that its chain of narration is weak, I considered his explicit statement to mean that the chain is not severely weak. Based on that, I considered it a corroborating narration for the hadith of al-Tirmidhi, which is from the narration of Abu Rafi'. At that time, the book Shu'ab al-Iman was not available to us, neither in manuscript nor in print. As many of you know, even with my presence in the Dar al-Kutub al-Zahiriyyah library, which contains thousands of hadith manuscripts, this book, Shu'ab al-Iman by al-Hafiz al-Bayhaqi, was not present in this library, nor in most of the libraries of the world. Today, however, the printing of this book, Shu'ab al-Iman, has become easy, and it has been added to Islamic libraries as a very valuable book containing many hadiths that are not found in the six books, nor in others. Among them is the hadith on which I relied on Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyyah to consider it a corroborating narration for the hadith of Abu Rafi' in Sunan al-Tirmidhi. It turned out that Imam al-Bayhaqi narrated this hadith in his book Shu'ab with a chain containing two narrators accused of lying. At that point, it became clear to me that Ibn Qayyim (may Allah have mercy on him) was lenient in his expression regarding the chain of the hadith, describing it as merely "weak." The correct statement would have been that it is "very weak." In this case, it is not permissible for one who engages in the science of hadith to consider a severely weak narration as a corroborating narration for one that is not severely weak. Consequently, I had no choice but to retract my strengthening of the hadith of Abu Rafi' in Sunan al-Tirmidhi with the hadith from Shu'ab al-Iman due to its severe weakness. Thus, the hadith of Abu Rafi' remains weak. And since we follow what Allah (Mighty and Majestic) has guided us to, which is that it is not permissible to act upon a weak hadith, we returned to the position that, since the hadith of Abu Rafi' is originally weak in its chain, and its corroborating narration is even weaker than it, the weakness remains. Therefore, we have retracted our previous statement regarding the recommendation (sunnah) or the permissibility (shar'iyyah) of the adhan in the ear of the newborn. This is the answer to the question.