The Response to the Accusation of the Shaykh of Being Lenient in Authenticating and Strict in Weakening.

The questioner : Some people sometimes say thatThe Shaykh : he is lenient in grading hadiths as good. He grades hadiths as good based on a slight suspicion or a faint trace of authenticity or goodness in the chain, andThe Shaykh : they also say that on the other side, he is strict in weakening and lenient in authenticating. What is your opinion of these people, or your response to them?

The Shaykh : By Allah, in my opinion, this is a matter that cannot be precisely controlled, because you know that the narrators upon whose biographies the authentication, weakening, and grading as good depend, many of them are subject to disagreement. Then, some of them have their hadiths graded as good because when they were biographed, it was noted that they had some poor memorization. This is very difficult to control now. I mean, the degree of weakness that fluctuates between a man’s hadith becoming good or dropping to become weak—this ratio is not a material matter that can be weighed on a material scale that every person with eyesight can distinguish. Rather, the issue requires special insight. For example, a man might be described by al-Hafiz Ibn Hajar as "acceptable" (maqbul), which, as is not hidden from you, means acceptable only if he has a supporting narrator (mutabi'). But I, and many like me, when we return to the source and origin, which is "Tahdhib al-Tahdhib," and study the opinions transmitted from the memorizers of hadith and critics of men, we may lean toward authenticating this man who is considered acceptable by al-Hafiz. In the rank of good hadith, people come who were in the stage we have passed through, and their main reference is a book like "al-Taqrib." So when they find me grading a hadith as good, they consider me lenient because al-Hafiz Ibn Hajar said of its narrator that he is acceptable, and that means he is not acceptable unless he has a supporting narrator, and I did not mention a supporting narrator for him. IfThe Shaykh : I am lenient, this is one example of dozens of examples, and there are very many examples. Their return is to the difference in weighing the opinions of men regarding a single narrator. These opinions often come in complete disagreement. Some say he is trustworthy, some say he is weak, some say, for example, he has poor memorization, or he makes mistakes, or use very different phrases. So in that case, one like me has no choice but to seek assistance from al-Hafiz Ibn Hajar and al-Hafiz al-Dhahabi, not to rely on them exclusively, but to seek their assistance. Therefore, this disagreement that some of the people you refer to see exists between al-Hafiz al-Dhahabi and al-Iskandari, because this, as Allah the Exalted said: Disagreement is a completely natural matter. So the successful one is the one whom Allah Mighty and Majestic guides to the truth. As for the difference of opinions, disagreement in matters of hadith does not differ at all from disagreement in jurisprudential matters and Islamic rulings, just as jurists differ in issuing some rulings, sometimes in complete contradiction: this one forbids it and this one permits it, let alone there being a middle opinion of dislike, neither prohibition nor permission, and so on. But the truth is one and does not multiply. So for this reason, which is natural on one hand, and because studies and expansion in them differ from one person or researcher to another, these suspicions arise. As for strictness in weakening, this also returns to what I mentioned earlier, with the observation of another thing: in my opinion, many of the predecessors, let alone the moderns, do not notice this. When I find a hadith with a weak chain and I do not find, after long and extensive research, anything to support it, I may look at the text. If I find in the text a scientific or jurisprudential anomaly that greatly weakens the hadith, this means a path followed by a few of the hadith critics from the old imams. Few of them critique the text as they critique the chain, while the majority of them limit themselves to critiquing the chains without the texts. Although I also noticed, and this is from the grace of the science of hadith, that I found in what I observed a response to some of the imitators of the Orientalists who accuse the hadith scholars of not concerning themselves with critiquing the texts, and that their concern was only the critique of men and chains. I found that this claim is false and baseless, because the science of hadith in reality is based on two things: first, knowing the narrators of hadith in terms of integrity, precision, and memorization; and second, examining the narrations of these narrators. When they study and research them, they find that some of these narrators have texts that contradict the trustworthy and precise imams, either by error in the text or by addition or omission in it. From here came some of their expressions that reveal their concern with critiquing the texts, when they say so-and-so is a denouncer of hadith, or so-and-so has denunciations, or so-and-so narrates absurdities from the precise ones. All of this makes us feel that these imams were also studying the texts of hadith as they study their chains. So I benefited from my observation of their critique of the texts, and especially in their placement of these phrases that mention that they look carefully at the texts of these narrators. I found that when I find a hadith with a weak chain that has no supporting narrator and no corroborating narration, if we stop at the chain and judge the text by it, we should say its chain is weak. But if I notice what I mentioned earlier of an anomaly in the text, I may say it is very weak, and I may even rule that it is fabricated. From here, it was said, as I think, what I mentioned earlier about him being strict when he weakens. And Allah knows best. In any case, we ask Allah Mighty and Majestic that there be scholars who care about studying the Sunnah and hadith with sincerity. Then it will not harm us if some opinions differ, because it is the Sunnah of Allah in His creation, and you will not find a change in the Sunnah of Allah. And if the Companions of the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him), as is not hidden from those present, differed in a little or a lot of rulings, and there was no field of disagreement in the subject of chains at that time because they occurred after them, then it is no wonder that those after them differ in jurisprudence, and even in the chains. This is my answer.

The questioner : May Allah reward you with good.

The Shaykh : Since they are sitting now, but do not blame them if they made a mistake and sat in such a gathering. If someone enters who has a status and dignity, they should stand up so that they do not fall into such a violation, whether it is them, their father, or their friend...
Abu Layla : I mean, our Shaykh, like them, if they came originally to sit like this, but if they made a mistake and sat in a place like this, they should stay in their place.

The Shaykh : Did you have something you wanted to add and throw in?
Al-Halabi : May Allah preserve you, my teacher. Your answer gave us something very important, including a response to some of the critics whom the professor Abu Mus'ab mentioned, may Allah reward him with good. They mention that your Shaykh, al-Albani, relies heavily on "al-Taqrib" and that it is his main reference in critique, verification, and the critique and vindication of narrators. So our Shaykh gave a practical example in the course of speaking about a narrator whom al-Hafiz described in "al-Taqrib" as acceptable, and then upon research, it became clear to him that he was higher or lower than that, so he changed his ruling on him as a result of looking at what was said about him by the imams of critique and vindication before and after. This is a reality, and our Shaykh has a nice point in this, meaning in this chapter. Also, there is another benefit mentioned by our Shaykh, may Allah preserve him, which is related to the critique of the text. It is also a response to some of the moderns in this era and some of those attached to the tails of the Orientalists who say that the hadith scholars do not look at the text in critiquing hadith, and they call it internal critique. Yes.

The Shaykh : And that is external.
Al-Halabi : And that external one, in fact, our Shaykh has a beautiful word, as I recall, in the introduction to "Fada'il al-Sham." My teacher, in the introduction to the tracing of the hadiths of the virtues of Sham, because Dr. al-Munjid, and I do not know what Allah did with him, is he alive or dead?

The Shaykh : Salah al-Din al-Munjid.
Al-Halabi : He is present. He critiqued several hadiths in his comments with the critique called internal critique, and his critique was in fact weak. So our Shaykh mentioned a nice word that internal critique or critique of the text is based fundamentally on the critique of the chain, or rather, it is rare, and rarer than rare, to find a hadith with a completely sound chain and there is a defect in the text, unless the attribution of the defect, our Shaykh, is based on the chain.

The Shaykh : In the chain, like the hidden defect and anomaly, and the like.
Al-Halabi : And even, my teacher, may Allah preserve you, you always also remember the wordThe Shaykh : Al-Mu'allimi, and you apply this in that when you see a text that contains an anomaly that cannot be resolved, you look for an isnad-based defect. And Allah the Exalted knows best.

The Shaykh : This is one of the subtleties of this science.
Al-Halabi : Allahu Akbar.

The Shaykh : And another thing occurred to me on the occasion of the previous question, regarding the alleged and previously cited reasons for the attribution, which is thatThe Shaykh : being lenient in authenticating or grading a hadith as good is a reality. And it is not hidden from you that the difference in research and tracing the routes, corroborations, and supporting chains is such that most of the young students today, when they grade a hadith, rely almost entirely on these circulating and printed books. Then, with the ease of referring to the original sources due to the various indexes, their research does not result in a comprehensive grasp of the routes. So the reality is that I may have authenticated a hadith or graded it as good in some of the abridgments, such as Sahih al-Jami' or "Sahih al-Targhib," and some other brief commentaries, because I found it authenticated or graded as good by someone else. Then the isnad of this famous hadith falls under the hand of one of today's students of this science, and he finds in it a defect, for example, Ibn Lahi'ah, or the "ina'ina" (narration from memory) of Ibn Ishaq, or other defects. Meanwhile, I, in reality, due to the tracing that Allah the Exalted has favored me with, either found a supporting chain for it or found another route that corroborates it, or something to that effect, so I gave it a ruling that contradicts the isnad on which some of these researchers today stop. They ask, some moderately and some aggressively, "How is this? He grades it as good, or even authenticates it, and it contains so-and-so, and he himself weakens it?" (referring to Al-Albani). And the reality is like this, and more. I am saying something about myself now: since we began studying hadith, and praise be to Allah, we have followed the practice of excluding the narrations of the 'Abbadalah from Ibn Lahi'ah, because they explicitly stated in the biography of Ibn Lahi'ah that the hadiths of these people from him are authentic. We followed this practice. Then, when the book "Siyar A'lam al-Nubala" by al-Hafiz al-Dhahabi was printed, there, in the biography of Qutaybah ibn Sa'id al-Misri, he groups him with the 'Abbadalah and cites reports that he used to narrate from the book of Ibn Lahi'ah. So I said to myself, "Where did we waste years weakening the hadith of Qutaybah from Ibn Lahi'ah?" And now, in my new view regarding "Sahih al-Targhib," I intend to see what al-Mundhiri says, and it contains Ibn Lahi'ah, so I say, "Let it be from the narration of Qutaybah, so I will research anew," even though I am a finished researcher. But when I researched, this new knowledge was not in my mind. For this and many, many other things, I say that knowledge does not accept stagnation; it must be in development and progress. Perhaps someone will come, and I do not say that he is better than me when I did not know this benefit that I derived from al-Dhahabi, and he will take the same position that I used to take, saying, "This is from the narration of Ibn Lahi'ah and not from the narration of one of the 'Abbadalah from him, so howThe Shaykh : did he authenticate it?" The answer to this remains in the detailed works, such as al-Silsilah al-Sahihah and others, but in the abridgments, the space does not allow for lengthening and explaining the reason. As for the reasons that make us appear lenient in the eyes of these people, the truth is that they are not researchers; they are not those who have become skilled in research and have the perseverance and patience to trace the routes and corroborations. This is also one of the reasons that lead some of these people to object or criticize. And now, what do you have?