The Shaykh's talk on the importance of the science of hadith: that the Islamic University was the first to establish the practice of disseminating it

The questioner : ... the envious ones.

Another questioner : This is a defense of him.

The Shaykh : Abu Hurayrah, in a narration in Al-Hakim's al-Mustadrak, that Abu Hurayrah (may Allah be pleased with him) used to go to one of the Companions from the Household of the Prophet, perhaps Ja'far, and he was generous, so he would eat food at his place. I think its name was al-Mughirah, so he named his book "Abu Hurayrah, the Companion of al-Mughirah," to hint at the same meaning.

The questioner : Yes.

The Shaykh : He means he used to go eat at his place so that he would be given a hadith about the virtue of... He means, first of all, with the words I quoted earlier, your question reminds me that the man denies the blessing. Before he was employed at the Islamic Library, he was printing his books, he was printing some of these hadiths absolutely, and this is very natural for all students of knowledge according to the method followed by the shaykhs, unlike the method followed now in the universities now, I say. And this is also from the favor of Allah upon us that the science of hadith in the university, Al-Azhar University, was not mentioned at all, and rather it was the Islamic University that established the practice of caring for the science of hadith. And in reality, due to the presence of Al-Albani at the Islamic University, the universities, starting from Saudi Arabia to the other universities, began to care for the study of the science of hadith. As for the shaykhs who are jurists, or rather those who study jurisprudence, they did not study hadith except in terms of terminology, like the terminology, for example. You know that without practical application it does not benefit anything. So Shu'ayb was a student of Shaykh Salih... he and 'Abd al-Qadir, yes, he was a student of Shaykh Salih... and this man is Hanafi in madhhab and not among the prominent ones even in this field. Then he also studied from him some of what is called by the later scholars the auxiliary sciences, meaning like grammar and morphology and the like. So when he was employed by Zuheir, he began to look at Al-Albani's takhrij in a way of gaining experience. The important thing is, when the commentary on al-'Aqidah al-Tahawiyyah was printed, he and 'Abd al-Qadir were employed at the Islamic Library in Damascus. Subhan Allah, so that our Lord would test His servants, it started with me... with them. There is a hadith: or something like this, and the hadith is weak. I do not know how I made a mistake; I said that I did not find this hadith in any of the books of the Sunnah, so they came upon this mistake there and noticed it and kept it to themselves until the book was printed. And I was at that time where? At the Islamic University. So Zuheir wrote to me that the matter is such and such, what is your opinion? So I wrote a correction and it was printed at the end of the book. So I said this is a mistake without doubt, and the proof is that I personally extracted the hadith in the commentary on al-Mishkat with number such and such, page such and such, and so on. And you were among the group who came upon this truth and concealed it until what? The printing of the book ended. So this is the aspect that he points to... so this indicates enmity.

The questioner : And this indicates that you have nothing against him, and before that he had started the enmity.

The Shaykh : Yes, no, he then forgets the consequences of his comments, true and false. He said Shaykh Nasser said such and such and he was mistaken, and so on. So if we respond to him in kind, we would be wronging him.