By Saʿd al-Shaykh
Translated from Arabic by: Shah T Ahmed
The project of Shaykh Albānī was to categorise Ḥadīth books into Ṣaḥīḥ (authentic) and Ḍaʿīf (weak) narrations. There is disunity among the people in relying on his work; there are some who blindly accept it, and those who completely reject his work, whilst others have taken a more objective approach., as is the norm when any new work is published.
After spending a lot of time looking into the legacy of the Shaykh (RH), it is apparent that he was unable to achieve the goal of his project , and that he went against what is preferred.
This is for many reasons:
- The procedure of dividing the Ḥadīth was done with a new approach whereby he looked critically at the Isnād and Riwāyah from the Ḥadīth works, as though they had been authored for experts just like the books of ʿIlal (those books which look into the unobvious mistakes in Ḥadīth narrations).. However, this is not the case, the works of Ḥadīth were authored for the general Muslims so that they may act according to them (the sunnah) and worship according to the [Ḥadīth] contained within them. Yes, it is true that there are ḍaʿīf Ḥadīth but they (the authors) themselves explain the weaknesses of the narrations whether it be by actually writing it, or by way of indication. The scholars of Ḥadīth were critical experts and leading figures in the field, therefore they possessed the ability to distinguish between what is ḍaʿīf, and what is ṣaḥīḥ if they had the intention to do so.
- He was not able to fully grasp the methodologies used by the scholars in their Ḥadīth works. Not every Ḥadīth used was intended to be taken as proof by the author. Some were used as proof, or to act as a corroborating narration, or to indicate towards a weakness, whilst others were included because they were the most authentic narrations for the subject at hand even if they were not ṣaḥīḥ themselves.
- He was unaware of the intentions behind the scholars’ decisions to place ḍaʿīf narrations in their works besides those that were munkar and those whose weaknesses could be dealt with. The scholars had used them as proof even if they had some sort of weakness in them, but it was only for secondary matters and certain aʿmāl (actions). These narrations were preferred over using opinion and judgement if there was not anything else (more authentic) that could be used to support it. According to the previous scholars, using narrations as a form of proof has more scope than using only what is ṣaḥīḥ. Not every ḍaʿīf Ḥadīth had to be abandoned according to them, similar to how every ṣaḥīḥ Ḥadīth did not have to be acted upon due to Usūl-related considerations which are known in their respective fields. This is clarified in the next point:
- These works are books of Ḥadīth and Fiqh simultaneously, their authors were muḥaddithūn (Ḥadīth experts) and fuqahāʾ (Fiqh experts) and they authored these works both for Fiqh and Ḥadīth. They are books of Ḥadīth which have been narrated through their sanads (chains of narration) followed up by the author’s critical analysis. They are also books of Fiqh because their chapters are organised according to the matters of Fiqh. They then followed the Ḥadīth up with the sayings and decisions of the fuqahāʾ just as how Imām Tirmidhī did in his Jāmiʿ.
- Lastly, this project is the result of a Shaykh of Fiqh influenced by the Ẓāhirī school of law. Their Fiqh is based on acting upon the ṣaḥīḥ Ḥadīth only, and they reject any ḍaʿīf Ḥadīth. Their evidence for the Sharīʿah is restricted to narrations that are ṣaḥīḥ and they completely ignore other pieces of evidence used as proof by the majority of the fuqahāʾ.
The path that Shaykh Albānī has taken is neither preferred, nor has it been followed by others, even from the Salafī approach which has adopted a confined way of dealing with the Sharīʿah.
