specialization, tremendous effort, and long years of practice by a believing, patient, quiet soul—one that tirelessly researches the books of the Sunnah, the chains of transmission of their hadiths, and the biographies of their narrators, in both printed works and manuscripts; studies the criticism of chains and texts by earlier and later leading scholars; compares their judgments and determines which is strongest; distinguishes sound reports from unsound ones, and strong reports from weak ones; and masters other matters that cannot possibly be learned merely by obtaining a doctorate, especially one in a field other than hadith.
Indeed, I know a doctor of Islamic law who claimed in a book of his on the Prophet’s biography that he had relied only upon authentic hadiths and reports, although he knows nothing of this noble science. Sufficient proof of that is his reliance upon reports in which Ibn Ishāq conceals breaks in transmission, his reports with two or more consecutive narrators omitted, and even the narratives and reports of al-Wāqidī, the liar. This is in addition to his other statements, including his accusation against the Salafis when he said: “Some people have gone astray whose hearts have never felt love for the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him)…” He has persisted in this charge, as explained in detail in my book In Defence of the Prophetic Hadith…, which is in print.
Nevertheless, there remain many fair-minded scholars who hold themselves above submission to personal desires. Among those with doctorates, I know one who would tell his students while teaching at the university and elsewhere: “We benefit from al-Albānī’s books, some of which have previously been presented to you”—or words to that effect. On another occasion, he said: “One of the misfortunes of this world is that people like us, holders of doctorates, are selected to teach hadith at the university, while there is someone here more qualified for it than we are—someone whose students in this science we are not even fit to be. But such are the systems and conventions!”
Yet why take readers so far afield? Here is the eminent Shaykh Muhammad al-Ghazālī, the great Islamic writer, who set an excellent precedent for other virtuous and fair-minded authors. Before 1375 AH, he expressed to some of our Salafi scholar-brothers residing in Cairo his wish that I undertake the tracing and critical assessment of the hadiths in his book The Jurisprudence of the Prophet’s Biography. I gladly volunteered to do so, appreciating in its author this noble character and tranquil, believing soul. He then instructed that my work be printed there together with his book, without any alteration or comment, apart from what he had included in the preface to the fourth and subsequent editions concerning his reliance upon consideration of the meaning of hadiths—