—whether their chains are authentic or weak—as grounds for either rejecting or accepting them. Thus, he rejects an authentic hadith—even one unanimously deemed authentic by all hadith scholars—if, for some reason of his own imagining, its content is unacceptable to him. Conversely, he accepts a hadith they regard as weak if he considers its meaning acceptable. He gave several examples of this, though there is no room to discuss them here, overlooking the fact that his position necessarily renders this critical assessment, and others like it that are based on the principles of hadith scholarship, virtually worthless. For in his view, the ultimate criterion for rejecting or accepting a hadith is merely personal opinion, rather than the scholarly standards of hadith criticism, which require acknowledging as established whatever is judged authentic and as unestablished whatever is judged weak—irrespective of the ruling inferred from either report, for that is a separate matter. Do you not see that a hadith they judge authentic may nonetheless not be acted upon because, for example, it has been abrogated, or for one of the other reasons explained by Shaykh al-Islām Ibn Taymiyyah in his treatise Removing Blame from the Eminent Imams? Under such circumstances, not acting upon it does not mean that the hadith itself is unestablished. Likewise, the content of a weak hadith may be acted upon because independent juristic reasoning and deduction have led to the same conclusion, even though it has not been established that the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) said it. This is demonstrated by the fact that a mujtahid might have adopted that same position even if no such hadith existed at all. Under such circumstances, knowing of the hadith or not knowing of it makes no difference. Is it then permissible to say of such a hadith, “The Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him) said…”?!

Attention must therefore be drawn to this distinction, and one must avoid confusing the technical discipline of hadith—through ignorance of it—with juristic ijtihad. Each has its own method, although both must necessarily be employed to ascertain the true ruling Allah has prescribed for His servants. I mentioned some of this to Professor al-Ghazālī during several of my meetings with him at the Supreme Council of the Islamic University, drawing his attention to the need to revise the position expressed in his introduction so that it would not conflict with the statements and principles of the scholars. He promised a favorable response, and perhaps he will do so.

Professor Dr. Muhammad Mustafā al-Azamī then followed his example in setting personal considerations aside and acknowledging merit. When he decided to publish his critical edition of Sahīh Ibn Khuzaymah through our brother Professor Zuhayr al-Shāwīsh, proprietor of al-Maktab al-Islāmī, he asked me to comment on some of the issues he himself had addressed and to correct whatever he might have