The Confidence Placed in Shaykh al-Albānī by Islamic Institutions and Academic Councils
Those who supervised centers of learning knew his true worth. That is why, when the Islamic University of Madinah was first established, its administrators—headed by the distinguished scholar Shaykh Muḥammad ibn Ibrāhīm Āl al-Shaykh, then rector of the university and Grand Muftī of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia—selected him to teach ḥadīth, its sciences, and its legal rulings.
The Faculty of Sharīʿah at the University of Damascus likewise chose him to authenticate the aḥādīth on commercial transactions for the Encyclopedia of Islamic Jurisprudence the university planned to publish around 1955.
The following reports further attest to his standing and widespread renown:
- He was appointed a member of the Ḥadīth Committee formed during the short-lived union between Egypt and Syria, tasked with overseeing the publication and critical editing of the Sunnah collections.
- The Salafī University in Banaras, India, invited him to assume the Chair of Ḥadīth, but he politely declined.
- In 1388 AH the Saudi Minister of Education, Shaykh Ḥasan ʿAbd Allāh Āl al-Shaykh, asked him to head the postgraduate ḥadīth studies department at the University of Makkah, yet certain circumstances prevented this from coming to fruition.
- King Khālid ibn ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz also selected him for a distinguished position.
(Quoted from “Rebuking the Aggressor Who Overstepped against al-Albānī,” pp. 36–37, by Shaykh Ṭāriq ʿAwaḍ, who in turn cited it from “The Life of al-Albānī.”)