Example Twelve:
Hadith no. 111, p. 178:
“Allah would never unite this ummah upon misguidance, and the hand of Allah is over the congregation—so hold fast to the great majority, for whoever breaks away will break away into the Fire.”

The author of “al-Tarājuʿāt” says:
(The Shaykh—may Allah have mercy on him—stated in the introduction to al-Silsilah al-Ṣaḥīḥah, vol. 4: ‘Ibn Abī ʿĀṣim narrated it in “al-Sunnah,” and its chain is weak, as I clarified in Ẓilāl al-Jannah, no. 80. Nevertheless, it is sound (ḥasan) when all of its routes are combined, as I explained in al-Ṣaḥīḥah, 1331, and elsewhere.’)

The author of “al-Iʿlām” criticizes this, saying:
(Anyone who reads the words of al-Albānī quoted by the compiler will assume that the Shaykh—may Allah have mercy on him—graded all three sentences of this report as ḥasan. I say: this is not the case, for what al-Albānī actually described as “ḥasan by virtue of its collective chains, as I explained in al-Ṣaḥīḥah, 1331, and elsewhere,” is only the first sentence. As for the second sentence—“The hand of Allah is over the congregation”—al-Albānī judged it weak in his takhrīj of al-Mishkāt (173), graded it ḥasan in his takhrīj of Hidāyat al-Ruwāt (171), and declared it weak in Ḍaʿīf al-Tirmidhī (2167) on account of the supporting narrations he found. The third sentence, however, remains weak because there is no acceptable corroborating report for it. The first and second sentences together are listed in Ṣaḥīḥ al-Jāmiʿ, no. 1848.)