—you who transmit from weak narrators reports you believe to be authentic, and who suppose that things have been established from the Prophet—may Allah bless him and grant him peace—that were never established from him. Thus, you suppose it established that the Prophet—may Allah bless him and grant him peace—would (1) sometimes perform the prayer in full while travelling; or that he would (2) recite the qunūt supplication after bowing in the dawn prayer until his death; or that he entered ihrām for Hajj without specifying any particular form, intending neither tamattu, ifrād, nor qirān; or that Makkah was conquered under a peace settlement; or that the decision of Umar, Uthmān, and others not to distribute landed property must be overturned, as must the judgment of the Rightly Guided Caliphs and Companions—including Umar, Uthmān, Alī, Ibn Umar, and others—concerning a missing person (3), while citing as proof reports from more than one weak narrator.

As for us, when we say, ‘A weak hadith is better than personal opinion,’ we do not mean a rejected weak hadith; rather, we mean a fair-grade hadith, such as the hadith of Amr ibn Shuayb from his father from his grandfather, the hadith of Ibrāhīm al-Hajarī, and others like them (4), whose hadith al-Tirmidhī grades fair or authentic. In the terminology preceding al-Tirmidhī, a hadith was (5) either authentic or weak. Weak hadith was of two kinds: rejected weak hadith and weak hadith that was not rejected (6). The leading hadith scholars therefore spoke according to that terminology. Then someone came along who knew only the terminology (7) of al-Tirmidhī and heard the statement of one of the imams (8)