one of the eminent contemporary academics who declared it weak, and to one of our worthy brothers—Allah willing—who declared weak the hadith: “I have left among you two matters … the Book of Allah and my sunnah.” Therein you will find a fitting lesson. This is despite the fact that both men possess a respectable degree of knowledge of this discipline. What, then, is to be said of those who pronounce on hadiths, declaring them authentic or weak without knowledge—rather, out of personal whim or blind imitation of one who neither specializes in this noble discipline nor possesses any knowledge of it whatsoever?! Such are those who declare weak the authentic hadiths concerning the Mahdi, the hadiths concerning Jesus, peace be upon him, and others besides. See p. 38.
Some of them cite hadith sources in a manner that gives readers the impression that the work is their own, when it actually belongs to someone else, out of eagerness for fame and to be called a hadith scholar! There are many such people, and their methods today are varied.
Before me now is the first volume of Abridgement of Ibn Kathir’s Exegesis, abridged and edited by Muhammad Ali al-Sabuni. It contains astonishing instances of plagiarism committed under the name of abridgment and critical editing, though there is nothing of critical editing in it. For the man has adopted a novel method of laying claim to knowledge that he does not possess. Al-Hafiz Ibn Kathir, in citing the sources of the hadiths in his exegesis, employs two methods with reports other than those narrated by al-Bukhari and Muslim:
The first is to cite the hadith with the chain of transmission of the compiler who recorded it, such as the authors of the Sunan collections, Musnads, and exegeses.
The second is to cite the hadith and identify its source by attributing it to the compilers, without mentioning the chain of transmission.
In either case, he sometimes explicitly states the hadith’s grading—which is one of the merits of his exegesis—and at other times remains silent. He is more often silent in the first case. Examples include: