Before me is an example that closely accords with what I have mentioned concerning the conduct of fair-minded scholars and their approach when a scholar’s opinion differs, at times, on certain matters of knowledge:

Here is Shaykh Bakr Abu Zayd—may Allah make him beneficial—examining, in his concise treatise Narrations Concerning the Supplication upon Completing the Quran, a report whose chain includes Salih ibn Bashir al-Murri, whose status is well known to the hadith scholars. At the end of his discussion, he wrote—may Allah preserve him:

“... His hadith are abandoned, despite his righteousness and asceticism. An abandoned narrator’s hadith cannot be used for corroboration, whether as a supporting witness or a parallel chain. This agrees with what the eminent scholar al-Albani established in The Weak Hadith Series (1/214 and 309), contrary to what he concluded in his commentary on The Niche of Lamps (1/36), no. 98, where he used him as supporting evidence. This should therefore be corrected.

“This should not be used to cast aspersions on the scholars. The same applies to the multiple reports transmitted from a single imam concerning matters of fiqh, to the grading of one and the same hadith, and likewise to the standing of a narrator.

“There are quite a few such instances in the works of the two great hadith masters, al-Dhahabi and Ibn Hajar, as can be seen by comparing al-Dhahabi’s The Concise Reference and The Enricher, and Ibn Hajar’s The Approximation, The Epitome, and The Opening. The explanations for this have been set out at length; see Ibn Taymiyyah’s Lifting Blame.

“But, for the innovators, this satisfies a desire through which they seek to assuage the pent-up anguish brought on by the ascendancy of Ahl al-Sunnah. Their acts of harm are well attested throughout history, yet they always end in their being forsaken. And the appointment is with Allah.”