to their numbers in Muslim. This means—if he is aware of what he is indicating—that they are narrated by Sulayman ibn Buraydah from his father. The first of the four concerns permission to visit graves; the second, greeting their occupants; the third, the inviolability of the women of the fighters; and the fourth: “Whoever calls to the red camel.”

It may be said that perhaps, deep down, he included them while conceding the weakness of their chain of transmission, because he had corroborating reports that strengthened them. I reply: first, this is not known of him; how many hadiths that are authentic through their combined routes has he ostentatiously included in his al-Da'ifah! Second, for many of those hadiths there is no known evidence that could strengthen them, such as the hadith on the inviolability of the women of the fighters. Third, he should have alerted readers that there is no necessary connection between declaring a hadith defective on account of a break in its chain—even if that were established—and its being weak, for the reason I have mentioned. This would have prevented them from being left perplexed about the hadiths narrated by the two sons from their father, Buraydah, may Allah be pleased with him, and would have dispelled any adverse suspicion they might have of him. He could have done so with merely a brief remark when he declared the two authentic hadiths referred to above weak on the grounds of a break in the chain.

Since he did not do so, he stands accused of declaring weak every hadith transmitted through the two sons from their father, unless he explicitly states his view on every hadith whose chain through them to their father is sound. If his answer is that they are authentic, then he has been rightly guided and the alleged defect is invalidated—which is precisely what is sought. But if he persists in clinging to it, then he must accept what we have held him to: that he declares dozens of authentic hadiths weak, thereby opposing “the way of the believers.”

So that you, dear reader, may become even more certain of the extreme gravity of this position, you should know that his aforementioned declaration of defectiveness extends to dozens of other hadiths scattered throughout the various Sunan, Musnad, Mu'jam, and Fawa'id collections, and elsewhere—too many to count and enumerate. I shall therefore confine myself to citing where their hadiths are found.