room to explain them here. But at the very least, he should clarify matters that ordinary readers may commonly misunderstand: absentmindedness or forgetfulness, which are part of human nature; the unavailability of reference works, even at times, for tracing a hadith’s chains; a lack of energy for research; the appearance of new sources that had not previously been printed or made available in photographic copies; or the difference between one researcher’s independent legal reasoning and opinion and another’s. It is in such cases that differences and variations in rulings arise, and this is entirely natural. A person should not be a mere follower of anyone; rather, he should strive, to the best of his ability, to know the truth concerning that over which they differ. Allah does not burden any soul beyond its capacity.
It has become clear to me that Shaykh al-Duwaysh—may Allah grant him success—has been endowed with no more than memory and retention. As for critical examination and authentication, there is none. Perhaps I have already mentioned some examples of this above. Very often, he criticizes me for declaring certain hadiths weak on the basis of corroborating reports which he cites, yet these corroborating reports are deficient and do not cover the hadith in its entirety—as with hadiths (2, 42, 44, 52, 55, 75, 82, 89, 94, 98, 100).
The wording of hadith no. (2) is:
“Whoever recites the Quran and acts upon what it contains, his parents will be adorned with a crown on the Day of Resurrection, whose light is finer than the light of the sun in the houses of this world …”
He deemed it strong on account of a corroborating report which he mentioned at its end:
“His parents will be clothed in two robes, the like of which the people of this world could not equal …”
But what does this have to do with that? What do the two robes have to do with the crown?!
At other times, the weak hadith concerns an endowment, yet he cites in support of it a hadith concerning a bequest; and the difference between the two is immense in the view of the jurists. See hadith (16).
At other times, he overlooks a narrator who has been declared weak merely because he is among the narrators of the Sahih