al-Salah,” where he discussed some of these routes of transmission and explained their defects. Yet he concluded with a sound summary, in accordance with what I myself had concluded—praise be to Allah—saying:
“If an impartial person considers the totality of these routes, he will know that the hadith has a basis and is not one to be discarded. They have declared many hadiths sound on the basis of routes less substantial than these. And Allah knows best.”
Notes (1/415).
- At the end of Hadith 91, which concerns the prohibition of music and musical instruments:
I then came across an article in the Jordanian weekly newspaper al-Ribat, written by a man called Hassan Abd al-Mannan, in which he sought to declare weak this hadith whose authenticity has been unanimously affirmed by the imams and hadith masters—men acknowledged by all the scholars of the Ummah for their knowledge and expertise, and who do not agree upon misguidance. Yet this man (!) came forth to depart from them and oppose their way.
I had already named a group of them, after al-Bukhari and Ibn Hibban, in the introduction to my new book Weak Hadiths in al-Adab al-Mufrad (pp. 14–15), in a brief statement responding to him. They are:
- Ibn al-Salah
- Al-Nawawi
- Ibn Taymiyyah
- Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyyah
- Ibn Kathir al-Dimashqi
- Ibn Hajar al-Asqalani
- Al-Sakhawi
- Ibn al-Wazir al-Yamani
- Muhammad ibn Isma'il al-San'ani.
There, I cited statements by al-Nawawi and al-Asqalani refuting Ibn Hazm’s weakening of it. Many others besides them have followed their path—whom I did not mention there—and it is inconceivable to any rational person that this one who has departed from them could be compared with even one of them. So how could he be compared with all of them? Among them are al-Shawkani and, finally, his teacher and shaykh—as he claims—Shaykh Shu'ayb al-Arna'ut?!