Dear respected Shaykh, assalamu alaikum wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuh. I would like to ask you about two scholarly issues which have caused great trouble between the salaf youth and students here, to such an extent that they have labeled each other innovators and have forsaken each other. The first issue is: Imam Muslim arranged the hadiths in his Sahih in a scholarly manner, and he first wrote the most authentic hadiths followed by the less authentic hadiths. He would give precedence to the stronger hadiths in the topics on the principles of religion. He would use weaker hadiths as supporting evidence in most chapters. He also mentioned some hadith defects in some sections of his Sahih. The second issue: It is noticeable that there is a difference between the later scholars of hadith and the earlier scholars of hadith criticism such that we find that some later or contemporary scholars grade a hadith as authentic yet the earlier scholars would have agreed that such a hadith is defective. Similarly they grade a hadith as weak or defective despite the fact that the earlier scholars would have agreed that the hadith is authentic. They depend on the apparent state of the chain of narrators in all this. Some people say, “We should refer to the earlier scholars and depend on what they agreed upon in terms of grading hadiths as authentic or defective. We should read their statements, look at their proofs before criticizing them and regarding them as mistaken and refuting them because they are more knowledgeable of this science. Are these issues main religious issues which justify labeling a person who differs with you an innovator, who is considered misguided and is forsaken, or are they scholarly issues where independent reasoning and difference of opinion are allowed? I also want your view on these two issues. May Allah reward you for your service to Islam and its people. تضعيف الأحاديث ليست مسألة يبدع فيها المخالف
