We Act Upon what is Apparent and We Don’t Look at What is Hidden from Us, This Was the Way of the Best of Generations

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Shaykh Wasee-Ullaah bin Muhammad al-'Abbaas [May Allaah Preserve him]

What Ibn Salaah means is that if there is a narrator that comes and he is apparently trustworthy and accurate in what he says, i.e. He has 'Adl and Dubt, then we take the narration from him as this is sufficient for us. This was the view of the majority of the scholars, from the past and those that came after them, meaning they would accept the narration of one who appears to have 'Adl and Dubt.

Is there a different of opinion in this? We shall discuss this in greater detail later, but as an example, if we take Yahya bin Ma'een who died 230AH and Imaam Ahmad who died 241H, they used to make a ruling on people that came a hundred years before them. How is this? In two ways, either they depended on what they heard from their scholars or they acted on what was apparent looking at whom and where they narrated from and to. So this is acting upon what is apparent trustworthiness.

I asked Shaykh Naasir ad-Deen al-Albaanee on this issue as I wanted to understand it properly and he replied by saying that we act upon what is apparent. So if he appears to be righteous and trustworthy in the apparent then we accept this but if he is apparently a sinner then we reject him, we act upon what is apparent from the narrator. We can’t act upon what is hidden, it is a must that we go by what we can see and not think bad about people. If a person does bad deeds but he appears to be good, then Allaah has concealed him so we can’t see his sins, but if he sins openly then his affair is known. Like the scholars say, ‘if a person intends to lie in the morning we will know about it by the evening.’

The point is, the statement of Ibn Salaah means that we act upon what is apparent and we don’t look at what is hidden from us, this was the way of the best of generations however some of the scholars that came after differed from this.

There is no doubt, if one is completely unknown then we reject his narration but what we are talking about is when a narrator appears to have Adalaah and Dubt then we accept it, if he doesn’t have these then he is Majhool or unknown.

[Adapted from Sharh Tadreeb ar-Rawee fee Sharh Taqreeb an-Nawaawee; Tape 58, 12-15mins]