Answer:

I do not have the nerve that whatever Ibn al-Hajar (Allah have mercy upon him) said about the blessed Mawlid statements of Hazrat Abu Bakr, Hazrat Umar, Hazrat Uthman al-Ghani, Hazrat Ali (Allah ennoble his countenance), that I declare verbally without examination as falsified.

 

This is how people with their own skills and their own wise knowledge think have the greatest proof. And those who think “we haven’t found it in any book”, then assume “this doesn’t even exist.”

 

All hadith scholars collected many hadith, and there are many ahadith that have been related by Allah’s noble friends [awliyah al-kiram], Gnostics [ahl al-kashf] and the Islamic noble saints while the people of derivation [mukharrijin] cannot get to know them, therefore it is clear that all the ahadith of the Prophet ﷺ are not included in the canonical Musnad, Mu’jam, Sahih, Sunan. There are also such hadith that have remained to be included. On this basis, there are also such statements from the Companions that have remained to be included. When a noble scholar, a trustworthy and reliable scholar – if he writes them, the assignment is his, the responsibility is his.

 

Our position is that in these matters we refer to his knowledge and base it on his certainty, and belief there is certainly a basis in it. It is not in me to declare it to be forged. Ibn al-Hajr wrote it and he is a very careful Islamic scholar and therefore there is certainly some basis in it. Declaring it forged is the insulting [manner] of the wahabiyyah and ghayr-muqallideen, while it is now observed that many newly risen scholars who came to study from al-Azhar [University], they in many ahadith on the basis of not reaching them and not finding it assume that it is proof, that they think the absence of knowledge is the non-existent of knowledge, or the absence of the report is that the report does not exist, or the absence of a source is that the source does not exist. This is their understanding. They must realise what they are doing! Our method is that whatever our trustworthy scholars reported, we do not have the nerve to disprove it without evidence and without investigation.

 

In the same discussion I would like to tell:

 

اَصْحَابِیْ کَالنُّجُوْمِ بِاَیِّھِمْ اِقْتَدَیْتُمْ اِھْتَدَیْتُمْ

 

The scholars of hadith have criticised this hadith a lot and according to most of the scholars of hadith this hadith is not proven insomuch that even the great scholars of hadith are accumulated and sometimes scholars also mention them, like Ibn Hazm, although his differences and extravagance in some matters of the Ahl al-Sunnah wa’l-Jamaat is abundantly clear. The scholars take his opinion. Ibn Hazm said this hadith has been falsified, while our scholars write that this hadith has been falsified on the basis that Ibn Hazm said it was falsified. And the statement of many hadith scholars in this subject that came is from Abu Zuh’a and Ibn ‘Adi and so on. But in this topic, I wrote a book ‘al-sahaba nujum al-ihtida’ in which I related that in many places the scholars of hadith are such that based on the fact that the chain of hadith has not reached them and is not known, certify that it is forged. And this does not mean that this hadith has no reality at all or has been falsified. On this basis, the newly risen scholars deceive that the hadith was not found from these scholars of hadith, and declare that it was falsified. This is their ignorance and folly of the method of the hadith scholars and the way of the hadith scholars.

 

I will translate the hadith I mentioned earlier:

 

اَصْحَابِیْ کَالنُّجُوْمِ بِاَیِّھِمْ اِقْتَدَیْتُمْ اِھْتَدَیْتُمْ

My companions are like the stars; whomever of them you follow, you will be guided.