Ibn Hazm was a scholar of the 5th century Hijri, who followed the Zahiri School of Though. He claimed to be a Mujtahid of the caliber of the four Imams or higher. The earlier scholars had refuted him vehemently, and rightly so. However, nowadays, in these times of ignorance, many of his opinions which contradict mainstream Sunni Fiqh is being heralded as the ultimate truth. Many of his promoters consider Shaikh Albani as an authority in hadith sciences. So below we produce Albani’s harsh criticism of Ibn Hazm’s knowledge of hadith science, which is a pre-requisite of the Ijtihad he claimed:
After mentioning the hadith transmitted by Anas رضي الله عنه that the Messenger of Allah ﷺ said: “Two sounds are accursed in the World and Hereafter; a flute at the time of a blessing and a humming at the time of a difficulty,” Shaikh Albani mentioned those who collected it in their hadith compilations with their chains of narrations and he also mentioned a supporting hadith transmitted by Jabir رضي الله عنه and those muhadditheen who collected it.
Albani then quotes Ibn Hazm from his ‘Risalah’ (Pg.97) saying:
‘It is not known who narrated it,’ and from his ‘Muhalla’ (Vol.9 Pg.57-58) saying:
‘We do not know any chain for it. They simply mentioned it generally and this is nothing.’
Then Albani remarks:
“This is one of the many evidences on the accuracy of Hafiz Ibn Abdil Haadi’s criticism concerning Ibn Hazm: ‘He [Ibn Hazm] makes a lot of errors in his authentication and criticism of hadith and in his classification of the conditions of the narrators.’”
[See Albani’s Tahrimu Aalaatil Tarb Pg.51-54]
So be cautioned, O reader.
