Recordings › Monday Nights with Mufti #199 | Q&A Unscripted & Unrestricted! 😉 | Mufti Abu Layth · 26 Jan 2021 › Segment 20 of 36
Is Mufti Abu Layth against Imam Bukhari?
hadeeth ahadith ahaadeeth hadis hadees ahaadith sahih al-bukhari sahih bukhari saheeh al-bukhari saheeh bukhari imam al-bukhari imaam imams prayer leader muftis kufr kuffar kaafir kufar kaafirun disbelief ahl al-sunnah ahl as-sunnah ahlus sunnah ahl al-sunna sunnis 'alim aalim shaykh shaikh sheik shuyukh shaykhs niyyah niyah niyat niyya niyyatWhat is his agenda? Respect for Imam Bukhari, and a book altered in transmission
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This segment1:32:28 to 1:37:45 · 5 min 17 sGeneral teaching
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machinesummary, machine-writtenNo: he says he respects al-Bukhari as an outstanding hadith scholar, though not infallible, but holds that the book reaching us was altered in transmission, so troubling reports deserve caution.
In more detail
Mufti Abu Layth turns to his agenda, which came up when the guest mentioned Bashar Awwad [?] refuting secularists in the Arab world. He says he is not and has never been against Imam Bukhari, whom he regards as a great and exceptionally talented scholar of hadith in the heavyweight league, though not the most senior of his day and not infallible, while maintaining that his book was mediocre and only later became what it is. He says he would never tolerate swearing at al-Bukhari and rejects those in the Arab and Indo-Pakistani worlds who call him a kafir, a hypocrite or a conspirator forging hadith to defile the Prophet. He says the book that reaches us is perhaps eighty or ninety percent al-Bukhari's and has been altered along the way, sometimes by people with good intentions, giving the example of the Ibn Sa'ada [?] manuscript known as al-Shaykha, on which the editions used in Morocco and the Muslim West rely and which disappeared and resurfaced some 400 years later. So, he says, when a report concerns killing someone or disrespecting the prophets one must back off, and he closes by recommending the discussion and announcing a challenge.
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Position stated
Mufti Abu Layth says he has never been against Imam Bukhari, whom he regards as an outstanding though fallible hadith scholar, but holds that the book reaching us was altered in transmission, so reports in it that disrespect the prophets or concern killing should be treated with caution.
“he wasn't a prophet and he wasn't infallible and you have to remember the book that comes to us from him 100 of it is probably not from him but maybe 90 of it was his”
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and verses the prophet could do all of these things but bukhari could never have made a mistake and you see there you go and with that i rest my case because in essence that's the argument that one walks away with that you know if the prophet of god you're saying could do these things isn't it more deserving that bukhari and these transcripts along the way in fraberi made these mistakes isn't that more obvious but uh yeah so that's the the summary of that but it was an amazing discussion and i'm very grateful to
um dr saab for accepting that um yeah so here i'd like to say a few words on my agenda what is my agenda okay and in that discussion with dr sab it was raised a bit with dr abdullah because at one point we spoke of the bashar awadh and he's and he says oh but bashar also refutes people and i go into this uh you know secularists in the arab world and i you see i want to clarify something
i am not and i've never been and none of my videos have i been anti-imam bukhari i to me imam bukhari right was somebody who you know he spent his life studying hadith and he was a great scholar of hadith and i'm not i've never denied that i've never said he was a great scholar of hadith i did say in the debate that look his book was just mediocre it wasn't this amazing book that later on it became but he himself was an exceptionally talented individual i'm not denying he wasn't the best the best in his day and age
there were people much more senior to him like him and all these people but he was still outstanding he was in the heavyweight league there's no question about that and i'm not you know i i would never tolerate swearing at him or things like this you know people just because there are people in the arab world especially and some from the indo-pak world who have accused imam bukhari of being a kafir of being a hypocrite of being a hidden non-muslims india who you know he has this great conspiracy
to forge these hadith to defile the prophet and he's doing this as part of his evil he wasn't a prophet and he wasn't infallible and you have to remember the book that comes to us from him 100 of it is probably not from him but maybe 90 of it was his maybe 80 was his but the whole book i feel has definitely been kind of played with along the way and then people have been adding to it and you have to remember sometimes they do it with good intention and i'll explain that in a moment that not all you know not all
interference is evil people say oh so oh so was it uh evil uh uh you know is it an evil plan then no it's not you know it's uh it's it's it's not an evil plot but people sometimes with good intentions they kind of you know they they miss the boat and um yeah so and let me and i speak about in the that so there's people like you've got let's say and these people may have been making mistakes and then after him his students moving around may have been making mistakes so and then after them people that came
may have been making mistakes and so you have to remember this so much before it gets to us so i'll give you an example the common truth the main sahil bukhari used in morocco and these places today in the western muslim world is based on a manuscript called of binsaada and the this bintsa ada manuscript that they rely on was is called the sheikh as well they call it the sheikha this was actually it had actually disappeared and resurfaced something like 400 years later as in and they don't know who wrote i mean
they okay there's some ideas that some person wrote obviously not the author himself but what what's happened in those 400 years with this manuscript i mean did somebody make some mistakes somewhere like this is my point you don't really uh you can't say with certainty so when an issue comes which is to do with kill someone or an issue comes with you know saying something about disrespecting the prophets you nee you need to back off and recognize that this has come to us with many faults anyway right so okay i hope that explains
and gives a summary but overall i definitely thoroughly uh enjoyed the discussion if you haven't seen it i do advise that you do watch it it was um it was amazing so yeah definitely that said now i also like to uh right i'd like to extend a challenge people challenge
this is a challenge i'd like to extend it to bra those of you that don't know um is part of the sunni defense the um which fareed used to be a part of but he isn't anymore now right so what's happened is um
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Cite this segment
Stable id, transcript version and tier are part of the citation. Every change to a transcript is logged.Mufti Abu Layth Archive, segment 2021-01-26b-S20, auto-transcribed, may contain errors. https://muftiabulayth.org/r/eokcnwggiba/s/20/ (accessed 1 November 2026)
- APA 7
Mufti Abu Layth. (2021, January 26). Is Mufti Abu Layth against Imam Bukhari? [Video, segment 2021-01-26b-S20, auto-transcribed, may contain errors]. Mufti Abu Layth Archive. Retrieved November 1, 2026, from https://muftiabulayth.org/r/eokcnwggiba/s/20/
- Chicago author-date
Mufti Abu Layth. 2021. "Is Mufti Abu Layth against Imam Bukhari?" Video, segment 2021-01-26b-S20, auto-transcribed, may contain errors. Mufti Abu Layth Archive. Recorded January 26, 2021. Accessed November 1, 2026. https://muftiabulayth.org/r/eokcnwggiba/s/20/
- BibTeX
@misc{abulayth-2021-01-26b-S20, author = {Mufti Abu Layth}, title = {{Is Mufti Abu Layth against Imam Bukhari?}}, year = {2021}, month = {1}, date = {2021-01-26}, howpublished = {\url{https://muftiabulayth.org/r/eokcnwggiba/s/20/}}, url = {https://muftiabulayth.org/r/eokcnwggiba/s/20/}, organization = {Mufti Abu Layth Archive}, urldate = {2026-11-01}, note = {Segment 2021-01-26b-S20, auto-transcribed, may contain errors} }
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