How did hadith scholars know narrators who died a century earlier were reliable?

Our loyalty now does not lie with Medina or with Kufa or with Bosra or with you know a certain Makkah. It now lies with the isnad. This was the great isnad project that was backed by people like voiced by people like and others. Now this takes off and then you have the huge second wave madith you know Bkari Muslim Abu Daw into the 200 HI and you see what they don't tell you though and this is where I'm going to speak about the

elephant in the room or the elephant in the chain which nobody's speaking about. [laughter] They're like Mal [laughter] you see when you go to the second wave muadin like this is remember going from like 230 hij onwards this kind of era uh you've got alibini abuim

you've got all the going right on right through the 200s into the 300s And you've got all of these great who are now the [clears throat] scholars of telling you this chain is fine because such and such is vouched for he's vouched for he's a you got with his book whoever comes he he's giving him a free pass

you know it's like everybody's in his goddamn [snorts] right so uh you've got this going on. Yeah. Now you see the elephant in the chains here is you know in their books of uh when they tell you which chain is the narrators are fine when or Ahmed Hal ornatim or uh all these people are transmitting that such and such narrator is fine Hisham is fine um you know they're going to say this is how uh Amash was this is how Katada was this is how such and such a Rai and these are very popular ones

but even not so popular ones this is how um you know was this is how all these people were they are commenting on them on their memories this is how Abu Khanifha was this is how such and such a person was here the question is how do you know because you're not telling us how you acquired that information because there's remember these people in that 200 onwards never met any of those people and they for the most part never met anybody that actually met them.

So like Hisham who dies in 146 hij these people in like 230 240 2 haven't met him they've never met anybody that's met him. So the question is when they say he is reliable when they say about anybody why is reliable? Oh is reliable? Okay, they are basing this information on somebody having told them must have their teachers who maybe their teachers told them.

So the they're basing this on somebody's information, but they're not disclosing who gave them that information. So we can't assess it. You see all they've done is taken the trust from Malik who told you beware of these one andone chains and when Malik says oh I trust I transmit in somebody doesn't name him but he says who I trust his dean and knowledge they say ah

we want the full name and because Malik isn't giving it we've taken that trust but this blind trust and they've just put the blind trust in this chain because when they declare these these narrators to be thick, they don't tell you how they came to know that they are trustworthy because mo an incredible amount of them have long been dead in a century before them.

So they're not disclosing to you, oh by the way, these are the names of these people who met them, who who assessed them and this is how they did it and this is how and even then there's a trust element. So this is the elephant in the chains. So this hadith great isnad project it look they did a wonderful they did I I'm not I'm going to commend the job the project they pulled off an amazing stunt.

I mean the the isnad um project is an amazing accomplishment. I'm not going to deny that it's uh profoundly executed with a lot of incredible you know amount of hard work that's gone into it. And for the most part it does look like it's something wow untouchable. But when upon closer inspection one will realize that there's so many gaps in the chain.

You know this is the the the you know the god of the is you know they say the uh the god of the gaps. This is the this is th that gap in the isn which that they're not speaking about. Nobody's speaking about this gap. And so in essence it's very similar except they've just made it they've packaged it so much better. It's like when Apple will package something it just looks so amazing.

[laughter] You know, they send you something and it's uh a thousand pounds, but because of the box and the way the box fits, you go, you know, [laughter] £1,000 well spent. And you might spend £80 on something else and it comes in and you're like, who even wants this? Huh? Who even wants that? [laughter] That's the But this is the um they packaged it.

They've done like an Apple job packaging of the Snad project. But the elephants are right there in the chain people. Right there. [laughter] So people that brings us on to uh somebody asked a question on thoughts on Anjam Chowri and Hassan Katani.

Yeah, I mean uh you see the the problem with Anjam Chowri is very clear obviously he's clear extremist. um what he you know [clears throat and snorts] people like that having the platform they've had is just suspect and Hassan Katani I've spoken about him in the past that look uh I've actually visited him once many years ago but at that time I didn't know I mean I knew who he was like I'd heard of him but I did not know that he was involved in the Casablanca bombings and things like that I had no idea Um, I