Is it obligatory for a Muslim to believe in all the hadiths in Bukhari and Muslim? Are there weak or fabricated hadiths in them? Is there a consensus on their authenticity? When and who were the scholars who affirmed this? Is it true that Bukhari is the most authentic book after the Quran? What is said about those who doubt the authenticity of their hadiths and how should they be refuted?

Allah has preserved His religion, and this is clearly manifested in the preservation of the Qur’an from addition and omission. If all its copies from every place were collected, they would be found to be in agreement with no اختلاف بينها (disagreement between them). Furthermore, Allah assigned to the Prophet’s Sunnah prominent scholars who preserved and refined it, such as the two Imams, Al-Bukhari and Muslim, whose two Sahih collections the Ummah has unanimously accepted. Al-Nawawi even said: “Scholars have agreed that the most authentic books after the Noble Qur’an are the two Sahihs: Sahih Al-Bukhari and Sahih Muslim, and the Ummah has received them with acceptance.”

As for those who reject the Sunnah on the pretext that it is ahad (solitary narration) or dhanni al-dalalah (probabilistic in meaning), they deprive themselves of the light of revelation. For while the Qur’an is qat’i al-thubut (definitive in authenticity), most of it is dhanni al-dalalah (probabilistic in meaning). The Sunnah, for the most part, is dhanni al-thubut (probabilistic in authenticity) and dhanni al-dalalah (probabilistic in meaning). Anyone who stipulates definitiveness in both authenticity and meaning would have rejected most of the Sharia and contradicted the consensus of the Ummah.

The people of knowledge have unanimously agreed on accepting the narration of a single reliable narrator (khabar al-wahid al-adl) and the obligation to act upon it. This is what the jurists have followed since the time of the Companions until today.