Conditions for acting upon the weak Hadeeth
1-11-2011 | IslamWeb
Question:
I asked question and you send me fatwa on it. Question: 2321606 What you state is " if it is not fabricated then we can act on it." As you said.. if reward stated is untrue then you won't get reward but if it is right then you will get reward.. based on it.. It's better to act on daef hadith as if it is true then we will get reward.. so few scholar allowed acting on daef hadith for reward and good deeds ??? it it right??? now there is one more category of very weak hadith... And if in some book some hadith is written without reference what should we do???? if we don't follow hadith then we are lossing great reward.(if right) but if we follow and it's weak (very) then what????
Answer:
All perfect praise be to Allaah, The Lord of the Worlds. I testify that there is none worthy of worship except Allaah, and that Muhammad 
is His slave and Messenger.
We did not say that if the Hadeeth is not fabricated it is absolutely permissible to act according to it; rather, the matter is restricted to a given issue which is the ruling on acting upon a Dha’eef (weak) Hadeeth for virtuous deeds if the weakness (of the Hadeeth) is slight. Therefore, it becomes clear to you that if the Hadeeth is very weak, it is not acceptable to act upon it. The same thing applies if we do not really know the status of the Hadeeth as it may be very Dha’eef or fabricated.
For more benefit on the conditions of acting according to a Dha’eef Hadeeth, please refer to Fataawa 13202 and 16192.
Indeed, acting upon a Dha’eef Hadeeth for virtuous deeds might be better than not acting upon it according to the view of those who said that it is permissible to act upon it with the aforementioned conditions, as they said that acting upon it is just a precautionary measure and that it is free from any disadvantages and it is hoped that one gets a benefit [reward] from it.
Allaah Knows best.