Question:
It was mentioned earlier that during organized collective supplications there is no clear evidence for people sitting together while one person makes du‘a and the rest say “Āmīn.” However, it was also mentioned that if someone makes a du‘a for us personally, we may say “Āmīn,” and that there is evidence for this in the book of Ibn Mājah.
Now her question is this: when she looked at the English translation of Ibn Mājah, she found two narrations. One narration reported from Aisha (Mother of Believers) is classified as authentic, while another narration reported from Ibn Abbas is considered weak. Because of this difference, she asks: what exactly is the ruling? Can we say “Āmīn” or not?
Answer:
This confusion arises because many people do not understand how scholars deal with hadith of different strengths. Suppose on a particular issue there are two narrations—one authentic and another weak. What should we do? The answer is simple: we accept the authentic narration and ignore the weak one. There is no confusion in that.
Consider an example from a courtroom. Suppose ten witnesses are presented. Eight of them are proven to be unreliable, but two are trustworthy witnesses. Would the judge reject the testimony of the two reliable witnesses simply because eight others were unreliable? Of course not. The court would accept the reliable testimony and disregard the false ones.
The same principle applies here. If a weak narration exists, we simply set it aside. If there is an authentic narration on the same topic, we act upon that authentic report.
In this case, the narration reported by Aisha (Mother of Beleivers) in Ibn Mājah is considered authentic. It states that the Jews envy Muslims for certain practices, including the greeting of salām and the saying of “Āmīn.” That narration supports the permissibility and virtue of saying “Āmīn.”
The narration reported by Ibn Abbas, however, is considered weak because one of its narrators—Talha ibn Amr—is regarded by scholars as unreliable and even suspected of fabricating narrations. Because of this weakness, that report cannot be used as evidence. So, we simply ignore the weak narration and follow the authentic one.
Therefore saying “Āmīn” remains permissible and encouraged.