Question
How authentic is the Hadeeth about the fly?
Fatwa
All perfect praise be to Allah, the Lord of the worlds. I testify that there is none worthy of worship except Allah, and that Muhammad is His Slave and Messenger.
Abu Daawood and Ibn Hibaan narrated on the authority of Abu Hurayrah, may Allah be pleased with him, and Ahmad and An-Nasaa’i and others narrated on the authority of Abu Sa‘eed, may Allah be pleased with him, that the Prophet instructed us that if a fly falls into anyone’s drink, he should dip the fly in the drink and then remove it, since one of its wings contains disease and the other contains a cure for it. The first wing to fall into the drink is that which contains disease. But if the person dips the fly and then removes it, the drink will return to its original state. The narrations of Al-Bukhari and Al-Bayhaqi do not state that the wing which has disease falls in first.
The fact that a fly carries a disease on one wing and its cure in the other is established and transmitted from the Prophet . Anyone who rejects the established Hadeeths of the Prophet knowing that they are established, is considered to be out of the fold of Islam.
If he rejects them because of their nonconformity with experimental scientific rules or because his mind does not accept them, then he is in great danger. Experimental scientific rules are not stable. They may prove something today and negate it tomorrow or vice versa. Furthermore, there are many unanswered questions that they fail to answer. For instance, they do not and will not know anything about the soul, whose separation from the body causes it to be a motionless corpse. Allah the Almighty truly Says (what means): {And mankind have not been given of knowledge except a little.} [Quran 17:85]
And Allah knows best.