Do Salafis really follow the daleel

Oftentimes we, the madhab followers, are confronted by those who describe themselves as Salafis, for not following daleel (evidence) but instead following a madhab. I have come across some who cannot even read a verse of the Qurâan without making serious mistakes, yet they claim to be able to interpret and follow the daleel.

One wonders how can someone in such a state follow and interpret daleel? Through a series of exchanges and observations, I found them to be nothing more than blind imitators of the contemporary Salafi teachers. These very teachers claim to understand, interpret, and follow the daleel all while promoting anti-madhabism. At length, I came to realize that when a young man of utmost ignorance claims to follow the daleel instead of imitating an Imam of a madhab, he is in fact insinuating that his Salafi teacher follows the daleel but the Imamâs of the four madhabs donât. Thus, I wanted to find out to what extent the learned Salafis or the Salafi teachers themselves follow the daleel (evidence). What is meant by âfollowing the daleelâ is that a qualified scholar gathers, on a given subject, all the proofs and then derives a ruling following the thorough analysis of the complete body of evidence (daleel). This involves sifting through a quarter of a million hadith spread across more than three hundred hadith books as well as hundreds of volumes of books of each madhab.

One of the prominent Salafi teachers by the name of Shaykh Albani put it as follows:
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