Yusuf Al-Qaradawi - Approaching The Sunnah, Comprehension & Controversy-IIIT

A PP ROAC HIN G TH E
NN AH
Comprehension & Controversy
The International Institute of Islamic Thought

he Sunnah still provides the stable moral framework- the
grammar - that enables Muslims, by formal rules and inward
sense, to know right from wrong. However, separation from the
mainstream of life puts the Sunnah in danger of becoming rigid - an
archaism. Addressing that danger, this book explains how the Sunnah
can function as the grammar of a living, adaptive language, capable of
guiding (and not shying from) the mainstream.
The first chapter sets out the qualities that characterize authentic
application of the Sunnah: universality, coherence (so that different
spheres of human responsibility are not split), compassionate realism,
moderation, and humility.The second explains standards and
procedures for determining the Sunnah in the fields of jurisprudence
and moral instruction.The third chapter illustrates through detailed
examples common errors in understanding the Sunnah - reading
hadiths singly without sufficient context, confusing legal and moral
injunctions, means and ends, figurative and literal meanings ... - and it
proposes remedies for these errors.
Yusuf al-Qaradawi is one of the Islamic world's most widely

respected and prolific scholars. His works have remained popular
over many decades. Among the best known of his books to appear in
English zsThe Lawful and the Prohibited in Islam (first edition
1994).
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© Corbis
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by Saddiq Ali
ISBN I-56564-418-2
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The International Institute of Islamic Thought

I
I
APPROACHING THE SUNNAH:
COMPREHENSION AND CONTROVERSY
APPROACHING THE SUNNAH:
Comprehension and Controversy
Yusuf al-Qaradawi
Translated Jamil Qureshi
THE INTERNATIONAL INSTITUTE OF ISLAMIC THOUGHT

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© The International Institute of Islamic Thought, 1427AH/2006CE
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Foreword
The International Institute of Islamic Thought (IIIT) has great

pleasure in presenting this scholarly work on the Sunnah, originally
published in Arabic in 1990 under the title Kayfa Nataâmal maQa al-
Sunnah. The author, Yusuf al-Qaradawi, a graduate of al-Azhar
University, is an internationally renowned scholar and specialist in
the field.
In this work he brings his extensive scholarship and experience
as a teacher to elucidation of the Sunnah, emphasizing its harmoni
ous, integrative nature, its balance and moderation. His argument
is subtle and challenging, applying traditional knowledge of the
Sharicah to issues faced by Muslims in the present day. He dis
cusses the controversies around various interpretations of hadiths,
exposing the confused, often misinformed, reasoning that under
lies the (unfortunately widespread) misunderstanding of them. He
examines the problem of weak hadiths, clarifying their relationship
to legal injunctions, and their relevance and authority for moral
instruction. He argues for ease in applying the Sunnah to our daily
lives; for, as he points out, the Sunnah is a vehicle for the mercy of
the Qur’an, meant to offer hope, not hardship. Muslims must, he
argues, recover from their neglect and backwardness in under
standing the Sunnah; strive to become proficient and discrimi
nating in their knowledge of it, and apply it with the proper
wisdom, decorum, sincerity and moderation.
The IIIT, established in 1981, has served as a major center to
facilitate serious scholarly efforts based on Islamic vision, values
and principles. Its programs of research, seminars and conferences
v
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I
over the last twenty-five years have resulted in the publication of
more than 300 titles in English, Arabic, and other languages.
Our thanks to Jamil Qureshi for his commitment to producing a
close, careful translation, and for his co-operation with the team at
the IIIT’s London Office. Our thanks to all those involved,
directly or indirectly, in the preparation and production of this
book, including Shiraz Khan and Maryam Mahmood. May God
reward them all, as well as the author, for their efforts.
April 2006 Anas S. Al-Shaikh-Ali,

Academic Advisor,
HIT London Office, UK
vi
CONTENTS
Foreword v
Translator's Note x
Author's Preface to the Second Edition xiii
Chapter One
The Status of the Sunnah in Islam
General characteristics of the Sunnah 1
A comprehensive pattern 2
A balanced method 2
An integrative way 4
A realistic method 6
A way made easy 8
The Muslims’ duty to the Sunnah 10
Warning against three evils 12
Principles for the application of the Sunnah 18
1: Verifying the firmness of the Sunnah 18
2: Proficiency in understanding the Sunnah 19
3: The text safe from contradiction by what is stronger 20
The source of both legislation and guidance 21
A defence of fabricated hadiths refuted 23
Rejection of the sahlh equal to acceptance of the fabricated 25
The doubts of the old enemies of the Sunnah 26
The doubts of new enemies of the Sunnah 28
Being content with the guidance of the Qur’an 29
Rejection of hadiths because of miscomprehension 30
Chapter Two
The Sunnah as a source forJurisprudence and Preaching
In jurisprudence and legislation 41
All jurists refer to the sunnah 45
The necessity of linking hadith and fiqh 46
The duty of scholarly revision of the legacy of fiqh 51
In preaching and guidance 54
Preparation before presenting a hadith as evidence 62
The defects of many admonishers 63
The fatwa of Ibn Hajar al-Haythaml 65
Narrating weak hadiths in targhib and tarhlb 66
vii
Some important realities 70
1: Rejection of weak hadiths even on targhib and tarbib 70
2: Non-adherence to the conditions of the majority 72
3: Prohibition of narrating in a style of certainty 72
4: The sufficiency of the sahib and the basan 73
5: Warning against unbalancing order among the deeds 74
6: A weak hadith cannot itself establish an injunction 75
7: Two complementary conditions for weak hadith 79
A wise preacher does not transmit what is unclear to people 82
Hadith: that every age is worse than what preceded it 84
Chapter Three
Principles for Correct Understanding of the Sunnah
Understanding in the light of the Qur’an 91
Preferring what is in the light of the Qur’an 92
Care in claiming contradiction of the Qur’an 99
Gathering relevant hadiths on a subject together 103
Hadith: wearing the i%ar long 103
The hadith in al-Bukhari on the censure of tillage 109
Reconciling differing hadiths or preference between them 113
Reconciling has priority over preference 113
Hadiths on women visiting the graves 115
Hadiths on alias'} (coitus intemcptus) 117
Abrogation in the hadith 121
Understanding causes, associations, and objectives 124
Hadith: <cYou know better the affairs of your worldly life” 126
Hadith: “I am quit of any Muslim” 127
The woman’s traveling with a mabram 129
The leaders are from the Quraysh 130
The method of the Companions and Successors 130
Texts based on a usage that changed later 132
Distinguishing changeable means and stable ends 139
“The weight of Makkah” and “the measure of Madinah” 144
Sighting the crescent to establish the month 145
Distinguishing between literal and figurative 155
The figurative in hadiths conveying injunctions 163
The danger of closing the door to the figurative 166
Against latitude in leaving the literal meaning 169
Ibn Taymiyyah’s rejection of the figurative 172
viii
Distinguishing the Unseen and the Visible 173
Adopting the lexical meanings of the words 179
Caution against reading current terms into old texts 179
Two words: Auw-and naht 181
Precaution in commenting on individual words or sentences 182
Epilogue 184
Notes 187
Index 205
ix
Translator’s Note
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
This translation would not have been undertaken, still less could it
have been completed, without the supervision of Mohammad
Akram Nadwi, currently research fellow at the Oxford Centre for
Islamic Studies. I am glad to express my appreciation and gratitude
for his encouragement, and his help in rescuing me from many
errors. Any errors, shortcomings that remain are my fault, not his.
TRANSLATION OF QUOTED MATERIAL
Shaykh al-Qaradawi’s book is, necessarily, filled with cited hadiths,

and extensive quotations of related discussion among the scholarly
experts of past and present. In almost all cases, these quotations
are presented as authoritative, intended to inform contemporary
application of the Sunnah. Accuracy in presenting this material was
more important than readability. Verbatim translation, fettered to
the Arabic words, word order and structures, resulted in English
that was quite often unintelligible. Accordingly, for the quoted
material, I traded a verbatim rendering for an intelligible one. This
means: where necessary, pronouns have been replaced with the
nouns they stand for; connectors serving as punctuation have been
replaced with punctuation; connectors with a logical function have
been rendered according to meaning (as I understood it) in the
context, so the same connector may be differently translated in
different passages; verbs have been put into the tenses/moods that
made most sense for the context; cascades of dependent clauses in
some texts have been divided up, where this was feasible, into
smaller sentence units.
With so much compromise for intelligibility, what remains of
‘accuracy? What remains will be evident in the use of square
brackets to mark instances where the original sentence has been
divided, or a pronoun paraphrased, etc. It should be possible to
sense the form and structure of the original, and so quickly locate
any errors in the translator’s reading. For texts with great moral
authority, this matters - and it matters most to Muslims.
X
This way of presenting Arabic in English is well established,
indeed it is now accepted convention for parallel text publications
intended for readers expected to refer also to the original.
Although the analogy is imperfect, this style of translation may be
compared to transliteration: with effort and practice it is possible,
even without the Arabic to hand, to sense the original. For readers
unfamiliar with this style, a good rule to follow is: simply read through
the square brackets without thinking of them as parentheses. (By contrast,
words or sentences in round brackets are parentheses in the
original and should be read as such.)
As for the main text: this has been rendered, with due deference,
into intelligible English, but without marking up departures from
the original. Author’s notes and bibliographical information are
presented as found in the original. A few notes, which had to be
added in order to explain a point that would not be obvious to an
English readership, are clearly marked ‘—Trans.’
TWO DIFFICULT TERMS: ‘LAW’, ‘ACTION’
Shaykh Qaradawl’s discussion contains many terms of the science,

which has its particular idiom. Arabic words are used sparingly in
this translation, glossed at first occurrence in the usual way, and
nuances should be comprehensible in context. However, there are
two usages (related to each other) which need a note: ‘Law’ and
‘action’.
‘Law’ (with initial capital) and its derivatives translate ‘Sharicah’
and its derivatives. ‘Sharicah’, though widely known, is widely
misunderstood to mean ‘the law in traditional Muslim societies’.
But Sharicah does not mean ‘law’ only in the sense of what the
state enforces to regulate the actions of people under its juris
diction. It means ‘way’ or the Way, and is nearly synonymous with
din, or religion. It includes social norms as well as (actionable) legal
rules, the two together forming the ethos which, in an Islamic
society, is supposed to identify and bind Muslims, individually and
collectively. The English word ‘law’ and its derivatives do not
convey this radical association of norms and laws, except nega
tively in the word ‘outlaw’, and in the weak meanings of ‘lawful’ or
‘unlawful’. The use of ‘Law’ (with initial capital) seemed a
xi
reasonable compromise, given that Way’ does not have the
derivatives needed for this text.
The reader will regularly encounter phrases like ‘this is acted
upon’ or ‘hadiths related to actions’. The meaning here is more
than ‘actionable’ matters in the narrow sense of what can be
appealed to the courts or other legal process. In some instances,
that is indeed the meaning. More often, however, the meaning of
‘it is acted upon’ is that the text in question commands or
commends behavior that should be normal practice (sunnaty. This
may relate to personal manners (e.g. speech or dress), to worship
(e.g. in the obligatory rites or in supererogatory acts such as
supplications), to norms of public behavior (e.g. whether or how
to disagree or express censure), as well as to transactions in which
the law is relevant (e.g. contracts). Shaykh Qaradawl distinguishes
between hadiths that are adduced in the derivation of Law, and
those referred to for moral instruction. Of the former, the
question hardly arises, assuming that the hadiths are authenticated
and their meaning unequivocal, that they are ‘acted upon’ in the
appropriate situation. But of the latter, the question does arise:
sometimes it is a historical issue (is there a majority or consensus
view?), sometimes a textual issue (preference among competing
texts; distinguishing universal intent behind particular wording),
sometimes a philosophical one (how far can the action be
practiced as a norm?)
Jamil Qureshi
Oxford. September, 2005
xii
Author’s Preface to the Second Edition
Praise and thanks are due to God: it is by His favor that righteous
deeds are accomplished, by His grace that all good and blessing
reach us, and it is by His enabling that any objectives are realized.
God’s blessing, prayer and peace be upon him — who is God’s
mercy to all creatures and their solace, His ever-continuing favor
to the believers, and His profound argument against all human
kind — our master, leader and model, our beloved and teacher,
Muhammad, and upon his family and Companions, and whoever
travels upon his path, being righdy guided by his Sunnah, toward
the Day of Judgment.
The Sunnah is the second or ‘unrecited revelation’, the Prophet’s

exposition of the Qur’an. It is, for Muslims, the second source of
Legal judgments and ethical directives. It is therefore a duty for
Muslims to hold to the Sunnah with full understanding, conviction
and firm adherence, in what they do and how they behave, as also
in how they invite to and teach the religion. This is especially so in
light of the fact that the regard of the Muslims for their Prophet’s
Sunnah has deteriorated through ages of backwardness, just as
their regard for the Qur’an of their Lord has also deteriorated.
It is incumbent upon the scholars of the Muslims — and their
preachers and thinkers, and those concerned about the renewal of
the religion and the reform of the Community, the enlightenment
of their minds, the awakening of their hearts, the stirring of their
powers — that they stand by their obligations in this field.
This book (I wrote it originally at the request of the International
Institute of Islamic Thought) is by way of my contribution to this
field. Over the eleven years since, a dozen or more impressions of
it have appeared in Egypt and in Beirut. I thought I should look
into it after this period with a view to revision, improvement and
completion — hardly an easy matter for me owing to the limitation
of my time by other pressing cares and commitments. Fortunately
xiii
for this book, however, I was able to work on it uninterruptedly,
to add to it whole sections, and otherwise complete the text and
the notes, rectifying and revising, until the book grew by nearly a
third of its original size. This is by the grace of God, Exalted is He,
and by His enabling. I hope that my brothers in religion who have
translated this book into other languages will rely on this edition to
revise the earlier translations and complete them so that they do
not diverge from the Arabic original of this edition.
I praise and thank God, Exalted is He, that He has enabled me
to serve the Sunnah through a number of books, among them:
“The Sunnah, the Source of Knowledge (mahifaty and Civiliza
tion”; “Introduction to the Study of the Sunnah”; “The Messenger
and Knowledge (9Zw)”; “Selection from the Taighlb wa-tarhtb of al-
Mundhiri”; “The Highest Authority in Islam according to Qur’an
and Sunnah” ... and through other books indirectly related to the
Sunnah, for example: “The Sharicah of Islam is Right for Every
Time and Place”; “Introduction to Study of the Islamic Sharicah”;
the first part of “Fiqh Made Easy for the Modern Muslim” ...
It was a comfort to me that Dar al-Shuruq took on the publi

cation of this expanded and revised edition. I appeal to God,
Exalted is He, to bring good by it to its writer, to its readers and to
its publishers, and to whoever has a part in diffusing the good in it.
God is surely All-Hearing and Responsive.
And, first and last, all praise and thanks are owed to God.
Yusuf al-Qaradawi
Cairo. Jumada 1,1421 AH/August, 2000CE
xiv
From the Qur’an:
God has certainly bestowed grace upon the believers in that He

has sent to them a Messenger from among themselves — who
recites to them His revelations, and thereby prospers and
purifies them, and who teaches them the Book and the Wisdom
— though, before that, they used to be in manifest error.
(Al ‘Imran, 3: 164)
O believers: obey God and obey the Messenger, and those

among you who are in authority. Then if you are in dispute over
something, refer it to God and His Messenger, if you are indeed
believers in God and the Last Day.
(al-Nisa’, 4: 59)
And whatever the Messenger gives to you, take hold of it; and
whatever he forbids to you, abstain [therefrom]. And fear God.
(al-Hashr, 59: 7)
From the sayings of God’s Messenger,
salla A.llahu Qalayhi wa sallam
“All of my Community will enter Paradise except one who

‘refuses’.” [People] said: “Who is that who ‘refuses’, O
Messenger of God?” He said: “Whoever obeys me enters
Paradise. And the one who disobeys me — then he [is the one
who] has refused [Paradise].”
(al-Bukhari reported it from Abu Hurayrah)
“I have left two things among you. You shall not go astray
following them: the Book of God and my Sunnah.”
(al-Hakim reported it from Abu Hurayrah)
“I have left to you the shining path; [the path being so clear] its
night is like its day. You must follow my Sunnah and the
Sunnah of the righteous, rightly-guided successors following
me: [hook yourselves into it firmly] .”
(Ahmad ibn Hanbal, and the authors of the different Sunany
reported it from al-^rbad)
* Literally: “bite into it with your incisors”.

CHAPTER ONE
GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS OF THE SUNNAH
The Qur’an is the supreme sign and the greatest miracle of

Muhammad (SAAS), the preserved everlasting Book, into which
falsehood cannot enter from any direction. Its permanency from
first to last makes it the primary fixed source validating all the
sources of Islam and its further secondary proofs — one never
argues from the latter to validate it. The Sunnah of the Prophet
comes as a source following along with the Qur’an and making it
clear, as God said, addressing His Messenger: <fWe have sent down
to you the Remembrance so that you make clear to humankind
what has been sent down for them” (at-Nah/, 16: 44). Through the
Prophet’s sayings, his actions and his acceptance {taqnf)y the
Sunnah functions as the practical exegesis of the Qur’an, the
application in reality, as well as the ideal, of Islam. In sum, the
Sunnah is the Qur’an interpreted and Islam embodied. cA’ishah
(RAA),3 through her understanding and insight, and her living in
the household of God’s Messenger, was aware of this, and gave
expression to it in a brilliant turn of phrase. When asked about his
character, she said: “His character was the Qur’an!”4
Whoever desires to know the practical way of Islam, in its
particulars and its pillars, should therefore know it as elaborated
and embodied in the Prophet’s Sunnah. The term sunnah means
‘way’ or ‘method’ or ‘pattern’. It represents the Wisdom of the
Prophet, in explaining the Qur’an, in commenting on the truths of
Islam, and in his teaching of the Community.5 God revealed to His
Messenger “the Book and the Wisdom”, both; and He made
conveying that Wisdom one of his most important duties in the
formative life of the Community.
A COMPREHENSIVE PATTERN
God said: “And we sent down to you the Book as a clarification of

everything” (al-Nahl, 16: 89). Accordingly, the Sunnah is a pattern
distinguished by its comprehensiveness and completeness in
relation to the whole of human life in all its dimensions, ‘length’,
‘breadth’ and ‘depth’. We mean by ‘length’ the temporal or vertical
dimension, from birth to death, indeed from the embryonic stage
to what comes after death. By ‘breadth’ we mean the horizontal
dimension, which comprehends all spheres of life. The Prophet’s
guidance proceeds with all of them: in the home, in the market
place, in the mosque, on the road, at work; in relations with God,
with oneself, with family, with Muslims, non-Muslims, and human
kind generally, with animate creatures and inanimate things. We
mean by ‘depth’ the deeper dimensions of human life, but this
covers body as well as mind and spirit, the outward as well as the
inward, and it embraces speech and action as well as intention.
Unfortunately, some Muslims hardly know anything of the
Sunnah except keeping the beard long and the robe short, and
using the siwak from the arak tree to clean the teeth. They forget
the comprehensiveness of the Prophetic pattern, in which every
one, however different their conditions or circumstances, can find
scope for something to serve as their model.
A BALANCED METHOD
The Sunnah is distinguished also by balance - between spirit and

body, mind and heart, this world and the hereafter, the ideal and
the actual, theory and practice, the unseen and the visible, freedom
and responsibility, individualism and collectivism, conformity and
inventiveness... So it has to be and is a moderate pattern for a
2
moderate society, with neither overdoing in it nor doing too little.

God commanded: “That you do not exceed the measure, but
establish the measure with equity, and do not fall short of the
balance” (al-Rahmany 55: 8—9).
When the Prophet caught sight of any among his Companions
inclining towards either extreme, he turned them back firmly to
moderation, and cautioned them against the consequences of
excess or insufficiency. He disapproved the three men who
questioned his worship as if they disdained it and their appetite for
acts of devotion was not satisfied. One of them resolved that he
would fast for life and not break his fast; another that he would
stand in vigil for the night and not rest; the third that he would
keep apart from women and not marry. When their saying so was
reported to him, he said: “Be aware! I am more fearful of God
than you, more God-aware than you, yet I fast and I break fast, I
stand in vigil and I rest, and I marry women. Then whoever
prefers [something else] above my sunnah is not one of mine.”6 On
seeing the excess of cAbd Allah ibn cAmr in fasting, keeping vigil
and recitation of the Qur’an, he returned him to moderation,
saying: “Indeed, your body owns a right over you (that is, of
relaxation), your eyes own a right over you (that is, of sleep), your
family own a right over you (that is, of everyday pleasures and
sociability), and your visitor owns a right over you (that is, of
hospitality and companionship).»7”7 In other words: give to every
owner of a right his right.
The Prophet himself set the highest standard of balance and
moderation throughout his life — as demonstrated by his Sunnah
and the history of his life — with his Lord, with his self, with his
family, with his Companions, and with people as a whole. Most
often what he prayed for was in the Qur’anic invocation: “Our
Lord, grant us good in this world and good in the hereafter, and
save us from the punishment of the Fire” (al-Raqarah, 2: 201).
Among his prayers was: “O God, set right my religion, which is
the protection of my affair; set right for me my world, wherein is
my life and livelihood; and set right for me my hereafter, to which
3
The Status of the Sunn/lh in Islam
is my return; and make my life prosper for me by every good; and
make my death a rest from every evil.”8
AN INTEGRATIVE WAY
The Sunnah of the Prophet is a harmonizing or integrative way. It

integrates within itself faith with intellection, or revelation with
reason, so that from both of them there flows “light upon light”
(a/’NUr, 24: 35). It combines also legislation and moral instruction.
The Sunnah is involved in the forming, foundation and direction
of instruction. In legislation, it is involved in defence, the applica
tion of force, discipline and punishment. Moral instruction is of
little avail without the support of legislation; and legislation is of
little avail without moral guidance. The Prophet was responsible
for both together.
The Sunnah integrates within itself might and right, the author
ity of the state with the Qur’an, the call to religion. For indeed
God restrains by that authority what he does not restrain by the
Qur’an. If good conscience of the right does not prevent some
people from wrongdoing, then might can prevent them, and who
ever rebels against this call, the state can discipline. For every situ
ation there is a limit of tolerance beyond which it is not permitted
that it be overrun by the false. The Messenger held together the
call to religion and the power of state: he it was who led the people
in the prayer, and on the battlefield; who judged between them in
disputes, and led them in administration in peace and in war. He
was not as the Israelites were at certain stages in their progress — a
prophet guiding them and leading in the call to religion, with a
king administering and leading in their affairs of state - as the
Qur’an has narrated to us that their prophet said to the Israelites:
“God has raised for you Saul as king” (al-Raqarah, 2: 247).
Nor has there come about the Prophet in the Islamic tradition,
what has come about the Messiah, regarding the partitioning of life
(and responsibilities) between God and Caesar, so that the religion
is for God, and for Caesar political power. Rather, God informed
him so that he said: “My prayer, my sacrifice, my living and my
4
dying are for God, the Lord of the worlds. He has no partner (or
peer). By that am I commanded, and I am the first of those who
surrender (to God)” {al-Anâm^ 6: 163-64).
Thus the Community was administered and its life guided in its
entirety by the Book and the Balance. Whoever rebelled against
either was disciplined, as God said, by “iron” of “mighty strength”:
<cWe sent our Messengers with the clear signs and sent down with
them the Book and the Balance so that people should establish just
measure, and We sent down iron in which are mighty strength and
benefits for people” (al-Hadid, 57: 25). Ibn Taymiyyah said: “People
must have a book to guide, and iron to support. ‘And God suffices
as Guide and Helper’ (al-T?urqany 25: 31).”
The leadership and the people are also brought together. The
leader is not as an angelic being circling in the sky, but a human
being dwelling on earth. Nor is it desirable for the leader to live in
a hermitage secluded from the people. Rather, it is incumbent
upon him to be with and among them, sharing in their sorrows
and joys, their crises and troubles. That is indeed how the Prophet
was. In times of scarcity he was the first to go hungry and the last
to satisfy his appetite; in battle he was at the front of the ranks; in
the prayer he was the people’s leader; and in manners their model.
When a stranger came, he could not distinguish the Messenger
among the people and so he asked: “Which of you is Muham
mad?” When the people were constructing the mosque and haul
ing stones, he hauled with them, sharing with them his toil in the
building, so that some of them said:
If we sit while the Prophet labors, it will be reprehensible on
our part.
In the shade of this pattern the believers are united in order to
make their society what it seeks to be, to make it the ideal, so that
they may proclaim their message to the world. This important task
is demanded of them collectively, with solidarity and mutual agree
ment, each in his place, and each according to his capacity: the
learned one gives freely of his knowledge, the rich one of his
wealth, the one who has celebrity of his celebrity, and each from
5
whatever he has of power or ability gives freely according to his

means: and God does not burden a soul except with what He has
given it. The responsibility of the weaker ones among the people is
honored, drawing the stronger among them to help the others, and
together they are a help against whoever is other than them. So
they are friends of one another, as God said: “And the believing
men and the believing women are friends of one another, they
enjoin the right and forbid the wrong, and they establish the prayer
and pay the alms-tax (zakah), and they obey God and His Messen
ger. On those God will have mercy” (al-Tawbab, 9: 71).
A REALISTIC METHOD
The Sunnah is also a realistic method. It does not regard people as

if they were winged angels, but as human beings who eat food and
live in the markets, who have their dispositions and passions, their
necessities and their needs - just as they also have elevated spiritu
al aspirations and are elevated by them to the host of heaven. They
were created from clay and molded mud, but also there is in them
a breath from the spirit of God. Little wonder then that a human
being ascends and descends, that he makes progress and he
stumbles, that he is guided and goes astray, that he stands firm and
he deviates, that he disobeys God and he repents.
One of the Companions supposed that he had become a
hypocrite because his state when at home was at variance with his
state when in the presence of the Messenger. He rushed out till he
reached God’s Messenger and said: “Hanzalah has become a
hypocrite.” He explained to the Messenger this ‘hypocrisy’ in that,
when he was with him, his heart was softened, and his eyes moist
ened with tears, and he remembered his Lord, and the hereafter
was present to him as if he saw it with his eyes. Then, when he
returned to his house, he joked with his children, and played with
his wife, and he would forget the state that he was in before. Then
the Messenger said: “O Hanzalah! If you were able to endure in
the state you are in [when] with me, angels would be shaking
6
hands with you on the roads. But, O Hanzalah, there is a time [for
this] and a time [for that].”9
It is a familiar fact that the human being is lucid and clear, then
dozes and nods off. There is no harm in that if his time and life are
apportioned between what is good for himself and the right of his
Lord, or between this world and the hereafter, as is said in the
proverbial saying: ‘An hour for your heart, and an hour for your
Lord?
In recognition of that, the Sunnah makes allowance for human
weakness. It widens the circle of the permitted and narrows that of
the forbidden, as in the hadith: “What God has made lawful in His
Book, that is lawful; and what He has forbidden, that is forbidden;
and what He is silent about, that is exempt [from ruling]. So accept
from God His latitude. For surely God never is forgetful of any
thing.” Then he recited: “And your Lord is never forgetful”
(Maryam, 19: 64).10 In further recognition of human weakness, the
Sunnah makes permissible, according to circumstances, the neces
sities among those things normally restricted. It even makes per
missible according to necessity certain of those things normally
forbidden: for example, the Messenger permitted to two of his
Companions the wearing of silk in light of their complaining of a
skin ailment.
The Sunnah makes allowance for the reality of the human being
and it relents for him when he lapses into disobedience. It does
not close the door in the face of repentance. Rather, it opens it
wide before him so that he can knock on that door, repentant and
remorseful before his Lord. As in the hadith: “God spreads out
His hands through the night so that He may accept repentance for
the offences of the day; and He spreads out His hands through the
day so that He may accept repentance for the offences of the night
— until the sun rises in the west.”11 And in another: “By Him Who
holds my soul in His hand, if you do not sin and seek forgiveness,
He will remove you, and bring [instead] a people who do sin and
>12
seek His forgiveness, and He will forgive them.”
7
The Status of the Sunnah in Isiâai
The Sunnah makes allowance for the different conditions of

human beings, and the differences between them, whether innate
or acquired. In consideration of such differences the Messenger
would answer a single question from a number of persons with
multiple answers - so he did not apply to an old man a ruling on
the matter (pnfiamilali) appropriate to a youth; or to someone in
conditions of necessity a ruling appropriate to one in abundance
and enjoying freedom of action. Similarly, he considered the cus
toms of peoples and their diversity: so he let the Abyssinians play
with their spears in his mosque on the day of Td; and he let
cA’ishah watch them from behind his shoulder. In the same way he
urged the girls to come and play with her, as a concession to her
being young. So too he made lawful entertainments at weddings,
and at celebrations for the return of someone long absent, and
other such occasions, as a concession to the need of human beings
for amusement and recreation.1
The realities engaged by the Sunnah are too many for examples
to encompass them. But all of them inform us of the realism of
this divine Prophetic pattern.
A WAY MADE EASY
Another of the special, distinguishing qualities of the way of the

Sunnah is its facility, its convenience and tolerance. Among the
virtues of this Messenger mentioned in the earlier scriptures, in the
Torah and the Gospel, are that he “will enjoin on them that which
is right and forbid them that which is wrong; he will make lawful
for them the good things and make prohibited for them the foul
things; and he will release them from their burdens and from the
fetters that were upon them” (al-AQrafy 7: 157). So nothing exists in
the Sunnah of this Prophet that hinders the people in their
religious life (did), or oppresses them in their worldly life (dunya).
Rather, he says about himself: “Indeed I am a mercy proffered [to
you]”,14 interpreting the verse: “And We have not sent you except
as a mercy to the worlds” (al-Anbiya\ 21: 107). He said: “Assuredly
God did not commission me for affliction, nor for bringing
8
affliction to others; on the contrary, He commissioned me as an

educator and as a means of ease for others.”15
He dispatched Abu Musa and Mucadh to the Yemen with a
succinct, comprehensive instruction: “Urge ease, and do not urge
hardship; offer good hope [lit. glad tidings], and do not provoke
aversion; listen to one another, and do not provoke differences.”16
By way of teaching his Community, he said: “Urge ease, and do
not urge hardship; offer good hope, and do not provoke
aversion.” ' To his Companions, after they became agitated with a
Bedouin who had urinated in the mosque, he said: “You are com
missioned as people who make things easy, not as those who make
things hard.” And about his Messengership, he said: “Assuredly I
have been commissioned [to impart] a tolerant true-religion.”19 He
said: “O people! [what is incumbent] upon you is actions that you
can bear. For surely God does not tire [cease to persevere] until
you tire [cease to persevere].”20
The Prophet made things easy in light of the pattern of the
Qur’an, which proclaims that God desires ease for His slaves, not
hardship, and that He did not lay upon them, in their religious
duties, any distress. Thus, He said in the conclusion of the verse of
purification: “God does not desire to lay upon you any distress”
{al-Maidah. 5: 6); and after the verses on the forbidden degrees in
marriage: “God desires to make (the observance of His decrees)
light for you, for man was created weak” (a/-Nisd\ 4: 28).
So the Prophet warned against pedantry and excess in the
religion. It is why he did not prescribe celibacy and seclusion from
the world or prohibit the good things of life. Rather, he called for
the enjoyment of life with balance. He said: “God is beautiful and
He loves beauty.”21 “God loves to see traces of His favors on His
servant.”22 He prescribed concessions and making duties lighter in
the rites of purification, prayer, fasting and pilgrimage. So he
prescribed tayammum in place of wudu\ he prescribed the short
ening and the combining of prayers; and the prayer sitting or lying
down or by gesture, depending on the ailment and the person’s
capacity; and he prescribed breaking the fast in Ramadan for the
9
invalid and the traveler, for the pregnant woman and the wet-
nurse. He said in the case of the man who saw people shading him
and spraying him with water while traveling: “There is no virtue in
fasting while traveling,” that is, while traveling in the kind of
journey that is strenuous and exhausting.
He permitted the combining of the %t<hr and Qasr and the maghrib
and zisha prayers while in Madinah and without their being cons
training circumstances such as traveling or rain. When Ibn cAbbas,
the narrator of the hadith, was asked: “What did he intend by
that?” He said: “He intended to not distress his Community.”24 In
other words, he purposed to lift the distress from his Community.
He said: “God loves that you act according to His indulgence, just
as He hates that you act in disobedience to Him.”25 And: “God
loves that you act according to His indulgence, just as He loves
that you [act according to] His decrees.”26
Once, some of his Companions complained to him that cAmr
ibn al-cAs had fallen into janabah (the state of major ritual impurity)
and then prayed with them after doing tayammuni but not taking a
bath. When he asked Amr about that he said that the night had
been severely cold, adding: “And I had in mind God’s saying,
Exalted is He: ‘And do not kill yourselves — surely God is ever
merciful to you’ (a/-Nisa\ 4: 29).” On hearing this, God’s Mes
senger smiled - an indication of his acceptance of cAmr’s action.
In another incident: a man suffered wounds, then he fell into
janabah. Some people ruled for him that he be given a bath in spite
of his wounds; his condition was aggravated as a result, and he
died. When the Prophet was informed, he said: “They killed him!
May God kill them! Why do they not ask when they do not know?
For the only cure for widessness is asking a question.”27
II
THE MUSLIMS’ DUTY TO THE SUNNAH
The Sunnah of the Prophet is, as we said, the detailed pattern for
the life of the individual Muslim and of the Muslim society, and
10
represents the Qur’an interpreted, and Islam embodied in life.

Among the Muslims’ duties is that they should know this detailed
Prophetic pattern, with its distinguishing features, namely its com
prehensiveness and completeness, its balance, its realism, and its
facility. They should know what is clearly displayed therein of the
virtues of deep-rooted piety, noble humanity, and authentic
morals. And they should take him as the good example to follow
in the entirety of their lives:
Assuredly there is in the Messenger a good example for one
who anticipates with hope God and the Last Day and
remembers God much. (al-Ahâby 33: 21)
And whatever the Messenger gives to you, take hold of it, and
whatever he forbids you from, reject it. {al-¥Lashi\ 59: 7)
Say: If indeed you love God then follow me. God will love you
and forgive you your sins. (/il-cIwranf 3: 31)
This makes it incumbent on Muslims to learn how to become
proficient in insight into this Sunnah, how to apply it, with under
standing and proper decorum, as the best generations of this Com
munity applied it, who studied in the school of Muhammad, the
Companions and their Successors, with sincerity. They excelled in
learning, thereafter they put into action what they learned, and they
excelled in action, thereafter they taught the leaders of Islam, and
they excelled in teaching.
The foremost crisis facing the Muslims in this time is the crisis
in thought. In my opinion it takes precedence over the crisis in
conscience. It is always the thought that sets bounds to perception
and sketches out the way. Then comes movement, after that,
reconciling perception with what the thought sketched out. What
most clearly represents that crisis in thought is the crisis in insight
into the Sunnah and in application of it. This is especially the case
among some movements in the Islamic re-awakening. The more
discerning are looking to those movements and hanging their
hopes upon them, and the heads of the Community the world
over are turned toward them in expectation. Often, those move
ments present issues from the direction of their wrong under-
11
standing of the Sunnah. Their view of it is a deficient view. It all

but limits the Sunnah to outward shows and formalisms, without
penetrating to the understanding of the wisdom of the Prophetic
pattern, whose special qualities we recounted earlier.
WARNING AGAINST THREE EVILS
It is narrated from the Messenger that he indicated that knowledge

of Prophethood and the legacy of the Message would be targeted
by extremists, and by falsifiers and by the ignorant. This has come
in what Ibn Jarir narrated, also Tammam in his Fawa’id, and Ibn
cAdi, and others, from the Prophet. He said: “From every genera
tion its just and upright [ones] will carry this knowledge, expelling
from it the distortion of the extremists, the deviation of the falsifi-
no
ers, and the interpretation of the ignorant.” Those are indeed
three destructive sledgehammers, each a danger to the Prophet’s
legacy.
a) The distortion of the extremists

Distortion originates in extremism and obduracy, in shunning the
moderation which distinguishes this religion, the tolerance which is
an attribute of this righteous community, and the facility which
characterizes the obligations in the Law. It is extremism that,
before us, destroyed the People of the Book, some of whom went
to excess in matters of creed, or of worship, or of conduct. They
expelled from the religion its facility, prescribed what God never
urged, and prohibited what God made lawful, thus burdening
people with obligations and covenants that God never made in
cumbent on them. The Qur’an recorded that against them when it
said: “Say: ‘O People of the Book, do not go to extremes in your
religion without right; and do not follow the caprices of a nation
that certainly went astray before and caused many to stray, and
strayed from the level path’” (al-Md'idah, 5: 77).
Ibn cAbbas narrated from the Prophet: “Beware yourselves
against extremism in the religion, for certainly those before you
were destroyed by extremism in religion.”29 Ibn Mascud narrated
12
from him that he said, and said three times: “The obdurate were
destroyed.”30
What is noteworthy here is that the hadith deems extremism to
be distorting the religion. That is because it turns it away from its
characteristic temperament of ease, facility and moderation to
another temperament, burdening the people to excess and bringing
hardship upon them.
b) The deviations offalsifiers

The deviations are those to which the falsifiers resorted in order to
bring into the Prophetic pattern what is not of it, and to attach to
it certain novelties and innovations which its temperament does
not accept, its creed and its Law strongly reject, and its roots and
branches shy away from. Now the falsifiers proved incapable of
adding anything to the Qur’an, since it has been memorized by the
hearts, inscribed in the written copies, and recited by the tongues,
of the believers. So they reckoned their route to deviations in the
Sunnah would be smooth, that it would be possible for them to
say ‘the Messenger of God said’ without any evidence.
But the critical scholars of the Community and guardians of the
Sunnah lay in wait for them at every lookout, and shut up against
them every loophole leading to deviations. They did not accept a
hadith without a sanad (chain of narrators, pl. isnad), and without
scrutinizing its narrators one by one until his person and character
were known from birth to death. They would find out about his
teachers, associates and students. They would evaluate his trust
worthiness and fear of God (taqwa), his exactitude in preserving
what he heard, his consonance with trusted well-known reports,
and the quality of his solitary reports on unfamiliar matters.
For this reason the scholars said: “The isnad is part of the
religion.” For, without an isnad, whoever wished might say what
ever he wished! They likened seeking knowledge without seeking
its isnad to ‘looking for firewood in the dark’. So they did not
accept any hadith except that whose sanad was thoroughly con
nected from its beginning to its end, reliably so, and from fair-
13
minded narrators with exactitude in preserving what came to them,

with no gaps evident or hidden, and with the requirement of its
being safe from all irregularity or defect or objectionable content.
This exactitude in the quest for the isnad, with its criteria and its
qualifications, is among the special qualities of the Community of
the Muslims. They were far ahead of contemporary civilization in
that it was they who established the foundations of the metho
dology of scientific history.
However, what is regrettable is that the Community circulated
false hadiths without source and isnad. It is regrettable also that the
knowledgeable scholars were adjudged to have been fabricating or
falsifying them. Moreover, this became common currency among
the general public. For example, the hadiths such as those about
women, like: “the burial alive of daughters is among the honorable
actions”; and “consult with [women], then oppose them”; and “do
not allocate upper-story rooms for [women] and do not teach
them writing”, etc. Certain of these hadiths even violated the creed
of tawbid. For example: “If one of you has believed firmly in a
stone, it will surely benefit him.” And some are false superstitions,
for example that the rose is created from the perspiration of the
Prophet.
This situation prompted a number of the scholars of the
Community to compile books of fabricated hadiths so as to warn
against them, and especially since the books of moral guidance,
softening of the hearts, tasawwuf (Sufism), and others, are filled
with them - even some books of hadith themselves. Among those
scholars were: al-Saghanl, Ibn Jawzi, al-Suyuti, al-Qarl, Ibn cAraq,
al-Shawkanl, and al-Laknawi, and al-Albani in our time. So it is an
obligation to make use of their books.
c) Interpretation of the ignorant
Wrong interpretation is that by which the reality of Islam is de

formed, in which words are twisted from their proper contexts,
and by which the main elements of Islam are diminished so that
what issues from its fundamentals and directives is pushed out.
14
Just as the people of falsehood deviated so as to bring into Islam

what is no part of it, these did so by deforming its priorities, put
ting back that whose right is to come forward, and bringing for
ward that whose right is to be put back.
Wrong interpretation and rotten understanding are a preoc
cupation of those who are ignorant of this religion, who never im
bibed its spirit, and never pierced with insight to its realities. They
do not have anything firmly-rooted in knowledge, nor impartiality
towards the truth. They do not refrain from deviation and perver
sion in understanding. They refrain from the Qur’anic verses with
explicit injunctions, the muhkamaty and run after the mutashabihat,
the allegorical or figurative verses. They do so for the sake of dis
sension, of interpreting those verses in accordance with the caprice
that leads astray from the path of God.
That is indeed the interpretation ‘of the ignorant’ — though they
put on the garments of learned scholars, or present themselves
with the titles of wise philosophers. It is obligatory to be alert to it,
and warn against it, and to put in place the discipline necessary for
protection from falling into it. The majority of the doomed sects
and factions, split off from the Community, from its creed and its
Law, and the groups deviated from the level way, were doomed by
such error in interpretation.
At this point it is worthwhile to turn to Ibn al-Qayyim’s en
lightened discourse on the need for quality of insight about the
Messenger of God. He mentioned this in the book We cite
from it what he said:
It is necessary that one understand from the Messenger his
intent without exaggeration and without abridgement, for his
speech does not carry that which it cannot sustain, nor falls
short of his intent or his purpose in giving guidance or expla
nation. Neglect of that and abandonment of it has assuredly
achieved straying in error from the right direction, which is not
known except by God. Rather, wrong understanding about God and
His Messenger is the root of every heretical innovation and
error growing up within Islam. Indeed, it is the root of every
failure in the roots and branches [of the religion], especially if
conjoined with wrong purpose. Wrong understanding was in
15
certain matters abetted by the leaders despite their good
purpose, and because of their evil purpose by those who
follow [the leaders]. O the tribulation [that has visited] the
religion and its people! And God is appealed to for help! The
Qadaris, the Murji’is, the Kharijis, the Muctazilis, the Jahmis,
and the Rafidis, and all the rest of the factions of the heretics,
appeared [and] caused discord only because of wrong understanding
about God and His Messenger. [This situation persisted] until
the religion became, in the hands of most of the people, that
to which these misunderstandings led. But that [religion], as
the Companions understood it, and those who followed them,
from God and His Messenger, was then forsaken and those
people did not turn to it nor pay attention to it [ ] so far
so that if you peruse the writing [of these people] from its
beginning to its end, you do not find that its author has, in
[even] a single place, understood from God and His Mes
senger his intent as it should be [understood]. And this only he
knows who has known what [opinion] is held by the people,
and laid it out beside what has come from the Messenger. As
for one who has reversed the matter — thus, laid out what has
come from the Messenger beside what he has believed with
conviction and come to profess, and blindly followed therein
the conjecture of whoever is more attractive to him — then it is
not gaining a thing to speak with him. So reject him and what
he has chosen for himself, and assign to him what he has
assigned to himself. And give thanks to Him who has kept you
untainted by this.
Bad interpretation of the texts — whether a text of the Qur’an
or of the Sunnah - is a long-standing evil. Muslims have suffered
from it, as the communities before them suffered. It steered them
into deviation from the religion of God, distortion of His radiant
words, and the derailment of the purposes He intended thereby,
namely to lead humankind out of darkness into light.
The Muslims suffered from the interpretations of the differing
sects, each of whom strove by tricks to direct the text so as to fit
their sectarian doctrine, without concern for critical principles and
the decisive basic rules of Law or language or reasoning. Among
them were some who went beyond all bounds. For example, the
Batinis, who displaced words from their meanings, and walked off
with them on a road undisciplined by reason or tradition.
16
THE MUSLIMS’ DUTY TO THE SUNN/\H
Hence the differing interpretations of the rationalist schools of

philosophers and theologians, and most particularly the Muctazilis.
Hence too, among the jurists, those who forced the interpretation
of the texts — notably the texts of the Sunnah — in support of their
schools’ doctrines, which they captured with guile. They adopted
their schools’ doctrines as sources and the texts as their branches.
This was a dangerous invention. For it is obligatory that schools or
doctrines refer back for authority and direction to the texts, not
the other way around. The basic principle is that the non-infallible
is referred back for authority and direction to the infallible: “And if
you have a dispute on a thing refer it to God and His Messenger if
you are believers in God and the Last Day” (a/-Nisa\ 4: 59).
Interpretation is surely indispensable, but it has its place, its
conditions, and its discipline. We have set this out in detail else
where.31
The cause of some of the bad interpretation was ignorance or
absent-mindedness or the pursuit of conjecture — in other words,
indolence of mind or deficiency in knowledge. Then there is
another kind of bad interpretation whose cause is the pursuit of
caprice. An example of that is what Ahmad ibn Hanbal narrated:
that a hadith of cAmmar ibn Yasir was mentioned to Mucawiyah —
“The group in rebellion will kill you”. Then he said to cAmr ibn al-
cAs: “Only the one who brought him killed him” meaning SAIL
This is an interpretation to be rejected from every aspect. Other
wise, we must say that the Messenger was himself the slayer of
whoever was martyred with him in his expeditions, such as his
uncle Hamzah and Muscab ibn TJmayr and others. This inter
pretation is without doubt one whose motive is caprice.
The interpretations of the religious and theological sects are
diverse. Their motive was only to support the school doctrine,
even if by means of affectation and arbitrariness. In our time we
have found the people inconsistent in embracing the authentic
hadiths, even the verses of the noble Qur’an — so they may
interpret them with meanings that are strange for them. This they
do for the caprice in their souls. And caprice makes blind and deaf:
17
“And who is further astray than one who follows his caprice
without the guidance from God?” (al-Qasas, 28: 50).
m
PRINCIPLES FOR THE APPLICATION OF THE SUNNAH
It is necessary for one who applies the Sunnah of the Prophet to

expel from it the deviations of the falsifiers, the distortions of the
extremists, and the interpretations of the ignorant, and adhere to
the few matters regarded as the fundamental principles in this
field.
1: VERIFYING THE FIRMNESS OF THE SUNNAH
The first such principle is that one verify the proof of the sunnah
and its soundness according to the comparison, scientific method
and painstaking detail, which the learned scholars applied to such
proofs. This includes both sanad and matn (the academic apparatus
and the text proper of the hadith), and equally whether it be the
Sunnah of speech or deed or acceptance. The diligent researcher
must have recourse to the people of renown and experience in this
field of work. They were the assayers of the hadith, who exhausted
their lives in study of it and teaching of it, in distinguishing the
sound from the unsound, the accepted from the rejected. “And
none can inform you like [One] Aware” (al-Fdtir, 35: 14).
The scholars established for the hadith a science well-founded
in its roots and well-ordered in its branches. It is the science of the
principles of hadith (usul al-hadith}, or the idiom and terminology of
hadith (mustalah al-haditty. It holds for the hadith the place that usul
al-fiqh holds for fiqh. In point of fact it is an assemblage of disci
plines. Ibn al-Salah expanded it to 65 ‘kinds’. After him others
added to that, until al-Suyuti (in Tadrib al-Raivl Qald Taqrib al-
Nawand) numbered as many as 93 ‘kinds’.
It is well-known that some questions in this science of usul al-
hadith are agreed upon and on others there is difference of opinion.
18
The obligation on the learned is to be reserved on the disputed

matters, and give preference therein according to the balance of
evidence. Here, I report giving more weight to the approach of the
forerunners among the scholars of the Community in the most
resplendent of its epochs, over the approach of the later scholars. I
do so because the former were more strict and bold in rejecting
weakness in the hadiths, and more often firmly established than
the latter.
They discussed a number of issues in the science. Among them
are the following:
Ziyadat al-thiqah ft al-hadith: additions in the hadith by a reliable
narrator. Up to what point should one accept the additional
material reported from such a narrator?
Taqwiyyatu al-hadith bi-taâddudi al-turuqi al-daQlfah\ strengthening a
hadith by the addition of weak routes of transmission. Which
hadith is strengthened by such addition? Which category of the
weak may one use for such addition?
Hadith mawqiif. where the chain of narration goes back to a
Companion and stops there, not going higher to the Prophet
himself. Then, the question of its being understood as (as if
from the Prophet himself) when its subject-matter has to do with
that in which there is no room for opinion (ray). But some of the
scholars permitted latitude in that, in hadiths in which it is possible
that there is room for opinion.34
Madniun-. study of the topic of the hadith, or (in the
terminology) its matn or content. Some of what the forerunners
accepted in accordance with the characteristics of their epoch is
not reckoned acceptable today in accordance with the
development of knowledge in our epoch.
2: PROFICIENCY IN UNDERSTANDING THE SUNNAH
The second principle is that one be proficient in understanding the

Prophetic text. Understanding it means understanding in harmony
with the meanings indicated by the language; in the light of the
path (the general intent) of the hadith, the particular circumstance
19
and aim of it; in the shade of the Qur’anic and Prophetic texts in
turn; and in the framework of the general principles and the
totality of the purposes of Islam. All that, together with the neces
sity of distinguishing what has come by way of the preaching of
the Message, and what has not come in that way — according to the
distinction of the learned doctor of Islam from India Ahmad ibn
cAbd al-Rahlm, known by the name Shah Wall Allah al-Dahlawi (d.
1176 AH). That distinction can be put in a different way (according
to the expression of our teacher Mahmud Shaltut, former Shaykh
al-Azhar): what was part of the legislative Sunnah and what was
not legislative; then, within the legislative Sunnah, what has attri
butes of general and permanent import, and what has attributes of
particular and time-bound import. Confusion of the two kinds is
among the worst defects (al-afat) in understanding the Sunnah.
Such defects did not come about as a result of the Sunnah not
being firmly established - it was already firmly established and au
thenticated — but as a result of errors in understanding. Such error
is an ancient disease — it touched the Sunnah just as it touched the
Qur’an. It is what prompted the truth-seekers among our scholars
to warn against error in understanding from God and from His
Messenger.
3: THE TEXT BEING SAFE FROM CONTRADICTION

BY WHAT IS STRONGER
The third principle is that one assure oneself of the safety of the
text from contradiction by what is stronger than it. "What is
stronger than if may be a text from the Qur’an, or other hadiths,
more abundant in number of sources, or more sound in proof of
their authenticity, or more consonant with original principles (usut)9
or more fitted to the purpose of the Legislative measures. Or it
may be the general purposes of the Law, which have acquired
definitiveness because they are not derived from one or two texts,
but from an assemblage of them, giving the advantage — through
conjoining some with others, together with the authenticity of
their proofs - of certainty and definitiveness.
20
This is connected to an important legal issue in both usul al-fiqh

and usul al-hadith, that is, al-taârud n>a al-tarjih (contradiction and
preference on balance of evidence). The texts in outward form
sometimes contradict each other but in their reality are not contra
dictory. It is incumbent on the jurist or scholar to remove the
apparent contradiction, wherever possible, by reconciling the texts
or, failing that, by judging on the balance of evidence. Al-Suyuti
stated in Tadrih al-Rawi that judgments on the balance of evidence
are of more than one hundred kinds.
THE SOURCE OF BOTH LEGISLATION AND GUIDANCE
The Sunnah is the second source of Islam for its Legislation and
its guidance. Jurists refer to it to discover the Legal injunctions. In
the same way preachers and educators do so, to draw from it
inspiring meanings, worthy instructions and profound wisdom,
and ways to persuade people to the good and dissuade them from
the evil.
So that the Sunnah can carry out this important duty, one must
give greater weight to its being proven to be from the Prophet.
This is expressed in the idiom of the science of hadith as the
hadith’s being attested as sahih (authentic, sound) or hasan (good).
The sahih is equivalent to the rank of ‘excellent’ or ‘very good’ (as
such terms are understood for university degrees); the hasan to the
rank of ‘good’ or ‘acceptable’. Beyond that, the higher level of the
hasan is considered as being close to the sahih\ in the same way its
lower level is considered close to the daQif (weak).
A sahih hadith is one narrated by a narrator well-known for
probity and for the completeness of his preserving from another
narrator, from the beginning of the sanad to its end, when it
connects to God’s Messenger, without gap or rupture. Also, a sahih
hadith is safe from irregularities and defects.
Thus, one does not accept a hadith narrated by a narrator of
unknown origin or whose circumstances are unknown, or whose
probity, or the completeness of whose preserving, are doubted. Or
if there is a gap or rupture in any link of his chain of narrators. Or
21
if the hadith reported from him is irregular (shadhdty in that it

contradicts a reliable narration from someone more trustworthy
than himself. Or if there is in the hadith some hint of defect or
something else objectionable in its sanad or its rnatn (the text being
reported).
Let no one suppose about this knowledge, or about the people
who conveyed it, that the Community’s scholars used to accept
anything from whoever might bring it to them, that one would
come to them and say ‘from So-and-So from So-and-So from
God’s Messenger’, and they would answer: ‘You have spoken the
truth!’ Rather, about everyone who came to them with a hadith,
they were sure to ask a number of questions: Which circle of
scholars and students is he from? Who are his teachers? Who are
his fellow-students, who accompanied him in the study of the
science? What are his character and his conduct in the view of his
teachers, his companions and his pupils? Do people attest to his
uprightness and his fear of God (taqwUft To his thoroughness in
preserving? Did he continue so throughout his life or did he
change in the last years of his life? Who among his pupils studied
under him in his old age, and who studied under him before he
changed? And so on.
The learned scholars of the Community are in agreement that
hadiths adduced in Legal injunctions affecting actions, which is a
pillar of the science of fiqh and a foundation of the lawful and the
unlawful, must be sahib or basan. However, they disagree in respect
of the hadiths that are related to the merits of actions, invocations,
what softens the hearts, targhib (inspiring longing for God) or tarhib
(inspiring fear of God), and the like, which do not enter unequivo
cally under the heading of Legislation.
Among the learned scholars of the early generations (salaf) there
were some who were relaxed about the reports of this class of
hadiths, and did not see harm in publicizing them. But this being
relaxed is not absolute, as some have supposed. Rather, it has its
grounds and its conditions. However, many abused this relaxation
of standards (for hadiths not connected with actions stipulated by
22
the Law), and thereby veered people off the level path, and
polluted the wellspring of pure Islam.
The books of preaching and what softens the hearts, and the
books of Sufism, abound in this kind of hadiths. However, we are
of the opinion that most of them are not satisfied with weak or
flimsy hadiths. Rather, these books follow sayings that have no
source or sanad^ some of them even contradict and belie God’s
Messenger. Hadith scholars warned against such hadiths, and
composed books clearly setting out their spuriousness. They were
unanimous on the prohibition of narrating such weak or false
reports, except in order to expose their falsehood and nullity. As a
result of their work, there was no circulation of them among the
mass of people.
The same kind of flimsy and rejected sayings are found in many
books of tafslr, to the extent that they habitually presented the
notorious fabricated saying on the merits of certain Qur’anic
surahs. They did so even though senior hadith experts (huffa$ had
exposed its defect and explained its invalidity, leaving no further
excuse for anyone to report it or blacken the pages of his book
with it. Yet the likes of al-Zamakhsharl, al-Thacalibi, al-Baydawi,
Ismacll Haqqi, and others persisted in presenting the false hadith.
A DEFENCE OF FABRICATED HADITHS REFUTED
More common than such presentation of the false hadith is to find

a Qur’an commentator — for example the author of Ruh al-Bayan —
willing to justify quoting the hadith and to defend it. This author,
at the end of the commentary on Surat al-Taivbah. with an enviable
daring, goes so far as to say:
Know that, about the hadiths that the author of al-Kashshdf
cited at the end of this surah (and al-Qadi al-Baydawi and al-
Mawla Abu al-Sacud followed him [in doing so], may God
have mercy on them, the cream of Qur’anic commentators),
the learned scholars often [had] discussion [and differences],
with some [of the scholars] affirming [those hadiths], others
rejecting them on the basis of their being fabricated, like Imam
al-Saghanl and others. [ ]
23
What is apparent to this poor slave of God, may God be
indulgent with what is decreed for him, is that those hadiths
are bound to be either sound and strong, or enfeebled and
weak, or falsified and fabricated.
If they are sound and strong, then no discussion on them
[is proper or necessary]. But if their isnads are weak, then the
hadith scholars have agreed that action is permitted on the
weak hadith for taighib and tarhib, as in al-Nawawi’s al-Adhkar
and cAli ibn Burhan al-Din al-Halabl’s Insan al^XJyiin and Ibn
Fakhr al-DIn al-Rumi’s al-Asrdr al-Muhanmiadiyyah^ and other
[works].
If they are fabricated: then it has been mentioned by al-
Hakim and others that a man from among the ascetics took it
on himself to compose hadiths on the virtue of the Qur’an and
its surahs, and then it was said to him: “Why do you do this?”
He said: “I saw people renouncing the Qur’an, and I longed to
inspire them to it.” Then it was said to him that the Prophet
said: “One who has with premeditation forged a lie against me,
let him provide for his seat in the Fire.” Then he said: “I did
not lie against him; rather, I lied for him.”
He meant: that lying against him leads to the destruction
of the foundations of Islam and undermines the Law and the
injunctions, and is not like the other — lying for him. [That, the
lying for him,] is for encouragement to following his Law and
following in his tracks in his path. Shaykh Tzz al-Din ibn cAbd
al-Salam said: “Speaking is a means to [attain] objectives. Then
every praiseworthy objective may arrive at its objective by
means of either of the two, [speaking] truth and [speaking]
falsehood. Now [speaking] falsehood is prohibited. Then, if
arriving at [the objective] is possible by [speaking] falsehood
and not [possible] by [speaking] the truth, then telling a lie in
that [instance] is permitted (mi<bab) provided the attaining of
that objective is permitted, and it is obligatory (wajib) provided
the objective is obligatory. So this regulates it [i.e. this is the
ruling principle in such situations].”35
Here we cannot help but express our consternation by saying Id

hawla wald qtmvata ilia bi Allah and inna li Allah wa inna ilayhi rdjiQun\
There is no might or power except with God’ and To God we
belong and to Him we are returning’.
One marvels at the sin of pride that publishes the like of this
discourse from a man self-enrolled among commentators on the
24
Book of God. Some people have described him as faqlh (a jurist,

one who understands the Law of Islam) and usull (an expert in the
usul or principles of fiqh)! But what understanding (jiqty does this
man have who is ignorant of what are, according to the exacting
scholars, the primary things? This shaykh (he has a Sufi leaning)
does not know that God perfected the religion for us, and thereby
completed the blessing upon us. So we do not recognize any need
for someone to complete it for us by manufacturing hadiths of his
own, still less that he presume to correct God, or to strengthen his
Messenger. In effect he says to the Prophet: ‘I lie for you so as to
make up for you the shortcomings of your religion, and I fill up
any gaps in it with the hadiths I contrive.’
As for the statement of Ibn cAbd al-Salam: it is being taken
quite out of context. Among what it permits are certain sorts of
speaking — such as deception in war, and making peace between
two parties, and giving help to an innocent fleeing a tyrant, and
other situations like that mentioned appropriately in the context.
In any case, the statement of Ibn cAbd al-Salam itself rebuts the
claim of this claimant. For Ibn cAbd al-Salam has stated that for
every praiseworthy objective that may be arrived at by both telling
the truth and telling lies, telling lies is prohibited. So here, in the
context of this discussion, he would say: if all of the desired,
preferred objectives which the fabricated hadiths persuade to, and
all of the repudiated objectives which they dissuade from, are
without doubt capable of attainment by means of hadiths that are
sahlh and hasan, then falsehood is therefore prohibited, indeed it is
one of the greatest of the great sins.
REJECTION OF THE SAHlH IS EQUAL TO ACCEPTANCE OF

THE FABRICATED
Just as accepting invalid and fabricated hadiths and attributing

them to God’s Messenger is an offence, an absurdity and danger,
so too, equal to it in nullity, is rejecting the sahib and established
hadiths — out of caprice or pride or presuming to know better than
God and His Messenger. Doing so entails an evil conjecture about
25
the Community, its scholars, and the leaders of its best generations
and noblest summits. In time past, the mass of people tended to
accept weak and fabricated hadiths. As for the general public in
this time: they tend to reject the authenticated hadiths - with no
knowledge, no guidance, and no enlightened book. We do not
mean by ‘general public’ the illiterate and those like them — for
those are not the ones thrusting themselves into what they are not
good at. We mean by ‘general public’ only the self-exalted and
deluded ones — who ‘never leave a house by the door’ (that is, who
love indirection and complication), who never strengthen knowl
edge by referring to its sources, who know the outer husk of
knowledge, grabbing it by snatches from secondary references, or
from orientalists and missionaries and their like. The important
thing here is that rejection of a sahib hadith is, in the religion, like
the acceptance of a rejected hadith: they are on a par.
Acceptance of falsified hadiths enters into the religion what is
not of it; rejection of authenticated hadiths drives out of the
religion what is of it. Without doubt, both are reproached and
censured alike - acceptance of the false and rejection of the true.
THE DOUBTS OF THE OLD ENEMIES OF THE SUNNAH
Since ancient times heretics and innovators have raised doubts and
allegations in refutation of the Sunnah. The learned scholars and
truth-seekers turned upon them to ruin and frustrate them. One
such scholar was al-Shatibi:
Imam al-Shatibi said:
Within the insurgency of heretical innovators [certain] factions

have at times justified rejection of hadiths with [the argument]
that they avail themselves of conjecture, and conjecture is
censured in the Qur’an - as in His saying, Exalted is He:
“They follow but a conjecture and what their selves fancy” (al-
Najw, 53: 23); and He said: “They follow only conjecture and
conjecture does not avail a thing against the truth” (53: 28);
and what has come with that meaning [in other verses]. [They
exaggerate in this line of argument] to the point that they make
26
permitted what God has made forbidden by the tongue of His

Prophet, though it is not made forbidden in the Qur’an textually.
They surely purposed thereby to affirm themselves in, from what
was appealing to them, some notions of their own minds.
The conjecture meant in the verse, as also in the hadith, is
other than what they have alleged. We have found that it has
three means [ways in which it is used and can be looked at]:
'Firstly. Conjecture about the usiil [root principles or funda
mentals] of the religion. According to the scholars it is of no
use because of the likely possibility of [the truth’s] being op
posed to [what] the one conjecturing has conjectured. [A con
jecture is by definition either true or false; the mere possibility
of its being false makes it useless for establishing the funda
mentals of the Law]. Conjecture in respect of the furifi [the
branches or derived matters in the Law] is different. For, ac
cording to specialists in the Law, it is acted upon because of
the evidence that demonstrates it. So conjecture is censured
except for what is connected to the Ji<riFy and this is correct —
the learned scholars have mentioned it in this context [i.e. they
have allowed a conditional role for conjecture in connection
with the details of the Law, not its fundamentals].
Secondly. Conjecture prefers, out of two contradictory [pos
sibilities], one over the other, with no demonstration for the
[one] preferred. [There is] no doubt that it is censured because
it is an arbitrary judgment. For that reason, “conjecture” is
followed in the verse by “the selfs fancy” in His saying: “They
follow but a conjecture and what their selves fancy.” So they
incline to a matter on bare prejudice and fancy. A conjecture
whose steps are demonstrated is different. Then it is not cen
sured in the generality [of cases] because it moves out of [bare]
following fancy. For that [reason], it is affirmed and acted
upon, according to its requirement, whenever it is fitting to be
acted upon, for example as in the furifi.
Thirdly. Conjecture is of two varieties: [1] conjecture depen
dent upon definitive principle. These are the conjectures [that
are] acted upon in the Law wherever they occur, since [such
conjecture] is dependent upon a well-known principle, and it is
of a species whose kind is well-known. And [2] conjecture not
dependent upon a definitive [principle]; rather, it is based on
something other than principle, and it is censured — as has
been set out [above]. If [it is] dependent on a[nother] con
jecture like itself, and if that conjecture is based also on a
27
definitive [principle], then as before. [On the other hand, if it is
based] upon something other [than definitive principle], then it
is censured.
So, by the implication of all [the foregoing]: for a solitary
report with an authenticated sanad — which must be dependent
upon a principle definitive in the Law — acceptance of it is
obligatory', and so we accept it absolutely. In the same way, as
the conjectures of the unbelievers are without basis on any
thing, then one must reject them, and their meriting being
considered is non-existent. (This last response is borrowed
from an original whose full exposition is in Kitab al-Mnwdfaqaty
and to God belongs the praise.)
Some of those who have strayed surely go too far in
rejection of the hadiths. They rejected the opinion of [one
who] relied upon what is in [the hadiths] to the extent of
unjustly attacking [his] opinion as [being] opposed to reason,
and accounted the one who said [it] as insane.
Abu Bakr ibn al-cArabi has narrated about some whom he
met in the East who are deniers of the ndyah [the believers’
seeing of God in the Garden]: that it was said to [a denier of
the ndya^. “Is unbelief attributed to one who affirms the [pos
sibility of] ndyah of the Creator, or not?” Then [this denier]
said: “No! For he has said what is unacceptable to reason, and
whoever has said what is unacceptable to reason has not
unbelieved.” Ibn al-cArabi said: “Then this is our status ac
cording to them [i.e. they think us mad]!” So let the fortunate
reflect on what the pursuit of fancy leads to. May God protect
us from that by His favor.36
Ibn Qutaybah has mentioned in his book Ta'wil Mukhtalif al-

Hadith many of the specious doubts, severally and individually,
which the enemies of the Sunnah stirred up. He invalidated them,
specious doubt by specious doubt, nor did he take leave of them
until he transformed their fire to ashes.
THE DOUBTS OF NEW ENEMIES OF THE SUNNAH
In our times new enemies of the Sunnah have arisen. Some are
from outside our lands, like the missionaries and the orientalists.
Others are from within our lands, from among those tutored by
missionaries and orientalists, or influenced by them, directly or
28
indirectly. These people have made use of the weaponry of older

adversaries of the Sunnah and joined to it new weaponry inspired
by the culture of the present. They called on these and those with
their ‘cavalry’ and their ‘infantry’ against the Sunnah and its books,
its narrators and its methods. They have been helped in that by
places and institutions with power and shrewd policies. However,
God has sent for the Sunnah, from among great contemporary
scholars, those who, with overwhelming truths and telling
arguments on their side, have made a stand against the doubts of
the skeptics, and their vanities and frauds. “So the truth was
brought to pass and what they were doing made obsolete, and
there they were vanquished and overturned [to become] the
37
ridiculed” {al-A.zrafy 7: 118—19).
BEING CONTENT WITH THE GUIDANCE OF THE QUR’AN
Among the doubts of the enemies of the Sunnah, which they

repeat continually, is their claim that the Qur’an suffices without
the Sunnah — in consideration of the fact that there is detailed ex
position in it of everything, as God said: “We revealed to you the
' Book as a clarification of everything and as a guidance and as a
mercy and good tidings for those who have surrendered” (al-Nahl,
16: 89). And He said: “Assuredly in their story there is a lesson for
people of understanding. It is not a made-up story; rather, it is a
confirmation of that which is before you and a detailed exposition
of everything, and a guidance and a mercy for a people who
believe” (Yiisuj\ 12: 111). They make the same claim also because
(they say) God vouchsafed the preservation for us of the Qur’an,
but not that of the Sunnah.
The answer to that claim is that the Sunnah is without a doubt
the clarification of the Qur’an. It is that which details what is
summary in the Qur’an, particularizes what is general in it, and
qualifies what is absolute in it. If the Sunnah were not there, we
would not know the details of the rites (prayer, fasting, alms-tax,
pilgrimage) and other necessary and essential duties. For this
reason, God said: “And We are revealing to you the Remembrance
29
so that you make clear to the people what We have revealed to

them, and perhaps they may reflect” (al-Nahl, 16: 44). Moreover, it
is the Qur’an itself that has enjoined on us obedience to the
Messenger, just as it has enjoined on us obedience to God: “Say:
‘Obey God and obey the Messenger’” (a/-Niir, 24: 54); “O
believers: Obey God and obey the Messenger, and the people of
authority among you; and if you have a dispute on any matter,
refer it to God and the Messenger” (a/-Nisd\ 4: 59). The scholars
were unanimous on the point that referring to God means
referring to His Book, and referring to the Messenger means
referring to his Sunnah. God said: “Let those be warned who
deviate from his [the Messenger’s] commands lest a trial afflict
them or a painful punishment afflict them” (ai-Niir, 24: 63).
As for the claim that God has preserved only the Qur’an —
namely, that He guarantees its preservation, and does not guarantee the
preservation of the Sunnah. This has already been explained by al-
Shatibi in al-Muwdfaqat-. that the preservation of the Qur’an vouch
safes that of the Sunnah because the latter is the exposition of the
former. For the preservation of what is clarified necessarily entails
the preservation of what is clarifying it.
REJECTION OF HADITHS BECAUSE OF MISCOMPREHENSION
What I wish to draw attention to here is rejection of the Sunnah

and sahih hadiths as a result of miscomprehension arising in the
mind of one not specialized and not well-grounded in this science.
That has confirmed for us that the need of the approaching time is
investigation and closely-detailed study of how the Sunnah should
be understood, with intelligent recourse to its sources and its
authorities. It is what we will be calling attention to in subsequent
pages.
Rejection ofthe sahih on account ofpoor understanding
Among the harms to which the Sunnah is exposed is that some

rash individual reads a hadith, presumes for it a meaning of his
own and interprets it accordingly. That meaning being unaccep-
30
table to him, he then rushes to reject the hadith, along with the
discarded meaning. But if he had been fair, looked attentively and
investigated, he would know that the meaning of the hadith is not
as he understood it. He would know that he had prescribed for it,
as suited his own judgment and taste, a meaning which neither
Qur’an nor Sunnah present, which the language of the Arabs does
not compel, and which no esteemed learned scholar from before
him advocated.
The hadith of <A’ishah: “He would command me to put on i%ar, then would
he intimate with me, while I was having my monthly period”
An example is the hadith, narrated by al-Bukhari and others, from
cA’ishah, that she said: “God’s Messenger would command me,
while I was having my monthly period, to put on the i%ar (lower
garment), then he would be intimate with me.”
Someone writing in the Kuwaiti journal al-zArabi nearly a third
of a century ago rejected this hadith. He based his argument on the
claim that it was at variance with the Qur’anic verse: “They ask you
about menstruation. Say: it is a hurt; so keep apart from the
women in menstruation, and do not go near them until they are
cleansed (of it)” (al-Haqarah, 2: 222). The writer said the Qur’an
commands the keeping apart from women in a state of menstru
ation, whereas the hadith says that the Messenger was intimate
with his wife above the i%ar.
We have already rebutted this argument in detail elsewhere.38
The gist is that there is no contradiction between the hadith and
the Qur’an, as the writer had understood there to be. Rather, the
hadith provides commentary on the Qur’an; it clarifies the mean
ing of the Tribal (the keeping apart) that is commanded. The intent
is not complete avoidance (ijtinaty of women — as the Jews do, who
will not spend the night with the wife when she is in this state. The
purpose in respect of the Ttiâl that is commanded is that one
forsakes the bodily intimacy of sexual intercourse. As for mutual
pleasure in what is other than that - it is not part of that which is
prohibited.39
31
Hadith: “0 God, have me live as a miskin ...”
Another example is the hadith that Ibn Majah reported from Abu
Sa^d al-Khudri and al-Tabaranl from TJbadah ibn Samit: “O God,
have me live misktnan (as a poor person) and have me die misktnan
and gather me [hereafter] in the company of the misktn”^ Some
one read this hadith and he understood al-maskanah (poverty) to
mean want of material wealth, with consequent neediness before
other human beings. Now, this understanding of the meaning re
pudiates the supplication of the Prophet against the affliction of
poverty,41 and his asking from God, virtue and prosperity,42 and
his saying to Sacd: “Indeed, God loves the slave [who is] prosper
ous, God-fearing and not ostentatious,”43 and his saying to cAmr
ibn al-cAs: “Excellent indeed is the righteous wealth of a righteous
man!”44
Because of the apparent contradiction, this person rejected the
hadith mentioned. But the reality is that al-maskanah here does not
mean ‘poverty’ in that sense. How could it mean that when he
supplicated God against it, and associated it with unbelief — “O
God, I seek refuge with You from unbelief and poverty”?45 And
his Lord entrusted him with prosperity: “And He found you desti
tute and enriched you” (al-Duba* 93: 8). What is meant by al-mas
kanah is as Ibn al-Athlr said: “He meant by it lowliness and humil
ity before God, and lest one should become one of the oppressors
and the arrogant.”
That is how the Prophet lived — far from the life of the arrogant
ones, whether in look or form: he dressed as the slaves and the
poor dressed; and he ate what they ate; and when a stranger came
he (the stranger) did not distinguish him from his Companions for
he was with them as one of them; and at home he mended his
shoe with his own hand; and he patched his cloak; and he milked
his sheep; and he turned a millstone to grind grains alongside the
woman neighbor and the slave.
When a man entered to him and, being in awe of him, was
trembling, he said: “Be at ease, for I am not a king. Rather, I am
32
the son of a woman of the Quraysh who used to eat dried meat in
Makkah”
The hadith on the renewal of the religion every century

Another example is the hadith, which Abu Da’ud and al-Hakim
reported, and more than one scholar authenticated, from Abu
Hurayrah from the Prophet: “God will send to this Community at
the head of every century one who will renew for it its religion.”46
Someone read this and understood renewal (tajdid) as meaning that
the renewer develops the religion and alters it so as to adapt it to
the age. He argued: ‘But the religion is not subject to renewal, it is
firmly established and does not change. It is not the duty of the
religion to adapt to progress; rather, it is the duty of progress to
adapt to the religion.’
Now, if ‘renewal’ meant that, in every age, we bring out (so to
speak) a ‘new edition’ of the religion, its principles and teachings,
going along with the needs of the people and in convoy with
developments - and this overturns the truths of the religion — then
a hadith that urges this should indeed be discarded. The person
would be right if the intent of al-tajdid had been what he inter
preted it to be. But it is not.
The renewing meant — as I have explained elsewhere47 - is of
the understanding of the religion, and of faith and action. For the
renewal of a thing is that by which an effort is made to return it to
what it was like on the day of its origination, and then it emerges
so as to seem new despite its antiquity. This is achieved by the
strengthening of what has weakened, and the repairing of what has
deteriorated over time, and the patching of what has frayed, so
that it reverts closer to its original form. So the meaning of renewal
is not the alteration of its ancient nature, or the replacement of it
by another thing, novel and newly created. For that has nothing to
do with renewal.
Let us take an example from among tangible things. If we
intended renewal of an ancient historical structure, that would
mean: letting its substance, its character and functions, and every-
33
thing that survives of its distinguishing features, remain; repairing

everything that decay has done to it; improving its entrances,
facilitating the approaches to it; improving the specification of it;
etc. It is nothing to do with renewal that we should demolish it,
and erect a prestigious building in the latest style in its place.
It is the same with the religion: its renewal does not mean the
issuing of a ‘new edition’ of it. Rather, it means the reversion of it
to where it was in the epoch of the Messenger and his Com
panions, and of those who followed them with sincerity. It means:
the revival of ijtihad in it, and recourse to its original wellsprings,
liberation from inflexibility and imitativeness (taqtidf and examin
ation of the legacy with a critical eye so as to benefit from its
positive qualities and guard against any points of deficiency in it.
Close to this renewal of thinking is another renewal, and that is the
renewal of faith in the religion, devotion to its precious values and
its principles, and renewing the invitation to it in harmony with the
circumstances and necessities of the age — as has come in the
hadith: “The faith wears out inside you, as the robe becomes worn
out [outside you] — so beg God that He renew the faith in your
hearts.”48
“Islam isfounded on five [foundations]”
Among the strangest instances in our time of the rejection of sahih

hadith, on account of incompetent understanding, is that some
people have rejected the most famous hadith — one that Muslims
young and old have memorized, the generality and the elite — and
it is the hadith of Ibn TJmar and others: “Islam is founded upon
five [foundations]: testifying that there is no god except God and
that Muhammad is the Messenger of God; and the establishing of
the prayer; and the paying of zakah; and fasting Ramadan; and
pilgrimage to the House for whoever is able to [make] a way
thereto.”
The pretext for this bold foolhardiness in rejecting the hadith is
that the hadith does not mention jihad, despite its great impor
tance in Islam. And that is the basis for rejecting it!
34
This view is ignorant of the obvious fact that jihad is obligatory

on some, not on others; that it is not an individual duty except in
special circumstances for most particular considerations. That is
very different from the five foundations, which are imposed on the
generality of all people.
If the reasoning of the one who rejects the hadith were correct,
it would entail rejecting the verses of the Qur’an which describe
the good qualities of the believers: the God-fearing, the bondsmen
of the Merciful, the virtuous and upright, the good-doers, those
who possess spiritual intellect; and other qualities, which God has
extolled in His Book, and promised for them most abundant
recompense, but among those good qualities He does not mention
jihad.
Read on that: the qualities of the God-fearing, in the first verses
of al-Baqarah^ 2: 2—5, of the people of virtue and veracity in the
verse “it is not virtue ...” (2: 177); the qualities of the believers at
the beginning of al-Anfdl, 8: 2—4; the qualities of those who possess
spiritual intellect in al-RrFd, 13: 20-22; the qualities of the believers
and the inheritors of Firdaws (Paradise) at the beginning of al-
Mufminiin, 23: 1—10; the qualities of the bondsmen of the Merciful
at the end of al-Furqan, 25: 63—77; the qualities of the God-fearing
and the good-doers in al-Dharijat, 51: 15-23; the qualities of the
most-honored in the Gardens of God in al-Maârij, 70: 22-35. In all
of these occurrences and others in the Book of God, jihad is not
mentioned. Then will that enormous ignorance which rejects the
hadith also expel these verses from the Book of God?
Shaykh al-Islam Ibn Taymiyyah has gone to some length in
explaining the confinement of Islam to the five foundations
mentioned, and why other fundamental obligations are not men
tioned, such as jihad, or the virtue of looking after one’s parents,
the bond of near kinship, and matters similar to that. He said:
In what was asked about is that: if there is, among the outward
actions that God made obligatory on him, more than these
five, then why did he say: Islam is these five? Some people
have answered that these [five] are the more visible and the
more powerful symbols of Islam, and by the slave’s accom-
35
plishing of them his Islam is completed; and by his leaving
them is indicated the dissolution of the bond of his being
bound [in Islam].
The more precise explanation is: that the Prophet men
tioned the religion that renders up the slave to his Lord abso
lutely, namely the right of God, upon individuals, of exclusive
worship. So He made it a duty for each one who was capable
of it that he worship God by it, dedicating the religion purely
to Him; and this [religion] - it is [made up of] the five. [As to]
what is similar to that [in being obligatory], then it is what is
obligatory according to occasions and exigencies, and so the
duties thereof [being connected to occasions and exigencies]
do not extend universally to all people.
Rather: [these other obligations comprise] either [1] the col
lective obligations - such as jihad, and commanding the good
and forbidding the evil, and what [necessarily] follows [from]
that by way of authority, and governance and the issuing of
Legal dicta, and [scholarly or philosophical] inquiry, and trans
mission of hadith, and other [such duties] —
Or [2, those obligations which are] obligatory by occasion
of the right of individual persons. By [that right] is specified
the one on whom it is obligatory to fulfil it fi.e. the right of
one individual specifies another individual for whom that right
becomes a duty], and it is voided by annulment, and when the
matter is achieved, or by acquittal - whether by his releasing or
by the accomplishment of the matter.
Then the rights of the slaves [of God] - for example:
settlement of debts; and restitution of the usurped [thing], and
of loans, and of deposits for safe-keeping; and just restitution
of wrongs respecting blood relations and properties and lands
- indeed these are rights of individual persons, and when they
release from them, [these rights] are voided, being binding on
one person, not on another, in one circumstance, not in an
other. They are not incumbent upon every competent slave as
is unmixed worship of God. That is why the Muslims share in
them with the Jews and the Christians. The five [however, are
obligations of a kind quite] different, for indeed these are
among the distinguishing [things] of the Muslims [i.e. unique
and restricted to the Muslims].
In the same way, what is obligatory respecting the bonds of
close kinship, and the rights of wives and children and
neighbors and [business] partners and the poor; and what is
obligatory respecting the rendering of testimony, and the
36
issuing of Legal dicta, and the giving judgment, and

governance, and commanding the good and forbidding the
evil, and jihad: all of that is obligatory by the contingent
occasions, and upon some and not others. [This kind of
obligation exists] in order to attract benefits or repel harms; if
[the aims are] achieved without action by a person, [then] they
are not obligatory. For that which is shared between people,
then it is obligatory collectively; and what is particular then it is
obligatory upon [a particular individual] Zayd, not upon
[another individual] cAmr. The people do not share in
obligations [laid] upon each competent individual to discharge
in person, except for the five. For indeed the wife of Zayd and
his near kin are not the wife of cAmr and his near kin, so it is
not obligatory upon this one the like of [what is] obligatory
upon this other. Different is fasting Ramadan; and pilgrimage
to the House; and the five services of prayer; and the zakah.
Indeed the zakah, though it is a right on property, yet it is due
to God, and the eight categories [of recipients] are its [only
lawful] heads of expenditure. This is why intention is
obligatory therein, and [why] it is not permissible that another
person do it [i.e. discharge the duty of zakah] without one’s
permission, and why it is not demanded from the unbe
lievers.49
On reckless haste in rejecting the sahih and its being dubious to do so
In our view, haste in rejection of any hadith, though it is sahib and

affirmed, makes its having been understood doubtful. Those deep-
rooted in knowledge do not venture recklessness in rejecting sahih
hadiths. Rather, they approve the opinion held by the early gener
ations of the Community (salaj). For when it is established that
they accepted a hadith, and no esteemed leader censured it, then
necessarily they did not recognize any criticism of it on grounds of
irregularity nor any cause of objection to it.
A fair-minded scholar must let the hadith stand, and study the
intelligible meaning or the appropriate interpretation of it. This is
the point of division in this field between the Muctazilis (rationa
lists) and Ahl al-Sunnah (the Sunnis, those who followed the Sun
nah). The former were prompt to dismiss every difficulty of hadith
that resisted what they had accepted as principles of knowledge
37
and religion. But Ahl al-Sunnah applied their minds to interpret

ation of the difficult hadith, and to bringing together what, out
wardly, was at variance, and reconciling what was contradictory.
For that purpose Abu Muhammad Ibn Qutaybah (d. 267 AH)
composed his well-known book Ta'nnlMtikhtalaf al-Hadith, refuting
the stormy assaults stirred up by the Muctazilis around some
hadiths, which they reproached for being contradictory to the
Qur’an or to reason, or false in light of sense-perception, or for
being opposed to other hadiths. After Ibn Qutaybah, the Hanafi
hadith scholar Abu JaTar al-Tahawi (d. 321) composed his book
Mushkil al-Athar in four bound volumes,50 endeavoring to locate
the points of difficulty in these hadiths, interpreting them and
making them acceptable, and distinguishing them as conformable
to reason.
Once the evidence of a hadith’s being from the Prophet has
been affirmed, a far-reaching, thorough examination into how it
may be understood is obligatory; and there must be every caution
against dismissing it merely to please far-fetched arguments, which
may themselves have a mistake hidden in them.
The stance of Afishah on certain hadiths
The clearest example of that is some of what has come from

cA’ishah. She censured some hadiths on the basis of her conjecture
that they were opposed to the Qur’an, or to the established prin
ciples of Islam, or for other reasons. At times, it is the case that
she censured hadiths narrated by the Companions, even though
there is no doubting their veracity or their exactitude in preserving,
and despite the hadiths’ general import being sound. Take for
example the hadith of the cat, and what has come about the pun
ishment for tormenting it until it died. Ahmad ibn Hanbal narrated
it from cAlqamah, he said:
We were with cA’ishah. Then Abu Hurayrah entered, so she
said: “Are you the one who narrated the hadith — that a
woman tormented a cat, confining her and then not feeding
her, not giving her water — ?” Then he said: “I heard it from
him” meaning the Prophet. Then she said: “Do you know
38
what the woman was? At the time she did [that] she was an
unbeliever. Indeed the believer is more noble with God, the
All-Powerful and Sublime, than that He would punish him for
a cat! So when you narrate a hadith from the Messenger of
God, then watch how you are doing so!”51
SA’ishah censured Abu Hurayrah for his reporting of this hadith
with his fashioning of it, and she reckoned that he did not preserve
its wording as he heard it from the Prophet. Her argument is that
she judged it too much that a believing human being be punished
because of a cat; that a believer is nobler with God than that He
would enter him into the Fire because of a dumb animal! May God
forgive cA’ishah, for she was forgetful of a thing here in this matter
that is the most important of the most important things. It is this:
what demonstrates against the woman is the deed — namely that
the cat was imprisoned until it died starving. It is proof plain of the
hardness of heart of that woman and her cruelty to God’s weak
creatures, and that the rays of compassion did not reach into her
bosom. None enters the Garden except the compassionate, and
God does not show mercy except to those who show mercy. If
she had shown mercy to one that is on the earth, then the One
Who is in the heavens would have shown mercy to her.
This hadith and others of the same import should be counted
in the sphere of humane values with pride in Islam, which respects
every living creature, for Islam establishes a reward for human
kindness to every group of creatures with a moist liver. What com
pletes this meaning is what has come in another hadith, which al-
Bukharl also reported: that a man gave water to a dog, God ack
nowledged it from him and forgave him; and that a prostitute gave
water to a dog, and God forgave her.
On top of that is the fact that Abu Hurayrah is not alone in the
reporting of this hadith, so that it might be supposed he did not
retain its words correctly — how could that be, when he is without
exception the strongest in memory of the Companions? Further
more, Ahmad ibn Hanbal, al-Bukhari and Muslim have reported
from Ibn TJmar that he said: “A woman is punished for a cat. She
confined her so that she died starving. Then she entered the Fire
39
on account of [the cat]. God said: You did not feed her, and did
not give her water, when you had tied her up. Nor did you let her
co
go forth that she might eat of the vermin of the earth.” Also,
Ahmad has narrated from Jabir that he said: “A woman tormented
a cat and tied him up until he died, and she did not let him go
53
forth so he might eat of the vermin of the earth.”
So Abu Hurayrah is not alone in the reporting of this hadith.
But even if he had been alone it would not have impaired at all the
quality or meaning of his report.
40
CHAPTER TWO
The Sunnah as a Source

for Jurisprudence and Preaching
IN JURISPRUDENCE AND LEGISLATION
The Sunnah is, after the Qur’an, the second source for juris
prudence and legislation. There is apposite and wide-ranging dis
cussion of the fact in all the books on the principles of juris
prudence of all the schools. Al-AwzacI (d. 157 AH) said: “The Book
is more in need of the Sunnah than the Sunnah is of the Book.”1
He said so because the Sunnah clarifies the Qur’an by detailing
what is summary in it, qualifying what is absolute in it, and
particularizing what is general in it. Some people even went so far
as to say: “The Sunnah is decisive over the Book.” However,
Ahmad ibn Hanbal disapproved this turn of phrase: “I should not
dare to say that. Rather, I say: The Sunnah is the exposition of the
Book’.”3 That expression of the relation between the Book and the
Sunnah reflects well Ibn Hanbal’s understanding and piety
together. It is the balanced position. For in one sense the Sunnah
is making clearer what is there in the Book; but then, even on
matters not directly in the Qur’an, the Sunnah remains so consist
ently within its orbit, that its teaching still serves as an exposition
of the Qur’an.
Certainly there is no dispute about the Sunnah’s being a source
of legislation in the rites of worship and general affairs for the
individual, the family, the society, and for the state and political
relations. Al-ShawkanI said: “The conclusion is that the need for
THE SUNNAH AS A SOURCE FOR JURISPRUDENCE AND PREACHING
the Sunnah is established, and its independence [as a source] for

the legislation of the injunctions is a religious necessity. No one
disagrees on that except one who has no share in the religion of
Islam.”4
The books of Islamic jurisprudence — of whatever school — are
overflowing with proofs from the Sunnah of speech, practice, and
acceptance. There was no difference on this point between those
known in the history of fiqh as the school of ahi al-hadith (‘the
people of hadith’) and those known as the school of ahi al-ray (‘the
people of opinion’). The fundamental principle was accepted by
both, any differences arising only in the detail and the practical
application, a consequence of the differences between them on the
criteria for acceptance of hadiths and for acting in accordance with
them.
The books of the Hanafi school (which exemplifies the school
of ra'j) abound in hadiths which their learned doctors use as
proofs. A typical book is al-Ikhtiydr Sharh al-Mukhtdr by Ibn Maw-
dud al-Hanafi al-Mawsili (d. 683 AH). It was prescribed, in schools
linked with al-Azhar, for our secondary studies (I mean for the
Hanafi students). Another is al-Hadtd\yy al-Marghlnanl, prescribed
for Hanafi students at the Sharicah faculty of al-Azhar, and the
commentary on it, Fath al-Qadir^ by the established Hanafi scholar
Kamal al-Dln ibn al-Humam. A careful study of the hadiths in
such books provides ample assurance that ahi al-ra’y looked to the
Sunnah for corroboration, just as did ahi al-athar (‘the people of the
traditions’).
Yet, some people in our time have said that Abu Hanifah
affirmed the authenticity of only seventeen hadiths. This opinion
makes no sense to anyone who knows the temperament of the
schools of knowledge of that age, and the nature and formation of
the scholars in them. Abu Hanifah came out of the Kufan school
of knowledge, which had combined jurisprudence and hadith since
its foundation by the noble Companion cAbd Allah ibn Mascud.
The school grew in knowledge and blessing with the advent of the
caliph, cAh ibn Abl Talib. It was he who said: “May God have
42
mercy on Ibn Umm cAbd (meaning Ibn Mascud) for he has cer
tainly filled this township with knowledge.”
It is particularly strange that those who hold that opinion about
Abu Hanlfah attribute it to the learned Ibn Khaldun. This is due to
a tendency (with which many test our forbearance) to extract
certain phrases without attending to, or being informed about, the
whole of the relevant passage, or even the immediate context. If
we refer to Ibn Khaldun we find that opinion expressed in the
passive voice (a common device to distance the opinion being re
ported and to imply its weakness); he does not offer (or adopt) it
as his own opinion; moreover, he says after it what rejects it. The
passage in question is in the section al-hadith (‘the sciences of
hadith’) in his Muqaddiniah'.
Know also that the leading mujtahids differed in how much and
how little of this material [i.e. hadiths, they accepted and trans
mitted]. Now about Abu Hanlfah, it is said that he transmitted
the narration of seventeen hadiths or thereabout (up to fifty);
and Malik — may God have mercy on him — pronounced as au
thentic according to himself only what is in his book {al-Mu-
ivatta)' and the utmost number of them is 300 hadiths or there
about. Whereas Ahmad ibn Hanbal — God have mercy on him
— [accepted] in his Musnad 30,000 hadiths. And each of them
exercised his judgment on whatever was conveyed to him.
Yet some raging zealots say: Among them, one [meaning
Abu Hanlfah] had litde in hadith material and for this [reason]
was less in narration [of it]. But there is no way for this view in
regard to the great imams, because the Law is derived only
from the Book and the Sunnah, and whoever had little in the
goods of hadith was bound to seek and narrate it, and be
assiduous and strenuous therein, so that he could derive the
religion from the authentic sources, and receive the injunctions
from the one who had them [as passed to him from one] who
[in turn] conveyed them from God. And among [the great
imams], whoever was less in narrating [hadith] was so only on
account of the taunts that were opposing him in [narrating],
and the defects which impeded its route — especially when
criticism [challenging and questioning sources] was a priority
[at that time] for many. Then personal judgment led him to
rejection of the acceptance [of a hadith] because of an opposi-
43
tion of that sort to it, among the hadiths and the routes of
their transmitting authorities. There was a great deal of that [at
that time]. Thus his narrating was [so] little for reason of the
weakness of the routes [of transmission]. This notwithstand
ing, the people of the Hijaz narrated much more of hadith
than the people of Iraq, because Madinah had been the focus
of the Hijrah and the refuge of the Companions. Those of
them who relocated to Iraq were often preoccupied in jihad.
Imam Abu Hanlfah was only so little in narrating [hadith]
because he was severe in the criteria for narrating and for [as
sessing] the firmness [of hadiths], and he would pronounce the
hadith weak if setded reasoning opposed it, and so he con
sidered it difficult. He reduced on account of that his narrating
[of hadith], and so reduced [the number of] his hadith. It is not
that he abandoned narrating the hadith as a deliberate policy —
for he was far removed from that. That he was among the
great mujtahids in the science of hadith is demonstrated by their
approbation of his school and by the dependence on him and
on his judgments in respect of rejection or acceptance [of
hadiths]. As for others among the hadith specialists (muhad-
dithlri) - and they were the majority - they relaxed the criteria
[for accepting hadith] and increased the number of their
hadith, and all [did so] on the basis of their personal judgment.
And indeed his colleagues [his students and fellow-scholars
among the scholars of Iraq] after him relaxed the criteria [for
accepting hadith] and increased the amount of their narrating.
Al-Tahawi [for example] narrated and [did so] in great volume,
and wrote his Musnad. He is one of lofty rank, except that he
does not match the two Sahihs, for the reason that the criteria
that were settled upon by al-Bukhari and Muslim in their two
books have been widely accepted among the Community just
as they [the hadith specialists] have said, whereas the criteria of
al-Tahawi have not been agreed upon, such as narrating from
one of hidden condition, and other than that.5
That is what the learned Ibn Khaldun really said about Abu
Hanlfah and his school. It is the discourse of a knowledgeable his
torian, well-informed and fair-minded.
44
ALL JURISTS REFER TO THE SUNNAH
We can state with complete assurance that all the jurists of the
Muslims — from different schools, from diverse cities, whose doc
trine survives or has been cut off, is followed or is not followed -
have been in agreement on acceptance of the Sunnah and the
appeal to it in making rulings. On this point (as noted above),
those affiliated to the school of ra’y and those affiliated to the
school of hadith were the same. The following reports from al-
Bayhaql illustrate this unanimity:
From TJthman ibn TJmar, that he said:
A man came to Malik and asked him about a matter. Then
[Malik] said to him: “God’s Messenger said so-and-so.” Then
the man said: “Is that your opinion?” Then Malik said: “Let
them beware who oppose his [the Messenger’s] command lest
a trial afflict them or a grievous punishment” (a/-Niir, 24: 63).
From Ibn Wahb, that he said:
Malik said: “There never used to be among those giving fatwas
to the people that one said to [the people], ‘Why did I say
that?’ The people were satisfied with the narration and pleased
with it.”6
From Yahya ibn Durays, that he said:
I was a witness [when] a man came to Sufyan, and said: “What
do you have against Abu Hanlfah?” He said: “What is [sup
posed to be wrong] with him? I have heard him say: ‘I take
from the Book of God, and if I do not find [what I am seek
ing], then from the Sunnah of God’s Messenger; then if I do
not find [what I am seeking] in the Book of God or the Sun
nah of His Messenger, I take from the sayings of his Com
panions. I take from the saying of whomever I like, and I leave
the saying of whomever I like. But I do not depart from their
saying to the saying of other than them. Then as for when the
matter reaches to Ibrahim or al-ShaÎ and Ibn Sirin and al-
Hasan and cAta’, and Ibn al-Musayyab’ - and he enumerated
the men — ‘people do ijtihad, and I do ijtihad as they do.’ ”
From al-RabF that he said:
One day al-ShaficI narrated a hadith and a man said to him:
“Do you accept this, O Abu cAbd Allah?” Then [al-Shafici]
said: “When I report from God’s Messenger a sahib hadith and
45
THE SUNNAH /\S A SOURCE FOR JURISPRUDENCE AND PREACHING
I do not accept it, then I attest to you that my mind has

definitely gone!”
From al-Rabi^ that he said:
If you find in my book an opposition to the Sunnah of God’s
Messenger then maintain a view according to the Sunnah and
leave what I say.
THE NECESSITY OF LINKING HADITH AND FIQH
Since the Sunnah is a fundamental source of fiqh, it is one of the

duties of jurists to go deeply into the science of hadith. In the
same way it is a duty of hadith specialists to master the science of
fiqh. There have been gaps of knowledge between these two that
should be closed up: this is something I called for long years ago.
The best practitioners of fiqh do not master the arts of hadith
or go deeply into the knowledge of its disciplines. In particular,
they do not go into the disciplines ofjarh and taQdll (critical scru
tiny of narrators leading to rejection or acceptance), and so fail to
appreciate the consequence of narrators being classed as reliable or
weak. Accordingly, certain hadiths, which are not considered es
tablished according to the leading figures in the assaying of hadith,
are common currency with them. Moreover, they settle such ha
diths in their books, adducing them in what they decide of injunc
tions in the Legal categories of the permissible and the forbidden,
the obligatory and the commended. At times they even argue from
hadiths without benefit of any reserve or discipline from what has
been said about them in the books — hadiths whose sources and
sanad is not known. Among the hadith specialists a saying has long
circulated: “This is from the hadiths of the jurists” — by which they
mean it does not have a well-known source.
On the other side, the best practitioners of hadith are not good
in the knowledge of fiqh or its principles. They have no aptitude
for discovering its rules and deriving its precious treasures and
subtleties. They are not thoroughly familiar with its leading figures,
the multiplicity of their schools and their objectives, or the divers
ity of their personal judgments.
46
Both sides, the specialists in fiqh and those in hadith, are in

pressing need of the knowledge of the other so as to complement
what each has. The jurist must know hadith, since the bulk of the
judgments of fiqh are established according to the Sunnah. The
muhaddith must know fiqh so as to understand what he is convey
ing, to not be a mere conveyor (naqut), and to avoid understanding
in an improper way what he is conveying.
Islamic scholars of the early period took note of this need. They
censured whoever disregarded it, to the extent that some of the
most learned of them, for example Sufyan ibn TJyaynah, are re
ported to have said: “If this matter were in our hands, we would
beat with a palm-rod (jarid) every muhaddith who did not busy
himself with fiqh, and every Jaqih (jurist) who did not busy himself
with hadith.”
It is strange that there are many weak hadiths in the books of
fiqh. Now many accept the use of a weak hadith to teach the
merits of certain deeds (jadait), or to inspire longing for God
(targhtd) and dread of Him (tarhlb). But there is general agreement
that a weak hadith cannot be used to derive injunctions. Neverthe
less, in the books of fiqh, one finds hadiths that are weak, extreme
ly weak, and fabricated, and some with no source at all. That
prompted those great hadith specialists who did busy themselves
with fiqh to write books of source-critique (takhrij al-haditty on the
hadiths that the jurists adduced in their books. These hadiths were
cited muâllaq (hanging, unsupported), that is, without any sanads.
Al-Jawzl wrote such a source-critique in his book al-Tahqiq Ji
Takhrij al-Taâllq, which, after him, Ibn cAbd al-Hadl refined in his
Tanqih al-Tahqlq.
Several hujja^ compiled books of source-critique of the hadiths
used in admired and famous fiqh writings. An example is Nash al-
Rayah li-Ahadith al-Tlidayah by al-Hafiz Jamal al-Dln al-ZaylacI (d.
762 AH). It has been printed many times in four volumes. Al-Hafiz
Ibn Hajar abridged it in his book al-Dirayah Ji Takhrij Ahadith al-
Hiddyah, adding to it some informative and instructive notes. It is
published in a single volume. The Hidayah is one of the principal
47
textbooks in Hanafi fiqh. Another example is Ibn Hajar’s source

critique of the hadiths in Fath Sharh al-Waji% Shark al-
Waji^Js the great commentary by al-RaficI on al-Ghazali’s al-Waji%
A group of scholars, including Ibn Hajar in his famous book
Talkhis al-Habir, have exposed its sources. Al-RafiTs commentary
is among the principal textbooks of Shafici fiqh.
To be sure, some jurists relied upon hadiths that only those
after them established as weak - so they are to be excused for rely
ing on them. But for those to whom their weakness had been dis
closed, there is no excuse for their repeated recourse to them. It is
right to abandon a ruling based upon hadiths established as weak,
when there is not, for that ruling, another proof (dalit) from the
texts of the Law or its general principles or its objectives as a
whole. Why it is right to do so can be easily seen from the works
of source-critique on books of fiqh of high repute in the still-
followed schools. For example: Nash al-Rayah li-Ahddith al-FLidayah
by al-Zaylaci; Falkhis al-Habir Ji Takhfij Ahadith Sharh al-FdfF al-
Kabir by Ibn Hajar; Irwd al-Ghalilfi Fakhrij Ahadith Mandr al-Sabil by
al-Albani {Manar al-Sabil being among the texts of Hanbali fiqh);
and al-HiddyahJi TakhriJ Ahadith al-Bidayah by Ahmad ibn Siddiq al-
Ghamari (al-Bidayah refers to Ibn Rushd’s Biddyat al-Mujtahid).
I myself have noted, while researching the fiqh of zakah, a
number of hadiths that scholars of fiqh of still-followed schools
rely on, and which have been challenged by the leading scholars of
hadith. For example:
There is no sadaqah on vegetables.
cUWand kharaj do not combine.
There is no duty [right] on wealth besides zakah.
The last hadith is well-known among the jurists. Some of their
great ones cite it, for example al-Mawardl in al-Ahkarn al-
Sultdniyyah\ al-Shlrazi in al-Muhadhdhalr, and Ibn Qudamah in al-
Mughni Al-Nawawl (in al-MajmiFa) said about it: “It is a very weak
hadith; it is not known.” Before him, al-Bayhaql said, in al-Sunan*.
“Our colleagues narrate it in commentaries, but I do not
remember any isnad in it.” The original form of the hadith,
48
according to al-Tirmidhi and Ibn Maj ah and al-Tabari in his Tafsir,

is: “There is a duty (right) on wealth besides zakah.” Subsequently,
a familiar sort of copyist’s error occurred in a particular trans
cription of Ibn Maj ah, and the word ‘is not’ (Jaysd) got interpolated
at the beginning of the hadith. The error circulated and persisted.
Abu Zarcah ibn al-Hafiz Zayn al-DTn al-Traql pointed out the error
in Tarh al-Tashfib fi Sharh al-Taqrib (vol. 4, p. 18). Ahmad Shakir
explained it in his source-critique of al-Tabari’s Tafsir (report no.
2527), and he furnished against it some proofs that settle the mind
and heart.
In many books of fiqh and its divisions (abwdty there are
hadiths of this category, that is, those whose sanad was unknown to
the hiiffaz In Nash al-Rayah, al-Zaylaci marked such hadiths zsghafib
(‘unknown’). It is a term peculiar to him, indicating that he did not
find a sanad for the hadith. To indicate the same thing, Ibn Hajar in
Dirayah used the expression “I did not find it” or “I did not think
it marfiiQ’ or words close to that. There are many such hadiths in
some divisions of fiqh, indeed so many that it draws attention.
While studying hadiths on the subject of ritual slaughter, I
found in al-Dirayah more than twenty hadiths, some of them sahih
and some weak; and about some, Ibn Hajar has said he “did not
know it” or “did not find it”. Some examples:
The hadith:
Adopt in relations with them (the Magians) the same way
(sunnaB) as with the People of the Book except marrying their
women and eating [of the meat from animals] that they have
slaughtered.
(Ibn Hajar said: “I did not find it in these words.” He means:
with the addition of the words “marrying their women”, etc.)
The hadith:
The Muslim slaughters in the name of God [whether] he has
invoked or has not invoked [God’s name].
(Ibn Hajar said: “I did not find it in these words.”)
The hadith of Ibn Mascud:
Strip the tasmiyah [of everything else, i.e. say only the tasmiyaB^
(Ibn Hajar said: “I did not find it in these words.”)
49
The hadith:
The immolation [i.e. the incision] should be [at the point] that
is between the top of the chest and the bottom of the chin.
(Ibn Hajar said: “I did not find it.”)
The hadith:
Cut the veins with what you wish.
The hadith:
That the Prophet prohibited you to dislodge the phlegm of the
goat when you slaughter. (The author said: “That is, [when]
you reach the phlegm with the knife.”)
(Ibn Hajar said: “I did not find it.)
The hadith:
That he prohibited A’ishah from [eating] lizard when she
asked about eating it.
The hadith:
That he forbade the sale of crayfish.
And so on - there are other hadiths like that.8
Such laxity in adducing weak hadiths is not confined to books
of ahi al-ra'y as they are called. Rather, one finds generally among
the books of the surviving schools of Law, weak hadiths and even
those with no source. But, to be sure, the ascription of laxity varies
from school to school.
In Talkhis al-Hahir^ Ibn Hajar has traced the hadiths in the
commentary by al-RaficI on al-Ghazali’s al-Waji^ (both of whom
were leading ShafHs). He pronounces as weak many of the hadiths
on which the argument in the book rests. Now Ibn Hajar was
himself a Shafifi - but the truth has more right to be followed than
one’s school. Similarly, al-Hafiz Abu Bakr Ahmad ibn al-Husayn
al-Bayhaqi (d. 457 AH) sent to Abu Muhammad cAbd Allah ibn Yu
suf al-Juwaynl (d. 438 AH; the father of Imam al-Haramayn) a cour
teous critique of some of the erroneous hadith conjectures that
had befallen him in his book al-Muhit. The very first hadith in the
book, on the prohibition of bathing with water exposed to sun
light, is an example: it is a hadith not authenticated as sahih.
50
It is a tribute to the fair-mindedness of al-Bayhaqi that he criti

cized also hadith specialists among his ShaficI colleagues. He criti
cized their laxity in abandoning the distinction between reports on
which it is correct to base argumentation, and reports on which it
is not correct to do so. He criticized them also for narrating from
weak and unknown narrators, and for other failings presented in
his treatise, al-Rastnah al-Rakinah?
Most strange indeed is that even books on the subject of the
principles of jurisprudence (usul al-fiqfi) are not lacking in hadiths
that are fragile and fabricated and without source. An example is
the hadith: “My Companions are like the stars: whichever of them
you are led by, he will guide you.” This is very weak. Indeed,
Shaykh al-Albani has judged it to have been fabricated. Another is:
“Whatever is seen by Muslims as good, it is good in the sight of
God.” This is in fact from the discourse of Ibn Mascud, not a
maifiF hadith (so it should not be attributed to the Prophet). Yet
another is: “My Community’s differences are a mercy.”10 And
there are several others, familiar from the books of usul al-fiqh well-
known to students.
THE DUTY OF SCHOLARLY REVISION OF THE LEGACY OF FIQH
It is a duty of the learned community in our time, the zulama\ to go

back over the fiqh inheritance — in the light of knowledge of the
hadith combined with fiqh and its principles, with penetrating and
perceptive reasoning — and look into the injunctions based on
weak hadiths. For it is a point of agreement that a weak hadith
cannot support an injunction, that one cannot build upon it the
obligations of the lawful and the unlawful. Through this effort,
those injunctions (relating to Legal dicta and to collective duties)
that have no authoritative basis other than weak hadiths will be
uncovered. Some examples follow:
Udoodwitfor non-Muslims
Take for example, in the criminal code, how one determines the
Legal bloodwit for the dhimmh. The majority of jurists hold that
51
the bloodwit for the dhimmts of the People of the Book — more
precisely, from those of them under Islamic jurisdiction (dar al-
Is/aw, as the jurists put it) - is one half the bloodwit for Muslims.11
Their proof for that is some hadiths that appear in the Musnad and
the Sunan. Of them, there is not one in both Sahihs or in either of
them (that is, in one but not the other). Rather, they are hadiths
that some scholars accepted but others rejected. For example, the
hadith of cAmr ibn Shucayb from his father from his grandfather
that the Prophet said: “The bloodmoney for the unbeliever is half
the bloodwit for the Muslim.” Ahmad ibn Hanbal reported this, as
did al-Nasal and al-Tirmidhi. Again Ahmad and al-Nasal, and also
Ibn Majah, have reported a variant: “He judged that the blood
money of the People of the Two Books (and they are the Jews and
the Christians) is half the bloodmoney of the Muslims.” (The
meaning of the two terms used, ‘bloodmoney’ and ‘bloodwit’, is
the same.)
Other scholars held that the bloodwit for a Jew or Christian is a
third of the bloodwit for a Muslim. Their doing so demonstrates
that, in their view, the hadith just cited was not established.
By contrast, al-Thawri, al-Zuhri, Zayd ibn cAli, and Abu Hani-
fah and his influential followers, held that the bloodwit of the
dhiimmis equal to that of the Muslim. They adduced hadiths and
reports (athdr) that the Prophet made the bloodwit of the person
under covenant of protection by the Muslims the bloodwit of the
Muslim, and that he paid out the bloodwit of a Muslim as the
bloodwit due for a dhimmi. But then, those scholars who disagreed
with this pronounced these hadiths weak.
The reality is that the hadiths of neither of the two opposing
viewpoints attain the rank of sahih, and none of them can sustain a
ruling. Therefore, recourse is obligatory to the general texts of the
Law and its objectives as a whole. Now, if we refer to the Qur’an,
we find for accidental killing it is the same — whether it be a
Muslim or one of the peoples between whom and the Muslims
there is a compact. The obligation in both cases is “bloodwit sur
rendered to his people and the emancipation of a believing captive
52
(slave)” (a/-Nisa\ 4: 92), and it does not differentiate between

Muslim and non-Muslim. This is consonant with the Law’s
restraining bloodshed among both Muslims and non-Muslims, and
with equal treatment of people in line with the noble sentiments of
humanity, especially among the people of the land, the land of
Islam, co-nationals under a single political authority. It is the
doctrine according to which Islamic governments ruled for long
centuries, throughout the periods of the cAbbasid and TJthmanI
caliphates. However, the great powers of the present want to
exploit the legal status of non-Muslim minorities, alleging that they
are oppressed, and that equal treatment for them does not exist in
the criminal code in Islamic jurisprudence.
Rloodwitfor the woman

In the case of bloodwit for a woman, the majority of the greatest
jurists hold that it is half that for a man. They rest their case on
hadiths mentioned from Mucadh marfHân (reporting from the
Prophet) that he said: “The bloodwit for a woman is half the
bloodwit for a man.” Al-Bayhaqi said of its chain of authorities:
“An isnad like its isnad is not [accepted as] established.” He report
ed from CA1I, that he said: “The bloodwit for a woman is [calculat
ed] as one half the bloodwit for a man.” This is a narration of Ibra
him al-Nakha^ from cAli. It is also narrated by Ibn Abi Shucayb,
who narrated it through ShaT)! from Ibrahim. It is in every case
mawquf (stopped at a Companion), and in Law there is no com
pelling proof in the non-marfuc (that is, in what is not from the
Prophet himself). There is not in the details of the penalty for a
woman and the penalty for a man - that is, for injuries and the like
- a single hadith established or demonstrated as being sahih.
As for the minority, they rest their case on an appeal to ijmac or
consensus. Now ijmac is a proof in which there is no doubt. But in
this instance ijmac is not established. For people have narrated that
on this subject there is a different opinion from two of the
scholars of the salaf (the early generations of Muslims). The two
53
are al-Asim and Ibn al-cAlbah: according to them, the bloodwit for
12
a woman is the same as the bloodwit for a man.
'Explanation ofthe attitudes ofIslam

Just as a sahih hadith is sought to explain the injunctions in the
rites of worship and in everyday affairs and in the lawful and the
unlawful, it is sought to explain the attitude of Islam in decisions
relating to ideas, education, good manners, and other matters. If,
for example, we wish to explain the attitude of Islam on ‘the life of
the world’ - in respect of renunciation of it or absorption in its
good things - then weak hadiths do not suffice. Among similar
examples are the attitude of Islam to reliance on God, as against
making use of (the so-called ‘natural’ or ‘secondary’) causes; to
preventive medicine or therapeutic medicine; to the conservation
of animals and plants; to instances of material or intellectual
progress; to supernatural phenomena and miracles.
For these cases and their like, it does not suffice to adduce ha
diths that are subject to disagreement. Rather, recourse must be to
hadiths that are strengthened and authenticated in their proofs,
clear and unambiguous in what they demonstrate. Also, one
should not be satisfied with a single relevant hadith. Rather, the
principle is that there should be many hadiths contributing their
light to the picture, and illuminating the attitude of Islam on this
or that matter - except, of course, when there is a Qur’anic verse,
and then it will be the source and reference point.
II
IN PREACHING AND GUIDANCE
The Sunnah of the Prophet is, after the Qur’an, the inexhaustible
resource and treasury on which religious teachers, preachers and
guides can draw for their lessons and sermons. For, as the Sunnah
is the agreed-upon source for the legislation of the injunctions, and
for the fiqh of the rites of worship and of everyday affairs, so too
54
it is the agreed-upon source for the purification of the soul. That is

why all those engaged in the education of the spirit, including the
great men of tasawwuf of the early period who were respected
among the Community, are unanimous on binding the traveler on
the road to God to the Sunnah, in his thought and worship, and in
his relations with God, with himself, and with people. Imam al-
Junayd, may God have mercy on him, said: “All roads are closed
off except [the roads taken by those] who follow the tracks of
God’s Messenger.” And: “One who does not memorize the
Qur’an and write down the hadith should not be followed in this
business [Sufism], because this our knowledge is bound to the
Book and the Sunnah.” Abu Hafs, one of the leaders of those who
followed a Sufi way, said: “One who did not give weight in his
actions and his states to the Book and the Sunnah, who did not
>>
rebuke his desires, he was not counted in the register of men.
Abu Sulayman al-Daranl said: “It may be that an anecdote from
the anecdotes of the people may enter my heart for a few days: but
I do not accept [anything] of it except according to the two just
witnesses: the Book and the Sunnah.” Ahmad ibn Abl al-Hawari
said: “Whoever does his deed without following the Sunnah, his
deed has wasted.”
So the educators and the preachers are needy of the Sunnah, as
are the students and practitioners of fiqh. In the Sunnah they find
illuminating guidance, cogent argument, and eloquent wisdom;
epitomes and maxims, affecting admonitions, salient similitudes,
and instructive stories; diverse kinds of command and prohibition,
and promise and threat to inspire longing for God and dread of
Him, to soften stiffened hearts, give life to exhausted resolve, and
awaken forgetful minds. Running within the framework of the
Qur’an, the Sunnah addresses the whole being, mind, heart and
conscience, striving for the formation of the perfected Muslim
personality — a mind that is alert, a heart that is pure, a resolve that
is strong, and a body that is fit.
Foremost of what those relying on this material should do is to
take it from the source of it, from the books of the Sunnah. First
55
of all, the two Sahihs', the Sahih of al-Bukharl and the Sahih of
Muslim, both of which the Community has met with acceptance.
Neither has been criticized except for a few hadiths mosdy on
matters of form and fine technical detail. After these two, selection
from the other books of the Sunnah: the four Sunan (of Abu
Da’ud, al-Tirmidhi, al-NasaT and Ibn Majah), the Muwattd of
Malik, the Musnad of Ahmad ibn Hanbal, the Sunan of al-Dariml,
the Sahih of Ibn Khuzaymah, the Sahih of Ibn Hibban, the Mustad-
rak of al-Hakim, the two Musnads of Abu Yada and al-Bazzar, the
Maâjim of al-Tabarani, and Shucab al-Imdn of al-Bayhaql. Then
there are other works, whose hadiths the hadith experts have con
firmed as sahib or hasan. Every preacher is under obligation not to
rely on hadiths that are feeble or rejected or classed as fabricated.
It is a matter of severe regret that such hadiths appear time and
again as the common merchandise of preachers of sermons and
religious counselors.
By the grace of God, a number of the basic texts have already
been published in print editions. Thanks to the labors of the
servant of the Sunnah, Muhammad Fu’ad cAbd al-Baql, may God
have mercy on him, Muwattd Malik, Sahih Muslim and Sunan Ibn
Majah, have been edited and published, with the hadiths numbered
and indexed. Also edited and published are Sunan Abi Da’iid and
Sunan al-Tirmidhi, again with the hadiths numbered and indexed, by
^zzat TJbayd al-Daccas. cAbd al-Fattah Abu Ghuddah, may God
have mercy on him, has edited al-NasaTs book, and numbered its
hadiths in accordance with al-Mujam al-Mufuhris li al-Alja^ al-
Hadith.
An even more important task is source-critique and exposition
of the rank of the hadiths, distinguishing the sahih from the faulty.
The following critical works, by the hadith-scholar Shaykh Nasir
al-Din al-Albani, have appeared: Sahih Ibn Majah, Sahih al-Tirmidhi,
and Sahih al-Nasd’i His Sahih Abi Da’ud has all but come out. So
too, all but completed, are parts of Sahih Ibn Hibban, edited with
source-critique by Shucayb al-Ama’ut. Before that, Muhammad
56
J
IN PREACHING AND GUIDrlNCE
Mustafa al-AczamI edited what was found of Sahih Ibn Khuâymah,

and published it together with source-critique by al-Albani.
Before that, there had appeared fifteen volumes of the Musnad
Ahmad, edited with source-critique by Ahmad Muhammad Shakir,
about one-third of the whole. Shaykh Ahmad cAbd al-Rahman had
earlier arranged the Musnad by topic, written a commentary on it,
and published it in 23 volumes. He called it al-Tath al-Rabbani, and
its commentary Bulugh al-Amani. Shaykh Shakir made an effort to
bring out some of the tafsir of Ibn Kathir, selected, corrected and
source-critiqued. He called it TJmdat al-Tafsir, he published five
parts of it but was unable to complete it. He, and his most learned
brother, Mahmud Muhammad Shakir, brought out rather more
than ten parts of Tafsir Imam al-Tabari (d. 310 AH), with editing and
source-critique of the hadiths and reports {athar) it contains. After
the older brother Shaykh Ahmad died, Professor Mahmud brought
out, after him, another two parts. Then this great scholarly work
came to a halt.
Al-Musannaf by cAbd al-Razzaq al-Sanca’nl (d. 211 AH) has
appeared in eleven parts, edited by the Indian hadith-scholar,
Shaykh Habib al-Rahman al-Aczami; so too Musannaf Ibn Abi
Shaybah (d. 225 AH) from al-Dar al-Salafiyyah in India, edited by
Shaykh Mukhtar al-Nadwl.
Some of the important secondary collections have also come
out. Mishkdt al-Masdbih by Shaykh al-Khatib al-Tabrizi (d. 732 AH)
has been edited by al-Albani with an abridged source-critique. Al-
Albaril has distinguished the sahih from the daQif\n al-Suyutfs Sahih
al-JamF al-Saghir and its Supplement, and published them in two
separate volumes. JamT al-Usill of Ibn al-Athlr (d. 606 AH) has been
edited and brought out by cAbd al-Qadir al-Arna’ut.
MajmaQ al-Zawaid of Nur al-Dln al-Haythaml (d. 807 AH) came
out earlier, but it was not edited. Its distinction is that it judges
between sahih and daQif hadiths, and brings together material from
outside the Six Books of hadith: Musnad Ahmad, and Musnad al-
Ba%%ar, and Musnad Abu YaQla, and the three MaSajim al-Tabardni. I
wish that this useful book had been edited, although I am appre-
57
hensive of present-day editors of our useful books: they edit the

book with additions to its bulk of commentary, of which there is
little need, and which they repeat in every book, the consequent
lengthening of the work providing scope to get money from its
poor readers!
Among the important books which are repeatedly printed — but
not edited, nor their sources checked — are: Mustadrak. al-lldkim (d.
405 AH) and the abridgement of it by al-Dhahabi (d. 748 AH).
Among examples of the important ones that are edited and source-
critiqued, are: Zddal-Maâdty Ibn al-Qayyim (d. 751 AH), edited by
Shucayb al-Arna’ut, published in five volumes by al-Risalah, with a
i
sixth for the index; and Riyadal-Sdlihin by al-Nawawi (d. 676 AH). It
i
is a book blessed and splendid in usefulness. Shucayb al-Arna’ut J
and al-Albani edited it and checked all its sources.
More important still is the source-critique of the book al-Ihsdn fi
Taqrib Sahih Ibn Hibbdn, edited by Shaykh Shucayb al-Arna’ut in
sixteen volumes, with a two volume index. Al-Risalah published it. I
Greater than that is the concordance of similar hadiths in
Musnad Iniam Ahmad, published in more than forty volumes, edited
by Shaykh Shucayb and five of his distinguished learned colleagues.
It is on the point of completion, and al-Risalah are publishing it v
with the support of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
Here one has a duty to refer to old source-critiques and benefit
from them. For example: the critique by Zayn al-Dln al-Txaql (d. r
807 AH) of the hadiths in al-Ihya of al-Ghazall (d. 505 AH), who
called it al-Mughni Qan Haml al-Asfdr fi Takhrij ma fi al-Ihya' min al-
Akhbdr. It was printed with marginal notes to the Ihya\ it is
necessary for the reader of al-Ihya' to refer to it. One knows the
rank of the hadiths that were adduced by al-Ghazali, and how
many extremely weak hadiths there are in it, others with no source
for them, and others pronounced fabricated! Another example is
the source-critique by Ibn Hajar al-cAsqalanl of the hadiths in the
tafslr, al-Kashshaf. It is useful from the viewpoint of the many
hadiths that the Qur’amc commentators adduce, and which were
subsequently copied by other commentators.
58
i
L
IN PREACHING AND GUID/YNCE
Among the important and famous books for preaching and

admonishment is the book al-Targhib n>a al-Tarhib of al-Mundhiri
(d. 606 AH) — may God have mercy on him. The defect of the book
is that there are many weak hadiths in it, and some of them
extremely weak. It may be that it even descends to the level of the
fabricated — to the extent that this is the opinion of al-Mundhiri
himself. But many givers of admonishments and sermons have not
read al-Mundhiri’s Preface so that they would know his technique
and terminology. This is what drove me back to serve this book by
making critical selections from it (muntaqa). The selection includes
the sahih and the hasan in it, with notes on what is obscure in it,
and explanations of its purposes, and answers to the questions it
asks itself. In short, it erases doubts and corrects misunder
standings. Its title is al-Muntaqa. min al-Targhib wa al-Tarhib.
As for the commentaries on the well-known books: the greatest
of them is Fath alTSdrifi Sharh al-Rukhari by Ibn Hajar. This is the
book about which (with a pun on the well-known hadith) al-
Shawkani said: “la hjirah baQd al-fath” (TSJo emigration after the
Conquest’). There are available other commentaries on al-Bukhari
earlier than it, contemporary with it, and later than it. One should
make use of them all. Examples are: al-Kirmani (d. 675 AH), al-cAyni
(d. 855 AH), and al-Qastalani (d. 923 AH).
Among commentaries on Muslim are the Sharh of al-Nawawi,
and those of al-Tyad, and al-Abbl and al-Sanusi. A recent com
mentary by an Indian scholar, Mawlana Shabblr Ahmad al-TJth-
manl, is called Fath al-Mulhim bi-Sharh Sahih Muslim. He had issued
four parts but not completed it. Our friend Shaykh Muhammad
TaqI al-TJthmani, undertook its completion. He attached to his
commentary some knowledge of the time and solutions for its dif
ficulties, which makes the commentary unique in its divisions (fi
bdbi-hi). He has brought out six volumes.
Of commentaries on the Muwatta, we would mention al-Mun-
taqd the commentary of Abu Walid al-Bajl (d. 474 AH), and the
commentary of al-Suyuti, Tanwir al-FLawdlik.
59
THE SUNNAH AS A SOURCE FORJURISPRUDENCE AND PREACHING
Among the greatest of the commentaries on Abu Da’ud is

al-Sunan by al-Khattabl (d. 388 AH). The commentary of
Ibn al-Qayyim is entitled Tahdhlb Stinan Abi Da’ud. Among the
hadith commentaries of the scholars of India are: cAwn al-Macblid
by al-Diyanwi, and Badbl al-Majhildfi Halil Abi Da’fid of al-Saha-
ranpuri (d. 1346 AH), with the commentary of Shaykh al-Hadlth al-
Kandhlawl, and a Foreword by Sayyid Abu Hasan al-Nadwi. The
Manhal al-<Adhb al-Mawrfid of Shaykh Mahmud Khattab al-Subki
(founder of al-Jamicah al-SharIcah) is a copious, full commentary.
He issued ten parts of it, but did not complete it, may God have
mercy on him.
Among the greatest of the commentaries on al-Tirmidhi, and
old, is <Aridat al-Ahwidhi of Imam Abu Bakr ibn al-cArabl (d. 543
AH). Of new commentaries: Tiihfat al-Ahwidhi by al-Mubarakpuri,
the well-known Indian hadith scholar.
Al-Nasal has not been commented on, as Abu Da’ud and al-
Tirmidhl have. However, there are the marginal notes of al-Suyuti,
and another set of marginal notes by al-Sindl (d. 1139 AH). Both of
them have been printed with the text of al-Nasal. (When I visited
India about twenty years ago, an Indian scholar there was busy in
the preparation of a commentary on al-Nasal. I do not know
whether he finished it.)
Of the commentaries on Mishkdt al-Masdbih. the best known is
the commentary of cAli al-Qari (d. 1014 AH), entitled Mirqdt al-
Majatih. It is printed in five parts. There is a new, complete com
mentary, entitled Mirqdt al-Majatih, by TJbayd Allah al-Mubarak-
purl, one of the scholars of India. (The work is distributed by al-
Jamicah al-Salafiyyah in the city of Benares in India, nine volumes
as I remember.)
Among the respected commentaries useful for the preacher is
that of cAbd al-Ra’uf al-Mana’wi on al-Suyuti’s al-]amF al-Saghir. It
is the one published under the title Fayd al-Qadirfi Shark al-JdmF al-
Saghir^ six volumes. It is a useful book but needs some editing.
On Riydd al-Sdlihin the well-known commentary is Dalil al-
Falihin by Ibn cAllan (d. 1054 AH), printed in eight parts. There is a
60
new commentary by Subhl al-Salih (may God have mercy on him)

called Manhal al-Wdridin. Another by Mustafa al-Khann and his
colleagues is called Nii^hat al-Muttaqin.
For al-Nawawi’s book al-Adhkar\ there is a commentary by Ibn
cAllan, namely al-Futuhat al-Rabbdniyyah, printed in seven parts. For
his small and famous work, al-Arbaîn al-Nawawiyyah, there are very
many commentaries. However, the most esteemed of them, and
the most popular and beneficial, is the commentary of Ibn Rajab
al-Hanball (d. 790 AH): Jamfi alAJliim wa al-Hukm. The forty
hadiths having been completed became fifty, and Muhammad al-
Ahmadi Abu al-Nur began an edition of them. 13 Shaykh Shucayb
al-Arna’ut edited and source-critiqued the hadiths in al-Arbaîn al-
Nawawiyyah^ and attached marginal notes. Mu’assasat al-Risalah in
Beirut published it in two volumes.
Among the most useful books in this context, one that
comments on what is behind the hadiths — their secrets, and the
religious and social wisdom in them — is the book lltijjat Allah al-
Balighah by al-Dahlawi (d. 1176 AH).
A perceptive preacher will know which books and chapters
from the sources of the hadiths he is more in need of than others.
No doubt the books and chapters on faith and tawhidy on the rites
of worship, and knowledge, and good manners, and renunciation
and the softening of the hearts, and the remembrance and
invocation of God, and the Qur’an, and virtue, and the rite of
prayer, and the states of the hereafter, the Garden and the Fire,
and the life-story and the battles of the Prophet, and the exemplary
stories and history, and the like — all these captivate the attention
of the preacher, most often with hadiths that relate to the
injunctions directly. If the preacher is adept and has extensive
knowledge, he will make use of all the divisions of the hadiths,
even those on the injunctions.
61
PREPARATION BEFORE PRESENTING A HADITH AS EVIDENCE
The important thing for a preacher is that he seek out the import
of the hadith he is presenting as evidence - find out its meaning,
its value, its stance. Indeed, die obligation is on all knowledgeable
persons to rely on authenticated sources, and to rid themselves of
hadiths that are feeble or rejected or fabricated, and those with no
source. It is with just such hadiths that many of the books in
Muslim religious education are stuffed to overflowing, then mixed
with others that are sabih and hasan* without distinguishing between
the kinds, the accepted and the rejected. Some are deceived by a
hadith’s being widely known. It circulates in books or on tongues,
and people reckon this is sufficient for its being established, and
license for its further passing around and acceptance. But it is well
known to serious scholars that a hadith that has circulated widely
on the tongues, even in the books of the learned, and been copied
by some from others, may nevertheless be extremely weak, lacking
a source altogether, even fabricated.
This is what prompted a number of hadith scholars to write
accounts of the hadiths made famous on the tongues. Examples
are: al-Tadkbirah hi al-Ahadith al-Mushtahirab by al-Zarkashi (d. 794
AH); Tanryi^ al-Tayyib min al-Khabith fi ma Yaduru Qala Alsinat al-Nas
min al-Hadith by Ibn Dlbac; al-La'al? al-Manthiirah fi al-Ahadith al-
Mashiirah by Ibn Hajar (d. 852 AH); al-Durar al-Muntashirah fi al-
Ahadith al-Mnsbtahirah by al-Suyud (d. 911 AH); and al-Maqasid al-
Hasanah fi ma Ishtahra min al-Hadith zald al-Alsinah by al-Sakhawl (d.
902 AH), which was abridged by al-Zurqanl (d. 1122 AH). Al-cAjlunI
(d. 1162 AH) collected these books in Kashf al-Khafa wa-Mu^l al-
Albds <Amma Ishtahra min al-Hadith Qala Alsinati al-Nas. Also
important in this field are the books, by Ibn al-Jawzi, al-Suyud, al-
Qari, al-Shawkanl, Ibn Traq, al-Albani, and others, that address
fabricated hadiths.
In books of tasanwuf* admonishment, and softening of the
hearts, the authors cite many in this category of hadith (weak,
flimsy, fabricated). So too in books of tafsir, and especially in what
concerns the merits of the surahs, stories about the prophets and
62
the righteous, and the occasions of Revelation, we find the same

category of hadiths being used. Very few of them have been
authenticated as sahih.
In a recent conference one of the attending scholars presented
the story of Thaflabah ibn Hatib, which the Qur’an commentators
mention as the occasion for the revelation of the verse: “And
among them those who pledged to God: if He grants us from His
bounty then we shall spend in charity and most certainly be among
the righteous. Yet when He gave them of His bounty, they were
niggardly with it, and turned away, and they were contradicted. So
He made their outcome hypocrisy in their hearts until the day
when they shall meet Him, because they broke with God what
they had pledged to Him, and because they were liars” (al-Tawbah,
9: 75-77). But the isnad for the story — as Ibn Hajar has said in his
source-critique of al-Kashshaf— is extremely weak.14
THE DEFECTS OF MANY ADMONISHERS
A failing common to admonishers and preachers of sermons in the

mosques in most Islamic lands is that they are “gathering firewood
in the dark”. They mumble from the hadiths what moves people,
while there is not among those hadiths one with a source that has
been confirmed as sahih or hasan. I have not witnessed a Friday
sermon or a lesson of admonishment but, almost always, I have
heard a bundle of weak, or severely weak, hadiths, and at times
even fabricated ones. In one country, I attended a sermon that I
think was on the occasion of celebrating the life of the Prophet,
and so its theme was his personality, the purity of his life, the
charm of his attitudes, and the greatness of his character. It is a
subject-matter richly endowed, overflowing with established truths
from the Qur’an, and the authentically reported Sunnah. But the
preacher remembered barely two or three of the hadiths estab
lished as sahih or hasan. Instead, he emptied from his store a big
number of hadiths that are feeble, rejected or fabricated, or whose
source is not known. The scholars have said about such material:
63
“It has no nose-ring or bridle [meaning it has no control, restraint

or discipline].” Here are some examples of that:
The first [entity] that God created is the light of the Prophet.
God brought his parents to life, and they accepted Islam at his
hands.
Whoever is called by the name ‘Muhammad’, intercession for
him is obligatory.
(Various sayings reporting supernatural phenomena in relation
to his birth, etc.)
Among the strange things that I heard about the excellence of
the Community of the Prophet is the hadith: “The scholars of my
Community are like the prophets of the Israelites.” The preacher
argued for the correctness of this hadith by telling a story. The gist
of it is: that Abu Hamid al-Ghazali met the prophet Moses in a
dream or in the spirit world. Moses (whom God addressed
directly) said to him: “What is your name?” He said: “Muhammad
ibn Muhammad ibn Muhammad al-Ghazali al-Tusi...etc.” He said:
“I asked you for your name, and I did not ask you for your geneal
ogy.” He said: “And you, when God asked you about what is in
your right hand, you did not say to Him ‘My staff and go quiet.
Rather, you said: ‘It is my staff. I lean on it, and I beat down with
it leaves for my sheep, and I have other uses in it’.” The preacher
commented: “So al-Ghazali disputed with Moses, upon him be
peace.” That is how this man established the truth of the false
hadith (“The scholars of my Community are like the prophets of
the Israelites”)! And that is how merchandise unworthy to be
brought to market - made up of strange material from stories and
dreams and Israelite traditions - is spread and circulates, in the
absence of the good merchandise, namely hadiths established as
sahih and hasan. Then, as the economists say, bad currency drives
out the good!
The failing is a familiar one. It touches even some scholars who
are people of knowledge and worthy of trust, and most strict in the
narration of hadith, but who, nevertheless, when they write on
topics related to admonishment, are lax to the extreme of laxity.
64
We have seen the like of that in the books on admonishment of

Abu Faraj ibn al-JawzT (d. 597 AH), for example Dhamm al-Hawd\
whereas the same al-jawzl is strict in al-Mawduât and alÎlal al-
Mutanahiyahftal-VIadith al-Wahiyah and the like. Another example is
al-Naqqad Shams al-Dln al-Dhahabl (d. 738 AH), who was lax very
often in al-Kabair because this book has the character of admon
ishment. Similarly, al-Hafiz al-Mundhirl in his comprehensive
book al-Targhib wa al-Tarhib. He cites in it a great number of feeble,
rejected hadiths, even fabricated ones. He had no need of them. In
his Preface, he informs readers about the matter through the
pointers and terminological classifications he mentions there. So
he discharged his responsibility in that way, God have mercy on
him. However, his readers are not mindful of that, especially in our
age. That is what drove me to prepare al-Muntaqd — a two-part
selection from al-Mundhirl’s book, with source-critique of the sahib
and hasan hadiths in it.15
THE FATWA OF IBN HAJAR AL-HAYTHAMl
Ibn Hajar al-Haythami, the well-known ShaficI jurisprudent, surely

did an excellent thing when he straightforwardly asked the rulers
of his time to forbid from preaching every preacher who did not
make clear the sources of the hadiths he cites, and who mixed up I
true and authenticated reports with invalid and false ones.

A questioner came to Ibn Hajar al-Haythaml about a preacher
who climbs the pulpit every Friday and recites many hadiths, and
does not clarify their sources or their narrators (the questioner
mentioned a particular hadith by way of example), and asked: “So
what is obligatory [to be done] about him?” And his answer in his
words:
What he has cited of hadiths in his sermon without clarifying
their narrators, or who said them, is permissible on condition
that he is [himself] one of the people of knowledge in hadith,
or he is quoting from a book written by one like that [knowl
edgeable in hadith]. But as for relying on the narration of
hadiths on [the basis of] the mere seeing of them in a book
whose author is not of the people of hadith, or in sermons
65
whose author is not like that [a hadith scholar] — then it is not

lawful. Whoever does that is to be rebuked for it with a severe
rebuke. And this is the condition of many sermon-givers. For
indeed they, from a mere seeing of a sermon with hadiths in it,
memorize [those hadiths] and preach with them [in their own
sermons], without their knowing whether those hadiths are
properly sourced or not. So it is a duty on the governors of all
lands that they restrain their sermon-givers from that. And it is
a duty of the governors of the land of this sermon-giver to
forbid him from that if he commits it to excess.
It is [incumbent] upon this sermon-giver that he make clear his
sanad in his narrations. Now if his sanad is correct, then [there
is] no objection against him. Otherwise it is permissible for the
person in authority that he remove from him the entitlement
to give sermons, holding him back from being so bold as to
hold this handsome status without right.16
If only this were put into effect on the sermon-givers of our
time! Then surely many of them - for their ignorance of the
hadith, and their confusion of the accepted and the rejected
hadiths - would be removed.
Ill
NARRATING WEAK HADITHS IN TARGHIB AND TARHlB
I am of the view that the cause of the wide circulation, among so

many of those who give sermons, reminders and admonishments,
of feeble, rejected and even fabricated hadiths, is adherence to the
opinion of the majority of scholars, which permits the narration of
such hadiths. They permit weak hadiths related to the virtues of
deeds, softening of the hearts, renunciation, and targhib and tarhib,
and stories tending to that, so long as these hadiths have nothing
in them connected to the commands of the Law, to any of the five
kinds of injunctions, namely the permitted, the forbidden, the
reprehensible, the obligatory, the commendable. In the Preface to
al-Targhib wa al-Tarhib al-Mundhiri wrote: “The scholars accept
relaxation of the categories of hadith in respect of targhib and tarhib
66
NARRATING WEAK HADITHS IN TARGHlB AND TARHlB
- to the extent that many of them cite the fabricated [one] and do
not make clear its condition!”
That is near to what al-Hakim says in his Mustadrak at the
beginning of Kitab al-Duza’ (the book of supplication): “And I, by
the will of God, shall set flowing the reports which the two
Shaykhs [al-Bukhari and Muslim] are silent about in the Book of
Supplications — following the doctrine of Abu SacId cAbd al-
Rahman ibn Mahdi on their acceptance.” Then he lays out his
sanad to Abu SacId cAbd al-Rahman and quotes his opinion:
If we relate from the Prophet on the lawful and the unlawful
and the injunctions, we are strict about the isnads and we criti I
cize the [narrators]. And if we narrate on the virtues of deeds,
and the reward and the punishment [hereafter], and the com
mended [acts] and the supplications, then we make easy the
• - » 17
isnaas.
Al-Khatib narrates in al-Kifayah, with his sanad from Ahmad ibn
Hanbal, the same opinion in nearly identical words,18 then says:
“The hadiths on the softening of hearts tolerate one’s relaxing [the
conditions] for them up to the point [in the hadith where] there
comes in it anything of an injunction.” Similarly, Abu Zakariyya al-
cAnbari says: “[If] the report when it came did not make the per
mitted forbidden and the forbidden permitted, and did not make
an injunction obligatory, and if it was on targhib and tarhib, or the
intensification or relaxing [of elements or forms of worship],
[then] it is obligatory to close one’s eyes to it [in forbearance], and
to make the narration of it easy.”19 I
I
But how far should this closing of the eyes, and making easy of j
the isndds, go?

Some people understand from this that one should accept a
*
hadith on targhib and tarhib without condition — even if its narrator
is alone in narrating it, or one atrocious in his errors, or who has a
i
lot of rejected reports credited to him, or who has been accused of
being a liar. Some of the ignorant ones of the Sufis even permitted
the narration of fabricated hadiths — hadiths concocted and manu
factured — provided only that they inspired to the good and fright
ened away from the evil. Some of them (as we noted earlier) went
67
so far as to excuse themselves with that motive, for contriving

hadiths on the merits of particular surahs of the Qur’an or of
particular good deeds. When people cited the well known hadith
reported mutawatir— “One who lies against me with premeditation,
he has provided his place in the Fire” — they said with all
impudence: “We never lie against him, but we only lie for him.”
That is an excuse more ugly than sin: it implies a judgment that his
religion is deficient and they are completing it for him. But God
said: “This day I have completed for you your religion” (al-Ma'idah*
5:3).
Therefore, the scholars dedicated to establishing the truth made
the purpose, and the limits, of relaxing the conditions for isnads
very clear. We cite here brief examples of the reflections of some
of those scholars:
Ibn Rajab al-Hanbali said (commenting in his Shark QIlal al-
Tirmidhi on al-Tirmidhi’s saying that he did not adduce in an
argument hadiths narrated from someone accused of dishon
esty, or known for forgetfulness, or for many errors in his
reports):
As for what al-Tirmidhl has mentioned ... his point is that he
does not adduce [such hadiths] in the Legal injunctions and
matters of practice. But if narrators had narrated some of
those [hadiths] on the softening of the hearts and targhlb and
tarhib, then many of the imams permitted the narration of
[such hadiths] from weak [narrators]; among [those imams
were] Ibn Mahdi and Ibn Hanbal.
Rawwad ibn al-Jarrah said:
I heard Sufyan al-Thawri, he said: “Do not take this
knowledge in the lawful and the unlawful except from the
heads, the ones most famous for their knowledge, those who
know the addition and subtraction [the adjustments needed to
understand the quality of a report]; and there is no objection in
what is other than that [i.e. the lawful and the unlawful] to
taking from respected elders [men known for their piety but
not specialists in hadith].”
Ibn Abi Hatim said:
My father transmitted to us from cAbdah, he said: “It was said
to Ibn al-Mubarak - when he had narrated a hadith from a
68
man — it was said: ‘This man is weak!’ Then [Ibn Mubarak]

said: ‘It is tolerated to narrate from [a weak narrator] this
degree (qadr) or the like of these things.’ [So] I said to cAbdah:
‘Like which things might it be?’ He said: ‘On manners, on
admonishments, on renunciation.’ ”
Ibn Macln said about Musa ibn TJbaydah al-Rabdhi, a man
known for his piety (not as a hadith scholar) and weakness in
narration, that he wrote down from his hadiths those on the
softening of hearts.
Ibn TJyaynah said:
Do not hear from Baqiyyah (meaning Baqiyyah ibn Walid)
what is in the Sunnah, but hear from him what is on the
reward [hereafter] and other than it.
Ahmad ibn Hanbal said about Ibn Ishaq (Muhammad ibn
Ishaq, author of the famous Sira/fy.
One writes down from him on the battles and things like
them.
Ibn Musa said on Ziyad al-BikaT.
No objection to him on the batdes, but as for what is other
than that: No.
I
Ibn Rajab said:
Indeed one only narrates on tarhib and targhib and renunciation »
and good manners the hadiths of those of the people who are
forgetful [but] who are not suspected of lying. And as for the I
people who are suspect, one leaves their hadith. So said Ibn
20
Abl Hatim and others.
The sayings just quoted (and others like them) make it clear that
not one of the imams of hadith accepts the narration of hadiths of
targhib and tarhib from all and sundry indiscriminately, nor if their
narrators were ignorant or accused of lying, nor if excessively
prone to error in their reports. They only permitted the narration
of some narrators, in whose capacity for memorization there was &
some pliancy or weakness, and though they were not (as Sufyan al-
Thawri put it) “among the famous heads of the knowledge”, there
was no doubt as to their trustworthiness and probity. There was
doubt only about their capacity for memorization and their
alertness and thoroughness.
69
For the acceptance of weak hadiths on the softening of hearts

and targhib' Ibn Hajar mentioned three conditions. Later, al-Suyup
copied them from him in Tadrib al-Rawi:
First: This condition is agreed upon. It is that the narrator or
report may be weak but not extremely so. Thus, one who is alone
in narrating is excluded, one who is from among the known liars,
or from those accused of lying, and one who is preposterous in his
error.
Second: that the hadith comes under a general principle (mean
ing, it conforms to and does not contradict the Law or the relig
ion). Thus, that which has been innovated, for which there is no
source at all, is excluded.
Third: that, in the course of acting upon such a hadith, it should
not be believed to be established as from the Prophet. Thus, what
the Prophet did not say will not be (incorrectly) attributed to him.
As for any action taken in accordance with such a hadith, it is to be
taken only as a precaution.
Al-Suyuti said: “The last two [conditions] are from Ibn cAbd al-
Salam and from his student Ibn Daqlq al-Td. And the first: al-
cAlal reported the agreement about it.”21
SOME IMPORTANT REALITIES
It is essential here that I alert readers to a number of realities of

this subject, of which many people have a poor understanding. As
a result, religious education has become confused for them, albeit
some of them continue to serve as religious guides for large num
bers of Muslims.
1: REJECTION OF WEAK HADITHS EVEN ON TARGHlB AND TARHlB
Among scholars, old and new, some do not accept hadiths other
than the sahih and the hasan, whatever their subject-matter. Ibn
Rajab said in Sharh al-Tlab.
It has appeared from what Muslim (d. 261 AH) has mentioned
in his Preface [that] he judged [that] the hadiths of targhib and
70
tarhib are not narrated except from one from whom the injunc-
tions are [also] narrated.
In the Preface of his Sahih he abhorred the narration of weak
23
hadiths and rejected reports.
Evidently, this was also the doctrine of Imam al-Bukharl (d. 206
AH). It is the doctrine of the master ofjarh and taSdil (censure and
approval of narrators), Yahya ibn Macln (d. 233 AH). Among the
later scholars who adhered to it were: Ibn Hazm (d. 456 AH) of the
Zahirl school, al-Qadl Ibn al-cArabl (d. 543 AH) of the Maliki
school, and Abu Shamah from the ShaficI school. Among contem
porary scholars: Shaykh Ahmad Muhammad Shakir and Shaykh
Muhammad Nasir al-Dln al-Albanl. Shaykh Shakir wrote about it
in his book al~BaSth al-Hathith^ in which he comments on Ibn
Kathlr’s Ikhtisdr ('Ulum al-Hadith. After stating what some people
permitted in the narration of weak hadiths, and expounding its
conditions (which we noted above), he says:
What I [hold] is that the exposition of the weakness of a weak
hadith is obligatory in all cases. Because leaving out the exposi
tion puts the one approaching it in mind that it is a sahih hadith
— especially when the transmitter is one of the hadith scholars
to whose opinion one refers in [such matters]. [I hold also that
there should be] no difference between injunctions [on the one
hand], and the merits of deeds and the like [on the other], as
regards non-acceptance of a weak report. Rather, there is no
argument from any [hadith] unless from what has been au
thenticated as from God’s Messenger - from a sahih or hasan
hadith. As for what Ahmad ibn Hanbal and Ibn Mahdi and al-
Mubarak have said — “...If we narrate on the merits and the
like we relax [the conditions of acceptability of reports]” —
then they only meant by that (in what I consider on balance,
and God knows better) the taking of hadiths that are hasan,
which do not reach to the rank of sahih. For, in point of fact,
the terms sahih and hasan were not in their epoch widely settled
upon and evident. Rather, many of the early scholars did not
rank the hadith except as sahih or daîf^vA no more.
Ibn Taymiyyah and Ibn al-Qayyim have a discourse of the same
meaning. In it they interpret what is narrated from Ahmad ibn
Hanbal as meaning that he accepts a weak hadith in the sense of
71
giving it priority over ra’y (personal opinion) and qiyas (analogical

reasoning); moreover, that what he had in mind was the reports
that (later) came to be classed as hasan. As is well known, it was al-
Tirmidhl who popularized the distinction between sahih and hasan.
As for Shaykh al-Albani: he has given his authority to the same
position in the prefaces to many of his books, in particular: Sahih
al-]amic al-Saghlr and its Supplement* and Sahih al-Targhib wa al-Tarhib.
2: NON-ADHERENCE TO THE CONDITIONS STIPULATED

BY THE MAJORITY
The second reality is that, regrettably, the three conditions, stipu

lated by those who permitted the narration of weak hadiths on
targhlb and tarhib, softening of the hearts, and the like, have not
been adhered to in a scholarly manner. Many of those who busy
themselves with the hadiths in this field do not distinguish be
tween the weak and the extremely weak. They do not scruple to
ensure that the hadith conforms to Legal principle established
from the Qur’an or the authenticated Sunnah. Rather, at times (as
I said earlier) the infatuation with what there is in these reports of
reminder and inspiration overwhelms them — even if a report is
one rejected in the most severe degree of rejection, or if there
loom about it signs of fabrication.
3: PROHIBITION OF NARRATING IN A STYLE OF CERTAINTY
The scholars have mentioned on this an important warning,

namely not to say in a weak hadith ‘God’s Messenger said this and
this’ in the style of a positive, definitive statement. Ibn Salah said
in category 22 of his <\Jlum al~Hadith\
If you intend the narration of the weak without isnad, then do
not say in it ‘God’s Messenger said like this or like this’ or
what resembles that in words [expressive] of certainty. Rather,
only say: ‘It is narrated from God’s Messenger this or this’; or
‘it has reached us from him this or this’; or ‘it has been men
tioned from him’ or ‘has come from him’; or ‘Some of them
narrate’; or what resembles that [sort of phrasing].
72
1
This manner is the rule for that whose being sahib or daQif
you doubt. Indeed, only say ‘God’s Messenger said’ in that
whose being sahib is clear to you in respect of its route [of
transmission], which we clarified earlier. God knows better.
What Ibn Salah said, al-Nawawl agreed with, as did Ibn Kathir,
and al-Traqi, and Ibn Hajar, and all the books on the technique
and terminology of hadith. But the givers of reminders and ser
mons, and writers who narrate weak hadiths, do not give their
hearts to this alarm. Instead, they start off their weak hadiths with
the words "God’s Messenger said’.
4: THE SUFFICIENCY OF THE SAHlH AND THE HASAN
If, on a particular topic, we have to hand a single hadith or many

from the category of sahih or hasan, and the same from the
category of the daîf* then the more worthy course is to find the
former sufficient. There is no call to load our memories with the
daQif. Indeed, doing so is at the expense of the sahih and infringes
one’s duty to it. It has come from some of the Companions: “No
effort do the people expend on innovation (bidâh) but they lose
the like of it from the Sunnah.” And that is something that has
actually happened: bidQah is replacing sunnah* innovation taking the
place of tradition. Al-Khatib narrated in al-Kifayah from Imam Ibn
Mahdi that he said:
One should not busy oneself in the writing down of the
hadiths of the weak [narrators]. For indeed the least of what is
in it — to the extent that he writes from the hadith of the
people of weakness — is that the hadiths of [the people of]
trustworthiness are missed by him.
If human capacity for memorization, reflection, comprehension
and absorption, is limited — and there is no escaping that - then it
is better to direct that capacity, and one’s effort and time, to what
has more right and priority. There is no disagreement that, of the
two, the sahih has precedence in this respect over the daîf.
73
5: WARNING AGAINST UNBALANCING THE ORDER AMONG THE DEEDS
The hadiths on softening of the hearts, targhib and tarhtb, may not
have (in their texts) anything to do with an injunction that makes
permissible or makes forbidden. Nevertheless, we find that they
contain something else that has its own great importance and
consequences. Our earlier imams did not attend to this — it is
something that has emerged (over time) from ‘the disordering of
the relationships’ among obligations and deeds, which the Law in
its wisdom had settled. For every deed — commanded by the Law
or forbidden by it - there is a weight or value specified, relatively
to some other deed, in the view of the Law. We are not permitted
to transgress a limit that the Law has stipulated as a limit — so that
we shift a deed below or above the level prescribed for it, so as to
make it more or less worthy, more or less important.
The most serious case is altering the weight of deeds: giving to
some of the righteous deeds a value greater than their due, or more
frequency than is proper to them, by inflating what is in them of
reward, until it extinguishes what is more important and higher in
rank in the view of the religion; conversely, giving undue weight to
some of the proscribed acts, overstating what is in them of
punishment, in such a way as damages one’s perception of the
importance of other proscribed acts. Such exaggerations in the
promise of reward or the threat of punishment have resulted in
distortion of the image of the religion in the view of the educated
seekers of enlightenment. They relate what they hear or read of
such exaggeration to the religion itself, whereas Islam is exempt
from it.
Often what such exaggeration leads to (especially on the side of
tarhlb) is psychological reversions and anxieties. They sow aversion
and hatefulness between people, and frighten them from the
religion, and distance them from its spaciousness. So we will find a
father has complained of his twelve-year-old daughter waking up
in the night alarmed and fearful, because she sees frightening
dreams - the affect of having listened to a cassette of one admon-
74
isher about the punishments of the grave, a cassette in which there

were many from this category of hadiths.
It is the Muslims’ duty to maintain the deeds in their ordering
in the Law — without falling into the web of exaggerations which
drive us hard into either extreme of excess or neglect. As CAU ibn
Abl Talib said: “Upon you [is obligatory] the middle way [of doing
things]: which the one going too far (al-ghdli) returns to, and the
one not going far enough {al-tali} catches up with.”
6: A WEAK HADITH CANNOT ITSELF ESTABLISH AN INJUNCTION
The scholars of the religion allowed the narration of a weak hadith

only with conditions attached to doing so. According to the oldest
of them: they were lenient in their scrutiny of the isnads in the
narration of a weak hadith, intending thereby only the urging of a
righteous deed whose righteousness is already established by
accepted Legal argument, or the restraining of an evil deed whose
evil is already established by Legal argument. They did not intend
to establish by the weak hadith the righteousness or evil of the
deed. However, many of the general populace — indeed even some
hadith scholars — did not differentiate between the permissibility of
narrating a weak hadith (with the conditions attached) and the
establishment of an action by it.
That is why we see, for example, people in most Muslim lands
making much of the night of mid-Shaân. They make its night
special by keeping vigil in it, and its day by fasting in it, on the
basis of the hadith narrated from CAH, maifiFatr. “When it is the
night of mid-ShaTjan, then keep vigil during the night and keep
fast during the day. For indeed God, Exalted and Blessed is He,
comes down in it, at the setting of the sun, to the heaven of this
world, and He says: ‘There is not one who has sought forgiveness
but that I forgive him [....].’ ” Ibn Majah narrated it. Al-Mundhiri
pointed to its being weak; al-Busiri also affirmed its weakness in
7. awa id Ibn Majah?^
Again, in most Muslim lands, we see people making much of
the day of cAshura’, sacrificing animals, considering it to be an T!d
75
or a day fixed for regular annual remembrance, and they give gen
erously in it to kith and kin. They do all this relying on a weak ha-
dith, nevertheless widely circulated among the common people:
“Whoever is generous in giving to his kith and kin on the day of
cAshura’, God will be generous to him for the rest of his years.” In
the opinion of Ibn Taymiyyah and others, the hadith is fabricated.
Al-Mundhirl said of it: “al-Bayhaql and others narrated it by way of
a group of the Companions.” And al-Bayhaqi said: “Though [the]
isnads [of this hadith] are weak, when they are drawn together,
some with others, they take strength. And God knows better.”
That is a statement that raises doubts. Ibn Jawzi and Ibn Tay
miyyah and others were quite certain that the hadith is fabricated,
but al-Traql and others sought to defend it and establish it as hasan
li-ghayri-hi (that is, not hasan in itself but by association with an isnad
that supports it). Many later scholars found it difficult to judge a
hadith as fabricated.
All of that, on balance of evidence, suggests to me, that this
hadith is something that some ignorant one of the Sunnis invented
to rebut the exaggerations of the Shica. For them, the day of cAsh-
ura’ is a day of sadness and mourning, so he turned it into a day
for being bathed and brightly-dressed and giving gifts to children!
Many of the misunderstandings and widespread innovations
among the Muslim masses can be traced back to such weak
hadiths. These hadiths spread through generations of backward
ness among them, influenced their minds and their hearts, and
chased away the sahib. Yet it is on the sahih that Muslims are re
quired — within the precincts of the Qur’an — to base their under
standing and interrelationships. Al-ShatibI clarified that duty in his
book, al-Htisam.
Shaykh al-Islam Ibn Taymiyyah, may God have mercy on him,
has a crystal-clear discourse on the intent of the scholars in saying
that one may act according to a weak hadith on the merits of
certain deeds (fadail) or targhlb and tarhib.
What the scholars are on [i.e. their considered opinion] is:
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1
Acting in accordance with a weak hadith on the fada’il is

not for the establishment of a recommended act by a hadith,
which is not [itself] adduced as an argument. For the recom
mended act surely is a [category of] command in the Law and
is not established except by Legal proof. One who reports
from God that Fie loves some particular deed without Legal
proof has surely prescribed as Law in the religion [something],
for which he has no permission from God. It is just as if he
established [actions in the category of] the obligatory or the
forbidden. For this [reason] the scholars differed on the re
commended [category], just as they differed on other matters.
Indeed, [this] is a basic principle of the religion as defined in
Law.
Their intention in that was only that the deed should be
something of which it had already been established, by a text
[of Qur’an or Sunnah] or by ijmac [consensus], that God loved
it or that God abhorred it — [a deed of the former kind] such
as reciting the Qur’an, and glorifying Him in His names, and
making supplication, and giving in charity, and emancipating a
slave, and treating people with kindness; and abhorred deeds
such as lying or treachery, and similar to that... So when a
hadith is narrated on the merit of some recommended deeds
and the reward for them, and the abhorrence of some deeds
and the punishment for them, and their reward and punish
ment and their kinds are established and decided, [and] if, in
what is narrated, the hadith [is one that] we do not know to be
fabricated, it is permissible to narrate it and act upon it. Mean
ing*. that the soul may hope thereby for reward, or be fearful
thereby of punishment. Just as a man knows that commerce
brings profit, but [as a supplement to that knowledge] he is
informed that it makes a great profit, then this if true benefits
him, and if false it did not harm him.
An example of that: targhib and tarhib by [reliance on] the
reports of the Israelites and [reports of] dream-visions, and the
sayings of the salaf and of the scholars, and events associated
with the scholars, and the like of that, does not permit the
establishing of a Legal injunction - neither a recommended act
nor anything else. However, that it be mentioned in taigbib and
tarhiby and the arousing of awe and fear is permissible [pro
vided that] what is attractive or repulsive about it was [already]
known by Legal argument. For indeed that is beneficial and
not harmful. And it is the same whether in itself the matter is
77
true or false. For what one knows to be false [and] fabricated,

it is not permitted to give attention to it. For if [it is] a lie, then
it is good for nothing; and if it is established that it is sahih,
then die injunctions are established by it. When both cases [it
is true or it is false] apply, it is narrated on the possibility of its
being true and the non-harmfulness of its being false. Ahmad
[ibn Hanbal] only said: “When there come [reports related to]
targhib and tarhib. we relax [the normal standards] for the is-
nads.” His meaning: We only narrate of that [sort of reports]
with the isnads, and [we do so] even if they were not reported
from trustworthy narrators [of the quality] that one would base
[a Legal] argument on them. Similarly, the saying of the one
who said: Act according to [those hadiths] in the merits of
deeds, only doing according to what in them is of the deeds of
righteousness, for example reciting the Qur’an and remem
brance [of God], and avoiding what is abhorred in them of
deeds of wickedness.
But if the weak hadiths on the fadd’il include [matters] de
termined and delimited [by the Law] — for example, [doing] the
prayer at a specified time with a specified recitation or in a
specified row - it is not permissible for you, because the re
commendation of this specified quality was not established by
Legal proof. [It is] different if what is narrated in it [is some
thing like]: “Whoever has entered the market and said ‘There
is no god but God...’, he will have such and such.”27 Now the
remembrance of God in the market surely is [already known to
be something] recommended, on account of what is therein of
remembering God among the forgetful, as has come in the
well-known hadith: “Remembering God among the forgetful
is like a green tree among dry trees.”28
As for the measure of reward narrated in [a weak hadith]:
its being established does not harm, nor does its not-being
established.
And the conclusion: that one narrates this category [of
hadith] and one acts according to it in targhib and tarhib^ but
not in the recommended acts. Beyond that: conviction about
the consequence of it - and [this] is the measures of reward
and punishment [for it] - [that] is conditional upon Legal proof.29
Despite this clear exposition, we see many people establishing
the bounds, and the terms and measures, of the lawful and unlaw-
78
ful, the recommended and the reprehensible, according to weak

hadith.
7: TWO COMPLEMENTARY CONDITIONS FOR THE ACCEPTANCE

OF WEAK HADITH
If we adopt the opinion of the majority on the permissibility of

narrating weak hadith on targhib and tarhib* then it is proper, in my
view, to polish the three conditions already mentioned with a
further two, complementary conditions. (These are mentioned in
my book Thaqdfat al-Daîyahl) They are: (1) that the hadith should
not contain exaggerations offensive to reason or Law or language;
(2) that the hadith should not contradict a Legal proof stronger
than itself.
What offends reason or the 'Laiv or the language. The leaders of hadith
study have stipulated that a fabricated hadith is known by
indications evident in the narrator or in what is narrated. Among
the evident indications in what is narrated are: a) from the general
evidence of fabrication, that the report is contrary to reason, hence
its interpretation is not acceptable, and it is closely bound to what
sense and perception reject. Or b), that the report is contradictory
to the definitive proofs of the Book or the Sunnah known as muta-
watir, or to the definitive ijmac (consensus), and there is no possi
bility of reconciling the contradiction between the two. Or f), the
report has to do with a large issue, about which there is a strong
expectation of a group of people having been present to convey it,
but it has been conveyed by only one person. Also among those
evident indications, d)\ the extremes of severe threat over a small
matter, or of tremendous promise over a slight matter: this is
common in the hadiths of story-tellers.
Even among hadith scholars, sadly, there are many who do not
apply these basic criteria to what they narrate on targhib and tarhlb
and the like. Perhaps there was an excuse for them in the
temperament of their age. As for modes of reasoning in our age,
exaggerations are not acceptable, nor are they digested; and it is
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likely that the religion itself is blamed when such exaggerations are
encountered in hadiths like these.
As to what offends die language: in this class are many of the
hadiths that certain story-tellers narrate. For example: Darraj Abu
al-Samah incorporated into Qur’anic commentary words whose
meanings are patendy clear in the language, but for which he
narrated interpretations that are misleading in their strangeness and
distance from the dictionary meanings. An example is the hadith
from Abu Haytham from Abu Satid, marfiâir. “WayE [its meaning
is] a valley in hell — unbelievers fall in it for forty autumns, before
its bottom is reached.” Ibn Hanbal and al-Tirmidhi have narrated
something similar except that they have the phrase: “seventy
autumns”. But wayl is a word meaning ‘threat of destruction’, well
known before Islam and after it. Another example is what has
come, according to al-Tabarani and al-Bayhaqi, from Ibn Mascud,
from his commentary on al-ghayy in the verse: “Then has followed
after them a generation who have ruined the rite of prayer and
followed lusts: so they shall encounter error (ghayy)” (Maryam, 19:
59). Ibn Mascud said: “A valley in hell”; and in a variant narration:
“the fire in hell”. But ghayy is a word well known, and it is the
antonym of nishd (guidance), as in the verse: “The right way (al-
rushd) has been clearly distinguished from the wrong way (al-ghayy)”
(al-Raqarah, 2: 256). Similar to that is what al-Bayhaqi and others
have reported from Anas ibn Malik, on the verse “And We made
between them a place of perdition (mawbitf)” (al-Kahf, 18: 52). Anas
said, of the meaning of mawbiq: “A valley of pus and blood.” Even
stranger is what Ibn Abi Dunya has narrated from Shafi ibn Matic:
that “there is in hell a valley called athdni, containing snakes and
scorpions He points to the verse: “And whoever does that
will pay the penalty (athani)” (al-Furqdn, 25: 68). But atham is only a
word derivative from ithm (sin, offence).
It is regrettable indeed that al-Mundhirl, may God have mercy
on him, should have cited all of these hadiths in his book al-Targhib
wa al-Tarhib. No wonder that the sermon-makers hurried to them
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I
and made much of them. That is why we argued against them in

our book al-Muntaqa min al-Targhib wa al-’Tarhlb.
1/ should not contradict a stronger Iêgal argument. An example of this
is the weak hadiths that report about cAbd al-Rahman ibn cAwf
that he entered Paradise on all fours on account of his wealth. It
has been claimed that such hadiths conform to the general class of
warning against the ordeal of property, and the arrogance of the
wealthy. However, we must note that these weak hadiths are con
tradicted by sahib hadiths that make cAbd al-Rahman ibn cAwf one
of the ten who were promised Paradise, not to speak of widely
attested events and well trusted reports, all of which establish that
he was among the best of the Muslims, and the greatest in piety
and God-fearing, of those who spent of their wealth freely in the
way of God, and the model of the wealthy man properly grateful
to God. For this reason God’s Messenger exalted him and was
pleased with him; and TJmar, appointed him as one of the six
Companions of the Council and gave to his say, when the voices
were equal, a weight and preference above that of others.
That is why al-Mundhirl rebutted these weak hadiths for their
impropriety. He said:
There has come [to us] something other than what is proper:
from the hadith of a group of the Companions from the
Prophet that cAbd al-Rahman ibn cAwf will enter Paradise on
all fours for the great quantity of his wealth. The best of [those
hadiths] is not safe from objection, and there never came from
them anything by a single narrator of the rank of hasan. Most
certainly his wealth was a quality that God’s Messenger
mentioned: “How excellent the righteous wealth of a righteous
man!”30 So how should his rank in the hereafter be dimin
ished, or he be judged inadequate, but not others of the
wealthy ones of this Community? And for sure this has not
come about the person of any other than [cAbd al-Rahman ibn
cAwf). It is only correct [to affirm] the absolute precedence of
the poor of this Community [over] their wealthy ones. And
31
God knows better.
Another example of this kind is the hadith ‘al-gharanlcj'. To be
sure, we have a hadith expert (hafi%) of the stature of Ibn Hajar,
81
author of the commentary on al-Bukhari, saying of this hadith that,

because it is narrated by a number of routes, it must have a source.
But it is a hadith that clear reason refuses to accept, and authentic
tradition rejects. Shaykh al-Albanl compiled about it the treatise
Nasba al-Majaniq li-Nasf Qissat al-Gharaniq. Also al-Shaykh
Muhammad Sadiq cArjun, in his valuable book Muhammad Rasul
Allah, sets out in comprehensive detail the falsity of these stories,
and describes them as a mere “stupid lie”.
A WISE PREACHER DOES NOT TRANSMIT WHAT IS UNCLEAR TO PEOPLE
The inspired preacher should not transmit to the people every

thing that is known of the hadiths, even if they are sahih. Jamal al-
Din al-Qasiml said in his book QaivdQid al-Tahdith\
Not every sahih hadith is transmitted to the general public. The

evidence for that is what the two Shaykhs [al-Bukhari and
Muslim] have narrated from Mucadh, that he said: “I was on a
donkey [following] behind the Prophet, when he said: ‘Mu-
cadh! Do you know what is the right of God upon His slaves
and what is the right of the slaves upon God?’ I said: ‘God and
His Messenger know best.’ He said: ‘Indeed, the right of God
upon his slaves is that they worship Him and do not associate
with Him anything. And the right of the slaves upon God is
that He shall not punish one who does not associate with Him
anything.’ I said: ‘Messenger of God, shall I give the people
this good news?’ He said: TMo, do not give them the good
news, lest they become listless!’ ”
In a[nother] narration from both [al-Bukhari and Muslim]
from Anas that: “The Prophet said to Mucadh who was fol
lowing directly behind him: There is not one who testifies that
there is no god but God and that Muhammad is His Mes
senger, truthfully and from his heart, except that God prohib
its him to the Fire.’ He said: ‘Messenger of God, shall I not in
form the people of it so they will rejoice in the good news?’
He said: ‘Then they will become listless.’ ” Then Mucadh noti
fied [someone] of it at his death, to avoid sinning [against the
command to share knowledge and not hide it]. Al-Bukhari re
ported [it] by way of a note [i.e. without an isnad attached]
from cAli : “Convey to the people what they know [and so can
82
I
understand]; do you want God and His Messenger to be de

nied?” There is a saying like it of Ibn Mascud: <fYou have not
transmitted a hadith to a people whose minds cannot attain it
except that it is a trial for some of them.” Muslim narrated it.
Al-Hafiz Ibn Hajar said: Of those who were averse to
transmitting some hadith and not others: Ahmad [ibn Hanbal
was averse to doing so] in the hadiths whose outward meaning
is rebelling against the ruler; and Malik in the hadiths of the
Attributes; and Abu Yusuf in the strange [matters]; and before
them Abu Hurayrah, [for example] in what is narrated from
him on the two bags: The point [that Abu Hurayrah was
alluding to] is what happens during dissensions. Similar to it [is
a report] from Hudhayfah. And from Hasan [al-Basri]: that he
disliked Anas conveying to al-Hajjaj the story of the TJraniy-
yun,33 lest he should adopt it by his weak interpretation as an
instrument [to justify] what he was intending in excess of shed
ding blood.
The control [ling principle] of that is: that the outward
[meaning] of a hadith may be strengthening heretical innova
tion, and its outward [meaning] is not the purpose in the origi
nal source; so what is wanted is keeping it back from one
about whom one fears that he will seize upon its outward
[meaning].
Thus the proscription (of conveying all hadiths to all and
sundry) related to the public interest, and was not a prohibition in
itself. Mucadh informed people as he did because of the generality
of the command to convey knowledge about the religion.
Some of the scholars said that the proscription in his saying
“Do not give them the good news” is particularized to some
people, i.e. not universal. Al-Bukhari adduced it in the argument
that it was for the scholar to particularize the knowledge to some
people and not others. The thing to be shunned is people not
understanding what is conveyed to them. He adopted the position
that hadiths like those of the all-permitting sorcerers {al-batala^ al-
mubdhiyyaH^5 provide a pretext for the abandonment of the reli
gious obligations and the lifting of the injunctions, and that opens
wide the way to ruin in this world on top of ruin in the next. For
where are those who, when they are given the good news, increase
greatly in worship? It was said to the Prophet “Why do you stand
83
[in vigil] in the night when God has forgiven you?” Then he said:
“Shall I not be a grateful slave?”36
So I marvel at all the absurdities in the attitude of those
preachers who do not cease to mention the hadith of the fly and
dipping it in the food! Or the hadith that Moses slapped the angel
of death! Or the hadith (in answer to one who asked, “Where is
my father?”): “Indeed my father and your father are in the Fire.”
Or the hadiths in which the salaf and the khalaf (the early gener
ations and the later) have differed about construing the Attributes
of God as predicates (qualifying His essential being) or as actions
(qualifying His acting in particular contingencies) — likely to be
misconstrued anthropomorphically (in both cases, if carelessly ex
pressed). Or the hadiths of the times of trouble which suppose in
their outward meaning that the only or best course is giving up all
hope of restoration of order, and the refraining from any action of
resistance to the disorder. Or other hadiths whose meaning is too
subtle for the majority of people.
There is no need for these hadiths. Injunctions are not arranged
upon them. If the people live their long lives without hearing
them, it does not diminish them in their religious life by a grain of
mustard seed. If, for a particular reason, the preacher does have
need of something from these hadiths then it is his duty to place
them in the right framework, to elucidate them with some expo
sition, and to preface them and add commentary to them, so as to
make their meaning clear and dispel from them any doubts and
misgivings.
We have taken as an example of that a famous hadith that has
often led the people to wrong understanding, and because of that
understanding, they have arranged upon it commands of danger
ous consequence. It is the hadith of Anas, as follows:
HADITH: THAT EVERY AGE IS WORSE THAN WHAT PRECEDED IT
Al-Bukhari narrated it with his sanad to al-Zubayr cAdI. He said:

“We came to Anas ibn Malik and we expressed to him our misgiv
ings about what we met from al-Hajjaj. Then he said: flBe patient!
84
For indeed there will not come upon you a time except that what
is after it is worse than it — until you meet your Lord. I heard it
from your Prophet.’ ”
The importance of this hadith
Some people have taken this hadith to justify sitting back from
taking action, from striving for reform, change and deliverance.
They have urged that the hadith demonstrates that human affairs
are in decline continually, in a permanent falling off, a successive
decaying, from one level to another level lower than it; it is not
carried from bad except to worse, nor from worse except to what
is worse than that, until the Hour stands over the evil ones of the
people and all people meet their Lord.
Others have held back from acceptance of this hadith. At times
some of them have rushed to rebut it because, to their way of
thinking, it was harmful or wrong for a number of reasons. First, it
encouraged hopelessness and despondency. Second, it urged nega
tivism in facing up to oppression from deviant rulers. Third, it op
posed the idea of ‘progress’ upon which the whole of life and
existence stands. Fourth, it moved away from the historical reality
of the Muslims. And fifth, it opposed the hadiths that have come
on the appearance of a khalifah who will fill the earth with justice
just as, now, it is filled with oppression and injustice (and he is the
one known by the name al-Mahdi)y and the hadiths on the coming
down of the Messiah, Tsa ibn Maryam, upon him be peace, and his
establishing the political state of Islam, and the rule of its Law, and
exalting its word throughout the earth.
The attitude of our scholars in older times to this hadith
It is our duty to say that the predecessors among our scholars held
back from this hadith, regarding its ‘generality’ (itlaq) as dubious.
By ‘generality’ they meant what is understood from the hadith, that
every time is worse than the one before it, whereas some times have
been less in evil than what preceded them, even if that happened
only the once — in the time of TJmar ibn cAbd al-cAziz. That was
85
after, immediately after, the time of al-Hajjaj, about whom com

plaint was general. The good that there was in the time of TJmar
ibn cAbd al-cAz!z has been made well-known. Even if what has
been said about it - that in his time evil faded away — might indeed
be going too far, it cannot be claimed by any means that his time
was worse than what preceded it.
The scholars in earlier ages responded to these reservations as
follows:
a) The interpretation of al-Hasan al-Basri
Al-Hasan al-Basri imputed to the hadith a meaning restricting it to

the overwhelming majority of times, not all times. Asked about
TJmar ibn cAbd al-cAzlz after al-Hajjaj, he said: “Some breathing
space [i.e. a period of solace] was necessary for the people.”
b) The interpretation ofIbn Masjid
There has come from Ibn Mascud: “There will not come upon you
a time except that it will be worse than the one preceding it. Look
now, I do not mean that one ruler is not better than another ruler
and no year is better than another year, but your scholars and your
jurists will go, then you will not find among [the people] a
successor [to them], and there will come a people who give fatwas
according to their personal opinion (raf).” And in a speech attrib
uted to him: “Then they will defile Islam and wreck it”. In al-Tath
Ibn Hajar weighed this argument in commenting on the meaning
of good and bad in this context, and said: “He is the more appro
priate to be followed.”
But in fact he does not altogether uproot the difficulty. For,
according to the texts, it is demonstrated that in the unseen future
there will come times for Islam in which its banner will be raised,
and its word exalted. Even if this happens only in the time of the
Mahdi and the Messiah in the end days, still it suffices.
History records that there have come periods of stagnation and
seizure in the world, succeeded by times of movement and renew
al. It suffices to mention, for example, those scholars and reform-
86
1
NARRATING WEAK HADITH S IN TARGHlB AND TARHlB
ers who appeared in the eighth century — after the fall of the cali
phate in Baghdad. And the vicissitudes of the conditions in the
seventh century, after which appeared, for example, Ibn Daqlq al-
cId, and Shaykh al-Islam Ibn Taymiyyah and his pupil Ibn al-Qay-
yim, and the rest of his pupils in Syria; so too appeared al-Shatibl
in al-Andalus; and Ibn Khaldun in the Maghreb and Egypt, and
others on whom Ibn Hajar wrote biographical notes in his book al-
Durar al-KantinahfiA. fan al-MTat al-Thanrinah.
In the epochs that followed that, we find for example Ibn Hajar
himself, and al-Suyuti in Egypt, and Ibn Wazir in Yemen, and al-
Dahlawl in India, and al-Shawkanl and al-Sanca’I in Yemen; and
Ibn cAbd al-Wahhab in Najd; and other scholars of high rank in
ijtihad, and leaders of the reformers. This is what prompted Ibn
Hibban to observe in his Sahih that the hadith of Anas was not for
the general public of his time, and he based his argument on the
afore-mentioned hadith on the Mahdi, and how he will fill the
37
earth with justice, after it has been filled with injustice.
c) The interpretation that ivefavor on balance

On balance I favor the commentaries on this hadith that Ibn Hajar
has given in al-Tathz
It is probable that the referent of the times mentioned is the
time of the Companions, on the basis that it is they who were
addressed by that [hadith]. Then as for those after them: they
were not intended in the report mentioned. However, the
Companion [i.e. Anas] understood [the words] in their general
ity, so for that [reason] he answered [in the way that he did]
those who complained to him about al-Hajjaj. He commanded
them to be patient, and they — or the greater part of them -
were the Tabi^ln [the Successors, the generation after the
38
Companions].
Ibn Hajar also brings to bear on this interpretation the dis
course of Ibn Mascud, who was particularly of the time of the
Companions and the Successors addressed in the hadith. (The
assassination of TJthman happened in that time, followed by the
Dissensions.)
87
I
As for the particular claim that the hadith implies an appeal to
silence before injustice, patience with abuse of power and tyranny,
and contentment with wrongdoing and disorder, and that it sup
ports negativism in the face of the arrogance of the tyrants in the
earth — it is rebutted by a number of arguments:
First-, that the speaker of “Be patient!” was Anas, so it is not a
hadith marfiF. He inferred what he understood from the Prophet.
And a Muslim is free to adopt or leave the discourse of every
individual except the one who was free of sin.
Second: Anas indeed did not command people to be content
before injustice and disorder, but only commanded them to be
patient — and the difference between the two is great. Contentment
before unbelief is itself unbelief, and before wrongdoing wrong
doing. As for patience, it is all but indispensable; one is patient
with a thing that one is averse to, while endeavoring to change it.
Third: one who does not have the capacity for resistance to in
justice and tyranny, has no way other than to seek refuge in
patience and long suffering. At the same time he must strive to
make preparations for appropriate action, for change, and to seize
means and occasions, to take help from all who share his burden
of concern. He must be ardent to exploit favorable opportunity, so
that he may counter the power of the false with the power of the
true, and the helpers of injustice with the helpers of justice.
Certainly the Prophet was patient for thirteen years in Makkah
against the idols and their worshippers. He used to pray in the
Masjid al-Haram, and circumambulate the Kaâh while there were
three hundred and sixty idols in it. He circumambulated it with the
delegation of his Companions in the seventh year of the Hijrah in
the ûmrat al-qadd\ and he saw the idols but did not touch them
until the right time came on the day of the Great Conquest — the
conquest of Makkah - and he destroyed them.
That is why our scholars have stipulated that if the elimination
of a wrong leads on to a greater wrong, silence is obligatory upon
one until the conditions change. Thus, it is not proper to under
stand the instruction to be patient as meaning an absolute sur-
88
render to injustice and arrogance. Rather: it means waiting and

watching attentively until God gives his judgment, and He is the
best of judges.
Fourth', patience does not forbid one from speaking the word of
truth, and enjoining the right and forbidding the wrong before
tyrants acting as gods. Yet there is no obligation to do so upon one
who fears for himself or his family or those around him. It has
come in a hadith: “The best jihad is a word of truth before an op
pressive ruler.”39 And in another hadith: “The leader of the mar
tyrs is Hamzah ibn cAbd al-Muttalib, and a man who stands before
an oppressive leader, then enjoins him [to do what is right] and
forbids him [to do what is wrong] and kills him.”40
89
:r-
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i*
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CHAPTER THREE
Principles for Correct

Understanding of the Sunnah
UNDERSTANDING IN THE LIGHT OF THE QUR’AN
To understand the Sunnah correctly, in a way that is secure from

distortion, deviation and bad interpretation, we must understand it
in the light of the Qur’an, in the framework of its divine instruc
tions. Where the Sunnah gives us information, the Qur’an is deci
sive as to its truth; and where it commands, the Qur’an is decisive
as to its justice: “And perfected is the word of your Lord in truth
and in justice. There is none to change His words. He is the All
Hearing and the All-Seeing” (al-AnQdm, 6: 116). We may think of
the Qur’an as the spirit of the body of Islam; as the foundations of
its building; and as the resource of its constitutional principles, to
which all the statutes in Islam are referred, as their parent and safe
refuge.
The Prophet’s Sunnah is the commentary on this 'constitution’,
the exposition of it, in the form of both theoretical explanation
and practical application: it was his duty to make clear to people
what was sent down to them. As the branch does not work against
the root, so the explanation does not oppose the explained: the
Sunnah turns always within the horizon of the Book, never trans
gressing it. That is why the sahih* established Sunnah is not found
to contradict the injunctions of the Qur’an. If people have sup
posed such contradiction to exist, then it must be a sunnah that is
not sahib, or the understanding of which is not sahlh, or it may be

that the contradiction is not real but merely conjectured.
Understanding the Sunnah in the light of the Qur’an means, to
begin with, that hadiths contradicting the Qur’an are rejected. For
example:
The hadith about the alleged ‘gharamtf (‘the long-necked ones’)
is, without a doubt, rebutted because it is contradictory to the
Qur’an. One cannot imagine how it could come in the context
where the Qur’an is strongly criticizing the false goddesses, where
it says: “Have you considered al-Lat and al-TJzza and Manat, the
third, the other? Are yours the males and His the females? That is
indeed an unjust division! They are surely only names that you
have named, you and your fathers, for which God did not send
any authority. They are not following anything but a whim of
the[ir] souls. And assuredly from your Lord the guidance has
come” (al-Najw, 53: 19-23). How, in the context of this negation of
and fleeing from the idols, can one reason that words glorifying
them should enter - the alleged words being: “Those gharanlq —
indeed their intercession is to be hoped for”?!1
Similarly, the hadith about women — “Consult with them and
then oppose them” — is invalid and false in that it contradicts the
verse about parents and their arrangements for the nursing of their
child: “And if the two of them desire [to engage a wet-nurse] by
mutual consent and consulting one another, then it is no sin for
either of them” (al-Baqarah, 2: 233).
PREFERRING WHAT IS IN THE LIGHT OF THE QUR’AN
Understanding the Sunnah in the light of the Qur’an also means

that, if jurists or commentators differ on what they derive from the
sunnahz, then the best of them and the one to be favored is the one
supported by the Qur’an. Consider the verse: “He it is Who pro
duces gardens trellised and untrellised, and the date-palms and
crops different in their taste, and the olive and the pomegranate,
like them and unlike them. Eat of its fruit when it bears fruit and
yield up its due on the day of its harvesting” {al-Anzdniy 6: 142).
92
Now this verse, in what it states in general terms and in what it

details, does not omit anything lodged and growing in the earth:
for every growing thing it indicates a due, and it commands the
yielding up of that due. The due as here commanded is general: it is
what the Qur’an and the Sunnah detailed subsequently, under the
categories of zakah (alms-tax).
In spite of this, we see among the jurists those who restrict the
liability to zakah on what God has produced out of the earth. They
confine it to either (1) four classes only of grains and dates; or (2)
to what is used as food in circumstances where one has choice (of
what to accept as food), not otherwise; or (3) to produce that can
be dried, measured and stored. They remove from liability other
fruits and vegetables — plantations of coffee and tea, orchards of
apples and mangoes, fields of cotton, sugar-cane, and the like,
from all of which wealth flows abundantly for their owners. So far
is this so that, when traveling in some Asian lands, I heard that the
Communists accuse Islamic fiqh or Islamic Legislation of putting
the burden of zakah on small cultivators (probably hired workers
on the land, not owners), who grow oats, wheat, barley and cedar,
while it exempts from zakah owners of great plantations of coco
nut, tea, rubber, and the like.
I stand in admiration at the discussion of this issue by Abu
Bakr ibn al-cArabi, the leading Maliki of his age. He commented on
the verse in his book Ahkam al-Qur'an, and clarified the doctrines
of three jurists — Malik, ShaficI, and Ibn Hanbal - on what, of the
plants of the earth, is liable and what is not liable. Among those
doctrines is his own, namely the doctrine of Malik, but (such was
his objectivity and depth of knowledge) he pronounced the doc
trines of all three schools weak as a whole. Thereafter he said:
As for Abu Hanlfah, he made the verse his looking-glass [i.e.
reflected on it intensively] then discerned the truth. He made
[zakah] obligatory on the edible [plants], be they nutritious or
otherwise. The Prophet explained that in the generality of his
saying: “In what the sky waters [i.e. whatever is produced by
the action of rain], a tenth (pl-cu$hf)”
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As for the opinion of Ahmad [ibn Hanbal] - that [the lia
bility to zakah] is in what is measured, according to his saying,
“There is not [any liability] in what is less than five measures
[...]” — it is weak, because that which the outward of the
I hadith rules upon is the nisab [minimum value below which
wealth is non-liable] in respect of fruit and grain. Then, as for
the falling away of the due right from what is other [than fruit
I
or grain], [that] is not within the competency of the statement
[it is not covered by the wording in the hadith]. As for the
relevance of the nutritional aspect (that is the Shafifi position),
then it is [merely] a claim, an idea that does not have a source
to which it refers. [The idea is not based on any authority of
text or principle.] And ideas, as we have explained in the book
on Qiyasy are only directed to injunctions according to their
sources.
Then how does God, glory be to Him, mention the bles
sing in the nourishing foods and fruits, and make them liable
to the due, all of them, [all] whose condition is classed as the
vine and the date-palm, [all] whose kind is classed as cultivated
[crops], and [all] to whose nutritional value is adjoined the
giving of light, by which the blessing is perfected in the enjoy
ment of the delight of the eye — [thereby achieving] the fulfill
ment [above the ground] of the favor in the darkness [under
the ground]?
Thereafter Ibn al-cArabl said:
Now if it is said: Why was it not conveyed from the Prophet
that he took zakah from the vegetables of Madinah and Khay-
bar? [The people objecting mean: no hadith has reached us, by
which the practice of taking zakah on vegetables can be legally
established.]
We say [in response]: Just so, that is what our scholars
relied on. To be more precise: it [not taking zakah on vege
tables] is [based on] an absence of proof, [it is] not [based on]
the existence of proof. [The objection is not based on any
authority that says not to take zakah on vegetables.]
And if it is said: If he took [the zakah], would it not have
been conveyed [that he did so]?
We say: What need is there for conveying it [as a practice
of the Prophet], when the Qur’an suffices on it?!2
There is the hadith narrated from the Prophet: “There is no
sadaqah on vegetables”. But it is weak in its isnad, and one cannot
94
adduce the like of such hadiths in any Legal argument — let alone
venturing to specify by them what, in the Qur’an and the well-
known hadiths, is general. Al-Tirmidhi narrated the hadith and
commented: “The isnad of this hadith has no sahih, and in [the
hadiths on] this topic not one thing is authenticated as from the
Prophet.”3
The hadith: “The one burying alive and the one buried are [both] in the Fire”
A Muslim must ‘refrain from’ any hadith that he sees as contra
dictory to an injunction of the Qur’an, unless he is able to find for
that hadith an interpretation easy to accept. So I ‘refrained from’
the hadith which Abu Da’ud and others have narrated: “The one
burying alive and the one buried are [both] in the Fire.”4 When I
read this hadith I felt dejected at heart. I wondered if the hadith
might be weak, for (as the people of this business know) not
everything that Abu Da’ud has narrated in his Sunan is sahih. But I
found in a text something in favor of its being sahih. Among those
who affirm its being so is Shaykh al-Albanl in Sahih al-]dmF ah
Saghir and Sahih Abi Da’ud.
An example of the arguments in defence of it: “The one bury
ing alive and the one buried alive are both in the Fire — except if
the one burying alive survived until the advent of Islam, then em
braced Islam.”5 This means that the one burying alive has some
chance of deliverance from the Fire, and the victim, the one buried
alive - no chance for her!
Here I raised questions about this — just as the Companions
raised questions when they heard from the Prophet: “If two
Muslims clash with their swords, then the one who slays and the
one slain are [both] in the Fire.” They said: “This slayer [we under
stand the outcome for him], but why the one slain [why should he
be in the Fire also?]” He said: “Indeed he [the slain] was coveting
the killing of his companion.” Thus he explicated for them the
aspect of the case justifying the Fire for the one slain - namely, his
intention, apparent from him, of killing his companion.
95
In the same way, I now ask: That the one burying alive should
be in the Fire I understand. But why should the one buried alive,
the victim, be in the Fire also? Her being consigned to the Fire
contradicts the verse: “And when the infant girl buried alive is
asked for what sin she was slain” {al-Fakwir, 81: 8—9). I have gone
back to the commentators to see what they have said on the
educational purpose of the hadith, but I have not found anything
that gives ease to the mind and heart.
The hadith: “Indeedjourfather and myfather are in the Fire”
Another example is the hadith which Muslim has narrated from

Anas: “Indeed your father and my father are in the Fire.”6 The
I Prophet said this in answering a questioner who asked about his
(the questioner’s) father: Where is he now (now that he is dead)? I
wondered: What sin did cAbd Allah ibn cAbd al-Muttalib have that
1
he should be in the Fire, and he was one of the people of the
Fatrah (the period before the advent of Islam), about whom the
sahlh reports are that they are saved?
It occurred to me that the words “my father” might be refer
ring to his uncle Abu Talib, who had provided for him, watched
over him and cared for him after the death of his grandfather,
cAbd al-Muttalib. The usage of zamm (uncle) for abu (father) has
appeared in the language and in the Qur’an itself: “We worship
your God, and the God of your fathers, Ibrahim and Ismacll and
Ishaq, and He is One God, and we are muslim (wholly submitted to
Him)” (al-Haqarahy 2: 133). Ismacil was the 'uncle’ of Yacqub, but
the term in the Qur’an is 'father’. One does not wonder that Abu
Talib should be in the Fire, given his refusal, to the last moment of
his life, to pronounce the testimony of tawhid. A group of authenti
cated traditions inform us that, while under punishment, he would
nevertheless be the most easy of the people of the Fire. However,
this way of explaining it is most weak in my opinion, because it
opposes the immediate aspect of the text. Then, from another
aspect: What was the sin of the father of the man who asked the
question? The outward sense of what we know of the case is that
96
this man’s father died before the advent of Islam. Accordingly, I

‘refrain from’ this hadith until something appears to me that settles
my unease about it.
One of my teachers, Shaykh Muhammad al-Ghazali, rejected
the hadith explicitly, because it controverts what God has said:
And they are not punished until We have sent a messenger, (al-
Isra’, 17:15)
And if We had destroyed them with some punishment, they
would certainly have said: “Our Lord! If only You had sent us
a messenger so that we might have followed Your revelations
before we were humiliated and disgraced.”(Taba, 20: 134)
...lest you should say: “No messenger came to us as a bringer
of good news and of warning,” a Messenger certainly has
come to you as bringer of good news and as a wamer. (al-Ma’idah,
5:19)
The Arabs did not have a wamer sent to them before Muham
mad, as is made explicit in the Book:
So that you may warn a people whose fathers were not warned
so they became heedless. (Yasin, 36: 6)
That you may warn a people to whom, before you, no warner
came, so it may be they will be [come] guided. (al-Sajdah, 32: 3)
And We did not send to them before you any warner. (Saba,
34:44)
However, I prefer, in regard to sahib hadiths, to ‘refrain from’
them, without rejecting them absolutely, for fear that they have
meanings not yet disclosed to me. By great good fortune I went
back to what commentators on Sahih Muslim other than al-Nawawi
have said. I mean the two most learned scholars, al-Abbi and al-
Sanusi. I found both of them to be ‘refraining from’ the outward
meaning of this hadith. Al-Nawawi commented on the hadith: “He
said it in accordance with the goodness of his nature, as a solace
for the man, as a sharing in the hardship [of having a father who
had not died in the faith].” Then he went on to say: “That one
who dies an unbeliever is in the Fire, and the relationship of near
relatives does not benefit him.” In response to that, al-Abbi said:
97
This absolute [statement] needs looking at! Al-Suhayll has said:
“It is not for us to say that, for he has said: ‘Do not give hurt
to the living on account of the dead.’ ” And the Exalted has
said: “Those who give hurt to God and His Messenger, God
has cursed them in this world and the hereafter, and has
prepared for them a humiliating punishment” {al-Ahâb* 33:
57). The Prophet only said it as solace for the man, and it has
come that the man had said: “And you, where is your father?”,
and he said that to him at that time [i.e. in response to the
particular form of the question].
Al-Nawa\vi said: “And in it is [included] that one who died
during the Fatrah* at which time the Arabs were [immersed] in the
worship of idols, is in the Fire, and this is not [an instance] of pun
ishment before preaching, because the call of Abraham, upon him
be peace, and other messengers, had reached them.”
In response, al-Abbi said:
Ponder what there is in this statement of contradiction. For
those whom the call [to correct worship] reached were surely
not of the people of the Yatrah. That is known by what is
heard [reported from tradition]: for the people of the Yatrah
are the communities existing between the times of the mes
sengers, those to whom the earlier Messenger was not sent and
who did not survive to [the time of] the later [Messenger] —
like the Bedouin Arabs to whom Jesus, upon him be peace,
was not sent, and they did not survive to the time of the Pro
phet. The Fatrah on this interpretation includes what was be
tween every two messengers.
However, when the jurists use the word Fatrah they mean only
[the period] which was between Jesus, upon him be peace, and
! •
the Prophet Al-Bukhari mentioned from Salman that it was
six hundred years.
Since the definitive [proofs] demonstrate there being no
punishment until the justification (htijjaB} has been established,
we know that they are not [among] the punished.
Then if it is said: [There are] hadiths establishing as correct
the punishment of some of the people of the Fatrah, like this
hadith, the hadith “I saw cAmr ibn Luhayy dragging his entrails
(qnsba-hu)1 in the Fire.”8
I say [in answer]: cAqIl ibn Abi Talib has responded to that
with three answers:
98
First that they [the hadiths in question] are solitary reports;

they cannot go against the definitive [hadiths established from
many narrators by many routes].
Second: the punishment is restricted to those [specific indi
viduals mentioned], and God knows the cause [for which they
are punished].
Third: the punishment mentioned in these hadiths is res
tricted to those who changed and altered [the way of life of]
the people to some misguidedness9 that was not forgivable.10
CARE IN CLAIMING CONTRADICTION OF THE QUR’AN
It is imperative that we warn here against latitude in claiming con

tradiction of the Qur’an without well-established foundations for
such a claim.
The Muctazilis were a group who rode rashly on the vehicle of
excess. At times they dared to reject widely known sahih hadiths on
the acceptability in the hereafter of the intercession of the Prophet,
of his brother prophets, of the angels, and of the righteous ones of
the believers. Such intercession is on behalf, among believers in
One God, of those who were disobedient. The hadiths tell us that
God forgives them by His grace and His mercy, and by the inter
cession of those who intercede, so that they do not enter the Fire
at all, or they enter it and come out of it after a time, and then are
proceeded towards the Garden.
This is the munificence of God, Blessed and Exalted is He, to
His slaves, which elevates the weight of mercy above the weight of
justice. Thus, He has made the recompense of a good deed ten
times its like or more, up to seventy times, or He increases it even
more. He has made the recompense of an evil deed its like only, or
He forgives it. He has appointed for the sins acts of expiation -
many of the five prayers, and the Friday prayer, and the fasting in
Ramadan, and the vigil therein, and different forms of charitable
acts, and the pilgrimage, both hajj and zumrahy and the recital and
remembrance of His Names, and the utterance of the formula of
tawhid* and the magnificat, and the praise of Him, and other kinds
of remembrance and supplication. All of these serve to lessen the
99
burden of sin. Moreover, a Muslim does not endure any trouble or
hardship, grief or sadness, or offence, so much as the pricking of a
thorn — but all of these God offsets against his sins and errors. So
also, a part of this munificence of God to His slaves is that He has
made the prayer of believers on behalf of one who has died, be
they from his family or not, of benefit to the deceased in his grave.
Then, it is not far-fetched that God honors the chosen and
elect ones of His slaves, and accepts their intercession for whoever
He wills of His creatures from those who died on the word of
tawhid. This is what the hadiths rally around:
The people come out of the Fire by the intercession of
Muhammad, and they enter the Garden, and they will be called
the people of hell.11
The people come out of the Fire by the intercession, as if they
were thaârir)1 {Al-thaârir. vegetables like asparagus.)
By the intercession of one man from my Community more
[people] will enter the Garden than [the number of people in]
the Banu Tamim.13
The martyr intercedes for seventy of the people of his house-
hold.14
The most fortunate of the people by my intercession on the
Day of Resurrection is one who says la ilaha ilia al-'Lahu (there
is no god but God) with sincerity from his heart.15
Every prophet has one supplication [that is accepted by God].
So I intend if God wills that I shall dedicate my supplication to
the intercession for my Community on the Day of Resurrection.16
Every prophet has asked a question — or he said: Every pro
phet has a supplication — he supplicates with it and he is ans
wered. So I have made my supplication the intercession for my
Community on the Day of Resurrection.17
And in the hadith of Abu Sacid, according to the two Shaykhs,
al-Bukhari and Muslim:
So the prophets and the angels and the believers will have
interceded. Then [God] the All-Compelling says: My inter
cession remains. So He will grasp from the Fire one handful,
then let out the people who have been roasted (that is,
100
scorched); then by His forgiveness they will be thrown in the

river at the mouth of the Garden called the water of life [...].18
Every prophet has one supplication heard and accepted, and
every prophet has hastened to submit his supplication. But I
have reserved my supplication for intercession for my Com
munity on the Day of Resurrection — then it is accepted — if
God wills — for whoever from my Community died not associ
ating anything with God.19
But the Muctazilis — because of their giving too much weight to
the threat over the promise of God, to His justice over His mercy,
and to reason over tradition (rationalism over revelation) - rejected
these hadiths, despite the strength and sheer clarity of what estab
lishes them as true. Their doubts, in rejecting those hadiths, were
based on the notion that they contradicted the Qur’an which, they
claimed, negated intercession. In fact, one who reads the Qur’an
does not find in it any negation of intercession except the kind that
the Associationists {niushrikuiij set their hopes on, and the devi-
ationists from the practitioners of other religions. The Association
ists claimed that their gods that they supplicated to, apart from or
in spite of God, had the power to intercede for them before God,
and hold the punishment back from them. As God has said: “They
worship apart from God what neither harms nor benefits them,
and they say those are intercessors before God” (Ytlnus^ 10: 18).
But the Qur’an pronounces this claimed intercession invalid and
false, confirming that their gods do not avail them in anything
from God. It says: “Or do they adopt intercessors apart from
God. Say: What? Even though they have no power over anything
and have no sense or reason? Say: the intercession belongs to God
altogether [exclusively]. To Him belongs sovereign power over the
heavens and the earth. And then it is to Him you are returning”
(al-Zumar^ 39: 43—44). Also: “And they have adopted gods apart
from God so that they may be for them [a source of] might and
honor. No indeed! They will reject their worship of them, and they
will be adversaries [advocating] against them” (Maryam, 19: 81—82).
Without a doubt, the Qur’an negates the notion that the spuri
ous gods have any power of intercession, and that there will be for
101
the Associationists an intercessor who is yielded to: “Warn them
of a day ...when there will not be for the wrongdoers (galinriri) any
friend nor any intercessor who is yielded to” (al-Gbafir, 40: 18). The
Qur’an frequently uses the term ‘wrong’ (£//Zw) for Associationism
and ‘wrongdoers’ (%alimiiri) for the Associationists, and Associ
ationism is indeed a tremendous wrong. Aside from that, the
Qur’an nevertheless establishes the validity of intercession upon
certain conditions:
First That it is only after the permission of God, Exalted is He,
to the intercessor that he may intercede. Not one, whosoever he
may be, has the power that he can oblige God in any matter. He
said in the Verse of the Throne: “Who is he that intercedes before
Him except by His leave?” (al-Baqarah, 2: 255).
Second'. That the intercession is on behalf of ‘the people of
tawhid, believers in the Unity of God. As God said about His
angels: “And they do not intercede except for him with whom
God is well-pleased” (al-Anbiyd\ 21: 28).
From the verse about the liars on the Day of Judgment —
“Then the intercession of intercessors will not avail them” (al-
Mudaththir* 74: 48) — one understands that there are intercessors, the
intercession of other than whom is denied, and they are those who
died on the faith.
So the Qur’an did not negate intercession absolutely, as those
claim who make that claim. Rather, it negated the intercession that
the Associationists and deviationists appealed to. It negated that
intercession which has been a cause of so much trouble and dis
order among the followers of the religions, those who were com
mitting the gravest offences while counting on the expectation that
their intercessors and mediators would lift the punishment from
them. So also kings and governors commit oppression and injus
tice in the affairs of this world, expecting to escape the consequen
ces hereafter.
It is regrettable that we find in our time among books associ
ated with Islam those that march side by side with the Muctazilis in
denying the intercession in the hereafter, and claiming that it is
102
GATHERING RELEVANT HADITHS ON A SUBJECT TOGETHER
colored by the sort of patronage and intervention on someone’s

behalf known to people in this world. So they throw to the wall
the hadiths that are sahih explicit and abundant, which are a solace
for us, alleging of them that they contradict the Qur’an.20
II
Also necessary for a correct understanding of the Sunnah is that

the sahlh hadiths on a single subject be gathered together and juxta
posed — the ambiguous alongside the explicit, the absolute along
side the restricted, the general alongside the particularized. In that
way, by interpreting one with the other, we make the meaning
intended in them plain and clear. We do not ‘strike some of them
with others’ (i.e. we do not cause some to clash or become con
fused with others). As it is established and agreed that the Sunnah
interprets the Qur’an, and clarifies it - meaning that it details what
is general in it, interprets what is obscure in it, particularizes what
is universal in it, and restricts what is absolute in it - the maxim
‘better followed by better’ is most successfully applied within the
Sunnah, some elements of it checking other elements of it.
HADITH: WEARING THE IZAR LONG
Take for example the hadiths on wearing the i%ar (the lower
garment) long. The threat against doing so is made severe. Many
zealous youths rely on that when they rebuke with severity who
ever is not wearing his robe above the ankles. They preach on it to
the effect of all but making shortening the robe one of the
symbols of Islam, or the greatest of duties in it! If they should
catch sight of a Muslim scholar or preacher who is not wearing his
robe short, how they act! They reproach him among themselves
for belittling the religion, and (worse still) they sometimes do so
with public proclamation!
103
If only they had gone back to the whole group of the hadiths
related to this issue, and set some of them alongside others, in the
light of a comprehensive view of the purposes of Islam for those
whom it obligates in their everyday affairs and usages! Had they
done so, they would have known the purposes of the hadiths on
this point, and they would have lightened their zeal and not ridden
rashly on the vehicle of excess. And they would not have made
narrow for the people a matter which God had made wide for
them.
Consider what Muslim narrated from Abu Dharr, from the
Prophet, he said: “[There are] three to whom God will not speak
on the Day of Resurrection: the benefactor who does not give
anything except as a favor [i.e. he does it for reputation or to bind
the recipient]; the quick profiteer whose commodity is [sold] by a
lying oath; and the one who wears his i%ar long.”22
In another narration, also from Abu Dharr: “[There are] three
to whom God will not speak on the Day of Resurrection. He will
not look at them, and He will not purify them, and theirs will be a
painful punishment.” He said God’s Messenger recited it three
times. He (Abu Dharr) said: “They have failed and they have lost!
Who are they, O Messenger of God?” He said: “The one who
wears his i%ar long; the benefactor; and the quick profiteer who
sells his commodity by a lying oath.”23
What is the intended meaning of‘one who wears his i%dr long?
Does it mean anyone who has his iâr long? Even if, in doing so,
he was merely following the conventions of his people, without
having in his intention any haughtiness or conceit? Another hadith
has perhaps attested to that, one found in the Sahih of al-Bukharl
from Abu Hurayrah: “That which of the iâr is lower than the
ankles, then it is in the Fire.”24 In al-Nasal it has appeared with the
wording: “That which of the i%ar is below the ankles, then it is in
the Fire.” The meaning would appear to be: whatever falls below
the ankles of the wearer of the i%ar constitutes ‘wearing it long’,
and it is in the Fire - the outcome for anyone is according to his
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deed, and here, the robe (used metonymically) alludes to the body
and the person it clothes.26
However, it becomes clear to one who reads the whole group
of hadiths that have come on this that its meaning is as al-Nawawi
and Ibn Hajar and others judged it on balance to be: namely, the
(apparent) absoluteness is to be interpreted by the restriction to
‘conceit’. And there is consensus that this ‘conceit’ is what the
threat in the hadith is directed against.27 So, let us read what has
appeared of the sahih from these hadiths.
Al-Bukhari narrated, under the chapter heading man jarra i^dra-
hu min ghayri khuyala (one who has trailed his i%ar without conceit),
in a hadith of cAbd Allah ibn TJmar from the Prophet, he said:
“ ‘Whoever trails his robe with conceit God will not look at him
on the Day of Resurrection.’ Abu Bakr said: ‘O Messenger of God;
one side of my iâr works loose, unless I am attending to that to
[prevent] it.’ Then the Prophet said: ‘You are not among those
who make that [happen] with conceit.’ ”28 Also in this chapter is a
hadith of Abu Bakrah, who said: “The sun eclipsed, and we were
with the Prophet. He stood up, trailing his robe in great haste until
he came to the mosque [...]”29 Then, narrated under the chapter
heading man jarra thawbahu min al-khuyala (one who has trailed his
robe with conceit), from Abu Hurayrah that God’s Messenger
said: “God will not look at one who trails his i%ar with arrogance
(al-batar)?^ Also from Abu Hurayrah: “He said the Prophet said,
(or he said Abu al-Qasim, said): ‘While a man was walking in fine
dress, himself admiring himself, his abundant hair well-combed,
then God caused the earth to give way to him, so he will be sha
king and sinking until the Day of Resurrection.’ ”31 And from Ibn
TJmar — and there is a hadith like it from Abu Hurayrah also -
“While a man was trailing his then [God] made him sink
down, so he will be sinking in the earth to the Day of Resurrection.”
Muslim narrated the hadith of Abu Hurayrah, the one last
mentioned, and the one before it. Also, he narrated the hadith of
Ibn TJmar by a number of routes. Among them: “I heard God s
Messenger, with these my two ears, saying: ‘One who trails his iâr
105
not meaning by that [anything] but conceit, then indeed God will
11
not look at him on the Day of Resurrection.’ ” In this narration,

the restriction of ‘conceit’ by way of the clear qualification “not
meaning by that [anything] but conceit” has not left any room for
interpretation.
Al-Nawawi - and he is not one accused of laxity, rather (as is
well known to students), one more inclined to the stricter, more
cautious approach - says in commentary on the hadith “One who
wears his z^Jrlong”:34
As for his saying, “The one who wears his i%ar long”: then its
meaning is ‘the one who has loosened it for trailing the side of
it with conceit’. It has come interpreted in the other hadith
“God does not look at the one who trails his robe with
conceit”, and ‘conceit’ [means] haughtiness. This limitation to
the trailing with conceit particularizes the generality of “one
who wears his i%ar long”. It is demonstrated that the object of
the threat is one who trails it with conceit, for the Prophet,
made allowance for Abu Bakr al-Siddiq in that, and said: <fYou
are not among them” when he was trailing it without conceit.
Ibn Hajar said in his commentary on the hadiths that al-Bukhari
narrated on the threat against wearing the i%ar long and trailing of
the robe:
In these hadiths: [it is clear] that wearing the i%ar long with
conceit is a grave matter. As for wearing long without conceit,
then the outward of the hadith forbids it also. However, the
inference from the restriction in these hadiths to ‘with conceit’
is that absoluteness in forcibly preventing the [behavior] men
tioned, in rebuking the wearing long, is to be taken alongside
i
the restriction here so that one does not forbid the trailing and
wearing long when [this happens in a way that is] safe from
conceit.
Ibn cAbd al-Barr said: “The understanding of it is that trailing
without conceit will not encounter the threat unless [indeed] the
trailing of the shirt and other than that of long garments is [to be
censured] in all circumstances.”35
This confirms that what is aimed at, in the restriction that goes
with wearing the i%ar long, and what carries the threat, is the inten
tion of conceit. It confirms also that the threat mentioned in the
106
hadiths is a severe threat, so far so that it has made whoever wears

his garment long one of three “to whom God will not speak on
the Day of Resurrection. He will not look at them, and He will not
purify them, and theirs will be a painful punishment”. Indeed, the
Prophet repeated that threat three times, which made Abu Dharr
so fearful of it that he said: “They have failed and they have lost!
Who are they, O Messenger of God?” All of this demonstrates the
deeds of those three as being among the gravest of sins, and the
gravest of the forbidden things. This is not so except in matters
that infringe ‘the public good’, which the Law came to uphold and
to safeguard — in the religion, the soul, the mind, dignity, lineage,
and property — the fundamental goals of the Law of Islam.
The bare shortening of the iâr or robe comes under the head
ing of the ‘refinements’ (not essentials), related to good manners
and perfections, by which life is graced, tastes elevated, and noble
traits of character deepened. As for wearing the garment long or
lengthening it when stripped from any evil intention, it belongs in
the class of the lesser disapproved acts.
What concerns the religion here, and is deserving of greater
attention, is the intentions and sensibility of heart behind the out
ward behavior. What harms the religion through resistance to it is
conceit, pride, haughtiness, self-praise, arrogance, and the like
among diseases of the heart and defects of the soul. He does not
enter the Garden who has a particle’s weight of them in his heart.
This supports every confirmation restricting the severe threat
mentioned to one who intends conceit in wearing his garment long
— as the other hadiths (mentioned above) have demonstrated.
Another meaning, related to what we have said, is this: the
command about dress is subject to manners and outward forms
familiar to the people and their customs. These vary with varia
tions in heat and cold, wealth and poverty, capacity and incapacity,
type of work and standard of living, and other influencing factors.
The Law here lightens the restrictions for people, and it does not
intervene except in matters related to the fixed bounds, so as to
forbid what is visible of waste and extravagance in the outward
107
life, or the intent of arrogance and conceit in the inner life, and the
like of that which we have set out in detail elsewhere.36
For this reason al-Bukhari quoted in the beginning of Kitab al-
Ubas in his Sahib, under the chapter heading qawlAllah Talala:Qul:
man harrama Rinata al-Kahi allati akhraja li-îbddihi (God’s saying,
Exalted is He: “Say: Who forbids the ornaments of God that He
has brought out for His slaves” {al-Azrdfy 6: 32)). The Prophet said:
“Eat and drink and dress, and give in charity, without wastefulness
0*7
and [with] no conceit.” Ibn cAbbas said: “Eat what you wish, and
wear what you wish, as long as [these] two do not touch you:
wastefulness and conceit.”
Ibn Hajar conveyed from his teacher al-Hafiz al-Traql that he
said, in his commentary on al-Tirmidhi:
What touches the earth from them (i.e. clothes) is conceit. No
doubt as to its being forbidden ... And if it is said about the
prohibition [that it is] on what exceeds the accustomed [prac
tice], it would not be [going] too far. However, the convention
happens to people of lengthening [robes]. Then every class of
people begin to notice and know it. The duty in that is [to
close] the way to conceit. For no doubt it is forbidden. But
[the prohibition] is not on the manner of the custom, and
there is no prohibition on it, so long as it does not reach to the
forbidden [kind of] trailing of the hem.
Al-Qadi ^yad conveyed from the scholars: “Aversion is
entirely to what is [done] over and above the custom, and
beyond the accustomed practice for length and looseness in
dress.”39
So custom has its rule, and convention its influence, just as al-
^raqi said. Departing from custom sometimes makes the doer of it
suspected of seeking notoriety, and the robe of notoriety is also
reproached in the Law. Then, the good lies in moderation.
Beyond that: one who intends, by the shortening of his robe,
following the Sunnah and keeping away from the suspicion of con
ceit, if he intends abandoning opposition to the scholars, and if he
intends his acceptance of the practice as a precaution, then he will
be rewarded for that, if God wills. That is on condition also that
he does not compel all people to the same, and does not proclaim
108
the rejection of one who, being among those content with the
views of the imams and profound commentators that we have
cited, has left that practice. The wise maxim is: to every established
mujtahid his reward, and to every man his intent.
The resort to the outward sense of a single hadith, without
looking into the rest of the hadiths and texts relevant to its subject,
often causes lapsing into error, and falling far away from the main
road of correctness, and from the purposes for which the hadith
has come.
THE HADITH IN AL-BUKHArI ON THE CENSURE OF TILLAGE
Consider the hadith that al-Bukhari narrated in Kitab al Mu^draâh

(share-cropping) in his Sahih from Abu Umamah al-Bahili. Abu
Umamah saw an implement of tillage (a plow) and said: “I heard
God’s Messenger, saying: ‘This does not enter the house of a
people except that God causes disgrace to enter it [also].’ ”40 The
outward sense of this hadith does indeed convey the aversion of
the Messenger to the plow and tillage, which leads on to censure
of workers in it. Orientalists have sought to exploit this hadith to
misrepresent the attitude of Islam to agriculture. But is this really
the purpose of the outward sense of the hadith, and is Islam really
averse to sowing and planting? In point of fact, other clear sahib
texts contradict that notion.
The Ansar (the Muslims native to Madinah) practiced and de
pended on agriculture and cultivation. But the Prophet did not
command them to abandon their agriculture and their cultivation.
Rather, the Sunnah clarified, and Islamic jurisprudence detailed,
regulations for agriculture and irrigation, and revival of barren
lands, and what is related thereto of rights and obligations.
The two Shaykhs (al-Bukhari and Muslim), as well as others,
have narrated from him: “[There is] not one from the Muslims
who plants a plant or sows a seed, then a bird eats from it, or a
person, or an animal, except that there is from it an act of charity
[recorded] for him.”41 Muslim has narrated [it] from Jabir in the
words: “[There is] not one of the Muslims who plants a plant
109
except that there is from it an act of charity [recorded] for him.

What a beast of prey eats from it, then it is for him an act of char
ity. What a bird eats from it, then it is for him an act of charity.
Not one deprives him (that is, diminishes or takes away from his
fruit) except that it is for him an act of charity.”42 Jabir also nar
rated that the Prophet entered a walled enclosure belonging to
Umm MaTâd, in which there was a date-palm. Then he said: “O
Umm MaT)ad. Who planted this date-palm? A Muslim or an un
believer?” She said: “Indeed, a Muslim.” He said: “A Muslim does
not plant a plant, then a person eats from it, or an animal or a bird,
except that it is for him an act of charity until the Day of Resur
rection.”43
So, for planting, there is recompense and reward with God, just
as for an act of charity. The reward is for any fruit taken from
what one has planted, even if one did not intend that — for exam
ple, what a beast of prey or a bird eats from it, or a thief steals
from it, or anyone who diminishes it without taking one’s permis
sion to do so. It is an act of charity ongoing, permanent, never cut
off, but enduring here while any living creature benefits from the
plant or its crop. What virtue is greater than this virtue? What en
couragement to agriculture could give greater assurance than this?
An encouragement to planting and sowing even more eloquent
and wonderful is what Ahmad ibn Hanbal reported in his Musnad.
and al-Bukhari in al-Adab al-Mufrad from Anas: “If the Hour ap
proaches and in the hand of any of you there is a seedling, then if
he is capable so that it (namely, the Hour) does not come until he
plants it, then let him plant it.”44
In my opinion this is an honoring of the work of building the
earth even at the very termination of it. One is urged to plant even
with the Hour approaching, even though there is not, after that
effort, any profit for the one who plants, or for someone else after
him, no expectation that anyone at all will benefit from it! There
cannot be a better inducement to planting and producing for as
long there is a breath of life to go back and forth. Man has been
created to worship God, then to labor and build the earth, and
110
persevere therein, worshipping and laboring until the world at last

is in the throes of death. This is the understanding of the Compan
ions and of the Muslims through the centuries. It pushed them to
the building of the earth through agriculture and the revival of
barren land.
Ibn Jarir narrated from TJmarah ibn Khuzaymah ibn Thabit
that he said: “I heard TJmar ibn al-Khattab saying to my father:
What prevents you from planting your land?’ My father said to
him: ‘I am an old old man. I may die tomorrow!’ Then he, TJmar,
said to him: 1 stress upon you that you must plant it!’ Then I
surely saw TJmar ibn al-Khattab plant it with his hand with my
father!”45 Ahmad ibn Hanbal narrated from Abu al-Darda’ that in
Damascus while he was planting a plant a man passed by. This
man said to him: <rYou do this work and you are a Companion of
God’s Messenger?” Abu al-Darda’ said: “Do not rush at me [do
not rush to judgment]. I have heard the Messenger of God say:
‘One who plants a plant — no human being nor any creature from
the creatures of God eats from it except that it is for him thereby
an act of charity.’ ”46
What then should be the interpretation of the hadith of Abu
Umamah which al-Bukharl narrated? Al-Bukharl recorded it under
the chapter heading ma yahdhuru min Qawaqib al-ishtighdl bi-dlati al-
%arci aw mujawaât al-hadd alladhl unrira bi-hi (What warns against the
consequences of preoccupation with the implements of tillage, or
disregarding the limit commanded for it). Ibn Hajar said in al-Fatir.
Al-Bukharl has pointed in the title to reconciling the hadith of
Abu Umamah with the hadith that has come on the virtue of
sowing and planting. And that [reconciling] is by one of two
ways. Either: that one understands what has appeared of the
censure according to the consequence of that [preoccupation
with tillage], and the circumstances of it when one is engaged
in it — so on account of [preoccupation with tillage] he neglects
and fails [in] what he is commanded to keep safe [of other
duties] — such as his neglecting and failing the command of
obligatory jihad. Or: that one understands [it] according to
what he does not neglect and fail in except that he transgresses
the limit [prescribed] for it.
Ill
Some commentators have said: This [relates] to one who is
near the enemy. For if then he is busy with the plow, he does
not busy himself with horsemanship, and the enemy is em
boldened against him. And their duty is that they busy them
selves with horsemanship, and upon others is [the duty of]
helping and supporting them in what they need thereof.47
A hadith that throws light on the purpose of the hadith of Abu
Umamah is narrated by Ahmad ibn Hanbal and Abu Da’ud from
Ibn TJmar, from the Prophet: “When you have exchanged by
specimen,48 and taken hold of the tails of cattle, and are pleased
with tilling the soil, and you leave the jihad, [then] God gives dis
grace mastery over you, and He does not remove [its power over
you] until you have returned to the religion.”49 This hadith disclo
ses the reasons for the disgrace that has fallen upon the Commun
ity — partly corresponding to its negligence in the commands
related to the religion, and its non-observance of those of the
commands related to this world whose fulfillment is obligatory.
The exchange ‘by specimen’ demonstrates that the Community
has plunged into what God has forbidden, and forbidden with
emphasis, proclaiming on the doer of it war from God and His
Messenger - namely, riba (usury), and tricks for the consumption
of it by a form of exchange that is, among those who take part in
it, outwardly lawful, but within definitely unlawful. Similarly, that
‘following the tails of the cattle’ and being contented with tilling
the soil, demonstrates becoming stuck in agriculture, and particular
tasks associated with it, to the point of neglecting other skills, in
particular the skills connected to military matters. The abandon
ment of jihad is the logical consequence of that neglect. For these
reasons taken together, disgrace surrounds the Community while it
does not return to its religion.
This hadith and those before it make it clear that it is not good
for a Muslim to take the Sunnah from a single hadith, without
joining to it what else has appeared on the subject in other sahih
texts, from what confirms it or contradicts it, or illustrates what is
general in it, or particularizes what is universal in it, or restricts
what is absolute in it. By this joining of the rest of the sahib
112
RECONCILING DIFFERING HADITHS OR PREFERENCE BETWEEN THEM
hadiths, some of them with others, he enables an integrated and

comprehensive view, and he rids his view of partiality and
inadequacy. Not doing so lands many who do it in error, even if
they did not intend it.
Ill
RECONCILING DIFFERING HADITHS OR PREFERENCE

BETWEEN THEM
The principle for established texts of the Law is that they do not
contradict, because the truth cannot contradict the truth. If the
existence of a contradiction is supposed, then it is only in the
outward of the case, not in actuality or reality. It is incumbent
upon us to remove such alleged contradiction. When it is possible,
without artifice and arbitrariness, to do that by combining and
reconciling the two texts so that one can act according to both
together, then it is better than recourse to preference between the
two. It is better because preference entails neglecting one of the
two texts and giving priority to the other over it.
RECONCILING HAS PRIORITY OVER PREFERENCE
For a good understanding of the Sunnah, it is important to

reconcile sahih hadiths that appear contradictory in that, at first
glance, their textual meanings are at variance. It is necessary to
combine some of them with others, and place each in its correct
place, so that they harmonize and do not differ, so that they com
plement and do not contradict. We say this only about sahih ha
diths, because weak and feeble hadiths do not enter into this field.
We seek to combine sahih and established texts if they contradict
each other. We do not do so for weakly supported texts except as
a voluntary service, a supererogatory act — there is no requirement
or duty to do that.50
For this reason the truth-seeking scholars rebutted the hadith,
(“Are you two blind?”) found in Abu Da’ud and al-Tirmidhi, of
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Umm Salmah, which forbids a woman seeing a man even if he is

blind. They rebutted it with the hadiths of cA’ishah and Fatimah
bint Qays, both of them in the Sahih'.
Umm Salmah said: "I was with the Prophet, and with him too
[was] Maymunah. Then Ibn Umm Maktum approached, and
that was after he had commanded us the hijab. Then the
Prophet said: ‘Cover yourselves from him!’ Then we said: ‘O
Messenger of God, is he not blind? He does not see us or
know us.’ Then the Prophet said: ‘Are the two of you blind?
Are you not seeing him?”’
Abu Da’ud narrated this hadith, and also al-Tirmidhl who said
it was sahih and hasatLX But in its sanad — which al-Tirmidhl indeed
pronounced sahih - there is Nabhan, the mawla of Umm Salmah,
who was not knowledgeable, nor one considered trustworthy ex
cept by Ibn Hibban. In al-Mughni al-Dhahabl mentioned him ac
cordingly as among the weak narrators. Also, this hadith is contra
dicted by what, in the Sahihs of al-Bukharl and Muslim, demons
trates the permissibility of a woman looking at a stranger. From
SA’ishah, she said: “I saw the Prophet: he screened me with his
cloak while I watched the Abyssinians playing in the mosque.”52
Qadl Styad said: “In it there is permission for the looking of
women at the action of strangers, because [what is] disliked from
[women] is only looking at good looks and taking delight in that.”
The same idea is expressed in al-Bukharl’s prefatory note on this
hadith: “The looking of the woman at the Abyssinians and their
like with no suspicion.”53 It confirms what al-Bukhari has narrated
in the hadith of Fatimah bint Qays, that the Prophet, said to her,
as soon as she was divorced with an irrevocable divorce: “Spend
the jddah [waiting period before re-marriage is lawful] in the house
of Ibn Umm Maktum, for he is a blind man, you can lay down
your cloak, and he will not see you.” First he had indicated that she
should spend the Qiddah with Umm Sharik, but then he said: “That
woman - my Companions visit her [house]. Spend the Qiddah with
Ibn Umm Maktum [...].”
In sum, the hadith of Umm Salmah does not take precedence —
because of the weakness in it - over these sahih hadiths. Yet, the
114
effort to reconcile between a weak and a sahih hadith is permitted -

by way of voluntary, supererogatory service — even though it is not
obligatory. In this regard al-Qurtnbi has said (and others also) on
the hadith of Umm Salmah:
On the assumption of its being sahih-. that [which he said] is,
from him [and] in view of their elevated status, treating his
wives severely, just as he spoke severely to them in the com
mand of the hijab — which Abu Da’ud and others of the imams
have indicated. There remains the meaning of the established
and sahih hadith, and it is that the Prophet commanded Fati-
mah bint Qays to take shelter in the house of Umm Shank,
[but] later he said: “That woman — my Companions visit her
[house]. Seek shelter with Ibn Umm Maktum, for indeed he is
blind. You can lay down your cloak and he will not see you.”
Some scholars infer from this hadith that a woman is permit
ted to be seen by a man up to what [one] is permitted to see of
a woman, [such] as the head and the earlobe, but as for the
zaivrahy then no.
He only commanded her to remove from the house of Umm
Sharik to the house of Ibn Umm Maktum because that was
better for her than her staying in the house of Umm Sharik as
Umm Sharik was reported to have many visitors to her [house]
so there would be many seeing her. But in the house of Ibn
Umm Maktum no one would see her. So the stopping her
being seen by him was more practical and better, so he made it
easy for her in that. And God knows better.
HADITHS ON WOMEN VISITING THE GRAVES
Another example of that is the hadith or hadiths which restrain

women from visiting graveyards. For example, the hadith of Abu
Hurayrah: “God’s Messenger condemned women visitors (gaw-
warai) to the graves”. Ahmad ibn Hanbal and Ibn Majah narrated
it, also al-Tirmidhl who called it hasan and sahib, and Ibn Hibban
narrated it in his Sahih?5 It is narrated also from Ibn cAbbas with
the words “women visitors (ga'inii) to the graves”, and from
Hassan ibn Thabit.56 Supporting that is what has come in other
hadiths prohibiting women following funeral processions, from
115
the import of which is derived the prohibition of women visiting

the graves.
In opposition to these hadiths, there are others from which one
understands the permissibility for women, as for men, of visiting
graves. Among them is his saying: “I had forbidden you to visit
graves, but [now I say:] visit them.”57 “Visit the graves, for indeed
co
they remind of death.” Women are included in the general per
mission to visit graves, and in the need of everyone to be reminded
of death. Also among these hadiths is what Muslim narrated (and
al-Nasal and Ibn Hanbal) from cA’ishah. She asked: “ ‘How shall I
address them?’ (she meant ‘when I visit the graves’). He said: ‘Say:
Peace be upon the people of the homes of the believers and the
Muslims; and God have mercy on the early-comers among us and
the late-comers. And indeed we, if God wills, are catching up with
you.’ ”59 Another example is what the two Shaykhs have narrated
from Anas, that “the Prophet passed by a woman weeping at a
grave. So he said: ‘Fear God and be patient.’ Then she said: ‘Go
away. For indeed you have not suffered the like of my affliction.’
And she did not know him [to be the Prophet.. .].”60 Now, he for
bade her anxiety, but he did not forbid her visiting the grave.
Another example is narrated by al-Hakim from Fatimah, the
daughter of God’s Messenger, that she used to visit the grave of
her uncle, Hamzah, every Friday, and she prayed and wept near
it.61
Moreover, these hadiths demonstrating the permissibility of
women visiting graves are more sahih and more common than the
hadiths demonstrating the prohibition of it. So combining and re
conciling them is possible, in this way: one interprets the ‘condem
nation’ mentioned in the hadith - as al-Qurtubi said — as referring
to over-frequent visiting, which is the connotation of (the inten
sive form of) al-^nnvarat, the expression used in the hadith. He
said: “Perhaps the reason for the judgment against it is that she
may be neglecting the right of the husband, and the displaying [of
herself entailed by frequent visiting], and what intoxicates from the
mourning (the wailing), and the like. And it could be said: If all
116
these [matters] are made safe, then there is no impediment to the

permission [given] to [women], for the man and the woman [alike]
have a need for the reminder of death.” And al-Shawkanl com
mented: “This is an opinion worthy of reliance in reconciling the
hadiths contradictory in outward [sense].”62
If reconciling two (or more) hadiths contradictory in outward
sense is not possible, one resorts to preference between them. This
is done according to one of the principles of preference mentioned
by the scholars. Al-Suyuti, in his book al-Tadrib al-Rdwi Qala Taqnb
al-Nawawz, counted these principles as more than one hundred.
This topic — contradiction and preference — is an important one
among the sub-disicplines of usiil al-jiqh, usiil al-haditb, and the
sciences of the Qur’an.
HADITHS ON ALSAZL (COITUS INTERRUP'TUS)
To illustrate, let us take as an example the hadiths that have come

on Qal-a^l {coitus interrupts) — the withdrawal of the man from his
woman during intercourse, whereby he casts the sperm outside the
vulva so that she does not conceive by him.
Let us look here at the hadiths which Abu Barakat ibn Taymiy-
yah (the grandfather) mentioned in his famous book al-Muntaqa
min al-Akhbdr al-Mstafay under the heading "What has come on al-
From Jabir, he said:

We used to practice withdrawal with the knowledge of God’s
Messenger, while the Qur’an was being revealed [i.e. during his
lifetime].
(The hadith is agreed upon.)
A variant, according to Muslim:
We used to practice withdrawal with the knowledge of God’s
Messenger. Then that [news of our doing so] reached him but
he did not forbid us [from it].
Also from Jabir, that:
A man came to God’s Messenger, and said: “I have a slave girl,
she is our servant, and she carries water for us in the date-
palms. And I go with her, but I do not want her to conceive.”
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Then he said: “Practice withdrawal from her if you wish. But
indeed there will come to her what is decreed for her.”
(Ibn Hanbal narrated it, also Muslim and Abu Da’ud.)
From Abu Sacid, he said:
We went out with God’s Messenger, on the expedition to the
Ban! al-Mustaliq. We took captives from the Arabs, and we
desired the women; the abstinence was severe upon us, and we
intended to practice alâ^ly so we asked God’s Messenger
about that. He said: “[It is] not [incumbent] upon you that you
not do [that]. For indeed God, the All-Mighty and Majestic,
has already written what He will have created until the Day of
Resurrection.”
(The hadith is agreed upon.)
From Abu Sacid, he said:
The Jews say withdrawal is like burying infants alive. Then the
Prophet, said: “The Jews lie. Indeed God, the All-Mighty and
Majestic, if He wills to create a thing, no one can rise up to
avert it.”
(Ibn Hanbal narrated it, and Abu Da’ud.)
fThe variant wording of it):
That a man said: “O Messenger of God, I have a slave girl, and
I practice withdrawal from her; I do not want her to conceive,
and I want what men want [from women]. And indeed the
Jews report that withdrawal is [...].”
Ibn al-Qayyim said in al-Zad. “Be content with the authenticity
of this isnddy for all of [its narrators] are hnjfd%.”
From Usamah ibn Zayd, that:
A man came to the Prophet, and said: “I practice withdrawal
from my woman.” God’s Messenger, said to him: tfWhy do
you do that?” Then the man said: “I am concerned about her
[conceiving] a child, or about her [having] children.” Then
God’s Messenger, said: “If there were harm [in it] it would
have harmed the Persians and the Romans [who do that].”
(Ibn Hanbal and Muslim narrated it.)
From Judamah63 bint Wahb al-Asadiyyah, she said:
I was present with God’s Messenger, in [a company of] people,
and he was saying: “I had intended that I should forbid inter
course during pregnancy (gbaylaH). Then I looked to the Rom
ans and the Persians - though they do this it does not hurt
their [unborn] children a thing.” Then he was asked about
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withdrawal, and he, God’s Messenger, said: “That is a hidden

[form of] burying alive, and she [who is so buried will cry out,
as the Qur’an says:] ‘When the infant girl buried alive shall ask
[for what sin she was slain].’ ”
(Ibn Hanbal and Muslim narrated it.)
From TJmar ibn al-Khattab, he said:
God’s Messenger forbade that one practice withdrawal from a
free woman except with her permission.
(Ahmad narrated it, and Ibn Majah, but its isnad is weak.64
That is my opinion too — because Ibn Lahicah appears in its
isnad, and there is a well-known discussion about him — but
what Ibn cAbd al-Barr and Ahmad ibn Hanbal and al-Bayhaqi
have reported from Ibn cAbbas attests to it: “He forbade with
drawal from a free woman except with her permission” (as
cited in Nay/al-Awtdr)/)
It would appear from the group of hadiths cited that they
demonstrate the acceptability of withdrawal. That is the position
that the majority of jurists adopt, except that one may not practice
withdrawal from a free woman without her permission and con
sent in view of her right of enjoyment of the act. Nevertheless,
there is, in the hadith of Judamah bint Wahb, the clear statement
of its being “a hidden [form of] burying alive”. Some among the
scholars reconcile this hadith with those before it. So it is inter
preted as mildly reprehensible (âld tan^H). That is the approach
taken by al-Bayhaql. Then, there are scholars who pronounce the
hadith of Judamah weak, because of its contradicting what has
more routes of transmission. Ibn Hajar said: ‘This rebuts the sahib
hadiths by making [them] suspect. But the sahib hadith - there is
no doubt in it, and [in any case] reconciling [them] is possible.”
Then again, among the scholars are those who have claimed
that it is abrogated, but this claim was rejected, following knowl
edge of the chronology (of the hadiths). Al-Tahawi said: “It is
possible that the hadith of Judamah is in agreement with what the
command was in the beginning, in line with the People of the
Book, in what was not sent down on him. Thereafter, God in
formed him with the ruling and he called what they had been
saying about it false. Ibn Rushd and Ibn al-cArab! criticized [that
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by saying] that the Prophet would not forbid anything following

the Jews and then say they were lying about it.”
Some among the scholars have preferred the hadith of Juda-
mah on account of the evidence for its being sahib. They call its
opposite weak on account of the variation in its isnad and the dis
crepancy therein. Ibn Hajar said: “It is rejected only in that it im
pairs the [other] hadith, not in that some [part] of it reinforces
some [part of the other]. For indeed it is acted upon. And it is the
case here. And [in any case] reconciling is possible.”
Ibn Hazm preferred acting according to the hadith of Judamah
because the hadiths other than hers agreed on the principle of the
permissibility of al-â^ whereas her hadith demonstrated its being
forbidden. He said: “Whoever claims that he permitted [it] after he
forbade [it] - it is up to him [to provide] the explanation [for the
inconsistency].”
Investigation shows that her hadith is not crystal clear in pro
hibiting al-('a%l. Also, calling it “a hidden [form of] burying alive”
does not necessitate the approach of making the two equal so that
alsa%l should be forbidden in the way that burying alive is. Ibn al-
Qayyim reconciled the hadiths and said:
That in which he said the Jews lied is their allegation that with
al-Qayl conception becomes unimaginable altogether. They
surely made it of the rank of cutting off the progeny by bury
ing alive, and so he called them liars. He informed [us] that it
does not prevent conception if God has willed to create it. If
He did not intend its creation it cannot be a burying alive in
reality. And [the Prophet] only called it a hidden [form of]
burying alive in the hadith of Judamah because the man with
drew only to avoid conception, and so he brought about his
intent [which may well be supposed to be] like what is brought
about by burying alive. But the difference between the two is
that the actual burying alive is by direct cause of the joining
together of the intent and the deed, whereas the withdrawal
has to do with intent only. So it is for that [reason] that he
described it as being a hidden [form of burying alive]. And this
reconciling [of the differing reports] is strong.
Also, the hadith of Judamah has been pronounced weak. I
mean the addition which is there at its end, because SacTd ibn
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Abl Ayyub is alone in narrating from Abu al-Aswad. Malik

narrated it and Yahya ibn Ayyub from Abu al-Aswad and did
not mention [this addition]. [It is considered weak also] on
account of its being in contradiction to the group of hadiths
under this heading. The people of the four Sunan have
curtailed [omitted] this addition.0
Al-Bayhaqi, in his Sunan al-Kiibra^ traced and narrated the
hadiths and reports judging for the permissibility of al-â^ and
they are many. Then he devoted a special chapter to those who
dislike al-Qa^ly and who differ in the report from him on it. He did
not narrate on its being disliked. But he did cite in that chapter the
hadith of Judamah bint Wahb, which Muslim reported. After that
he (al-Bayhaqi) said:
The opposite has been narrated to us from the Prophet. The
narrators of the permissibility [of al-Qa^ are more common
and better at preserving. Those have permitted it whom we
have named from the Companions (that is, Sacd ibn Abl Waq-
qas, Zayd ibn Thabit, Jabir ibn cAbd Allah, Ibn cAbbas, Abu
Ayyub al-Ansari, and others). And it [permissibility] is better.
And the aversion [to it] is interpreted by those who dislike it as
staying aloof [from it] (tan^h) without forbidding [it] (tahrim).
God knows better.66
ABROGATION IN THE HADITH
Linked to the topic of contradiction between hadiths is the issue of

abrogation, or the abrogating and the abrogated, in hadith. It is an
issue common to the sciences of both the Qur’an and hadith.
Among Qur’an commentators there are those who exceed the
bounds in their claims of abrogation in it - so far so that some of
them allege that a single verse, called the ‘verse of the sword’,
abrogates from the Book of God more than a hundred verses, and
they make that claim despite not agreeing among even themselves
about what the ‘verse of the sword’ is! In the hadith, some speci
alists resort to ‘abrogation’ when reconciling two contradictory
hadiths becomes troublesome for them, and when they know
which is the later of the two.
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In reality the claim of abrogation in the hadith is narrower in

scope than the same in the Qur’an. This is so despite the fact that
one would expect it to be the other way around, since in principle
the Qur’an addresses general and permanent conditions, whereas
what the Sunnah deals with includes matters that are partial, cir
cumstantial and temporal, corresponding to the Prophet’s lead
ership of the Community and his consideration for its everyday
affairs. Nevertheless, of many of the hadiths of which abrogation
is alleged, it becomes evident from precise determination that they
are not abrogated.
Among the hadiths there is both what intends stricture, and
what intends leniency, and both kinds of injunctions obtain, both
together, each in its place. Some hadiths are restricted by a cir
cumstance, and some are otherwise according to another circum
stance, but this alteration of the circumstances does not mean
abrogation. That has been said, for example, on the prohibition of
storing the meats from the Sacrifice after three nights, and its
being subsequently permitted. But this is not abrogation, rather the
prohibition applies in one circumstance, and the permissibility in
another circumstance, as we have clarified elsewhere.
It is worthwhile citing here what al-Bayhaqi has conveyed — in
his book Ma^rifat al-Sunan iva al-Athdr— with his sanad to al-Shafici,
may God have mercy on him. He said:
Wherever it is feasible of two hadiths that they be acted upon
together, let them be acted upon together, and [let] not one of
the two be suspended [for] the other. If nothing is feasible of
the two hadiths except [their] difference, then the difference in
them [can be regarded from] two directions:
One of the two [directions]: that one of the two [hadiths] is
abrogating, and the other is abrogated, so one acts according
to the abrogating [one], and one leaves the abrogated [one].
And the other [direction]: that the two differ and there is
no evidence as to which of the two is abrogating, and which of
the two is abrogated. Then we do not go to one of the two
and not to the other unless for a cause that demonstrates that
the one that we [prefer to] go to is stronger than the one we
leave, and that [cause] is that one of the two hadiths is more
established [in proof] than the other, so we go to the [one
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which is] more established [in proof], or more conformable

with the Book of God, the All-Mighty and Majestic, or to the
Sunnah of God’s Messenger. [We also consider] in what
[respects] the hadiths are the same as his Sunnah and [in what
respects they] differ from [it], or what is better according to
what the people of knowledge know [of the matter], or more
correct in [terms of] analogical reasoning, or what the greater
number of die Companions of God’s Messenger were on.
Al-Bayhaql reports that al-Shafici said:
The summary of this is that one does not accept except a
proven hadith, just as one does not accept testimony [in a legal
case] except from one whose probity is known. So if the
hadith is unknown, or conveyed from those from whom one
keeps one’s distance, [then] it is as if it had not come, because
it is not established.
Al-Bayhaqi said:
That of which knowledge is obligatory upon one who looks
into this book {M.a'-rifat al-Sunan wa al-Athar) is that he should
know that both Abu cAbd Allah Muhammad ibn Ismacil al-
Bukhari and Abu al-Husayn Muslim ibn al-Hajjaj al-Naysaburi
classified and compiled the hadiths, all of them sahih.
The sahih hadiths that remained, they did not trace and
report because of their falling, according to both of them,
below the rank and quality which they prescribed in their
books for authenticity.
Abu Da’ud Sulayman al-Ashcath al-Sijistani traced and re
ported some of them [i.e. of the hadiths not in al-Bukhari and
Muslim]. Abu ^sa Muhammad ibn cIsa al-Tirmidhi [traced and
reported] some of them. Abu Bakr Muhammad ibn Ishaq ibn
Khuzaymah [traced and reported] some of them. May God
have mercy on them. Each one of them was on [the position]
that his ijtihad called him to.
[All] hadiths that are narrated are according to three classes:
Among them: that whose authenticity the people of the
knowledge of hadith have agreed upon. So that is [a hadith]
that it is not for anyone to find room to differ on - as long as
it has not been abrogated.
Among them: that whose weakness they have agreed upon.
So that [is a hadith] which it is not for anyone to rely upon.
Among them: that about whose being established they dif
fer on. Then, among [the scholars] there is one who has con-
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sidered [a hadith] weak because of a defect that has appeared
to him in some of [that hadith’s] narrations, [and] that [defect]
was hidden from others. Or [one scholar] was not prevented
from [knowing] the condition of [a narrator] such that accep
tance of his report would be obligatory, [whereas] other [schol
ars] were prevented from [knowing] it. Or [one scholar saw in]
the meaning what he considered a defect [and other scholars]
did not see it as a defect. Or [one scholar] ‘refrained from’ a
discrepancy [in the transmission of the hadith], or ‘refrained
from’] a discrepancy in some of its words, or in some narra
tions [‘refrained from’] the interpolation into the text [proper
of the hadith] of the words of the narration, or [‘refrained
from] the isnad of one hadith entering into [the isndd of another]
hadith - [all of] that being hidden from other [scholars].
This is what is obligatory upon the people of the knowl
edge of hadith after [those predecessors in this science]: that
they should investigate their differences, and strive for knowl
edge of the meanings [of the differences] in [view of] accep
tance or rejection; then they should choose from their opin
ions the most correct And the means to success is from God.6
IV
understanding causes, associations, and objectives
The best understanding of the Prophet’s Sunnah comes by investi

gation of the particular causes on which hadiths are based, or the
specific occasion to which they are attached, specified in the hadith
text or discoverable from the hadith, or understood from the
actual circumstance to which the hadith is addressed.
A penetrating observer will find that, among the hadith, some
are based upon consideration of particular temporal conditions in
order to realize a recognized public good, or to ward off a specific
harm, or to deal with a difficulty existing at that time. This means
that the injunction that the hadith carries appears general and per
manent but, on further consideration, is seen to be founded upon
a particular reason, and the injunction passes away with the passing
away of that reason, just as it stays in force with the continuance of
that reason.
124
UNDERSTANDING CAUSES, ASSOCIATIONS, AND OBJECTIVES
This requires profound understanding and subtle perception, as

well as comprehensive, integrated study of the texts and mature
insight into the goals of the Law and the reality of the religion. It
also requires moral courage and inner strength to come out with
the truth even if it opposes what the people are used to and what
they have inherited. It is not an easy thing. This is the cost exacted
from Shaykh al-Islam Ibn Taymiyyah by the enmity of the scholars
of his time. They conspired against him until he was put in prison
many times, and he died therein, may God be pleased with him.
For an understanding that is sound and subtle, one must know
the associated circumstances which the hadith text addresses. This
is so because the hadith came to clarify those circumstances and to
deal with the conditions thereof. That knowledge helps define the
objective of the hadith with accuracy, and does not give scope to
meandering speculations, or to unintended running about behind
the surface meaning. It is well known that our scholars have stated
that part of what is necessary for a good understanding of the
Qur’an is knowledge of the occasions of revelation. This is to pre
vent happening what happened with the extremists among the
Kharijis and others, who took the verses that were sent down
about the Associationists and applied them to the Muslims. Ibn
TJmar used to regard them as the worst of creation for that reason
— because they distorted the Book of God from what was sent
down in it.68 Now, if the occasions of the revelation of the Qur’an
were sought by whoever wished to understand or comment upon
it, the occasions of the appearance of the hadith are even more
emphatically to be sought. That is because the Qur’an is by its
nature general and permanent; there is not in its concern what
would allow room for partial matters and details and time-bound
considerations — except to take principles and moral lessons from
them. The Sunnah on the other hand does often treat of localized
difficulties, partial and time-bound matters; and in it there are
particulars and details that are not typically found in the Qur’an.
Therefore, it is necessary to distinguish between what is partic
ular and what is general, what is temporal and what is eternal, and
125
what is partial and what is all-comprehensive. Each of these has its

appropriate kind and form of injunction. The investigation into the
context, and the associated circumstances and occasions, assists in
the achievement of a proper, correct understanding, for whomever
God enables to achieve that.
HADITH: “YOU KNOW BETTER THE AFFAIRS OF YOUR WORLDLY LIFE”
An example of that is the hadith: “You know better the affairs of

your worldly life.”69 It is one on which some people base their
evasion of the Legal injunctions in the spheres of economics, civic
and political duties, and the like, because these matters — so they
claim — are among worldly concerns, and we know them better,
and the Messenger, entrusted them to us! But is this really what
this noble hadith intends?
By no means. Among the purposes with which God sent His
messengers is that they should stipulate for the people the prin
ciples of justice, the balanced norms of equity, and the regulations
of the rights and duties in their worldly life, so that their standards
should not clash, nor their ways differ. As God said: “We surely
sent Our messengers with the clear signs, and We sent with them
the Book and the Balance so that people may uphold equity” (al-
Hadid, 57: 25).
So texts of the Book and the Sunnah have come which order
and regulate everyday concerns — selling and buying, partnership
and mortgaging, leasing and lending, and other matters — to the ex
tent that the longest verse in the Book of God was sent down on
the arrangement of a matter that is slight among the worldly mat
ters, namely the writing down of debts. God said: “O believers:
when you transact a debt for a settled term, then write it down.
And let a scribe write it down between you with justice” (a/-
Baqarah, 2: 282).
The hadith (“You know better your own worldly affairs”) is
interpreted by the occasion that prompted it, namely the incident
of the pollination of date-palms. The Prophet’s indication to the
people about this was his conjecture, for he was not an agricul-
126
i
i
turist, he had grown up in a valley not endowed with crops. But
the Ansar supposed his opinion to be by way of a revealed or reli
■
gious command, and so they abandoned pollination. Its effect was

bad for their yield. Then he said: “I was only conjecturing a con
jecture, so do not take [from] me [what is] by way of conjec
ture...” to [where] he said “...You know better your own worldly
affairs”. And this is the story behind the hadith.70
HADITH: “I AM QUIT OF ANY MUSLIM WHO SETTLES [AMONG] THE

ASSOCIATIONISTS”
We give as another example, the hadith: “I am quit of any Muslim

who settles [among] the Associationists [in such a way that] the
fires [of the Muslims and the Associationists] cannot be seen from
each other [meaning the two parties are at war].”71 Some have
understood from it the prohibition of settling in a non-Muslim
land of any description, despite the multiplication of the needs for
that in our time — for education, preaching, work, business, diplo
matic missions, flight from oppression, and other reasons — especi
ally as the world is (as one man of letters put it) quickly becoming
‘one big village’.
The hadith, as Rashid Rida said, appeared on the obligation of I
Hijrah (emigration) from the land of the Associationists to the
Prophet in order to help him. The compilers of the various Sunan
narrated it. Among them, Abu Da’ud narrated it from Jarir ibn
cAbd Allah, noting that the group of narrators did not mention
Jarir, i.e. he narrated it as a mursal hadith (one narrated from the
Prophet by a Successor, without the Companion narrating to the
latter being identified). Al-Nasa’I mentions only this mursal version.
Al-Tirmidhl traced and reported it as a mursal hadith and pro
nounced it sahih. He conveyed from al-Bukharl that he regarded
the mursal as sahih. However, al-Bukharl did not report it, as it did
not meet his conditions for inclusion in his Sahih. Argumentation
from the mursal is a famous point of disagreement in the science of
the principles of hadith. The text of the hadith:
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7
God’s Messenger sent a detachment to Khathcam, and [some]
people from them took refuge in prostration, but the killing
rushed on them [rr. they were killed in the rush of batde].
[News of] that reached the Prophet. Then he ordered them [to
pay] half the bloodmoney (i.e. bloodwit) and he said: “I am
quit of any Muslim who settles [among] the Associationists.”
They said: “O Messenger of God, why?” He said: “Their fires
are not seen by each other.” (That is, they are not as neighbors
or near kin [who camp close to one another] so that you see
the fire of either as the fire of the other. And that implies the
distance that is between the two of them.)
He halved the bloodwit for them though they were Muslims,
because they had helped against their own and voided the half of
their duty by settling among the Associationists at war with God
and His Messenger. He was severe about this kind of residence,
because it resembled ‘sitting out’ (i.e. not taking active part in) the
call to help God and His Messenger. God says of those who did
that: “And those who have believed and do not leave their homes
- you have no duty to protect them till they leave their homes. But
if they seek help from you in the religion, helping them is your
duty, except against a people between whom and yourselves there
is a treaty.” {al-Anfal, 8: 72)
God repudiated friendship with Muslims who did not emigrate
when Emigration was a duty.73 So the meaning of his saying “I am
quit of any Muslim...” is being quit of any liability for that per
son’s life if killed, because he brought that upon himself by settling
among those at war with the Islamic state.
The meaning of this is: if the circumstances in which the text
was spoken change, then the observed reason behind it is detached
from the general good it meant to bring about, or from the harm it
meant to avert. So the understanding is that the injunction estab
lished by this text before has since been turned away — for the
injunction hinges upon its reason being existent and present.
128
\
THE WOMAN’S TRAVELING WITH A MAHRAM
An example of that is what has come in the two Sahihs from the
hadith of Ibn cAbbas and others rnarjTân\ “A woman may not
travel except a mahram is accompanying her.”74
The reason for the prohibition is fear for the woman traveling
alone without husband or mahram at a time when traveling was by
camel or mule or donkey, and she was often crossing through des
ert or barren terrains empty of human settlements or living crea
tures. Even if, during this kind of journey, the woman did not
suffer mischief to herself, she suffered it in her reputation.
But when the conditions change — as in our time — when travel
is by airplane or train carrying a hundred or more passengers, then
there is not much room to fear for a woman traveling alone. One
does not consider this acting in opposition to the hadith. Rather,
this position is confirmed by the hadith of cAdl ibn Hatim
marfifian, according to al-Bukhari: “[The time] is all but [here
when] a woman will leave from Hlra heading for the House (i.e.
the KaTah), [with] no husband accompanying her.”75 This hadith
comes in the context of praising the advent of Islam and the rising
of its light, and as a token of its providing safety in the land. It
demonstrates the permissibility of a woman traveling alone. Ibn
Hazm proceeded in accordance with this view.
It is no surprise that we find some of the imams permitting the
woman to do hajj without a mahram or husband accompanying her,
if she was with trustworthy women, or in trusted company. That is
how cA’ishah did the hajj and taivaf, as one of the ‘mothers of the
believers’ during the rule of TJmar. There was not with them a
single mahranr, rather, TJthman ibn cAffan and cAbd al-Rahman ibn
cAwf accompanied them. It is so reported in Sahih al-lbukhan.
Some people say: A single trustworthy woman is enough as a
traveling companion. Others say: She may travel alone if the road
is safe. The followers of the Shafis school have pronounced this
view correct for traveling for hajj and Qamrah. Other Shafts
include any journey in this permission, not just for pilgrimage.
129
THE LEADERS ARE FROM THE QURAYSH
Another example of that is the hadith “The leaders are from the
Quraysh”. Ibn Khaldun commented on it in his Muqaddimah. The
Prophet saw, in his time, what the Quraysh had of power and
group-solidarity, on which, in the view of Ibn Khaldun, caliphal or
monarchical rule is established. He said:
If it is established that the stipulation of the Qurayshis was i
only their [capacity for] deterring strife with what they had of
group-solidarity and conquering spirit, [then] we know that
only that [capacity] is what sufficed [to qualify them for rule].
So we trace it [the stipulation of the Quraysh] to it [possession
of group-solidarity]. We move on to the comprehensive reason
within the purpose aimed at [in choosing] the Qurayshis [for
rule], and it is the existence of group-solidarity. So we stipulate
for the person of the commander of the Muslims that he be
from the people who have group-solidarity above whoever
[else] has it in his time so they can make whoever is like them
[in having some group-solidarity] subservient [to them], and
the word can come together [i.e. the people can agree] on the
best of protection....78
THE METHOD OF THE COMPANIONS AND SUCCESSORS IN

INVESTIGATING THE REASONS AND CIRCUMSTANCES OF THE TEXTS
This is the method of investigating the surrounding conditions of

the hadiths, and of the reasons that constitute their context. The
Companions were pioneers in it, and those who followed them in
excellence (i.e. the Successors). They abandoned acting on the
outward sense of certain hadiths when it was clear to them that
these hadiths were attached to the condition fixed in the era of
Prophethood, and subsequently that condition had changed.
An example is that the Prophet divided up the lands of
Khaybar among the conquerors of it, but TJmar did not divide up
the fertile land of Iraq (sawad). His view was that it should remain
in the hands of its owners, and he put the duty of kharaj (land tax)
on the land, so that it would be a permanent resource for future
generations of Muslims.79 On that, Ibn Qudamah said: “The divi-
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ding up of Khaybar by the Prophet was at the beginning of Islam

and [in] the extremity of need, and there was public good in it. The
public good in what was after that was in [charitable] public en-
dowment of the land. And it was obligatory.”
The attitude ofÛthman to stray camels

An example of that is the Prophet’s attitude to stray camels. When
he was asked about them, he forbade rounding them up, and said
to the questioner: “What is it [to do] with you and with them? You
can leave them be. For indeed they have their ‘shoes’ and their
‘waterskins’. They will find water, they will eat [from] the shrubs —
81
until their master finds them.”
The matter progressed on this pattern throughout the time of
the Prophet. In the time of Abu Bakr al-Siddlq and TJmar ibn al-
Khattab, the stray camel was left alone in whatever condition it
was and, following the command of the Messenger, no one took
possession of it — for as long as it was capable of defending itself,
and capable of tracking water to drink and to store thereof in its
belly what it wished, and it had its ‘shoes’, i.e. its hoofs, which give
it strength in traveling and crossing the desert — until its owner
found it.
Then came the time of TJthman ibn cAffan. Malik narrates in
the Muwattd that he heard Ibn Shihab al-Zuhri say: “The stray ones
of the camels in the time of TJmar ibn al-Khattab were camels
giving birth to camels, and no one touched them. Until it was the
time of TJthman ibn cAffan. He ordered the identification of them,
then selling [of them]. Then when the owner of them came he was
given the price [obtained] for them.”82 After TJthman, conditions
changed a little. CAU ibn Abl Talib agreed it in permitting the
rounding up of the camels and keeping them safe for their owners.
However, he took the view that at times there might be some
harm in selling them and rendering their price to their owners —
because the price did not have the same use for the owners as the
camels themselves. Later on he held that rounding up of strays and
the expenditure on them should be from the public treasury — until
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such time as their owner came and they would be given back to
him.83
In what TJthman and CA11 did, there is no opposition to the
words of the Prophet. Rather, they looked to his purpose, and to
how the character of people had changed — not honoring rights
had crept into their ways, and some of them were stretching their
hands to the forbidden. The strays from the camels and cattle were
left to get lost by themselves, and their being abandoned was a
care upon their owners. It is what the Prophet did not intend at all
when he forbade rounding them up. Rather, it was to avert this
particular harm.
TEXTS BASED ON A USAGE THAT CHANGED LATER
Related to what we have just discussed are issues that come under
earlier or later usage. These entail investigation into what some
texts are based on in respect of usages ongoing in the age of
Prophethood but which, since then, have changed. No harm
ensues, in our view, from looking into the objectives of the texts
without clinging to their letters. Here is an example:
The opinion ofAbu Yiisuf on measuring by volume or weight

Scholars of fiqh know the opinion of Abu Yusuf on this topic, de
rived from his discussion of the categories of (what had been)
interest-bearing goods. About such goods there has come the well-
known sahth hadith of the Prophet: “Wheat for wheat; measure for
measure, like for like.” That is how it is also for barley, dates and
salt. As for gold and silver, he said about them: “Weight for
weight.”
Abu Yusuf took the view that that form of expression in what
was said, about the categories of goods to be measured by volume
or by weight, was based on the usage at the time, and usage had
changed. Dates and salt, for example, had come to be sold by
weight — as in our age — and action was necessary in accordance
with what the new usage had become. So Abu Yusuf made lawful
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the selling of, for example, dates and salt, by equal weights, even if
they differ in volume.
This is opposed to the position that (his teacher) Abu Hanifah
took: namely, that any thing of which God’s Messenger stipulated
variation in it being forbidden, it was to be measured like for like
always - even if people had abandoned measuring it that way.
Similarly, anything that he stipulated variation from weighing it as
being forbidden, it was to be weighed always - even if the people
had abandoned weighing in it. According to this view it is obliga
tory to go on measuring dates, salt, wheat, barley by volume until
the Day of Resurrection. This makes hardship for the people -
whereas he ordered that the Law should have no prejudice ensue
from it. The correct position is what Abu Yusuf said, and it is in
agreement with the well-being of the people in our time. Indeed all
the old volumetric measures for cereals and other produce have
I
come to be replaced by measures by weight.
The existence of two nisabsfor calculating %ak.ah on money
Among the examples that have emerged of a text being based on a

usage later altered is the Prophet’s decreeing two different nisabs
for calculating zakah on money. One of the two, for silver, he set
at 100 dirhams (equivalent to 595 grams), and the second, for gold,
he set at 20 mithqals or dinars (equivalent to 85 grams). For the
dinar in that time the exchange rate was equal to ten dirhams.
I have explained in my book Tiqh al-Zakdh that the Prophet did
not intend to lay down two different nisabs for zakah. Rather, it is a
single nisab, ownership of which is considered adequate to become
liable for zakah on it. He decreed two courses of action following
the customary usage of the people during the age of Prophethood.
The text came based on that established usage. The nisab was
defined for the two liable kinds of wealth, these two being equiva
lent always. But conditions have changed in our age — the price of
silver has fallen drastically relatively to the fall in the price of gold.
It is not permissible for us to set the nisab for two different kinds
of liable wealth that are so extremely different — so that we should
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4-
Principles for Correct UnderstzYnding of the Sunnah
say, for example, that the nisab of money (cash) is what is equiva
lent to the value of 85 grams of gold, or what is equivalent to 595
grams of silver. At the present time the value of the nisab for gold
is greater than the value of the nisab for silver by roughly ten times.
It does not make sense that we say to a person who has the liable
amount fixed in a particular currency: you are considered wealthy
if we calculate your nisab in silver; and we say to another person
who possesses many times more: you are counted poor if we
calculate your nisab in gold!
The solution of that is the definition of a single nisab in our age
for money. By it the minimum limit (nisab) for the wealth liable to
zakah under the Law is known.84 This is the position adopted by
the great professor Shaykh Muhammad Abu Zahrah, and his col
leagues, Shaykh cAbd al-Wahhab Khallaf and Shaykh cAbd al-Rah-
man Hasan - God have mercy on them — in their lectures on
zakah in Damascus in the year 1952, calculating the nisab in gold
only. This is what I chose and supported with argumentation in
my research on zakah. 85
Again, this is not opposition to the text, as it has been accused
of being. Rather, the text is based on a particular custom; with the
wearing away of that custom, the injunction relative to that custom
has worn away also.
The change in the people liable to pay bloodwit in the time of TJmar
Another example of a text based on temporal usage that changed
subsequently is the issue of who is liable to pay bloodwit. The
Prophet’s decision was that the people liable to pay bloodwit for
an accidental killing were ‘the paternal relatives of the man’. Some
jurists took hold of the outward sense of that and made it obliga
tory that the people liable were always to be the paternal relatives.
They did not look to the fact that the Prophet only laid the blood
wit to the charge of the paternal relatives because, in that period,
they were the pivot of support and help. Opposing those jurists
were others, like the Hanafis. They argued from the action of the
caliph TJmar, who in his time placed liability on ‘the people of the
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I
diwan (military register)’. Ibn Taymiyyah discussed the matter in his !'
Yatawa. He said:
The Prophet judged the bloodwit on the people liable, and
they were those who supported the man and helped him. The
people liable in his time were [the man’s] paternal relatives.
Then, in the time of TJmar, he [TJmar] laid it on the people of
the diwan. That is why the jurists have differed on this. The
principle of that: are the people liable as defined by the Law or
those who supported [the man] and helped him? Those who
[held] the first opinion did not act [to shift liability away] from
the near relatives because they were the people liable according
to the [practice in the Prophet’s] time. Those who [held] the
second opinion made those liable in any time and place who
are [the person’s] support at the time. Since, in the time of the !
Prophet, [those who] supported and helped him were only his
near relatives, they were the people liable [to pay bloodwit] -
for, in the time of the Prophet, there was no diwan.
When TJmar set up the diwan it was known that the [mem
bers of the] army of a city supported each other and helped
each other, even if they were not near relatives, and so they
were the people liable. This is the more correct of the two
positions — that [the liability] differs according to the differ
ence in conditions. For otherwise: a man living in the west, ;•
and there are there those who support and help him - [but] I'
how can those be liable who are of the east, under another
sovereignty, and news of him has been cut off from them?!
The inheritance [by contrast] can be preserved for the absent
one: for indeed the Prophet judged on the woman who had
killed that her bloodwit was due from her paternal relatives,
and that her inheritance was for her husband and her sons, so
the one who inherits is not of the people liable [to pay the
bloodwit].86
It is according to this reasoning that I have given a fatwa in our

age that the people liable for bloodwit could be assigned from the
professional associations: so if a doctor kills by mistake, then his
bloodwit is due from the association of doctors, and the engineer’s
from the association of engineers ... and so forth.
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About the %akdt al-fitr
Among the established sunnahs is that the Messenger used to pay
the %ak.at al-fitr^ and he ordered its payment after the fajr prayer and
before the ^d prayer on the day of the fitr. That period of time was
sufficient for its collection and its distribution to those entitled to
it, on account of the society and its members being few in number,
and the people in need being well-known, and their places of
residence very near, to each other. So there was no difficulty in
making the payment in the time he indicated for that.
In the age of the Companions, the society expanded, its mem
bers lived further apart, the number of its individuals increased,
and new races entered into it. Then the interval between the fajr
and (dd prayers was not considered sufficient. The fiqh of the
Companions was that they should give %akat al-fitr before the Td
by a day or two days. Then, in the period of the followed imams
among the mujtahid jurists, the society grew ever more expansive
and complicated, so they permitted it to be paid from the middle
of Ramadan (as in the Hanball school), or even from the beginning
of Ramadan (as in the ShaficI school).
Moreover, they did not stop at the foodstuffs stipulated in the
Sunnah for the payment of %akat al-fitr. Rather, they did qiyas on
those and, by analogy, made it acceptable to give in whatever food
stuffs happened to be prevalent in the area in question. Indeed,
some of them broadened the permission to include payment of the
cash value (instead of payment in foodstuffs), especially if it was
for the greater benefit of the poor. That is the doctrine of Abu
Hanlfah and his students. Thus the purpose — ‘providing for the
needy’ on this day of generosity, and payment due, in foodstuffs —
is rightly served by payment of their cash value. Sometimes the
cash value is more perfect in fulfilling the duty of provision than
food, and especially in our time. In this, there is preserving of the
purpose of the Prophetic text, and applying its spirit, and this is
the true fiqh.
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d
The letter of the Sunnah and its spirit, or outward sense and inner objective
For sure, adherence to the letter of the Sunnah amounts on
occasion to non-implementation of its spirit and purpose; indeed,
it is opposed to it, if adherence is only to the outward form of it.
By way of example, consider the strictness of those who totally
reject payment of the %akat alfitr \n its value in cash - as is permit
ted according to the doctrine of Abu Hanlfah and his students,
and the opinion of TJmar ibn cAbd al-cAziz, and of others among
the jurists of the early generations. The argument of those who are
strict is that the Prophet made %akat alfitr obligatory on specified
categories of foodstuffs - dates, grapes (raisins), wheat and barley.
They say it is our duty to stop within the limits that God’s
Messenger prescribed, and not contradict his sunnah with our per
sonal opinion. But if they aspire to obey the command as it should
be obeyed, they will find that in reality it is they who are opposing
the Prophet by following him only in the outward form of his
command. I mean that they are, with due humility, obeying the
body of the Sunnah but neglecting its spirit.
The Messenger looked to the circumstances of the situation c
and the time. So he made the %akat alfitr obligatory on what the
people had to hand in foodstuffs. And that was more easy for
those giving and more useful for those receiving. Among the
Arabs, especially the Bedouins, at that time, ready cash was a rarity
while payment in food was easy for them, and the needy were in
need of food. In that way the duty of charity was made easy for
them. So far is that so that he permitted payment in ‘cottage
cheese’ (it is milk dried with the cream extracted) to whoever had
it and it was easy for them, for example among the nomads, for
owners of camels, goats and cattle.
Since then, conditions have changed. Money has become
abundant, and foodstuffs scarce. Or the poor man has become
needy on Td, not of foodstuffs, but of other things for himself or
his family. Payment of the value in money is easier for the ones
giving and more useful for the ones receiving. And this is acting in
accordance with the spirit of the Prophet’s teaching and his pur-
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pose. In the city of Cairo alone there are more than ten million
Muslims. If they were to be charged with the payment of ten mil
lion cubic measures of barley or dates or raisins, where would they
find them? And what hardship and trouble it would be for them to
search for those things in the environs of villages, to track down
all or even some of them. But God rejected trouble from His
religion, and He intended ease for His slaves, and He did not in
tend for them hardship. Suppose that they could find those things
with ease: then how does the poor man benefit from them, when
he has not the means to mill flour, or make dough, or bake, and he
can only buy bread ready-made from the baker? Surely, we lay a
burden upon him when we give the zakah to him as grain. Then,
what follows the giving of grain is selling it (for money to ex
change for something else). But then who will buy it, when all the
people roundabout are no longer in need of grain?
Nevertheless, it is reported to me that in some lands there are
Muslims whose scholars forbid them from payment of the cash
value. So what happens is that the one giving the %akat al-fitr buys a
measure of dates or of cedar, for example, from a merchant for ten
riyals, then gives it to the poor man. Then the poor man sells it on
the spot to the same merchant for less by one or two riyals than
what it was bought for — and sometimes for half the original value,
and on occasion the merchant refuses the purchase because of the
great quantity of what he already has of it. The measure of food
stuffs continues to be sold and bought in this way, time after time.
What happens is that the poor man does not receive food, he
receives only money, but with a diminution in the sum he would
have received if the zakah-giver had paid the value directly in cash.
That is the loss incurred in the difference from the original sum
for which the zakah-giver bought from the merchant. Only the
sum that the poor man sells it for is his.
Now, did the Law come for the welfare of the poor or for the
contrary of that? And is the Law formalistic to this extent? Is the
strictness in this really following the Sunnah or opposing the spirit
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DISTINGUISHING CHANGEABLE MEANS /\ND STABLE ENDS i
of the Sunnah, whose watchword has always been, ‘make it easy,

do not make it difficult’?
Further, do not those who disallow payment of the value in
%akat al-jitr, permit the payment in kind of foodstuffs that the
hadith did not stipulate, if such foodstuffs are prevalent in the area
in question? That entails a kind of interpretation or analogical
reasoning with the text. Their imams have authorized that, and not
found any harm in it. It is — in our view — a correct analogy, and an
acceptable interpretation. Why then should there be strict rejection
of the idea of payment of the value in %akat al-jitr, though its
purpose was to make the needy free of the need to run about beg
ging on this day. Perhaps this purpose justifies payment of the
value rather more than it justifies payment in the specified food
stuffs. As for the latter, we regard it as obligatory in only one
situation, namely the condition of famine, when the people are
needy of food much more than of money, when the person has
money but cannot find food to buy with it.
DISTINGUISHING CHANGEABLE MEANS AND STABLE ENDS
Among the causes of confusion and error in the understanding of

the Sunnah is that some people confuse the stable purposes and
aims, the realization of which the Sunnah strives for, with the
temporal and circumstantial means which sometimes assist the
attainment of the sought-for aims. So you see them firmly placing
the whole focus on these means, as if they were the purpose itself.
By contrast, those who are profound in understanding the Sunnah
and its more inward purposes — for them it is clear that the
important thing is the aim, which is stable and enduring, whereas
the means indeed change with the change in circumstances or
epoch or usage or other influencing factors.
Hence you find a common concern among some students of
the Sunnah is with the ‘medicine of the Prophet’. They focus their
energy and concern on the medicines, nutriments, herbs, grains,
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and other things from what the Prophet described as being
medicines in the treatment of some bodily defects or illnesses.
They quote well-known hadiths in this regard, for example:
87
The best of what you can use as medicine is cupping.
The best of what you can use as medicine is cupping and qust
88
al-babn (black cumin).
[It is incumbent] upon you [to treat] with this Indian aloes
wood, for there are in it seven healing [properties] ...
[It is incumbent] upon you [to treat] with this black seed, for in
it there is healing for every ailment except al-sam, and that is
death.90
In the black seed there is healing for every ailment except al-
sam (i.e. death).91
Wear kohl with antimony for it clears the vision and makes the
hair grow.92
I think these prescriptions and their like are not of the spirit of
the Prophetic medicine. Rather, its spirit is preservation of the life
and health of the human being, and soundness of the body and its
strength, its right to rest when tired, to food when hungry, and to
treatment when ill. Its spirit is that the seeking of treatment does
not contradict faith in predestination (al-qadr), nor reliance upon
God. Its spirit is that for every ailment there is a cure, and con
firmation of the law of God (sunnat Allahi) in respect of contag
ion; the legitimization of quarantine for health reasons; the con
cern for hygiene of the person, the house and the road; and the
prohibition of pollution of water and land; the emphasis on pre
vention above cure; the prohibition of all that (of intoxicants,
drugs, noxious aliments or polluting drinks) whose consumption
harms the person; the prohibition of any oppression of the body
even in the worship of God; the stipulation of relaxation to pre
serve bodily well-being; and the preservation of the health of the
mind alongside bodily health - and other teachings which repre
sent the reality of the Prophetic medicine, in those aspects of it
which are true for every time and place.
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DISTINGUISHING CHANGEABLE MEANS /\ND STABLE ENDS
The means change at times, from age to age, from one situation
to another. Indeed it is inevitable that they should change. So,
when a hadith stipulates a particular means, that is only to be taken
as an explanation of the reality of its time: we are not bound by it,
and we are not restricted to it.
Indeed, if a text of the Qur’an itself stipulates a practical
measure for a specified time and specified place, then it does not
mean that we stop at that measure, and not think of other mea
sures developed since then and elsewhere. Did not the Qur’an say:
“Make ready for them all you can of force [of men] and reined I
horses so that you may thereby dismay the enemy of God and
your enemy, and others besides them” (al-Anfaly 8: 60)? Despite
this, no one understands that defence against the enemy is not
possible except by cavalry, as the Qur’an stipulated in this verse.
Rather, everyone who has intelligence and knows the language and
the Law understands that ‘cavalry’ now is tanks and artillery and
the like weapons of the age. The texts that have appeared on the
virtue of maintaining a cavalry, and the great reward for it — for
example, the hadith: “Good is attached to the forehead of the
horses until the Day of Resurrection: the reward [hereafter] and
the spoils [of war]” — require that one adapt to every means that
is invented and has replaced cavalry, or that exceeds it in force of
power by many times. An example of such texts is what has come
on the virtue of “One who shoots an arrow in the path of God, so
he is thus and thus”. 4 It applies to any shooting - with an arrow
or a shotgun or cannon or missile — to any means thereof that lie
hidden in the future.
I hold that the specifying of the siwdk for cleaning the teeth is
in the same category. For its aim is cleanliness of the mouth so as
to please the Lord — as in the hadith: “The siwdk, is a cleansing of
the mouth and a pleasing of the Lord.”93 But is the siwdk the
purpose itself? Or was it the means suited to and easy for the Arab
Peninsula? The Prophet prescribed for the people what was suited
to the goal and was not difficult for them. There is no objection
that, in different societies where the siwdk is not easy, this instru-
141
ment should change to one (such as the toothbrush) that can be

manufactured in mass quantities and that suits many millions of
people.
Some jurists have stipulated something like that. In the Hanbali
fiqh, the author of Hidayat al-Raghib. said: “The stick is from the
[trees or shrubs] arak, zarjun> and %aytun (olive), and others. It does
not hurt or harm or splinter. To use what hurts or harms or splin
ters is reproachable (makruB). That which harms: such as the
pomegranate (rumart) or the rihan and the tamarisk (tarfa*) and the
like of those He does not rightly observe the sunnah who does
his teeth with other than a stick.” However, the editor of the book,
Shaykh cAbd Allah al-Bassam conveyed from al-NawawI that he
said: “With whatever thing one does the teeth that can remove the
change [i.e. restore the teeth to cleanliness], then the cleaning is
achieved — even [if the instrument used is] a piece of cloth or a
finger....” That opinion is the doctrine of Abu Hanifah, according
to the generality of the evidence found in hadiths. We read in al-
Mughni “that it observes the sunnah to the extent that it achieves
some cleaning, and one should not leave the lesser sunnah for the
sake of the greater”. And he mentioned that this opinion is cor
rect96 From this we know that toothbrush and toothpaste can take
the place of the ardk in our age, and especially in the house, and
after eating and before sleeping, and in particular as some people
do not make proper use of the siwak.
Included in the same category are the hadiths related to table
manners, on the virtue of ‘licking the bowl’, ‘licking the fingers’,
and the like. Al-Nawawi has cited in Riyad al-Sdlihin a good number
of these hadiths. One of them is what the two Shaykhs have nar
rated from Ibn cAbbas, who said: “God’s Messenger said: ‘When
one of you eats, let him not wipe his fingers until he has licked
them or had them licked.’ ”97 Muslim narrated from KaT> ibn
Malik, he said: “I saw God’s Messenger eating with three fingers,
and then he finished off by licking them.”98 He has also narrated
from Jabir that God’s Messenger commanded licking the fingers
and the bowl, and said: “Surely you do not know in which part of
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your food the blessing is.”99 And from Anas, who said: “When he
ate food he licked his three fingers. And he said: ‘If a morsel of
anyone of you falls, let him pick it up and let him remove from it
the harm [i.e. any dirt], and let him eat it and not leave it for Satan.’ '!
And he commanded us that we clean out the platter (i.e. that we
wipe it out) and he said: ‘Surely you do not know in which part of
your food the blessing is.’ ”100
One who looks at only the wording of these hadiths will not
understand other than that eating with three fingers, and licking
them after eating, and licking the bowl or cleaning it out or wiping
it, is the sunnah of the Prophet. So he may, at times, look with dis
gust at someone eating with a spoon because, in his opinion, that
person is opposing the sunnah* behaving as unbelievers do! The
reality is that the spirit of the Sunnah that should be taken from
these hadiths is his modesty, his acceptance of God’s blessing in
the food, and the anxious wish that he should not leave from that
blessing anything to be wasted without benefit, such as the rem
nant of food left in the bowl, or the morsel that falls from some
people and they are too proud to pick it up, showing themselves as
being in affluence and plenty, and distancing themselves from
looking like the poor and indigent, who strive for the smallest
thing, even if it be a crumb of bread.
The Prophet used the expression that the left-over morsel is
left over only for Satan. His sunnah in these matters is indeed a
moral and economic training at one and the same time. If the
Muslims would act upon it, we would not see the waste that is met
with every day — rather, at every meal — in every wastebasket and
rubbish bin. If the Muslim Community calculated the level of this
waste, its economic value every day would amount to millions or
tens of millions. Then how much would it be by month or in a
whole year? That is the inner spirit behind these hadiths. Many a
man who sits on the ground and eats with his fingers, and licks
them afterwards, following the words of the Sunnah, is yet far
from the character of humility and the character of gratitude, and
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the character of economy in the use of the blessing of food —

which is the desired end behind these manners.
“THE WEIGHT OF MAKKAH” AND “THE MEASURE OF MADINAH”
Another example is the hadith: “The weight is the weight of the

people of Makkah, and the [volumetric] measure is the measure of
the people of Madinah.”101 In light of the age in which it was said,
this contains what some contemporaries would call a ‘progressive’
teaching. It teaches the unification of the standards of measure or
gauge to which the people refer in selling and buying and other
transactions. There is reference in that to the smallest unit of the
scale that the people knew well.
The people of Makkah were traders, they did their selling and
buying in metallic coin, and so depended on the standard weight,
being well-preserved — the mithqdl, dirham, daniq, and the like. Ac
cordingly, they gave much attention to the preservation of these
weights and their multiples and divisions. Then it is no surprise
that their weights were the standards relied upon, the reference
against which people resolved any dispute that arose. It is on this
basis that the hadith has come with the particular wording: “The
weight is the weight of the people of Makkah ” Similarly, the
people of Madinah were people of agriculture and tillage, owners
of grain and fruit. Their attention was directed to the preservation
of volumetric measures — such as the madd, the saQ, and others —
because of their pressing need of them in the marketing of the
produce of their lands, orchards and vineyards. When they sold or
bought they made use of these measures and they were more right
fully owners of their regulation. So, no wonder at the wording of
the Messenger, that the measure is their measure.
What we mean to establish here is that the meaning of this
hadith has to do with the class of practical measures, liable to
change with the changing of time and place and circumstance, and
it is not a binding command stopped in itself and not permitting
any alteration. As for the aim of the hadith — it is, self-evidently, as
we have said, the unification of the measures with reference to
144
what man has come to know with greater precision. So the Muslim
of today finds no harm in using decimal measures (such as the
kilogram and its divisions and multiples), on account of what he
distinguishes therein of precision and ease in calculation. Nor does
that amount to opposing the hadith in a particular situation. That
• is why we see it being used by contemporary Muslims in many
regions of the world without objection from anyone. The use of
metric measures in length is another instance. There can be no
objection to it as long as the aim is to arrive at accuracy and unity
in the standards. The appropriate maxim to have in mind is:
‘Wisdom is the lost property of the believer wherever he finds it,
and of all people he has the most right to it.’
SIGHTING THE CRESCENT TO ESTABLISH THE MONTH
It is proper to include in the context of this discussion what has

come in the well-known sahth hadith: “Fast upon sighting it (name
ly, the crescent) and stop fasting upon sighting it. Then if it is
hidden from you, estimate (calculate) [the days of the month].” In
a variant wording: “Then if it is hidden from you complete thirty
days of ShaTjan.”
Here the jurist should say: ‘Surely this noble hadith points to
both an objective, a goal, and to a means.’
Now, as for the objective of the hadith, its explanation is plain
to see: that people fast the whole of Ramadan, not missing out a
day at the beginning or end of it, or that they fast a day from an
adjacent month, namely Shahan or Shawwal. That objective is
achieved by affirming the start and end of Ramadan by a method
practicable and available to the majority of the people, one that
does not burden them with hardship or impediment in their fulfill
ment of the duties of their religion.
Sighting the crescent with the eyes was the easy and available
means for the generality of the people in that time. That is why the
hadith specifies such sighting. If it had burdened them with
another method, such as mathematical calculation — and the Com
munity in that time was ignorant, not versed in writing or calcul-
145
ating — it would have placed a hardship upon them in the matter.

And God desires for His community ease and He does not desire
for them hardship. And the Prophet said about himself: “Surely
God sent me with an easy teaching, and He did not send me with
distress.”102
What then, if another method is found better able to realize the
objective of the hadith, and further from erroneous interpretation
or conjecture or falsehood in determining the opening of the
month? And if this method is no longer difficult to achieve, not
beyond the capacity of the Community, given what has come into
it of the learning and knowledge of astronomers, geologists and
physicists specialized at the global level? And when human knowl
edge has reached to the extent of man being able to ascend to the
moon itself, alight upon its surface, peer about at the fissures of its
land, and obtain samples of its rocks and soil? Why then should we
adhere to means mentioned in the hadith — and the means is not
the intended end itself — and forget the purposes that the hadith
aimed at?
The hadith has established the opening of the month by the
report of one or two persons proclaiming the sighting of the cresc
ent with the naked eye - where it was the practicable means avail
able to the average member of the Community. Then how can one
think of renouncing a means that is closed to error or conjecture
or falsehood, a means that attains the rank of certainty and defini
tiveness? Moreover, it is possible that, by adopting it, the Islamic
Community of east and west can come together, and reduce the
continual opposition and differences among them in the fasting
and breaking fast and the Id days.103 It is something one cannot
make sense of or accept, either by logic of knowledge or by logic
of the religion, given that, on this matter, it is confirmed beyond
dispute that one party must be right and the others wrong.
Acceptance of definitive calculation today surely is the means to
establish the months. One must accept it under the heading of
‘preferred analogy’ in the sense that the Sunnah makes the accep
tance of a permissible means lawful for us. Something that entails
146
■1
uncertainty and a need for interpretation — namely, sighting the

crescent with the naked eye — cannot cause the rejection of a
means higher and more complete, more adequate to the realization
of the intended purpose. The more so as this means (definitive
calculation) relieves the Community of severe controversy when
deciding about the time of its fasting and its Sacrifice, and enables
the longed-for unity in its public symbols and rites of worship, '■
stable continuance of what is commanded of the more special

affairs of its religion, and what is more relevant for its life and its
spiritual being.
The learned and great nmhaddith^ Ahmad Muhammad Shakir
(may God have mercy on him) reasoned by a different route to the
same judgment — that the lunar month should be by astronomical
calculation. He based his argument on the fact that the command
in respect of sighting the crescent is dependent on the (legal) cause
stipulated for it in the Sunnah itself. Now that that cause is no
longer found, it is proper that the injunction be negated also,
because it is an established and agreed principle that an injunction
goes with its cause, existent or non-existent. It is best to cite his
text in his own words, because there is strength and clarity in it.
He wrote in his essay Aivd’il al-Shuhur al-zArabiyyah\
From what there is no doubt [about] is that the Arabs, before
Islam and in the early period of Islam, did not know the
astronomical sciences, positive scientific knowledge. They
were an unlettered Community - they did not write and they
did not calculate. One among them who had acquired anything
of that knew it only elementarily or the husk of it. He knew it
from observation or from following [imitation], or by hearsay
and report. [His knowledge] was not based on mathematical
roots, nor on definitive proofs deduced from secure axioms.
For that [reason] the Messenger of God made the resort for
establishing the months in [the people’s] rites of worship the
definite and witnessed matter that [was] within the capacity of
everyone of them, or within the capacity of most of them, and
[that] was sighting of the crescent with the naked eye. Then,
this was stronger and more regulatory of the times of their
[religious] symbols and their rites. It was what joins to itself
certainty and firmness from what [was] within their capacity
147 I
[to achieve at the time]. And God does not burden a soul
except that He gives scope [the capacity to carry that burden].
From what conforms to the commands of the Law there
was not [in that time anything to the effect that] one rest the
proofs on the devices of calculation and astronomy. They did
not know a thing of that in their major cities. Many of them
were Bedouin (nomads): the news of the major cities did not
reach them, except in occasional intervals of proximity [to the
cities], and [that was] infrequently. So if he had made calcula
tion and astronomy [the resort] for them, he would have
oppressed them. [For] novelties [as the science of asronomy
then was] were not known among them, except by very few,
[and that too] from hearsay if it reached them [at all]. It was
not known [even] to the people of the major cities except by
imitation from some of the people of calculation, and most of
them or all of them were from the People of the Book.
Then the Muslims conquered the world, and they took the
reins of the sciences. They broadened [their knowledge and
competence] in all their arts and crafts. They translated the
sciences of predecessors and they distinguished [themselves]
therein. They also discovered much from the hidden [hitherto
unknown] things and preserved them for those who [were to
come] after them. Among those [sciences were] astronomy
and astrology and calculation of the stars.
Many of the jurists and hadith scholars did not know as
tronomy, or they knew [only] some of its rudiments. Some of
them, or many of them, were not trusting of one who knew
[astronomy], and were not at ease with him. Rather, some of
them censured preoccupation with it as deviation and heresy,
thinking of it that these sciences led their [practitioners] to
claim knowledge of the unseen (‘astrology’). Some of them
were indeed claiming that, and it brought harm to themselves
and to their science. [In fact, some] jurists were excusing [that
abuse]. Those who, among the jurists and scholars, knew these
sciences, were not capable of defining for them a sound (sahib)
position in relation to the religion or to fiqh. Rather, they were
indicating them with dread [as something to be feared and
avoided].
Their situation was thus — when the cosmological sciences
were not as widespread as the religious sciences [were], nor
what relates to [those sciences]. Also, according to the schol-
148
ars, the foundations [of those sciences, in contrast to the religi

ous sciences] were not definitively established.
This spacious and splendid Law will endure through time
until God permits the end of the life of this world. It legislates
for every community, and for every age. For that [very reason]
we see in the texts of the Book and the Sunnah subtle indica
tions to what of the affairs [of humankind that the Law deals
with] is renewable. Then, when confirmation of [those affairs]
comes, they will be explained and known and understood,
even though predecessors had explained them according to
[what is] not their reality.
What we are now discussing has been hinted in the authen
tic Sunnah. So al-Bukhari has narrated from the hadith of Ibn
TJmar from the Prophet, that he said: “Indeed we are an un
lettered Community. We do not write and we do not calculate.
The month [he gestured with his hand] is like this....and like
this: that is, at times twenty-nine [days], and at times thirty
[days]”.104 Malik narrated it in al-Mmratta'^ Also al-Bukhari i
i
and Muslim and others [narrated it] with the wording: “the
month is twenty-nine [days], so do not begin fasting until you
see the crescent; and do not stop fasting until you see it. Then
if it is obscure for you, then estimate (or calculate) it.”
Now our earlier scholars, may God have mercy on them,
were right on the explanation of the meaning of the hadith,
but they were in error in the interpretation of it. [An example]
of their collective opinion on that is the opinion of al-Hafiz I
Ibn Hajar:106 “The intended meaning of the term calculation
(al-hisaty here is the calculation of the stars and the movement
thereof. And [people] were not knowledgeable about that ex
cept in a lowly way. So the command to fast and other [com
mands] are attached to the sighting [of the crescent] so as to
lift the burden from them in [respect of] the hardship of
knowing the movements [of the stars]. And the command in
[respect of] the fasting lasted even though some of them hap
pened to know that [knowledge of the stars’ movements].
However, the outward [wording] of the command negates
absolutely linking the command [to fast] to calculation [rather
than to sighting the moon]. It is clear in his saying in the last-
■
mentioned hadith: ‘Then if it is obscure to you, complete the

number of thirty’; he did not say ‘Then ask the people of
calculation’. The wisdom in it is that, when it was obscure, the
number [of days to be fasted] is the same for [all] who are
149
i
under obligation [to fast], so it caused the controversy and dis
pute to disappear from [among] them. Now in that [matter],
one group of people did go to [the position] that resort should
be to the people of the movements [of the stars], and they
were the Rafidis.107 Their agreement [with that position] has
been conveyed from some of the jurists. [But] al-Baji said:
‘The consensus of the righteous salafis a proof against them.’
And Ibn Bazizah said: ‘It is an invalid doctrine. The Law has
forbidden delving into the science of the stars because it is sur
mise and guesswork; there is no definitiveness in it; and con
jecture does not outweigh [the definitive, when it comes to
making any Legal decision]. Moreover, if the command [of the
hadith] is restricted to [astronomers], then it will be narrowed,
because [astronomy] is not known except by a few.’
This explanation is correct in that [in the hadith] attention
is [indeed directed] to the sighting and not to the calculation.
But the interpretation is erroneous [if the claim is] that, even if
there happens [to exist] one who knows [calculation], the
injunction on fasting remains (i.e. in respect of seeing alone).
[It is erroneous] because the command to rely on the seeing
alone has come dependent on a Legal cause explicit in the text,
and it is the [Community’s] being unlettered (‘not writing and
not counting’). Now, a cause [7//^, in this case being unlet
tered] stays within the circle of the effect [/zwVZrZ, in this case
being unable to calculate the crescent] being existent and non
existent. [But] then, if the Community has come out of its
being unlettered, and become literate and numerate; I mean if
there have come into its society [i.e. the collective life of the
Community] those who know these sciences; [if] it is possible
for the people, the generality of them and the elite of diem, to
attain to certainty and definitiveness in calculating the begin
ning of the month; [if] it is possible that they have trust in this
calculation [of the same degree as] their trust in sighting, or
I
stronger; when this has become their situation in their collec
tive life and the cause (fillaty of being illiterate has disappeared
[from the society] - [then] it is a duty that they resort to [what
yields] established certainty. [It is a duty] also that they adopt
in establishing [the month] the instrument of calculation alone,
and not resort to sighting, except when knowledge [by
calculation] becomes difficult for them - as when people are in
the desert or a [remote] village and authentic, reliable reports
from the people of calculation do not reach them.
150
If it is a duty - with the disappearance of the cause [Qillah,

which] its being proscribed [was based] on - to resort to cal
culation alone, then it is also a duty to resort to true calculation
according to the instruments [available]. It is [a duty] also to
repudiate the possibility of sighting when the possibility of it is
non-existent - for the true first of the month is the night on
which the crescent disappears from view after the setting of
the sun, even if [the event is confirmed by only] a single 1
• • „108
viewing.
This opinion of mine — that the injunction varies with the
variations of the conditions of the people bound by it - is not
an innovation among [juristic] opinions Indeed this is [found]
commonly in the Law, the people of knowledge know it, and
others. Among the examples of that in this question of ours is
[the following]: That the hadith “If it is obscure to you, then
estimate (or calculate) it” has appeared in other wording. In
some of them: “If it is obscure to you, then complete the
number of thirty”. The scholars explained the summary narra
tion “then estimate (or calculate)” [by joining] to it the detailed
narration “then complete the number”. However, the great
imam of the Shafts — indeed he was their leader in his time -
and he was Abu al-cAbbas Ahmad ibn Surayj109 - reconciled
I
the two reports by making them relate to different circum
stances. [He argued] that the meaning of his saying “then
estimate (or calculate) it” is that [people] should estimate (or
calculate) it according to the lunar phase, and that this [com
mand] addresses those whom God has picked out for this
science [of astronomy]. And that his saying “then complete the
thirty” is an address to the generality [of people who do not
know astronomy].110
Now my opinion all but sees eye to eye with the opinion of
Ibn Surayj except that he has made it particular to when the
month is obscured, [for it is in that event only that] he does
not accept people doing the sighting. Also he has made the
command to adopt calculation [applicable] to the few - in
accordance with what was in his time the fewness of the
number of those knowledgeable about [astronomy], the non-
acceptance of their opinions and calculations, and the slowness
of the receipt of reports between one land and another if the
month was established in one of them. As for my opinion: it
decides generally for the adoption of precise and trustworthy
calculation. And the generality of that for the people is [based]
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on what is easy in these days, such as the speed of the receipt
of reports and their wide circulation. Reliance on sighting
remains for the very few rare [occasions], for those to whom
the reports do not come, and they do not find [any means]
that establishes [the beginning of the month] from knowledge
of the heavens and the descent of the sun and moon.
I see this my opinion as the most just of the opinions, and
the nearest of them to a safe understanding, and [nearest] to a
correct understanding of the hadiths that have appeared on
this topic. 111
That is what Shaykh Shakir wrote more than half a century ago
(Dhu al-Hijjah, 1357 AH, January 1939). Astronomy had not at
tained at that time what it has since attained by leaps and bounds.
It has enbaled people to invade space and ascend to the moon.
The science has attained a degree of precision such that, according
to one account, the probability of error in calculation by it is as
little as one hundred-thousandth of a second!
Shaykh Shakir wrote that, and he was above all things a man of
hadith and athdr. He lived his life, may God have mercy on him, in
the service of the hadith and the Sunnah of the Prophet. He was a
pure salafi* one who followed, not one who innovated. Yet he did
not understand the salafiyyah as if it were inflexibly fixed according
to what those before us from the salaf said. Rather, the true salafiy
yah is that we take as a method their method, that we imbibe their
spirit, that we strive according to our time as they strove according
to their time, and that we respond to our reality with our minds,
not their minds, without being bound except according to what is
definitive in the Law, and the judgments of its texts and its objec
tives taken as a whole.
This notwithstanding, I read a lengthy article in the month of
Ramadan of the year 1409 AH by an esteemed shaykh.112 In it, he
pointed to a sahib Prophetic hadith: “We are an unlettered Com
munity; we do not write, and we do not calculate.” He appears to
argue that this implies the negation of calculation and lowers the
esteem for it among the Community. If this were correct, the
hadith would also be an argument for the negation of writing, and
the lowering of esteem for that. For the hadith certainly comprises
152
1
two matters, by which the Community’s being unlettered is dem !

onstrated - writing and calculation. No one has said in the past or
in the present that, in his view, writing is a matter censured or
undesirable for the Community. Rather, writing is a matter sought
after; the Qur’an and the Sunnah and the ijmac demonstrate this.
The first who took the initiative in spreading writing was the
Prophet, as is known from his biography, and his attitude to the
prisoners of Badr.
Among the arguments put forward on this subject is that the
Messenger did not legislate for us to act on the basis of calculation.
He did not command that. He commanded us only in respect of
sighting, and adoption of it as the method of establishing the
month. In this opinion there is something of error and distortion,
in both matters:
First', it does not make sense that the Messenger would com
mand reliance on calculation. In his time, the Community was un
lettered, they did not write and they did not calculate. So he legis
lated for it the means appropriate for it in the time and place, and
that is sighting — the practicable method for the majority of the
people in his time. However, when a means has been found that is
more precise, more secure and further from error and conjecture,
then there is nothing in the Sunnah that forbids turning to it.
Second', the Sunnah does point to basing action on calculation in
the circumstance of obscurity, when the sky is clouded over. It is
what al-Bukharl has reported in Kitab al-Sawm in Jdwic al-Sahlh by
his well-known ‘golden chain’ of narrators: from Malik from Nafic
from Ibn TJmar from God’s Messenger: he mentioned Ramadan,
then he said: “Do not fast until you see the crescent; and do not
stop fasting until you see it; and if it is obscure to you, then
113 • >5
estimate it.
This ‘estimating’ or ‘calculating’ is what is commanded. It is
possible that reliance on calculation is included in the command
for one who would do it well. It joins to the command what settles
and contents the soul. It is what has come about, in our age, in the
orderly arrangement of the definitive things - as is well-established
153
and well-known to anyone who has the minimum knowledge of

the sciences of the age and of what man attains therein, whom his
Lord taught what he did not use to know.
I have for years been calling for the adoption of definitive
astronomical calculation, at least in the negation, not in the affirm
ation, of the fact, thereby lessening the big differences happening
every year at the beginning of the fasting and at the QId al-jitr at the
extreme it leads to three days of difference between some Islamic
lands and others. The meaning of adopting calculation ‘in the
negation of the fact’ is that we should continue to establish the
crescent by sighting (in conformity with the opinion of most jurists
in our age), but if calculation negates the possibility of sighting — if
it says it is impossible because the crescent has not been born at all
in any place in the Islamic world — it is obligatory not to accept the
testimony of eye-witnesses in any way, because the reality (which
definitive mathematical science has established) contradicts them.
Indeed, in this circumstance, it is not at all required that you give
consideration to the testimony of the people, or that the Law
courts or a session for fatwas or religious matters be opened to
one who wishes to declare a testimony about sighting the crescent.
This is what I was satisfied with and spoke about in many
fatwas, in teaching and lectures. Then God willed that I should
find it commented on and detailed in the work of one of the great
Shafifi jurists, Taqi al-Dln al-Subkl (d. 756 AH), about whom people
said: indeed he reached the rank of ijtihad. He said in his fatwas
that, if calculation negates the possibility of sighting with the eyes,
the qadi is obliged to reject the testimony of the witnesses: “Be
cause calculation is definitive, and the testimony and report are
conjectural, and the conjectured cannot contradict the definitive,
let alone take precedence over it.” He stated that it is part of the
business of the qadi> in all cases, to look into the testimony of the
witness before him. Then, if he sees that immediate sense-exper
ience or perception contradicts it, he rejects it, and no credit is
accorded to it. He said: “The condition of proof is that what is
being testified to be possible - perceptible, reasonable and lawful.
154
1
DISTINGUISHING BETWEEN LITERAL AND FIGURATIVE
Then if the proof of calculation decides definitively on the non

possibility of it, then the impossibility of the opinion becomes the
ruling, because of the absurdity of what has been testified to, for
■
the Law does not bring absurdities.”114
In contrast to mathematical calculation, the testimony of wit
nesses can be interpreted as suspect, or mistaken, or false. What
i
might al-Subkl have said if he had lived to our time and had seen,
of the advance in astronomy (or astrology, as it used to be named),
i
some of what we have pointed to above?
Shaykh Shakir mentioned in his research that the opinion of the
great professor, Shaykh Muhammad Mustafa, Shaykh al-Azhar,
famous in his time, when he was the head of the Sharicah High
Court, was like the opinion of al-Subkl in rejecting the testimony
of witnesses when calculation negates the possibility of sighting.
Shaykh Shakir said: “I was, and some of my brothers, among those
who opposed the great professor in his opinion. Now I make it
clear that he was right. I add [to what he said] the obligatoriness of
establishing the crescents by calculation in all circumstances except
for one for whom knowledge by it is beyond him.”115
VI
Arabic is a language in which the portion of figurative expressions

is plentiful. Figurative expression is rhetorically more effective
than literal, as is established in the science of rhetoric. The Prophet
was most expressive in spoken Arabic, and his sayings most in
spired. No wonder then that, in his hadiths, there should be a great
number of figurative expressions drawn from their purposes, in
most striking form.
‘Figurative expression’ here means what is included in figurative
diction and concepts — metaphor, metonymy, metaphorical simile
— all that in a word or sentence departs from the correspondence
with the reality they signify. Figurative expression is indicated by
markers, in the words themselves or in the context in which the
155
words occur. An example of that is speech or conversation

attributed to animals and birds, and inanimate and non-corporeal
entities, as in popular sayings like: ‘The wood said to the nail: Why
are you cleaving into me? It said: Ask the one who is hammering
me!’ The representation and similitude entailed are not counted as
falsehood in a report. Al-Raghib al-Asfahani said in his valuable
book al-Dhafâh ila makaritn al-sharFah (The means to the most
noble of the Law): “Know that speech, when it moves off in the
direction of similitude to [convey] a lesson, not a report [i.e. bare
information], is not a lie in reality. For this [reason, even] those
who are wary do not hold themselves aloof from what is narrated
therewith.” As an example of that he presented the famous story
in which a lion, a jackal and a fox took part in a hunt. They hunt
ed and took an ass, a gazelle, and a hare. The lion said to the jackal:
“Divide it out!” The jackal said: “It is divided up like this: the ass is
for you; and the gazelle is for me; and the hare is for the fox.” The
lion pounced on the jackal for saying so and slew him. Then he
said to the fox: “Divide it out!” The fox said: “It is divided up like
this: the ass is for your breakfast; the gazelle is for your midday
meal; and the hare is for your night meal.” Then the lion said:
“Who taught you this division?” The fox said: “The crimson robe
that is on the jackal!”
Al-Raghib al-Asfahani said: “And [it is] in the light of metaphor
[that] one interprets His saying, Exalted is He (Sad* 38: 23): ‘This
brother of mine has ninety-nine sheep, while I have one sheep’.
Another example of that is what many Qur’an commentators have
said about His saying, Exalted is He (al-Ah%ab, 33: 72): ‘Surely We
offered the trust to the heavens and the earth and the mountains,
but they shrank from carrying it and were afraid of it. And man
assumed it.’ ”
Interpreting a saying figuratively is on some occasions precisely
appropriate. Otherwise, one stumbles into error. One time, the
Messenger said to his womenfolk: “The quickest of you to join me
will be the one with the longest hand.” cA’ishah said: “So they
measured, which of them had the longest hand!” Indeed, in some
156
hadiths, it is reported that they took a cane to measure which hand

was the longest! But the Messenger had not meant that. He only
meant ‘long in the hand’ in doing good and spending on others in
the right way. That is what the event confirmed. For the first of his
womenfolk to join him was Zaynab bint Jahsh — she was a woman
who worked industriously with her hands and she spent in
charity.116
This kind of error in understanding happens with the Qur’an as
it happens with the Sunnah. It happened to cAdI ibn Hatim who
misunderstood this verse on the subject of fasting: “So now have
intercourse with them and seek that which God has prescribed for
you, and [also] eat and drink until the white thread becomes clear
to you from the black thread of dawn. Then hold to the fast until
the night” (al-Baqarah, 2: 187). Al-Bukhari narrated from cAdI ibn
Hatim that he said: ‘‘When this verse was sent down (‘and eat and
drink’), I [looked for] two cords, one of them black, the other
white. Then I put the two [cords] under my pillow. Then I made
[myself] look to the two [cords], and when it was clear to me the
white from the black, then I restrained [myself as for fasting].
Then I arose and went in the morning to God’s Messenger and
informed him of what I did, and he said: Then your pillow is
indeed spacious! That [verse] is only [pointing to] the day’s
whiteness [being distinguishable] from the night’s blackness.’”117
(The meaning of “Then your pillow is indeed spacious!” is that it
was spacious enough to accommodate the two ‘threads’, referred
to in the verse, the two being the white of the day and the black of
the night. So he judged that the pillow was as wide as the east and
the west!)
Another example of that is God’s saying, in the well-known
hadith qudsr. “If My slave approaches Me by a hand-span, I ap
proach him by an arm’s length; and if he approaches by an arm’s
length, I approach him by the breadth of a fathom; and if he
comes to Me walking, I come to him running.”118 The Muctazilis
stirred up controversy with ahi al-hadith for narrating the like of this
text, and accused them of ascribing to God that which is suspected
157
of likening Him to His creation in physical nearness, in walking

and running, and this does not befit His Godhood. Ibn Qutaybah
rebutted that in his book Ta'wilMukhtalif al-¥ladith\
This is surely [just] similitude and [figurative] likening. It meant
only: whoever comes to Me hastening in obedience, I come to
him with reward faster than his coming. Then that has been
replaced with ‘walking* and ‘running*.
An example of that is His saying, Exalted is He: “And
those who strive to thwart (saQaw) Our signs, those are rightful
owners of the Fire” (al-Hajj, 22: 51). The striving to thwart
(saci) [implies] the speed (or haste) in moving. It does not
always mean moving. It only means that they are rushing with
their intentions and their actions. And God knows better.
We find some hadiths stirring a kind of ambiguity, specially in
the minds of the educated of modern times, when interpreted ac
cording to their literal meanings as conveyed in the words in their
literal denotations. However, if they are interpreted according to
their figurative meaning, the ambiguity is gone, and the face of the
intended meaning becomes clear. Let us take as an example of that
the hadith of the two Shaykhs from Abu Hurayrah from the
Prophet, he said: “The Fire complained to its Lord and said: ‘O
Lord, one part of me has consumed the other part.’ Then He
permitted it two breaths - one breath in winter, and one breath in
summer. It is the most severe heat that you find, and the most
severe cold that you find.”
Students in schools in our time study in geography the causes
of the variation of the seasons, and the appearance of summer and
winter, heat and cold. They are regulated according to the usages
of creation, and causes well-known to students. So too, among the
well-known witnessed things is that some parts of the terrestrial
sphere are in severely cold winter, while others are in severe heat.
Another example is the hadith of Abu Hurayrah in the two
Sahihs from the Prophet, he said: “God created the creation, until
when He was free from creating it. The womb said; Ts this the
place of refuge with You from the cutting off?’ He said: "Yes.
Does it not content you that I will join with one who joins with
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you, and I will cut off the one who cuts you off.’ It said: ‘Certainly,
O Lord.’ He said: ‘Then it is for you.’ Recite if you wish: ‘Would
you then, if you were given the command, spread corruption in the
land, and sever your ties of kinship?’ {Muhammad, 47: 22).”121
But is the speaking of the womb (it signifies ‘near relations’)
here literal or figurative? The commentators have disagreed. Qadi
cjyad interpreted the hadith figuratively and said that it is in the
class of similitudes. Ibn Abi Jamrah said, in Sharh Mukhtasar al-
Riikhari, in commenting on the meaning of God joining with one
who joins his ‘near relations’: “The being connected with God is a
metaphor for a great one of His favors, and He has addressed
people [in terms] they understand. And why it is of the greatest [of
favors] is that the beloved one is offering, to the one loving him,
reunion — and [this] is nearness to him, and providing him with
what he desires and helping him to what pleases him. The literal
[sense] of that is an absurdity in respect of the due right of God,
Exalted is He. [So everyone] knows that that is figurative allusion
to a great favor of His to His slave. [...] Similarly, the saying about
the cutting off — it is a figurative allusion to being deprived of the
favor.”
Al-Qurtubl said:
It is the same whether we said that the expression referring to
the ‘womb’ is figurative or literal. Or that it is by way of esti
mation or likening as to what the meaning is. If the ‘womb’
were something [endowed] with reason and faculty of speech
it would say [it] thus. And an example of it: “If We had sent
down the Qur’an on the mountain you would see it fearful
...”; and in another [example] “And those are similitudes that
we coin for people” (al-Hashr, 59: 21). Now the purpose of
this speaking is to inform [us] of the imperative [nature] of the
command [to maintain] the bonds of the ‘womb’. And that
He, Exalted is He, sent it down [as] a station for one who
seeks refuge with Him, then He gives him refuge and enters
him into His protection. If it is like that, then the one near to
God is not left forsaken. He said: “One who prays the dawn
prayer, and he is under the protection of God: if God seeks
from him anything from his responsibility [i.e. something he
has failed to do], He gets hold of him, then He throws him on
159
his face in the Fire.” Muslim traced the sources of and
reported it.
My view is that the kind of interpretation here, taking the ha-
dith as figurative, does not diminish the religion in its power, pro
vided it is accepted without affectation and arbitrariness, and there
is a necessity for such interpretation, for departing from the literal
to the figurative. Only when the meaning one finds in a text is
ruled out by clear reason, or what is right in Law, or certain in
knowledge, or certain in reality, does it rule out following the
intent of the literal meaning.
Here the controversy arises: in such a case, is it forbidden to
take the literal meaning or not? Something that has been regarded
as impossible by one man or one group, other scholars may reckon
to be possible. It is a matter that demands searching reflection and
study. For interpretation (away from the literal sense) without
good reason, is not acceptable, interpretation that is arbitrary is not
acceptable; on the other hand, to interpret a saying literally when
there exists something (in reason or Law or knowledge or reality)
forbidding that is also not acceptable.
The rejection of resort to the figurative is here in the category
of a trial or test for the intelligent among the people, those whose
knowledge of Islam finds no contradiction between the authenti
cally traditional and the clearly rational. Let us read this hadith
which the two Shaykhs narrate from Ibn TJmar, who said that
God’s Messenger said: “When the people of the Garden attain to
the Garden, and the people of the Fire to the Fire, then death is
brought until it settles between the Garden and the Fire, then it is
slaughtered, then a caller calls out: ‘O people of the Garden: no
[more] death. O people of the Fire: no [more] death.’ So the
people of the Garden increase in the joy of their rejoicing, and the
people of the Fire increase in the sadness of their grieving.” In
the hadith of Abu Safid, according to the two Shaykhs and others,
“Death is brought in the form of a handsome ram...”
What does one understand from this hadith? How death is
slaughtered, how death dies?
160
Abu Bakr ibn al-cArabi certainly ‘refrained from’ this hadith. He

said:
This hadith has been regarded as dubious, on account of its
being opposed to obvious sense, because death is a quality,
and the qualitative is not changed bodily, then how is [death]
slaughtered? [...]
One party [altogether] deny the correctness of the hadith
and reject it. And its interpretation [according to] one party [is
that] they say: “This is by way of simile, and the slaughtering
here is not literal.”
And a[nother] party say: “Rather, the slaughtering is [to be
understood] literally, and the one slaughtered is the one en
trusted with [administering] death. And all of [the people]
know him, because he is the one charged with the seizure of
their spirits.”
Ibn Hajar said in al-Fath\ “Some of the later [people] approved
this.” He conveyed from al-Mazirl his opinion: “In our view death
is a quality. According to the Muctazilis it lacks meaning. Accord
ing to both doctrines it is not correct [to say] that [death] could be
a ram or [anything] corporeal, and that the intent of this is by way
of metaphor and simile.” Then he said: “Indeed God created the
body [of death], then He slaughtered [the same], then made [it] as
an example to [the effect] that death cannot befall the people of
the Garden.”
Al-Qurtubi said the like of this in al-Tadhkirah. All these explan
ations are running away from interpreting the saying because of its
literal sense being in opposition to simple reason, as Ibn al-cArabl
said. And that is the beginning of denying the hadith and rejecting
it. But it is established by a group of routes that it is sahib from a
number of Companions. So its rejection is an act of rashness, and
so too is rejection of the possibility of interpreting it.
Ibn Hajar also conveyed in al-Fath the opinion of a speaker he
did not identify, who said: “There is no bar to God bringing quali
ties into being as substances, appointing for them their particular
matter — as is established in Sahih Muslim in a hadith: ‘Indeed [the
surahs of the Qur’an] al-âqarah and Al Îmran will come as if they
were like two clouds’ and the like of that among the hadiths.”
161
This is the view that Shaykh Ahmad Muhammad al-Shakir inclined
to, in his Takbrij of the Musnad. After conveying from al-Fath the
doubts of Ibn al-cArabi about the hadith, and the discussion about
its interpretation, he said:
All this burdens and trespasses upon the Unseen, which God
has appropriated exclusively to His knowledge alone. We have
no duty other than to have faith in what has appeared as it has
appeared, neither denying it nor interpreting it. The hadith is
sahib. Its meaning is established also from the hadith of Abu
Sa^d al-Khudri according to al-Bukhari, and from the hadith
of Abu Hurayrah according to Ibn Majah and Ibn Hibban.
The Knower of the unseen [matter or energy] that is behind
substances does not inform about it minds [such as ours]
limited by the bodies on earth. Rather, the minds [of human
beings] are [already sufficiently] astounded by information
about the embodied realities within reach of their capacity for
information. So why will they rise to judge what is beyond
their [minds’] power and authority? And here we are the first
in our age to be informed of the transformation of matter into
energy, and we are informed of the transformation of energy
into matter, by making and doing — [without clear] knowledge
of the reality of the one or the other - and we do not know
what will be hereafter, except that human reason is needy and
lacking, and [we do not know] what matter is or energy, and
quality and substance, except terms of convention approxi
mating the realities [of what they signify]. So the good [thing]
for man [to do] is that he have faith and that he act righte
ously, then leave the Unseen to the Knower of the Unseen —
so that he may be saved on the Day of Resurrection. “Say: If
the sea became ink for the words of my Lord, the sea would
be used up before the words of my Lord were exhausted, even
if We brought the Eke of it to help” (al-Kahf, 18: 109).125
The Shaykh’s discourse, may God have mercy on him, on the

reason for refusing interpretation of texts bearing commands on
matters unseen is based on strong and convincing logic. However,
in this context, exclusion of the hadith text from interpretation is
not incontestable. Here, there is no justification for flight from
interpretation. For among the perfectly well-known things that
reason and tradition agree upon is that death — which separates
162
man from life — is not like a ram or an ox, or any other animal.
Rather, it is one of the non-physical realities or, as the earlier scho
lars put it, ‘a quality’. The non-physical does not transform into
corporeal or animal form except under the heading of similitude
and imaging, which gives (some sort of graspable) form to non
physical and mental realities. This is what is more suited to addres
sing minds of modern temperament. And God knows better.
THE FIGURATIVE IN HADITHS CONVEYING INJUNCTIONS
Figurative expression occurs in hadiths conveying information and

in hadiths conveying injunctions. Being alert to it and alerting
others to it is a duty of the people of fiqh. It is for the discharge of
duties of this kind that people stipulated conditions for a niujtahid-.
that he should be learned in Arabic, knowledgeable about what is
possible to be understood in different arguments or proofs in it, in
the way it was understood in the pure Arabic of the time of the
Prophet and the Companions. Some knew the language by nature,
and some by study, as the Bedouin of old said: “I am no gram
marian who has to contort his tongue, rather, I am a natural who
pronounces correctly.”
Ignoring the distinction between figurative and literal gives rise
to many errors — as we clearly see among those who rush to give
fatwas in our time, prescribing the forbidden and the obEgatory,
pronouncing on the heresy or transgression of others, even at
times on the unbeEef of others, according to texts if they are
strong in respect of being correctly estabEshed, though not in
respect of plainness or clarity of argument.
Take as an example the hadith which some contemporaries
adduce for the absolute prohibition against a man shaking hands
with a woman. It is what al-Tabaranl narrated: “That one of you be
pierced with an iron needle is better than that he touch (yamass) a
woman not lawful to him.”126 Al-AlbanI has pronounced the
hadith hasan in his critique of our book al-Yialdl wa al-ldaram* and in
his Sahih al-JamF al-Saghir. If — despite the hadith being not well-
known in the time of the Companions and their students — we
163
him
Principles for Correct Underst/\nding of the Sunnah
concede its being hasan, then its wording shows that the hadith
does not stipulate the prohibition of shaking hands because, in the
language of the Qur’an and Sunnah 'touching’ (al-mass) does not
mean the bare touching of one person touching another. The
meaning of al-mass here is what the saying of the Qur’an commen
tator Ibn cAbbas demonstrated: that in the Qur’an al-mass (touch
ing), al-lams (feeling, groping), al-mnlamasah (contact, sexual inter
course) are ways of naming the act of sexual conjugation. For sure,
God in His noble modesty alludes to what He wills by what He
wills. This is something that cannot be understood otherwise in
the instance of this verse: “O believers: if you marry believing
women and divorce them before you have touched them (tamassu-
hunnd), then there is no waiting period for them for you to reckon”
(al-Ah%ab, 33: 49).
Now all Qur’an commentators and jurists — until the Zahiris —
interpreted ‘touching’ (al-masf) as ‘penetration’ (al-dakhul), and they
linked it to circumstances of strict seclusion because that is the
likely situation for it to take place. An example of it is the verse in
Surat al-Baqarah on the divorce that happens before ‘touching’ (al
mass), meaning before consummation (al-dakhiit). The saying of the
Qur’an on the tongue of Maryam, upon her be peace, confirms
this meaning: “How can I have a son when no man has touched
me (yamsas-ni)?' (Al cImran, 3: 47). Indeed, the proofs for this in
the Qur’an and Sunnah are many.
So there is nothing in this hadith that justifies prohibition of a
mere shaking hands, in which there is no craving and no fear that,
behind it, there lies a cause of disturbance (fitnati). This is especially
so whenever there is a need for it, such as coming back from a
journey, or medical treatment during illness, or escape from perse
cution, and the like situations which people face. One accepts that
when near ones greet one another, when a man needs to shake
hands with the wife or daughter of his paternal or maternal uncle,
or some other close relative. Especially is this so when she comes
to him unexpectedly and extends her hand toward him, and he
does not fear in his own heart or in hers any sentiment of lust.
164
A text that confirms this is narrated by Ahmad ibn Hanbal in

his Musnad from Anas, he said: “There was ‘a slave-woman from
among the slave-women’ of Madinah and God’s Messenger took
her by the hand and he did not take his hand from her hand while
she went with him wherever she wished [to go].” Al-Bukhari
narrated it with the wording: “There was ‘a slave-woman from
among the slave-women’ in Madinah, and she took the Messenger
of God by the hand; then she walked off with him wherever she
wished.”
The hadith demonstrates the extent of his humility, courtesy
and tenderness: though she was a slave-woman she clasped him by
the hand and she consulted with him through the city streets of
Madinah, so that he decided for her certain needs. He was of ex
treme modesty and great in character, he did not want to hurt her
feelings by withdrawing his hand from her hand. Rather, he shaded
her, moving along with her in this situation until she was finished
with the judgment of her need. Ibn Hajar said in commentary on
the hadith of al-Bukharl:
The purpose of [this] taking by the hand is the necessary im
plication of it, and that is [its demonstration of] gentleness and
complaisance. Also included are the furthest ranks of humility,
because of the mentioning in it of a woman and not a man, of
a slave-woman and not a free woman, moreover altogether
generalized by the phrase “from among the slave-women”,
namely that she might be any slave-woman, and by its saying
“wherever she wished”, meaning any place whatever. The ex
pression “taking by the hand” indicates the extreme of dispo
sition [allowed to the woman], to the extent [that she might
have led him anywhere] even if her need were going out of
Madinah. The mutual contact with him was her help in that
need, so that he helped in that [by not withdrawing his hand
while she continued to need to hold it].
And this is proof of the largeness of his humility and his
freedom from all the categories of pride.127
What Ibn Hajar has stated, may God have mercy on him, as a
whole is incontestable. However, his diverting the meaning of
taking by the hand away from its literal meaning to what it implies
165
only, namely gentleness and complaisance, is not acceptable. This

is because the literal and the implied meanings are both intended
together. The rule with a saying is that one interprets according to
its literal meaning unless one finds some evidence or association
that diverts it away from this literal meaning. Here, I do not see
what prevents that. Indeed, the narration of Ibn Hanbal — “and he
did not take his hand from her hand while she went with him
wherever she wished [to go]” — clearly demonstrates that the literal
meaning is (also) the purpose, and that it is affectation and artifice
to depart from it.
THE DANGER OF CLOSING THE DOOR TO THE FIGURATIVE
Closing the door to figurative expression in understanding the

hadiths, and stopping at the primary (literal) meaning of the text,
blocks many educated contemporaries from understanding the
Sunnah, even from understanding Islam, and confronts them with
doubts as to its soundness if they take the saying literally. At times
they find in the figurative expression what does not please their
tastes, and what their education disapproves, and they do not make
a way out of this distaste in accordance with the logic of the
language and the pillars of the religion.
Similarly, some of the enemies of Islam often exploit some of
these primary (literal) meanings to ridicule the Islamic understand
ing of them, and their (apparent) contradiction of modern science
and modern thought. For years one hostile Christian, relying on
certain hadiths, has attacked Islamic thinking for its belief in super
stitions in the age of science and progress. An example is what al-
Bukhari and others have narrated: “Fever is a heat-haze from hell,
so cool it with water.” The hostile critic says: Fever is not some
heat-haze from hell. Rather it is some heat-haze from the earth.
What there is in it is some filth, assisting the generation of germs.
This critic is stupid or pretends to be stupid, is ignorant or pre
tends to be ignorant of the figurative meaning and purpose of the
hadith. Anyone can understand it who enjoys the taste of the
Arabic. For example, we say of a day of intense heat — "this intens-
166
ity opens from hell’ — and speaker and listener alike understand the
intended meaning of the expression.
The meaning of “the Tlack, Stone isfrom the Garden”

One of the ill-intentioned (mahsublri) wrote about Islam in ridicule
of the hadith “The Black Stone is from the Garden”,129 and the
hadith “Pressed dates are from the Garden”.130 This writer ignored
the intended meaning of these expressions and similes. The same
kind of usage is found in the agreed-upon hadith: “Know that the
Garden is under the shade of the sword.”131 No one understands,
nor imagines that he understands, that the Garden which God has
prepared for the righteous and God-fearing and whose expanse
He has made like the expanse of the heavens and the earth, is
really under the shade of the sword. One understands only that the
jihad in the way of God — and the sword symbolizes it - is the
nearest road to Paradise, and especially when God has prescribed
being in the Garden as the reward for martyrdom. Another
example of that is his saying to one who intended to offer himself
in the jihad, and had left his needy mother in someone else’s care:
“Stick to her: surely the Garden is under her footsteps.” Again,
anyone who has sense understands that the Garden is not literally
by the foot of the mother. He understands only that obedience to
the mother and taking care of her are among the widest of the
doors that lead to the Gardens of Favor. It is related from one of
the righteous that he lagged behind his brothers one day, so they
asked him about that. He said: “I have been rubbing my side in a
meadow of the Garden; for it has reached us that the Garden is
under the footsteps of the mothers!” His brothers did not under
stand otherwise than that he had been preoccupied in the service
of his mother and her care, aspiring thereby to the assurance of
God and His Garden.
Hadith: “The Nile and the 'Euphrates arefrom the Garden”

Mustafa al-Zarqa’ told me that a great professor of modern
positive law, among the most learned in Egypt, indeed in the Arab
167
I

world, said to him one day that he bought the book Sahih ah
"bukhari* then opened it once and his gaze chanced upon a hadith
saying “The Nile and the Euphrates are among the rivers of the
Garden”. As soon as the learned man saw that, contradicting the
reality — because the source of these two rivers is well known to
every student, and they spring from the earth and not from the
Garden - he was opposed to al-Bukhari’s book, the whole of it,
and thereafter never thought even to turn its pages. The point of
this is the suspicion that settled in his head. For if this man had
behaved a little modestly, and referred to one of the commentators
on al-Bukhari, or asked one of the proficient scholars among his
contemporaries, the truth would have become as plain to him as
daylight to the eyes. But pride and arrogance are among the
greatest veils to seeing the reality.
Here I think I should quote the opinion of one of the leaders of
Islamic civilization, namely Abu Muhammad ibn Hazm, on his un
derstanding of the meaning of the hadith and its explanation. I
have chosen Ibn Hazm only because he, as is well-known, was a
Zahiri jurist. He believed in the letter of the texts and the adoption
of their literal (gahiri) meanings, without looking to underlying
reasons and correlatives in other texts. However, he did believe
that in the Arabic language there is both the literal and the figura
tive. After citing the sahih hadith, “The Sihan and the Jihan and the
133
Nile and the Euphrates are all among the rivers of the Garden”,
and the hadith “What is between my house and my pulpit is one of
the meadows of the Garden”,134 he said: “These two hadiths are
not what the people of ignorance suppose — [namely] that the
meadow is cut out from the Garden [literally, as a piece of it], and
that the rivers are descended from the Garden. This is invalid and
false.” Then Ibn Hazm explained that the meaning of that space
(between the Prophet’s house and his pulpit) being a meadow of
the Garden is only by way of alluding to the merit of it, to the
prayer in it leading to the Garden. Similarly, the rivers, on account
of their blessings, are connected to the Garden figuratively. In the
same way as one says on good days: ‘This is from the days of the
168
Garden’; and it is said about a flock of sheep: ‘These are animals of

the Garden’. So too what he said: “Surely the Garden is under the
shade of the sword”; another example is the hadith: “The Black
Stone is from the Garden”. Ibn Hazm says of these reports: “The
proof is clear from the Qur’an, and from necessity of sense
experience, that they are not [to be understood] on their literal
[meaning].”135
This was the position of Ibn Hazm, well known for his being
Zahiri, and his attachment, to the extreme of strictness, to the Eteral
import of the texts. Yet, despite this, according to him, it was not
appropriate that these texts be interpreted by their Eteral meaning.
And — just as he said — only ‘the people of ignorance’ suppose that
they can be so interpreted!
AGAINST LATITUDE IN LEAVING THE LITERAL MEANING
I should warn here that there is a danger in interpretation of

hadiths (and the texts generally), and critique of them, at a remove
from their Eteral meanings. From the viewpoint of reason or tradi
tion, it is not commendable for a learned MusEm to enter into it
unless the matter necessitates that. Often hadiths are interpreted
away from the expressions themselves or their specificities or oc
casions, only for it to appear to the scrupulous researcher there
after that it would have been preferable to leave them in their Et
eral meaning.
I cite, by way of example of that, the hadith: “Whoever cuts the
lote-tree, God has fixed his head in the Fire.”136 It is often narrated
in a different wording. Some commentators explain that the in
tended referent of the cutting is the sacred lote-tree (sidr al-hara?ri),
despite the fact that the word here (sidraty is indefinite in the
context so that it is general to aU lote-trees. However, they find the
threat to be so severe that they restricted the reference to the
sacred lote-tree.
However, I incEne to the view that the hadith informs us of an
important matter that people are heedless of, namely the import
ance of the tree — especially the lote-tree in the land of the Arabs —
169
because of the usefulness of its shade and its fruit, most particu
larly in the open desert. So, cutting down this lote-tree — outside of
necessity — prevents much good from people collectively, and ex
poses them to probable harm. Nowadays, this subject comes
under what contemporary scholars call ‘conservation of plants and
the environment’. It is a cause for which societies and political
parties have been set up, groups and conferences convened, and
institutions and ministries established.
In the Sunan of Abu Da’ud I found a query by Abu Da’ud
about this hadith. He said: “This hadith [text] is abridged. That is
[in full it is:] one who cuts down a lote-tree in a waterless desert,
under which a son of the road [i.e. a traveler] and livestock take
shade, [and he cuts it down just] for the sake of it or for wrong
doing without any right [of property over that tree to excuse his
cutting it down], God will fix his head in the Fire.”
Praise is due to God! This explanation and commentary of Abu
Da’ud accord with how I had been thinking the hadith should be
understood. This hadith and others like it place Islam in the van
guard of the appeal for conservation of the environment and of
plants and trees. Let it be entered in the religious temperament of
every Muslim who hopes for Paradise and has dread of the Fire.
Rejected interpretations
Among interpretations to be rejected are the vain interpretations

for which there is no evidence in the expression used in the text,
nor in the context. An example is the opinion of one who said on
the hadith, “Take the sahiir [meal before fasting], for there is surely
blessing in the sahiir” that the meaning intended by sahiir was
seeking forgiveness! No doubt the seeking of forgiveness in the
moments before daybreak is one of the greatest of the actions
urged by the Qur’an and Sunnah. However, its being the intended
meaning of the hadith here is an aberration on the part of the one
who said it, and it is to be rejected. Most particularly so in the light
of other hadiths that have come, making clear and certain the
intended meaning here. For example, his saying: “How excellent
170
dates are for the sahiir” and: “the whole of the sahiir is blessing.
So do not leave it, even if [it be] that one of you swallows a gulp of
„ >>139
water.
Another example is an interpretation of the hadiths that have
appeared on the Anti-Christ {Masih al-Dajjat), from the evil of the
ordeal of whom we are commanded to seek refuge in God in every
prayer. The interpretation is to the effect that the Dajjal symbol
izes the now dominant Western civilization, because it is single-
minded (that quality being represented in the Dajjal’s being one-
eyed). It looks to life and humanity with just one eye or viewpoint
(the material one) and nothing more, so that what goes beyond
J
that, it does not see — so man has no spirit; the creature has no
God; and after this life of the world there is no hereafter. This
interpretation is opposed to what many hadiths have established —
that the Dajjal is a single individual, who walks here and there, I
who enters and departs, who summons and seduces and ruins, etc.,
all that the hadiths have authenticated about the matter. Moreover,
these reports are of the rank of taivatur (reported by many from
many).
Another example of that is the interpretation, by some moderns
among the Muslims, of the hadiths that have come on the descent
of the Messiah at the end of time. These likewise are hadiths of the !
rank of tawatur, as all the leading hadith experts have explained.140
The interpretation is that the descent of the Messiah symbolizes an
age in which peace and security will predominate, it being widely
and popularly supposed that the Messiah is he who will call to
peace and tolerance among humankind. This interpretation con
tradicts completely what the sahih hadiths have demonstrated
about the coming of the Messiah: they have described him as the
contrary of that: “Ibn Maryam will come down as a just ruler,
breaking the crosses, and slaughtering the pigs, and removing the
ji^ya”^ for none will then accept other than Islam. That is but
one contradiction of all the contradictions of this interpretation.
Even so, it is an interpretation that conforms to the opinions of
the ill-meaning and ill-doing missionaries and orientalists, who
171
claim that Islam is a religion of the sword, while Christianity alone

is the religion of peace! This, in spite of what the Messiah says in
the Gospel (Matthew 10: 34): “Think not that I am come to send
peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword.” Indeed,
some Westerner said that the Messiah did not speak the truth so
fully in any of his prophecies as in this one. Perhaps that under
standing is why Christendom has been given to so much warring
and bloodshed, even within itself — in recent times, the two world
wars, whose harvest was scores of millions of human lives.
IBN TAYMIYYAH’S REJECTION OF THE FIGURATIVE
I am aware that Shaykh al-Islam Ibn Taymiyyah rejected the figur

ative in the Qur’an and the hadith, and in the language, in general
terms, and he backed that rejection with diverse arguments and
considerations. I know likewise his motives for this opinion. He
wanted to bolt the door against those who go to extremes in inter
pretation of what is connected to the Attributes of God. Ibn Tay
miyyah called them c'al-MuQattilah\ For them, God’s Attributes be
come all but bare negatives, with no positive in them; so (in effect)
they deny, instead of affirming, the Attributes. Ibn Taymiyyah
wanted to revive the position that the early generations of the
Companions (salafi were on. So he established about God, what
He established about Himself in His Book and on the tongue of
His Messenger; and he rejected about Him what the Qur’an and
the Sunnah rejected about Him. However, in doing that he went to the
extreme of rejecting the figurative from the language as a whole.
Now Ibn Taymiyyah is one of the scholars of the Community
most dear — perhaps even the very dearest — to my heart. But I
approach them with my reason, and I differ from him here, just as
he differed from the imams before him. So too he taught us that
we should think, and not follow blindly, and that we should follow
the proofs and not the individuals, and that we should know the
men by the truth, and not the truth by the men. So I love Ibn
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Distinguishing the Unseen and the Visible
Taymiyyah, but I am not a Taymiyyan. Al-DhahabI said: “Shaykh
al-Islam is dear to us; but the truth is dearer to us than he.”
Yes: I am with the Shaykh al-Islam in what concerns the attri
butes of God, what is connected to the world of the Unseen, and
the conditions of the hereafter. So it is better that we should not
plunge recklessly into imagining referents for Him without proof.
It is better not to pretend to knowledge of what we do not know,
and to refer it to the Knower of it. We say what those deeply-
rooted in knowledge say: “We believe in it; all [of it] is from our
Lord” {Al zImrany 3: 7).
This is what I wished to throw some light on in the following
section.
VII
The Sunnah presents subjects related to ‘the world of the Unseen’,

some of them are connected to perspectives other than of this our
world — for example, the angels, to the host of whom God has
assigned diverse duties: “And none knows the hosts of your Lord
except He” {al-Mudaththir, 74: 31); or the jinn, inhabitants of the
earth, under obligations like us, some of whom see us but we do
not see them; and among them the satans, the hosts of Iblis, who
swore before God that he would mislead us and make the false
and the evil seem good to us: He said: “By Your power I will cer
tainly mislead everyone of them except those of Your slaves
among them of pure heart {mukhlisin)^ (Sad, 38: 82—83). And
among other examples of the same: the Throne, the Chair, the
Tablet and the Pen.
Some of these elements of the Unseen are related to the life in
the barâkh, the interval of life after death and before the resur
rection of the Hour — for example, in connection with the inter
rogation in the grave, and its blessings or its torments. Some of
them are related to the life of the hereafter itself — the sending out
from the graves, the gathering and the standing, the conditions of
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the Day of Resurrection, and the supreme intercession, and the
Balance and the Reckoning, and the Path, and the ranks of the
people therein, and the Fire and the classes of torment therein,
touching the senses and the spirit, and the descending degrees of
the people therein. All these matters, or most of them, the Qur’an
has set out, and the Sunnah has expanded upon and detailed what
is summary in the Qur’an.
We are bound to point out that some of the hadiths that have
appeared on this do not reach the rank of sahihy which is expected
of them, so it is not proper that they be gathered in a discourse on
this subject. The discourse should be limited to only the hadiths of
the Messenger which are established and authenticated. The duty
of the Muslim scholar here is to accept what he has verified as
established, according to the principles of the people of knowledge
and those of the early generations of the Community who were
followed. Rejection of a text is not permitted merely on account of
its opposition to what is familiar to us; nor on account of the oc
currence of it seeming to us far-fetched in relation to what is famil
iar to us, so long as it falls within the sphere of the rationally pos
sible. Now there surely is what we customarily consider to be im
possible. Yet we also know that even mere human beings have
been capable (by virtue of what comes from knowledge) of making
things once considered to be in the order of the impossible.
Indeed, if such things were reported to predecessors, those who
reported them would be represented as madmen. How dare we
then measure the power of God, which lacks for nothing in the
earth or in the heavens?
For this reason, our scholars affirmed as a principle that the
religion brings what reason can marvel at, but it is not possible that
it has brought what reason parts from. Accordingly, the authenti
cally conveyed tradition is not contradicted in any circumstance,
nor the plainly and clearly reasoned.
One does not suppose any mutual contradiction between the
two. It is inevitable that error can indeed have arisen, but only in
what has been conveyed but is not authentic, or what has been
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reasoned but is not plain and clear. I mean matters related to what
man considers to be of the religion is not among the truths of the
religion, or what he considers to be derived from knowledge or
reason is not definitively related to knowledge or reason.
Some schools of thought and Islamic sects surely went to
extremes, for example the Muctazilis, in rejecting some of the sahih
hadiths that seemed far-fetched to their reason. We have seen this
in the attitude of some of them to the hadiths that speak of the
interrogation by the two angels in the grave, and what ensues of
blessing or punishment. Among other examples are: their attitude
to the hadith of the Balance142 and the Path; to the believers’ see
ing God in the Garden; and to some hadiths that speak about the
jinn and their relationship to human beings. Al-Shatibi said in his
valuable book
It is from the habit-patterns of the people of innovation and
deviation that they reject hadiths which entailed non-conform
ity with their prejudices and doctrines, and made propaganda
that [these hadiths] were opposed to what can be reasoned,
and [were] without proximity to what [rational] demonstration
has necessitated, and so rejection of them was obligatory.
So they are deniers of the punishment of the grave, and the
Path and the Balance, and the seeing of God, Mighty and
Glorious is He, in the hereafter. In the same way [they deny]
the hadith of the fly and its dipping, and that in one of its
wings there is harm, and in the other healing, and that it puts
in first the one in which there is harm; and the hadith of the
one who came complaining about his brother’s stomach and
the Prophet advised him to drink honey;144 and what is like
that in the sahih hadiths conveyed by people of honorable
record.
At times they slandered the narrations from some of the
Companions and the Successors — and they are far from deser
ving that — [whereas] the leading hadith scholars were agreed
on their being upright men worthy to be followed. All that
they rejected, according to what opposed them in their doc
trine. At times they also rejected [the Companions’] fatwas and
reviled them in the hearing of the general public so that they
frightened the Community away from following the Sunnah
and the people of the Sunnah.
175
They made speaking about the Path or the Balance or the
Pool being established and proven a speaking of which one
makes no sense! Then indeed one of them asked: “Is unbelief
attributed to the one who affirms the [believers*] seeing God
in the hereafter?” Then he said: “No. He has not unbelieved
insofar as he has said what makes no sense. And one who has
said what makes no sense is not an unbeliever.”
One faction went to [the position of] negating the reports
of the single narrators out of hand, and restricting [what they
would accept] according to what pleased their reason in under
standing the Qur’an, to the extent that they made wine per
missible from His saying, Exalted is He: “There shall be no sin
on account of what they consumed upon those who believe and do I
righteous deeds” (al-Maidah, 5: 93).
And about those and the like of them God’s Messenger
said: “Let me not find one of you reclining on his couch: there I
comes to him one of my commands with what he is com
manded [to do] or he is forbidden from [doing], and he says, ‘I
am not aware [of that]. We did not find our following it [com
manded] in the Book of God.’”145 This is a severe warning,
including in it [the warning against] denial [of the Sunnah]. It
does not justify the one who perpetrates the crime of rejecting
the Sunnah.146
Of the same sort as that are the far-fetched calls (from some
contemporaries) to reworking of the sahih hadith: “In the Garden
there is assuredly a tree in whose shade a rider may travel for a
hundred years without crossing through it.” The hadith is one
agreed upon. The two Shaykhs have narrated it from Sahl ibn Sacd,
and from Abu Sacid, and from Abu Hurayrah.147 Al-Bukhari has
also narrated it from Anas. On this point Ibn Kathlr said in his
tafsir of the verse: “And spreading shade” (al-WaqFah, 56: 30) -
“This hadith from God’s Messenger is well-established, indeed de
finitively niutawatir in being sahih according to the leaders of hadith
scholarship.”
The outward sense is that the hundred years are the years of
this world. For this reason, it is said in the narration of Abu Sacid:
“The rider may travel on a horse specially trained for speed.” The
outward of this is, again, that it is in this world, but none knows
except God the kind of anything between the time of this world
176
and the time of the world that is with God: “And surely one day
with your Lord is like a thousand years of what you count” {al-
Hqff, 22: 47). When a hadith has been authenticated there is no
scope for us except to say we are content: we believe and we af
firm the truth of it, being certain that the particular norms in the
hereafter are different from the norms of this world. That is so far
so that Ibn cAbbas said: “There is nothing from the world in the
Garden except the names!”
An example of that is what has come on the punishment of the
unbelievers in the Fire: the heaviness of the unbeliever’s molar
teeth; the distance between his two shoulders; the coarseness of
his skin; etc. The acceptance of such hadiths as they are worded is
more salutary. As for inquiry into the details thereof — there is no
avail in it. The fortunate preacher should not preoccupy the minds
of his readers or his audience with this class of hadiths, whose
subject-matter gives rise to ambiguities in the contemporary mind,
and on knowledge of which neither the practicability of the
religion nor contentment in this world are dependent. Only what is
appropriate should be mentioned according to the exigency.
Foremost among the things that the Muslim should busy his
soul with: to ask of God the Garden, and whatever of speech or
act brings him nearer to it, and that by which he may seek refuge
from the Fire and from whatever of speech or act brings him near
er to it; and that he behave with the behavior of the people of the
Garden, and keep far from his soul the behavior of the dwellers of
the Fire. The sound attitude that is incumbent upon him is the
logic of faith; and the logic of reason is not incumbent upon him.
It is incumbent upon us that we say about all that has been estab
lished of the religion in respect of the unseen things: We believe in
and we affirm the truth thereof; just as we say about all that has
come to us in respect of acts of worship: “We have heard and we
obey.”
Certainly! We believe in what the text has come to us with, and
we do not question about its essence or its modality; nor do we
inquire into the details of it. For our intellects are often helpless to
177
comprehend these matters of the Unseen. God, who created man,

did not fit him for the like of this perception, because he did not
need that for the execution of his duties in the stewardship of the
earth (khilafafj), and the raising up of its structure, and the worship
of God therein.
Now if the school of rational theology, which the Muctazilis
exemplify, had been guided to the perception of this truth and the
acceptance of it, they would not have needed to reject the sahih
hadiths, which establish the believers’ seeing of God in the here
after, and their seeing their Lord as they see the moon on the night
of full moon. And the simile is for the seeing distinctly, not for
that which is seen, in connection with the outward meaning of the
Qur’an, whose interpretation they have caricatured — for example
the verse: “That day faces will be radiant, looking toward their
Lord” (al-Qiydmah, 75: 22—23).
The fundamental error which has occurred in this is the
analogical likening of the Unseen to the visible, of what is to come
(hereafter) with what precedes it (in this world). It is a dubious
mode of analogy - analogy to the dissimilar — and every mode has
its norms and established patterns. For this reason the people of
the Sunnah affirm the seeing, together with their consensus that it
is not on the pattern of the familiar seeing with the seeing-faculty
that is known to us. Rather, it is — as Muhammad cAbduh said — a
seeing without modality and without boundaries, and the like of it
cannot be except by the seeing-faculty that God will particularly
designate for that purpose, for the people of the abode of the
hereafter. Or He will make particular alteration in the seeing-
faculty so that it then becomes unlike the familiar form known in
I
the life of this world. It is something of which knowledge is not
possible for us; nevertheless, we affirm the reality of it when the
report of it has been authenticated.148
Rashid Rida adhered to the discourse of his teacher (cAbduh)
on the means of the seeing in the hereafter. He said:
The prehension [grasping] of reality belongs to the spirit; and
the senses [sight, hearing, etc.] are its instruments. Moreover, it
178
ADOPTING THE LEXICAL MEANINGS OF THE WORDS
is established by the definitive experiments of the scientists of

the east and the west in this age that among people there is
one who sees and reads while his eyes are blindfolded, in
[something] they call reading of concepts; and he sees some
things [though] not others in the act of dreaming; and among
them [there is another] one who sees a thing despite many
veils; and [what is] remote and far away [he sees] like one
[directly present and] watching [...]. So then this confirms
about the seeing of all people in this world [what is] in oppo
sition to the familiar [modes of seeing]. So does it befit one
who has sense that he should be dubious about what, in the
Garden, is stranger than [that], and further from the familiar?
And [the Garden] is a world of the Unseen, different in its
patterns and conventions than the world of the visible. And is
the dubiety about and rejection of the seeing [of God in the
hereafter] otherwise than on account of an analogy between
the world of the Unseen and this world in respect of the
seeing and the being seen? It is a vain, false analogy. Its false
hood in respect of the being seen is more evident [than in
respect of the seeing]. 149
VIII
It is of the utmost importance, for a correct understanding of the

Sunnah, to adopt the lexical meanings of the words in which the
Sunnah has come. For words surely change in their connotations
from one epoch to another, and from one locale to another. This
is a matter well known to students of the evolution of languages
and vocabularies, and the traces of time and place in that
evolution.
CAUTION AGAINST READING CURRENT TERMS INTO OLD TEXTS
People agree by convention on certain words denoting particular

ized meanings, so there is no dispute among them about termin
ology. However, the source of anxiety'’ here is the interpretation of
what has come in the Sunnah — and another example of that is the
179
Qur’an - in words belonging to current terminology, and here
flaws and errors occur.
Al-Ghazall informed us about the alteration of terms, in some
of the names of the sciences, to meanings removed from what
they denoted in the generations of the salaf. He cautioned against
the danger of this alteration and its misleading those who did not
go deeply into the definition of what was being understood. In al-
Ihya\ he addressed a valuable section in his Kitab alÎlm to that. In
it he said:
Know that the source of the confusion of the reproved disci
plines in the sciences of the Law is the distortion of the ap
proved names and their alteration. They have been conveyed
with ill-intentioned objectives to [introduce] meanings other
than what the righteous salaf intended. [In] the first century:
there were five words - fiqh (jurisprudence), cilm (knowledge,
science), tawhid (God’s Oneness), tadhklr (reminding), hikmah
(wisdom) — now these are approved names, by [derivatives
from] which are signified office-holders of high dignity in the
religion. But nowadays they are conveyed with disapproved
meanings. Then the hearts [of people who knew better] shied
away from disapproving those who were qualified with their
meanings, so that the application of these names to them
i 150
spread.
Al-Ghazali elaborated that, may God have mercy on him, in a
number of pages. If there were, at that time, these five words, the
change in which in the field of science al-Ghazall took note of,
there are now innumerable words in diverse fields that have
changed.
Over time this alteration did not fade away. Rather, it widened
along with the change in epoch and locale and human develop
ment, to the point that there arose a far-reaching gulf between the
original Legal connotations of the words, and the connotations
known later or used in current idiom. And therein lies the source
of unintended error and false understanding, as also of willful devi
ation and distortion. That is what the brilliant and truth-seeking
scholars of the Community cautioned against: namely, reducing
180
the words of the Law to the idioms current with the passing of the
ages.
TWO WORDS: AND NAHT
Whoever does not take due care in this discipline will fall into
many errors — as we see in our age. Take for example the word
taswlr (image) which has come in sahih and agreed-upon hadiths.
What is the intended meaning of it in the hadiths which threaten
those who make images (musaunvir) with the severest torment?
Many of those who preoccupy themselves with hadith and fiqh
include under this threat those called musawwir in our age, a term
embracing whoever uses that device called ‘the camera’, and they
put this ‘copying a form’ (shakt) together with what is more prop
erly called an image (surati). But is this naming — calling the opera
tor of the camera a maker of images {tnusawwif)^ and his action
image-making (taswirari) — a linguistically correct naming? No one
claims that, when the Arabs coined a usage that occurred to their
hearts for this matter, it was not a lexically correct naming. But, at
the same time, no one claims that this naming is to do with the
Law, because this sort of art or skill was not known in the age of
its Legislation. No one imagined that the word musannvir would
apply to the operator of a camera, for the device was then non
existent.
So who then calls him musannvir, and his action taswirari* Indeed
it is the current usage that does so, it is we Arabs who do so, or we
find the ones who demonstrate this art or skill in their time, and
we apply to it the name taswir, and we mean by it: ‘photography’.
It is possible that people call it something else and adopt that as
their usage. One such possibility is their naming it zaks (reflection,
reverse, contrast) and call the one who practices it zakkas, as the
people of Qatar and the Gulf do. So if one of them goes to the
musannvir (or âkkas) and says to him: I want you to ‘take a picture
of me (tazakisu-ntf\ and the other says to him: ‘At what time shall I
‘take pictures’ tûkus) of you? — their conversation is nearer to the
reality of the action. For it is not more than a reflection of the
181
form taken by a particular device, just as the form is reflected in

the device of a mirror. This is what the learned Shaykh Muham
mad Bakhit al-Mutifi, the mufti of the lands of Egypt in his time,
said in his treatise al-Jawab al-Kafifi Ibahat al-Taswir al-Fnt/lgbrdfi.
Just as, in our time, the (photographic) image is called by the
term Qaks, an embodied image used to be called naht (something
worked in wood or stone): it is what the scholars of the salaf
considered as being ‘that which has a shadow’. They agreed upon
its being forbidden except in the games of children. Now, would
calling this (photographic) image naht take it out of the sphere of
what the texts have brought the threat against, in respect of both
image and image-makers? The answer is negative emphatically.
Because what takes it out of the sphere of that threat is not this
name or another, but its nature and function.
In the first place this (photographic) image is that to which the
word ‘image’, in the sense understood in the Law, does not apply
in the language or in the Law, because that, to which ‘image’ in
that sense is properly applied, is what resembles and has been
made to resemble the creation of God, because the creation of
God and its ‘image’ is an embodied creation, as in the sahih hadith
qndsr. “Among the greatest wrongdoers from those who go about
is [he who] creates like My creation.”
THE OBLIGATION OF PRECAUTION IN COMMENTING

ON INDIVIDUAL WORDS OR SENTENCES
One who comments on the eloquent text of a great man of letters

or a great poet must study it closely and make fine distinctions in
his commentary until he has explained the intended meaning of
the text. The research gives expression to the purposes of the
author of the text, and it sustains the meaning commensurate with
the rhetorical norms of the writer. This is more obligatory and
necessary when the text is a religious or sacred one, such as the
text of the Qur’an, or a text of the Prophet, which attained the
summit of human eloquence, and which turned within the horizon
of the Qur’an, clarifying and detailing from the Prophet what was
182
in the Book revealed to him. God gave him weighty sayings

(epitomes and maxims), and He taught him the Book and the
Wisdom, and He taught him what he did not know, and it was a
tremendous favor of God upon him.
It is enough for some words that one refers to the dictionary of
the language for their explanation, and the books on the strange
materials in the hadith, though with a need for subtlety and refine
ment in the use of such resources. We find of some words that
they shift from the literal to the figurative, from the plainly evident
to the secret or hidden. From some words, from the literal ones of
the language, the Law is derived, and these were accorded a new
meaning not well-known before the appearance of the Law - for
example, words related to cleansing of the body (wudn\ tayanimnni},
and to the prayer rite, and the like. Some words are not under
stood except in the light of their context, and their purposes, and
their local and historical situations, as we explained in section IV
above.
We have seen how contemporaries, who have intruded what is
foreign into the sciences of the Law, play in commentary on the
words of the Qur’an and the hadith. It is a matter of regret to all
with a kernel of knowledge, and to all with a conscience, for these
are commentaries that do not rely upon the logic of religion or of
language or of science. They are following only caprice and, as Ibn
cAbbas puts it, caprice is the worst of what is worshipped on earth:
“Have you seen him who makes his caprice his god? God causes
him to stray knowingly and seals up his hearing and his heart and
makes a covering over his eyes? Then who will guide him after
God?” {al-Jathiyah^ 45: 23).
183
epilogue
In concluding this inquiry we must affirm that the Sunnah of the

Prophet is the Muslims’ second source of guidance, the reference
accompanying the Book of God in the field of Legislation, Legal
judgment and fiqh, and in the field of preaching, instruction and
education. We must affirm also that the Sunnah is in need of a
service befitting its rank and station in Islam, and the standing of
the Community at the beginning of the fifteenth century Hijri (the
twenty-first of the Christian era). This service must look for its
support to the foundations of Islamic knowledge, so that it pre
sents to the world food that is wholesome, fruit that is ripened,
and shade that is welcoming in its spaciousness.
The Sunnah is in need of an encyclopedia of the narrators of
hadith, including all of them, and all that has been said about them
by way of description and characterization, of their trustworthiness
or weakness, even of there being among them forgers and frauds.
Also needed is an encyclopedia of the texts of the hadiths with
their sanads and all their routes, the whole of what has been trans
mitted as sunnah from the person of the Messenger, from every
possible source, and covering all manuscript and printed sources
to the end of the second third of the fifth century AH.
These two wide domains prepare the way for the third. And
this is the manifest aim behind the whole task: the selection, out of
the all-inclusive domain, of the domain of the sahih and the hasan.
Such selection must be in agreement with the standards of the
precise science, whose foundations the brilliant and critical pio
neers of the scholars of the Community laid down. Their effort
and achievement is what makes it so important that, first and fore-
EPILOGUE
most, those people of the Remembrance, who had a special com

petence, are read before any contemporary scholars.
Alongside that, it is necessary that this spacious domain of the
selected (sahih and hasan) hadiths is arranged in a new and compre
hensive arrangement, indexed with an up-to-date inclusive index.
It is necessary too that the thematic arrangement is organized to
serve all religious, human and social sciences, and other sciences
with which the Sunnah is concerned, and from whose different
fields inquirers can benefit. Of particular usefulness in all this —
from all that God has taught man in this age and made subservient
to him, such as medicines and developed appliances — is the most
prominent of those advanced appliances, namely the computer.
One Muslim has called it ‘the hafi^ of our age’. But it is more than
a hafi^ having more than a capacity for memory. If we excel in
benefiting from it, it can enable us to make progress in the service
of knowledge, in terms of volume, precision and diversity of the
kinds of information we can manage. The pioneers in the service
of the Sunnah did not dream of these things, nor did they occur to
them. I am hopeful that the Center for Research in the Sunnah
and Sirah in Qatar will make progress, with the help of similar
centers and institutes, in its intended role in this field.
Then, the Sunnah is in need of new commentaries, elucidating
its truths, making plain the obscurities in it, rectifying the ways of
understanding it, and rejecting what is dubious or vain and false.
These commentaries should be written in the tongue and idiom of
the people in this age, so that we may explain the Sunnah to them
effectively.
The Qur’an certainly has won the approbation in our age - and
it is its right — of some great scholars. In commentary on it and
discovery of its blessings and its jewels, they have addressed, with
what has been granted to them of knowledge and culture, the
propositions of contemporary reason. This enabled them to put
into hearts and minds the most wide-ranging divisions of subject
matter. We have seen that in the Qur’an commentaries of Rashid
Rida, Jamal al-Dln al-Qasiml, al-Tahir ibn Ashur, Abu al-Aâ al-
185
Epilogue
MawdudI, Sayyid Qutb, Muhammad Shaltut, Muhammad al-Gha-
zali, and others.
The books of the Sunnah — and especially the two Sahihs — have
not yet been so fortunate in the commentaries of the like of those
outstanding people, who reconciled the original and the new in
commenting on the Qur’an. Here we must mention the praise
worthy endeavors in commentary on the four books of Sunan by
colleagues and fellow-Muslims among the scholars of India and
Pakistan. But in these commentaries the temperament of copying
and imitating predominates, and they do not interact with modern
ideas and culture. It may be that God will enable some great prea
cher to do a commentary on the Sahihs of the two Shaykhs, al-
Bukhari and Muslim, that is at the same time learned and modern.
By that Islamic culture would be rendered a conspicuous service.
And, concluding, our prayer:

Praise and thanks belong to God, Lord and Sustainer of all
beings.
i
i
186 i
I
Notes
NOTES TO CHAPTER ONE
1 [Salla Allahu âlayhi wa sallam (the prayer and blessing of God be

upon him and peace): a reminder to readers that Muslims say these
or similar words after every mention of the Prophet. — Trans.]
2 [‘Acceptance’ is the literal translation of taqrir. The Prophet was
bound, by his duty to give guidance, to express disapproval if he
witnessed something wrong. His non-disapproval of something that
he witnessed is accordingly understood to mean his acceptance of
it. —Trans.]
3 [Radiya Allahu Qanha (may God be pleased with her): a reminder to
readers that Muslims say words of this meaning after mention of
Companions of the Prophet, and other revered figures. —Trans.]
4 Muslim narrated it in the words “His character was the Qur’an”.
Also Ahmad ibn Hanbal narrated it, Abu Da’ud, and al-Nasa’I.
Cited in Ibn Kathlr’s tafsir of Surah Nun.
5 As in the verse: “God has certainly shown grace to the believers
when He sent among them a Messenger from among themselves
who recites to them His signs and purifies them and teaches them
the Book and the Wisdom, whereas they were before in manifest
error” (3: 164). And addressing the womenfolk of the Prophet:
“Keep in mind what is recited in your houses from the Revelation
of God and the Wisdom” (33: 34). There is no one with more right
to embody the explanation of the Qur’an and the teaching of Islam
than the one to whom the Qur’an was revealed and to whom God
entrusted the duty of explaining it to the people — and that one was
His Messenger.
6 Al-Bukhari and Muslim narrated it from Anas.
7 Al-Bukhari narrated it in Kitab al-Sawm.
8 Muslim narrated it from Abu Hurayrah.
9 Muslim and others narrated it.
10 Al-Hakim (vol. 2, p. 375) narrated it and authenticated it, and al-
Dhahabl confirmed it. Al-HaythamI said in al-Majmuâ (vol. 1, p.
171): “al-Bazzar narrated it and al-Tabaranl in al-Kabir, and its isnad
Notes
(chain of transmitting authorities) is good, and its narrators (rijal)
trustworthy.”
11 Muslim and Ahmad ibn Hanbal narrated it from Abu Musa.
12 Muslim narrated it.
13 See our book Maldmih al-MujtamaS al-Mttslim (The characteristics of a
Muslim society), ch. al-Fahw wa al-Funiin (amusement and arts). See
also our treatise al-lslam wa al-Fann (Islam and art).
14 Ibn Sacd narrated it and al-Hakim al-Tirmidhl as a nittrsal (discon
nected) hadith from Abu Salih. Al-Hakim narrated it also from him
from Abu Hurayrah as a mawsiil (connected) hadith, authenticating
it according to the criterion of the two Shaykhs, al-Bukhari and
Muslim, and al-Dhahabi agreed with that. Al-AlbanI has authenti
cated it: see the exposition in our book, al-Halal wa al-FIaram^ hadith
no. 1.
15 Muslim narrated it in Kitab al-Talaq, hadith no. 1478.
16 Agreed upon, from the hadith of Abu Musa and Mucadh: al-Ladltd
wa al-Muijany hadith no. 2130.
17 Agreed upon, from the hadith of Anas, al-Ladlu* wa al-Mujan^ hadith
no. 1131.
18 Al-Bukhari narrated it, and al-Nasal and al-Tirmidhi, in Kitab al-
Taharab from Abu Hurayrah.
19 Al-Tabarani narrated it from Abu Umamah. In its sanad (chain of
transmitting authorities) there is a weak narrator, as explained in
MajmaS al-Zawa'id (vol. 4, p. 302). Al-Khatib and others also narrated
it from Jabir by a weak route. In Fayd al-Qadlr it is said: “But it has
three routes so it is not improbable that, because of [that], it will not
be deprived of the rank of hasan” See: Ghdyat al-Maram of al-Albani,
hadith no. 8. Ibn Hajar cited it in al-Fath (vol. 2, p. 444) from al-
Sarraj by way of Abu Zinad from TJrwah from SA’ishah in the story
of the playing of the Abyssinians in the mosque, and therein: “the
Jews should know that in our religion there is space [latitude]. [He
said:] ‘Indeed I was commissioned with a tolerant true-religion?
What Ahmad [ibn Hanbal] narrated from Ibn cAbbas testifies to
[that]: ‘It was said to the Messenger of God: “Which of the religions
is dearer to God?” He said: “The tolerant true-religion”? Al-
Haythami said: ‘Ahmad [ibn Hanbal] narrated it and al-Tabarani in
al-Kabir and al-Awsaty and al-Bazzar, wherein [it is said]: “Ibn Ishaq:
he [was] a mudallis [one who did not name his teacher, claiming
instead to narrate directly from his teacher’s teacher]’”” (vol. 1, p.
60). Al-Bukhari made a note of that in his Sahih.
188
Notes
20 Agreed upon, from cA’ishah: Sahih al-JamiQ al-Saghir* hadith no. 7887.
21 Muslim narrated it from Ibn Mascud.
22 Al-Tirmidhi and al-Hakim narrated it from Ibn cAmr. Al-Tirmidhi
pronounced it sahih in Sahih al-]amiS.
23 Agreed upon.
24 Muslim narrated it.
25 Ahmad ibn Hanbal and Ibn Hibban narrated it, and al-Bayhaql in
al-Sunan from Ibn TJmar. Cited in Sahih al-JdmF al-Saghir* hadith no.
1775.
26 Ahmad ibn Hanbal and al-Bayhaql narrated it from Ibn TJmar; and
al-Tabarani from Ibn SAbbas and Ibn Mascud. Ibid, hadith no. 1775.
27 Abu Da’ud narrated it from Jabir. In it there is also the following:
“It was quite enough for him to have done tayammum.”
28 Ibn al-Qayyim cited the tradition in Miftah Dar al-SaQadah (Beirut:
Dar al-Kutub al-nimiyyah), vol. 1, pp. 163—64, and reckoned it
strong by the multiplicity of its routes of transmission. Similarly,
Ibn al-Wazir demonstrated its being sahih or hasan by the great number
of its routes of transmission, alongside what he conveyed of its
authentication by Ahmad ibn Hanbal and Ibn Abd al-Barr, and the
weight accorded to its isnad\yy al-TJqayll, as well as the breadth of their
thorough enquiries and their trustworthiness. All of that demands
adherence to it. See: al-Kawd al-Fasim fi al-Dhabbi Qan Sunnah Abi ah
Qasirn (Beirut: Dar al-Macrifah, vol. 1, pp. 21-23). See also: al-Rawd
al-Rasim in al-Albaru’s Takhrij (commentary on) Fawaid Tammam.
29 Ahmad ibn Hanbal narrated it, also Nasa*!, Ibn Majah, al-Hakim,
Ibn Khuzaymah and Ibn Hibban, from Ibn SAbbas. Cited in Sahih
al-JamF al-Saghir and its Supplement* hadith no. 2680.
30 Muslim narrated it in Kitab ahÎlm in his Sahih.
31 See the chapter Suf al-Tawil (‘bad interpretation’) in our book ah
MuijFiyyah ah^Dlydfial-Islam* pp. 297—330.
32 See ibid, pp. 298—99.
33 [The rationale here is that if a Companion reports on (say) a matter
connected with the hereafter, of which he could have no personal
knowledge and therefore no personal opinion, then what he reports
might be accepted as a report from the Prophet, even if its being
from the Prophet is not explicitly stated by that Companion. On
the other hand, on matters where the Companion could hold a per
sonal opinion as to what is right or preferable for a believer, then
the believers who come after are at liberty to take the report, as they
189
Notes
would the report of any esteemed person, as that individual’s per
sonal advice or preference, and act accordingly. — Trans.]
34 See what we have written about the Sunnah in our discourse on
‘The principles of fiqh made easy* in our book Taysir al-Fiqh li al-
Muslim al-Mu^dsir (Making fiqh easy for the contemporary Muslim),
part 1 (Cairo: Maktab Wahabah).
35 Shaykh cAbd al-Fattah Abu Ghuddah cited that with censure and
disparagement in his commentary on Laknawi’s al-Ajwibah al-
Fadilah, (2nd edn., Cairo, 1984) pp. 133-34.
36 Al-Shatibl’s al-Ftisam (Safeguarding), vol. 1, pp. 235—37.
37 We count among those scholars the jurist, preacher and mujahid,
Shaykh Mustafa al-Sibafi, may God have mercy on him, in his wor
thy and useful book al-Sunnah wa Makdndtu-hd Ji al-TashrF- al-Islami.
May God elevate him in honorable status and rank with Him. Also
among them: Muhammad Mustafa al-AczamI who rebutted Shacht;
Shaykh cAbd al-Rahman ibn Yahya al-Mucallimi al-Yamanl, author
of al-Anwar al-Kashijah', Shaykh Muhammad cAbd al-Razzaq
Hamzah, author of Zulumat Abt Rayyah; Shaykh Muhammad Abu
Shahbah, author of DifiF Qan alSunnah\ cAjjaj al-Khatib in his al-
Sunnah Qabl al-Fadwin, and his book about Abu Hurayrah; and
others there is not enough space here to mention.
38 This rebuttal was published in papers and periodicals at the time,
and in our book FatawaMid'asirah (Contemporary fatwas), part 1.
39 See our fatwas in defence of Sahih al-Rukhdri in ibid.
40 See Sahih al-JamF al-Saghir, no. 1261. Some scholars have alleged that
the hadith is ^cjf(weak). But it is the same by way of cA’ishah, and
it has not come by only the two routes mentioned.
41 Al-Bukhari and Muslim narrated it from cA’ishah. Ibid, no. 1288.
42 Muslim, al-Tirmidhi and Ibn Maj ah narrated it from Ibn Mascud.
Ibid, no. 1275.
43 Ahmad ibn Hanbal and Muslim narrated it from Sacd ibn Abl Waq-
qas. Ibid, no. 1882.
44 Ahmad ibn Hanbal and al-Hakim narrated it, al-Dhahabi authenti
cated it and agreed it.
45 Al-Hakim and al-Bayhaqi narrated it, in the supplication from Anas.
Sahih al-jdmF al-Saghir, no. 1285.
46 Abu Da’ud narrated it in Kitab al-Maldhim (Battles) in his Sunan, no.
4270; al-Hakim in al-Mustadrak (vol. 4, p. 522); al-Bayhaqi in Ma^rifat
al-Sunan wa al-Athdr, and others. Al-^raql authenticated it, and al-
Suyuti cited it in Fayd al-Qadir, vol. 2, p. 282.
190
Notes
47 See our study: Tajdid al-Din ji Daw' al-Stinnah (2nd edn., Qatar:
Markaz Buhuth al-Sunnah wa al-Sirah), p. 29. Also printed in my
book: Min Ajli Sahwah Bashidah (Beirut: al-Maktab al-Islami).
48 Al-Tabarani and al-Hakim narrated it from Ibn cAmr. Cited in Sahih
al-JamP al-Saghir.
49 From Kitab al-Iman in Ibn Taymiyyah’s Majniu^ al-Yatawd^ vol. 7, pp.
314-16.
50 Later printed by Mu’assasat al-Risalah in eight volumes, edited by
Shucayb al-Arna’ut.
51 ALHaythami cited it in Majmaz al-Zawaid (vol. 10, p. 190), and said:
“Ahmad [ibn Hanbal] narrated it, and its [narrators] are sound
men,” As for the woman’s entering the Fire because of her cruelty
to the cat, it is so narrated from Abu Hurayrah by the two Shaykhs
and others. See: Sahih al-JamF al-Saghir, hadith no. 3374.
52 See ibid, the two hadiths, nos. 3995, 3996.
53 Ibid.
NOTES TO CHAPTER TWO
1 Al-Shawkani Irshad al-Fuhiil (Cairo: Mustafa al-Halabi), p. 33.

2 Ibid. He has attributed it to Yahya ibn Abi Kathlr. Ibn cAbd al-Barr
cites it in Jamic Bayan al-zIbn wa Fadli-hi (Beirut: al-Musawwirah can
al-Munlriyyah), vol. 2, p. 192.
3 Ibid., pp. 191-92.
4 Irshad al-Fuhiil, p. 33.
5 Ibn Khaldun, Muqaddimah (ed. cAli cAbd al-Wahid Wafi; Beirut: Lajnat
al-Bayan al-cArabi, 2nd edn.) vol. 3, pp. 1143—45.
6 That is, that they were not contradicting the sahih and sarih hadiths
with mere opinion, not opposing their own judgments to the revela
tion of their Lord. Of course, this does not forbid questions seeking
explanation and proof. Indeed, how could it be otherwise when the
Companions themselves used to ask questions of the Prophet, so
that matters were clarified and they were convinced.
7 Al-Suyud, Miftdh aljannah, pp. 49—50.
8 See Ibn Hajar, al-Dirayah Ji al-Hidayah (ed. Hashim al-Yamani), vol.
2, pp. 205-13.
9 See Miiqqadiniah in MaSrifat al-Sunan wa al-Athdr \n the critical edition
of al-Sayyid Ahmad Saqr (Cairo: al-Majlis al-Aâ li al-Shu’un al-
Islamiyyah).
191
II
Notes
10 See our discourse on this hadith in al-Sahwat al-Islamiyyah bayna al-
Ikhtilaf al-Mashrifi wa al-Tafamtq al-Madhmiim under the heading 'al-ikhtiltf
rahmab9. The hadith is not established, but its meaning is correct
(sahib) if it imports differences in understanding of details, if it does
not tend to contention and dissent except in the way that the
Companions held differences on such points of fiqh.
11 See the chapter ‘Diyat Ahl al-Dhimmab9 in al-Shawkanl, Nayl al-
Awtar^ vol. 7, pp. 221—24.
12 See the chapter ‘Diyat al-Mar'ah' in ibid., pp. 224-27.
13 He has since finished the work; it has appeared in three volumes.
14 Because it is a narration from CA11 ibn Yazld al-Albanl. Al-Bukharl
said about him: he is a nrnnkar (that is, a weak narrator who brings
hadiths that conflict with hadiths from reliable narrators). Al-NasaT
said: “He is not trustworthy.” Al-Daraqutnl said: “He is rejected
[when he reports] from al-Qasim Abu cAbd al-Rahman.” Ahmad
ibn Hanbal said about him: “CA1I ibn Yazld reports from him [al-
Qasim] the most strange [things]!” Ibn Hibban said: “He used to
narrate from the Companions nn^dilldt [hadiths with isnads broken
in two or more places], and bring from the trustworthy [narrators]
maqlubat [hadiths with the isnadand the niatn mixed up]!”
15 Published by the Center for Research in the Sunnah and Slrah in
Qatar. It was later printed in Beirut by al-Maktab al-Islaml, and in
Cairo by al-Dar al-Islamiyyah Ii-1-Tawzlc, with a supplement of re
visions, source-critique, and annotations.
16* Al-Fataivd al-Shaddyyah (Beirut: Dar al-Macrifah), pp. 43—44 (the text
cited has been abridged).
17 Al-Mustadraky vol. 1, p. 490.
18 “If we relate from God’s Messenger on the lawful and the unlawful,
the sunnahs and the injunctions, we are strict about the isnads and we
criticize [the narrators]. And if we narrate from the Prophet on the
virtues of deeds, the reward and punishment [hereafter], the com
mended [acts] and the supplications, then we relax on the isnads”
19 Al-Khatib, al-Kifdyah (al-Madinah al-Munawwarah: al-Maktab al-
Tlm-iyyah), p. 134.
20 Ibn Rajab, Sharh cIlal al-Tirmidhi (ed. Nur al-Din al-Ttr), vol. 1, pp.
72-74.
21 Tadrib al-Rdnn zala Taqrib al-Nawawi (ed. cAbd al-Wahhab cAbd al-
Latif; Cairo: Dar al-Hadlth), vol. 1, pp. 297, 299.
22 Ibn Rajab, Sharh zllal al-Tirmidhi, p. 74.
192
Notes
23 Imam Muslim said in the Preface of his Sahih*. <rWell then, may God
have mercy on you: The proper response to what you requested of
discrimination and objective assessment would be easy for us, but
for [the following: [1] what we have seen of the evil practice of
many of those who give themselves the rank and title of hadith
experts - in holding which [title], expelling weak hadiths and
rejected nar-rations is incumbent upon them; also, [2] their
abandoning the limitation to sahih and famous hadiths from what is
conveyed by reliable [narrators] well known for truthfulness and
trustworthiness; beyond that, [3] their knowing and their confirming
with their tongues that much of the slander against the absent
minded] ones of the people is detestable; also, [4] the transmission
[of reports] from a people not blessed, narration from whom the
leading hadith scholars have censured [...] However, on account of
what we notified you about — regarding the circulation by the
people of rejected reports via weak isnads of unknown and weak
[narrators], and their bombarding therewith the general public who
do not know their defectiveness — it has lightened our heart to
answer you what you asked.”
24 Al-RHith al-TAathith*. Sharh Ikhtisar al-TAadith (Beirut: Dar al-
Kitab al-Îlmiyyah), pp. 91—92. (The text as here quoted has been i!
slightly abridged.)
25 Ibn Salah, al-Muqaddimah^ and Mahdsin al-Istilah (ed. cA’ishah cAbd
al-Rahman; al-Hiy’ah al-Misriyyah al-cAmmah li-l-Kitab), p. 217.
26 The hadith is from Ibn Majah, no. 1388. In its sanad there is Abu
Bakr ibn cAbd Allah ibn Muhammad ibn Abl Slrah. Ahmad ibn
Hanbal and Ibn Hibban and al-Hakim and Ibn cAdI have accused
him of fabricating the hadith. So too in Tahdhib al-Tahdhib (there is
the same assessment of him). ■
27 He indicates that, in his view, this hadith is weak despite the num
ber of its routes of transmission. But al-Albanl has pronounced it
hasan in his source-critique of Ibn Taymiyyah’s al-Kalini al-Tayyib.
28 A part of the hadith — Abu Nucaym narrated it in al-Hilyah from Ibn
TJmar. Al-Traqi pronounced it weak. As cited in Yayd al-Oadir\ vol.
3, p. 559. Ibn Taymiyyah’s discussion of it indicates that he thought
it strong.
29 MajmiFa Tatawa Shaykh al-Islani (Riyadh), vol. 18, pp. 65—67.
30 Ibn Hanbal and al-Hakim narrated it, and al-Dhahabi authenticated
it as sahih and agreed it.
193
Notes
31 See al-Mundhiri, al-Farghlb (ed. Muhammad Muhyi al-Din cAbd al-
Hamid), hadith no. 4576.
32 In the Mnsnad Ahmad that Abu Hurayrah said: “I had in my keeping
three loads. I distributed two of them.” And in Sahih al-Fukhari,
from the hadith of Abu Hurayrah that he said: “From God’s Mes
senger I had two containers. Then as for one of the two, I distribu
ted it. And as for the other, if I had distributed it, this would have
cut the windpipes.”
33 The TJraniyyun were a band who approached the Prophet and em
braced Islam. They suffered from the climate in Madinah, and he
ordered them to come to the camels donated as charity (sadaqah)
and to drink of their milk. They did so and got better. Then they
reverted from Islam, killed the camel-herds and drove off their
camels. Then he sent people to follow their tracks, and they were
brought and punished with a severe and deterrent punishment, until
they died. The hadith is in the two Sahibs and other compilations.
(Consult Fath al-Bari, vol. 12, p. 98.)
34 The word abtala is used when something comes bi al-bdtil, and al-
batalah stands for witchcraft and the satans. In Musnad Ahmad from
the hadith of Abu Umamah: “Recite al-Faqarah. Indeed, taking it is
blessing, and leaving it is an affliction, and witchcraft is incapaci
tated by it [i.e. reciting al-Faqarah protects from witchcraft].” And
Muslim reported it in al-Salah.
35 So it is in the original. Perhaps it should have read al-ibahiyyah
(meaning ‘license’). That was certainly the intent of what was said.
36 The two Shaykhs traced and reported it; also al-Tirmidhl and al-
Nasa*! from the hadith of al-Mughlrah ibn ShuT>a.
37 Fath al-Ptdri (Cairo: al-Halabi), vol. 16, p. 227.
38 Ibid.
39 Ibn Majah narrated it, so also al-Humaydi and al-Hakim, from Abu
Sa^d. Ahmad ibn Hanbal, Ibn Majah and al-Tabarani, and al-
Bayhaqi in al-ShiFab, narrated it from Abu Umamah; Ibn Hanbal
and al-Nasal, and al-Bayhaql in al-Shuâb, from Tariq ibn Shihab.
Also al-Hakim narrated it from TJmar ibn Qatadah. And others. See
Sahih al-JamF al-Saghlr&ni its Supplement, no. 1100.
40 Al-Hakim narrated it, and al-Diya’, from Jabir. Al-Albani pronounced
it hasan in Sahih al-JdmF al-Saghlr, no. 3575.
194
Notes
NOTES TO CHAPTER THREE
1 See, on the mythical gharanlqy the profound study written up by Mu

hammad al-Sadiq cArjun, may God have mercy on him, in his book
Muhammad Rasul Allah, under the heading ‘Qissat al-Gharanlq XJkdhiibah
Balha* Muta%indiqah\ vol. 2, pp. 30—155.
2 See Ibn al-cArabi, Ahkam al-Qufdn (^sa al-Halabi), vol. 2, pp. 749-52.
3 See al-Tirmidhl, Kitab al-Zakdh, Bab: ‘Ma jaa jt Zakat al-Khadrawat ’; and
Sahih al-Tirmidhlwith the commentary of Ibn al-cArabI, vol. 3, pp. 132-33.
4 Abu Da’ud, no. 4717 from Ibn Mascud. Ibn Hibban and al-Tabarani
have reported the same from al-Hathlm ibn Kalib. Al-HaythamI
said: “Its [narrators] are [narrators] of the sahlli' (al-Fayd al-Qadii\ vol. 6,
p. 331).
5 Ibn Hanbal and al-Tirmidhl narrated it from Salmah ibn Yazid al-
Jucfi. Cited in Sahih al-Jamic al-Saghlr.
6 He narrated it in Kitab al-Imany no. 347.
7 qasba-hi<: that is, his intestines.
8 Agreed upon, from Abu Hurayrah, cited in al-Lsdlu’ wa al-Murjany
no. 1816. The rest of the hadith is: “Indeed he was the first who
sanctified an animal p.e. made it untouchable] in the name of a god
or goddess.”
9 For example burying a daughter alive or the like of that act, whose
foulness is known to all reasoning beings, and to the followers of all
religions.
10 See Sharh of al-Abbl and al-Sanusi on Sahih Muslim^ vol. 1, pp. 363-73.
11 Ibn Hanbal, al-Bukhari, and Abu Da’ud narrated it from ^mran ibn
Husayn. Cited in Sahih al-JamT al-Saghlr; no. 8055.
12 Agreed upon, from Jabir. Ibid, no. 7058.
13 Al-Tirmidhl and al-Hakim from cAbd Allah ibn Abl al-Jadca’. Ibid,
no. 8069. f
I
14 Abu Da’ud from Abu al-Darda’. Ibid, no. 8093.
15 Al-Bukharl from Abu Hurayrah. Ibid, no. 967.
16 Agreed upon, from Abu Hurayrah: al-ladltd wa al-Mujany no. 121.
17 Agreed upon, from Anas. Ibid, no. 122.
18 Agreed upon, from Abu Sa^d. Ibid, no. 115.
19 Muslim narrated it, and al-Tirmidhl and Ibn Maj ah, from Abu
I
Hurayrah: Sahih al-JantiS al-Saghlrno. 5176. •
20 We have already rebutted this claim in an essay focused on, and
reliably established by, the most clear proofs. We called it ‘Interces-
195
r
k
Notes
sion in the hereafter: between reason and tradition’ (Cairo: Dar
Nahdah). We suggested in it that the work of intercession on the
Day of Resurrection might be likened to the work of ‘committees
for extraordinary leniency’ in ordinary examinations. Thus, a stu
dent may have no just expectation of success if we lay on him mea
sures of strict justice; but if we address him with the logic of leni
ency, which takes into consideration various extenuating circum
stances, and if he can, in light of those, be brought near to the
standard of success, he has a right to hope that he will advance
from a ‘fail’ to a ‘pass’.
21 Al-mnnajfiq (with doubling of the fa and kasrafif. al-murawwij* namely
one who hastens to the quick sale of his commodity and its mar
ketability.
22 Muslim narrated it in Kitab al-Iman in his Sahih.
23 Ibid.
24 Al-Bukhari narrated it in Kitab al-Ubas* Bab: cMd Asfala min al-
Kaîbaynfa-hnwaJi al-Nar\ no. 5787.
25 Al-Nasa’i narrated in Kitab al-Zinah* Bab: ‘Ma taht al-KtFibayn min al-
\ar\ vol. 8, p. 207. i
26 Fath al-Bari (Dar al-Fikr; a copy of al-Salafiyyah), vol. 10, p. 257. i
27 Ibid. i
28 Ibid, p. 254, no. 5784.
29 Ibid, no. 5785.
30 Ibid, no. 5788. And al-batar self-aggrandizement and arrogance.
31 Ibid, no. 5789. The meaning of “he will be shaking and sinking”: he
will sink in the earth with a violent buffeting, and he will be falling
from one fissure to another.
32 Ibid, no. 5790.
33 Sahih Muslim* Bab: ‘Tahrim Jarr al-Thawbi Khuyald”* with the Sharh of
al-Nawawi (al-ShrFaty* vol. 4, p. 790.
34 Ibid, vol. 1, p. 305.
35 Fath al-Bari* vol. 10, p. 263.
36 See our book al-ifalal wa al-Haram* the section on clothes and ornaments.
37 Al-Bukhari mentioned it without isnad but in the active voice (im
plying that he had an isnad for it, presented elsewhere). But Ibn
Hajar stated that there was no isnad for it elsewhere. Al-Tayllsi and
al-Harith ibn Abi Usamah in their Musnads have presented the isnad
with the hadith of cAmr ibn Shucayb from his father from his
grandfather. In al-Tayllsi’s narration the words “without wasteful-
!
196 i
i
Notes
ness, etc.” are not found; also lacking in the narration of al-Harith is
the phrase “and give in charity”. Ibn Abl al-Dunya presented the
isnad with completeness in his book al-Shukr. Fath al-Bari, vol. 10, p.
253.
38 Ibn Hajar said: “Ibn Abi Shaybah provided an isnad in his Musan-
naj?' Ibid.
39 Ibid, vol. 10, p. 262.
40 Al-Bukhari narrated it in Kitab al Mnâraâh.
41 Agreed upon, from the hadith of Anas: al-Ladlid wa al-Muijan, no.
1001.
42 Muslim in Kitab al-Musaqat, Bab: 'Fadi al Zira'i wa al-Garsi\
43 Ibid.
44 Ibn Hanbal narrated it in Musnad under ‘Anas’, vol. 3, pp. 183-84,
191; al-Bukharl in al-Adab al-Mujrad\ and al-Albani (al-Sahlhahy no. 9)
pronounced it sahlh by the standard of Muslim (even though it was
not included by Muslim in his Sahlh}. Al-Haythami presented it
abridged in al-Majmu\ and said (vol. 4, p. 63): “al-Bazzar narrated
and his [narrators] are well-grounded and trustworthy.”
45 Al-Suyud, al-]amF al-Kabir. See al-Albani, al-Sahlhahy vol. 1, p. 12.
46 Al-Haythami presented it in al-Majnia\ and said (vol. 4, pp. 67-68):
“Ahmad [ibn Hanbal] narrated it and al-Tabaranl in al-Kablr, and its
[narrators] are trustworthy. Among them [there is discussion about
the narrators, but] the discussion does not detract [from the worth
of the report].”
47 See: Fath al-Barl (al-Halabi), vol. 5: 402.
48 “By specimen”: This is a sort of commercial exchange as follows:
one sells a thing to another for a deferred price. He surrenders it to
the buyer, then buys it back from him, before taking receipt of the r
price of the first sale, for a price less than that of that first sale, the
rate that he pays in cash. In reality it is a sale that was never
intended. The purpose was only the cash transfer, and it is a form I
of trickery about the consumption of riba (usury).
49 Al-Albani pronounced it sahlh and the whole of its authentic routes.
See on it the discussion in our book BayQ al-Murabahah li al-Anrir bi
al-Shird*.
50 As for the hadiths which have no source and no sanady or the fabri
cated and false hadiths, then preoccupation with them in this field is
not worthwhile, except under the heading of exposition of their false
hood and invalidity, and of their opposition to the Book and the
197 I
i
Notes
Sunnah, to the decided elements of the creed, and to the purposes
of the Law.
51 Abu Da’ud, no. 4112, and al-Tirmidhl, no. 1779.
52 The hadith is agreed upon. The two Shaykhs have narrated it, and
others with variation in the wording, but the general meaning is
one. See al-Lrilu* wa al-Mtiijan, no. 513, and al-Bukhari with al-Fath
al-Bdri, hadith no. 950.
53 Al-Yath al-Bari, vol. 2, p. 445.
54 Al-Qurtubi, Tafsir (Dar al-Kutub al-Misriyyah), vol. 12, p. 228.
55 Al-TirmidhI in al-Jana’i^ no. 1056. And Ibn Majah, no. 1576, and
Ahmad ibn Hanbal, vol. 2, p. 337, and he pointed to it in Mawarid al-
Zam'dn, 789. Al-Bayhaqi also narrated it in aI-Sunan, vol. 4, p. 78.
56 See the source-critique of the hadiths nos. 761 and 774 in al-Albani’s
Irwa’ al-GbaliL
57 Ibn Hanbal and al-Hakim narrated it from Anas. Cited in Sahih al-
Janiiz al-Saghir, no. 4584.
58 Muslim, nos. 976, 977.
59 Muslim narrated it in al-Jana'i^ no. 794; and al-Nasal, vol. 4, p. 93;
and Ibn Hanbal, vol. 6, p. 221.
60 Agreed upon. Cited in al-Iadlu' wa al-Mutjan, no. 533.
61 He mentions it in Nayl al-Awtar, vol. 4, p. 166.
62 Ibid.
63 Al-Daraqutni (al-Tahdhib al-Tahdbib, vol. 12, pp. 405—06) said: “[Her
name] is [spelled] with ayzw, and the dal is undotted. Whoever men
tions [her name] with dhal [i.e dal dotted] has misspelled [it].” Al-
Hafiz Ibn Hajar said: “That is how al-cAskari said [it], and he
reported it with dhal {dal dotted) from a group [of narrators].” Al-
Tabari said: “Judamah bint Jandal. The hadith specialists say: ‘bint
Wahb’. The preferred opinion is that she is the daughter of Jandal
al-Asdiyyyah. She embraced Islam early on in Makkah, then she
made the Pledge, and she emigrated with her folk to Madinah.”
64 Al-Muntaqa (Beirut: Dar al-Maîfah), vol. 2, pp. 561—64.
!
65 Nqyl al-Awtdr (Dar al-Jil), vol. 6, p. 346.
66 Al-Sunan al-Kxbra, vol. 7, pp. 328-32. -
■
67 Al-Bayhaqi, MaQrifat al-Sunan wa al-Athdr (ed. al-Sayyid Ahmad

Saqar; Cairo: al-Majlis al-Aâ li-l-Shu’un al-Islamiyyah), vol. 1, pp.
101-03.
68 See what al-Shatibi said in al-Muwdfaqat.
69 Muslim narrated it in his Sahih, Kitab al-Manaqib, no. 2363. From the
hadith of cA’ishah and Anas.
■
198
Notes
70 Readers may consult what we wrote concerning this inquiry in the
section on ‘the Legislative side of the Sunnah’ in our book al-Sunnah
Masdaran U al-Ma^rifah wa al-FIadarah (Cairo: Dar-al-Shuruq).
71 Abu Da’ud narrated in al-Jihady no. 1645; al-Tirmidhi in al-Siyar^ no.
1604.
72 Al-Khattabi said on the reason for the bloodwit being cut in half:
“Because they had taken pains against themselves by settling among
the unbelievers, and they were like those who are destroyed by their
own crimes, or [the crimes] of others. So the share of their crime
cuts from the bloodwit.”
73 As the FFjrah was obligatory at the beginning of Islam on all who
embraced the faith, so that they should be joined to the Prophet
and his Companions in Madinah so that he could teach them Islam,
and they could strengthen the power of the Islamic society. Then
when Makkah was conquered, the need for emigration to Madinah
was lifted. God’s Messenger said: “No hijrah after the Conquest, but
the jihad and the intent (niyyafi) [remain].” Agreed upon.
74 Agreed upon. See al-Kulu wa al-Mutjan, no. 850, and the three hadiths
before it.
75 Al-Bukhari narrated it in (Kitab al-Manaqid) Bab: *Alamat al-
Nubuwwah fi al-Islam\
76 See Fath al-Bdfi (Cairo: al-Halabi), vol. 4, p. 447 et seq.
77 From the hadith that Ibn Hanbal narrated from Anas. Its narrators
are trustworthy, as al-Haythami said in Majrna^ al-Zawa'id* vol. 5, p.
192. Al-Mundhiri said in al-Targhib wa al-Tarhlb\ “Its isnad is
excellent.” See our book, al-Mt<ntaqay hadith no. 1299. Ibn Hanbal
narrated it in another hadith with the wording: “The commanders
are from the Quraysh.” Al-Haythami (vol. 5, p. 193) said: “Its
narrators are sahih narrators, except for Ibn cAbd al-cAziz, and he is
trustworthy.” Al-Mundhiri said: “The narration of it is reliable.” See
al~Muntaqd, p. 1300.
78 See Ibn Khaldun, Muqaddiniah (ed. cAbd al-Wahid Wafi; Lajnat al-
79
Bayan al-cArabi, 2nd edn.), vol. 2, pp. 695—96.
For TJmar’s stance on the issue of the non-division of the land
I
among its conquerors, see: our book al-Siyasah al-Sharfyyah: Bayna
Nusiis al-SharPah wa-Maqasidi-ha (Maktab Wahbah), pp. 188-201.
80 Ibn Qudamah, al-Mughni (Cairo: Matbacah Nashr al-Thaqafah al-
Islamiyyah), vol. 2, p. 598.
81 Al-Sharastani, Nayi ai-Awtar, vol. 5, p. 338. It is an agreed upon hadith.
199
Notes
82 Al-Miiwattay vol. 3, p. 129. Camels having camels: i.e. many would be
taken into possession.
83 Muhammad Yusuf Musa, al-Ta'iikb al-Fiqh al-Islann: Fiqh al-Sabdbah
wa al-TabFin, pp. 83-85.
84 There is no sense in referring to the same Muslim two different
nisabs of extreme disparity. This is what we have preferred in our
discussion of the subject in Fiqh al-Zakah\ we hold to the necessity
of unifying the nisab on money. If the nisab is made one, should it be
the nisab of silver or the nisab of gold? What I have preferred for the
nisab on money is gold, not silver.
85 See: Fiqh al-Zakah, part 1, pp. 260—61.
86 Ibn Taymiyyah, Majmif- al-Fataiva.* vol. 19, pp. 255—56.
87 Ibn Hanbal and al-Tabarani narrated it, and al-Hakim, who pro
nounced it sahib from Samurah. Cited in Sahih al-JdmF al-Saghir.
88 Ibn Hanbal and al-Nasa’i narrated it from Anas. Cited in ibid.
89 Al-Bukhari narrated it from Umm Qays. Cited in ibid.
90 Ibn Majah narrated it from Ibn TJmar; al-Tirmidhi and Ibn Hibban
from Abu Hurayrah; and Ibn Hanbal from SA’ishah. Cited in ibid.
91 Agreed upon. Cited in al-Fn'lu" iva al-Muijdn^ no. 1430.
92 Al-Tirmidhi narrated it from Ibn cAbbas and said it was hasan gharib\
no. 1757.
93 Ibn Hanbal, the two Shaykhs, al-Tirmidhi, and al-Nasa’i narrated it
from TJrwah al-Bariqi. Ibn Hanbal, Muslim and al-Nasa’i also nar
rated it from Jarir. Sahih al-]am? al-Saghir^ no. 3353.
94 See the hadith that Ibn Hanbal, al-Nasa’i, Ibn Majah, al-Tabarani
and al-Hakim narrated from cAmr ibn SAnbasah; and the other
hadith that al-Tirmidhi, al-Nasa’i and al-Hakim narrated from Abu
Najih. Ibid, nos. 6267, 6268.
95 Ibn Hanbal narrated it from Abu Bakr; al-Shafici, Ibn Hanbal, al-
Nasa’i, al-Darimi, Ibn Khuzaymah, Ibn Hibban, al-Hakim and al-
Bayhaqi from cA’ishah; Ibn Majah from Abu Umamah; and al-
Bukhari in al-Ta'rik.h and al-Tabarani in al-Awsat from Ibn cAbbas.
Ibid, no. 3695.
96 See Shaykh cAbd Allah al-Bassam, Nay/ a/-.Marib, vol. 1, p. 40.
97 Agreed upon, as cited in al-lai'M wa al-Muijan, hadith no. 1320.
98 Muslim narrated it, no. 2032.
99 Ibid, no. 2033.
100 Ibid, no. 2034.
101 Abu Da’ud narrated it in Kitab al-FuyiF (no. 3340), al-Nasa’i (vol. 7,
p. 281), and Ibn Hibban, al-Mawdrid (no. 1105), al-Tahawi in Mushkil
200
Notes
al-Athar (vol. 2, p. 99), and al-Bayhaql in al-Sunan (vol. 6, p. 31), from
the hadith of Ibn TJmar. Ibn Hibban pronounced it sahib} also al-
Daraqutnl, al-Nawawi and Abu al-Fath al-Qushayri. Ibn Hajar men
tioned it in al-Talkhis (Cairo), vol 2, p. 175. Al-Albani mentioned it in
his Sahih, vol. 1, hadith no. 165.
102 Muslim narrated it, and others.
103 The difference between one land and another has been as much as
three days: in Ramadan of the year 1409 AH, the opening of the
month was established as Thursday (6th April 1989) in the Kingdom
of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrayn, Tunisia and other countries —
all of them by sighting of the crescent in Saudi Arabia. It was estab
lished in Egypt, Jordan, Iraq, Algeria, Morocco and other countries
as Friday. As for Pakistan, India, Oman, Iran and other countries,
they began fasting on the Saturday!
104 Al-Bukhari narrated it in Kitab al-Sawm.
105 A.l-Mmvatta.\ vol.l, p. 269.
106 Fath al-Bari, vol. 1, pp. 108-09.
107 “We do not know whom al-Hafiz intends by al-Rafidls [here]. If he
meant the Imam! Shica, we know from their doctrines that, accor
ding to them, the adoption of calculation is not permissible. If he
meant [some] other people, we do not know who they are.”— Shakir.
I think the ones intended are the IsmacIlis, as it has been conveyed
that they hold that position. — al-Qaradawi.
108 The opinion on balance is that there remains a period after sunset
when the moon’s appearance is possible, whereby sighting it with
the naked eye also becomes possible, and that is about fifteen to
twenty minutes, according to what specialists have said. — al-
Qaradawi.
109 “Surayj” with sin carrying a damma and jim at the end of it. It is
written incorrectly in many printed books “Shurayh” with shin and
ha\ and it is misspelled. This Abu al-cAbbas died in the year 306 AH,
and he was a student of Abu Da’ud, author of the Sunan. Abu Ishaq
al-Shirazi said about his person (Tabaqat al-Fuqaha\ p. 89): “He was
among the greatest of the ShafFis and of the imams of the Mus
lims.” He was distinguished above all the ShafFis, including even
cAli al-Muzani; the best biographical notice in al-Khatib’s Tarikh
Baghdad (vol. 4, pp. 278-90) is about him, as also in Tabaqat al-Sha-
fFiyyah of Ibn al-Subki (vol. 2, pp. 67-96). And some have counted
him as the mujaddid (renewer) of the third century.
201
Notes
110 Shark of al-Qadl Abu Bakr ibn al-cArabi on al-Tirmidhl (vol. 3, pp.
207—08); Tarh al-Tathrib, vol. 4, pp. 111—13; and Fath al-Bari, vol. 4, p.
104.
111 The essay: al-Awail al-Shuhilr al-Ârabiyyah (Maktabah Ibn Taymiy-
yah), pp. 7-17. (I would mention here that among those in modern
times who have held this opinion was the great faqih, Mustafa al-
Zarqa’. He proposed and supported it in the Academy for Islamic
Fiqh but was unable to secure enough backing from other members
to achieve the required majority.)
112 He is his eminence Shaykh Salih ibn Muhammad al-Lahaydan, head
of the High Council in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. His opinion
was printed by the Kingdom in the daily paper in TJkaz on 21
Ramadan 1409 AH.
113 Qadara — with damma or kasrah, yaqduru or yaqdiru — with the
meaning of qaddara. An example of it is the verse: fa-qadamafa-nFma
al-qadirun (al-Mtirsaldt, 77: 23)
114 See al-Subkl, Fatawa (Cairo: Maktabat al-Quds), vol. 1, pp. 219—20.
115 The essay, al-Awailal-Shuhiiral-'Arabiyyah, p. 15.
116 Muslim narrated the hadith in Fada’il al-Sahdbah, no. 2453. Accord
ing to al-Bukharl there arose a suspicion that the longest in hand of
them and the quickest to join him was Sawdah. This is an error
found in some narrations which Ibn Jawzi exposed. See al-Dha-
habi, SiyarA^lam al-Nubala* (Beirut: al-Risalah), vol. 2, p. 213.
117 See: Tafsirlbn Kathir, vol. 1, p. 221.
118 Agreed upon. See al-Ulu’ wa al-Muijdn, nos. 1746, 1721.
119 Ta'nnlMukhtalafal-lladith (Beirut: Dar al-Jil), p. 224.
120 See al-ladlu* wa al-Muijany for what the two Shaykhs are agreed
upon, according to Muhammad Fu’ad cAbd al-Baql, no. 359.
121 Al-Bukhari narrated it in his Sahih, in Kitab al-Adab and Kitab al-
Tafsir, and Muslim in al-Birr wa al-Silah. See: al-Fu’lu* wa al-Muijan,
no. 1655.
122 Hadith 6548 in Sahih al-Rukhari with al-Fath. It is in al-Fu'lu' wa al-
Mujdn, no. 1812.
123 Ibid, 1811.
124 See on these sayings: Fath al-Rdri (Dar al-Fikr), vol. 11, p. 421.
125 See: al-Musnad (ed. Shaykh Shakir; Dar al-Macarif), vol. 8, pp. 240—41.
126 Al-Haythami presented it in al-MajnnF (vol. 4, p. 326) and said: “Al-
Tabaranl narrated it, and his [narrators] are authentic, from Macqil
ibn Yasar.”
127 Fath alFdri, vol. 13.
202
Notes
128 Agreed upon, from the hadith of Ibn TJmar, cA’ishah, Rafic ibn
Khadlj, and Asma’ bint Abl Bakr. Al-Bukhari narrated it also from
Ibn SAbbas. See Sahih al-JamF al-Saghlr, no. 3191; and al-Ku'lu* wa al-
Mnjan> nos. 1424, 1426.
129 Ibn Hanbal narrated it from Anas, and al-Nasa’I from Ibn cAbbas.
Cited in Sahih al-Jamic al-Saghlr, no. 3174.
130 Ibn Hanbal, al-Tirmidhl and Ibn Majah narrated it from Abu Hu-
rayrah; Ibn Hanbal, al-Nasa*! and Ibn Majah from Abu Safid and
Jabir. Cited in Sahih al-JamiS al-Saghlr, no. 4126.
131 Agreed upon, from the hadith of cAbd Allah ibn Abl al-Awfa. Al-
Kidlu’ wa al-Mufjany no. 1137.
132 Ibn Hanbal narrated it and al-Nasa7 from Jahimah. Cited in Sahih
al-JamiS al-Sagh1ry no. 1249.
133 Muslim narrated it from Abu Hurayrah. MukhtasarMuslim^ 1868.
134 Agreed upon, from cAbd Allah ibn Zayd al-Mazini and from Abu
Hurayrah. See Sahih al-JamF al-Sagh1ry nos. 5586, 5587.
135 Ibn Hazm, al-Mahalld, vol. 7, pp. 230-31, Masa'il 919.
136 Abu Da’ud narrated it in Kitab al-Adab in his Sarian, Bab: 'QatS al-
Sidd, no. 5239. Also al-Bayhaqi narrated it in his Sunan, and it is cited
in Sahih al-Jdmfi al-Saghlr.
137 Agreed upon, from the hadith of Anas. Cited in al-ljdlu’ wa al-
Mujan, no. 665.
138 Ibn Hibban narrated it, Abu Nucaym in al-Hilyah, and al-Bayhaqi in
al-Sunan, from Abu Hurayrah. Cited in Sahih al-JamF al-Saghlr.
139 Ibn Hanbal narrated it, and its isnad is strong. Cited in al-Mundhiri,
I
al-Targhlb.
140 See on that: Anwar al-KashmirFs book al-Tasrih bi-ma Tawdtar fi
Nu%ul al-Masib (ed. cAbd al-Fattah Abu Guddah). Moreover, he has
collected in it forty sahlh and hasan hadiths, not to mention others
beyond that.
141 Agreed upon, from the hadith of Abu Hurayrah, with the words ap
proximated. See Sahih al-JanriS al-Sagh1ry no. 7077, and al-Lidlu* wa al-
Mujan, no. 95.
142 Invention in the knowledge of diverse weights and measures in our
age makes it possible to measure the heat in the atmosphere or in a
person, and to measure things to the very limit of fineness, so far so
that certain types of computer can calculate to one part in the
million in a second. Then the Balance (that we must face in the
hereafter) is not of the sort that has two pans — as the Muctazilis
imagined it to be.
203
Notes
143 See our comments on this hadith in our book Yatawa Muzasirah, vol. 1.
144 What the Messenger commanded is what is advised in present-day
medicine: to leave the stomach to empty out what is in it (and
thereby relax), and not (as was the practice followed in old times)
fight the ailment by putting into it what keeps the stomach taut.
145 Abu Da’ud narrated it, no. 4605, and al-Tirmidhi, no. 2665, from the
hadith of Ibn Raff. Ibn Hanbal narrated it abridged in al-Musnad,
vol. 6, p. 8.
146 Al-V'tisdm (Sharikat al-Nanat al-Sharqiyyah), vol. 1, pp. 231—32.
147 See al-lji'lu* wa al-Murjany hadith nos. 1799, 1800, 1801.
148 Shaykh Muhammad SAbduh, Risdlat al-Taivhid, pp. 187—88.
149 Ibid.
150 Ibya* z\Jlum al-Din (Beirut: Dar al-Macrifah), vol. 1, pp. 31—32.
204
Index
(Note: in sorting the entries alphabetically, the definite article (prefix al-)
and the letter cayn 0 are ignored; consonants marked with a dot under
are sorted as the same consonant without the dot.)
A
Abu Umamah al-Bahili, 109,
al-Abbi, 59, 97-98, 195
111-12,188,194, 200
cAbd Allah ibn cAmr, 3
Abu Yacla, 56-57
cAbd al-Baql, Muhammad
Abu Yusuf, 83
Fu’ad, 56, 202
on standard weight and
cAbd al-Muttalib (grandfather of
volume, 132—33
the Prophet), 96
Abu Zakariyya al-cAnbari, 67
cAbd al-Rahman ibn cAwf, SO-
cAdI ibn Hatim, 129, 157
81, 129
affectation (in interpreting
cAbduh, Muhammad, 178, 204
texts), 17,160,166
abrogation in hadiths, 121—24
agriculture, 114; see hadiths
in Qur’an and hadith
discussed
contrasted, 122
ah! al-hadith {ahi al-athdr). 42
Abu Bakr al-Siddlq, 105—06,
131 ahi al-ra'y^ 42, 50
Abu Bakrah, 105 cA‘ishah, 1, 31, 38-39, 50,114—
16,129,156,189-90,193,
Abu Da’ud, 33, 56, 60, 95, 112-
16,118,123,127,170,187, 198, 200, 203
189-90,195,198-201,203 al-cAjluni, 62
Abu Dharr, 104, 107 âks (photographic image), 181-
Abu al-Darda’, 111, 195 82
Abu Ghuddah, cAbd al-Fattah, al-Albani, CA1I ibn Yazld, 192
56,190 al-Albani, Nasir al-Dln, 14, 48,
Abu Hafs, 55 51,56-58, 62,71-72, 82, 95,
Abu Hanifah, 42-45, 93, 133, 163,188-89,193-94,197-
136-37 98, 201
Abu Hurayrah, 33, 38—40, 82, cAH ibn Abi Talib, 17, 42, 53,
104-05,115,158,162,176, 75, 131-32
187-88,190-01,194-95, allegations (against the Sunnah),
200, 203 26-29
Abu Musa, 9, 188 that it is not preserved, 29-
Abu Sulayman al-Daranl, 55 30
that intercession is invalid,
Abu Talib (uncle of the
Prophet), 96 99-103
205
Index
cAmmar ibn Yasir, 17 al-Baydawi, 23
cAmr ibn al-cAs, 10,17, 32 al-Bayhaqi, 45, 48, 50, 51, 53,
cAmr ibn Shucayb, 52,196 56, 76, 80,119, 121-23,
Anas ibn Malik, 80, 82-84, 87- 189-90, 194,198, 200-01,
88, 96,110,116,143,165, 203
176,187-88,190,195,197- al-Bazzar, 56-57, 187-88,197
200, 203 bidQa (see heresy, innovation)
Ansar, the, 109,127 bloodwit:
<Aqil ibn Abi Talib, 98 for non-Muslims 51—52
arbitrariness (in interpreting for women, 53—54
texts), 17,113,160 for Muslims settled among
al-Arna’ut, cAbd al-Qadir, 57 enemies, 199; see also hadiths
al-Arna’ut, Shucayb, 58, 61,191 discussed: ‘settling among
artifice (in interpreting texts), enemies’
113,116; (legal) 112,197 changes in liability for, 134—
al-Asim, 54 35
Associationists (mushrikiiri), 101- al-Bukharl, 31, 36, 39, 44, 46,
02,125, 127—28; see also 51,56, 59, 65, 67, 70-71,
hadiths discussed: ‘settling 82-84, 98,100, 104-11,114,
among enemies’ 117,122-24,126-30, 133,
astrology, 148,155 144,148-51,157, 159,162,
astronomy, 146-48,150-52, 165-66,168,172,176-77,
154—55; see hadiths 182,186,188-92, 203
discussed: ‘crescent, sighting C
the’ Caesar, God and (separation of
Attributes of God, 82-83,172 religion and state), 4
authenticated, see sahih calculation (see astronomy)
authenticating hadiths, caprice, 12, 15
importance of, 18—19 (as motive of interpretation),
al-AwzacI, 41 17-18, 25,183
al-cAynI, 59 cat, one tormenting a: see
al-A^zami, Muhammad Mustafa, hadiths discussed
57,190 celibacy, 9
al-Aâml, Habib al-Rahman, 57 character, of the Prophet, 1, 63,
al-Azhar, 42 143,165,187
‘Shaykh al-Azhar’, 20,155 combining (reconciling) hadiths
al-za%l: see hadiths discussed 113; examples of discussed
B 114—21; see preference,
al-Baji, Abu Walid, 59,150 juristic
balance: see priorities, combining fiqh and hadith,
disordering necessity of, 42—51
Batinis, 16
206
Index
Companions of the Prophet, 3, decadence, inevitability of: see
6-7, 9-11,16, 32, 38-39, 44, hadiths discussed: ‘every age
51,73, 76, 81,87-88, 95, is worse’
114-15,121,123,130,136, defects in understanding the
161,163,172,175,187, Sunnah (ajai), 20
191-92,199 irregularities in hadith texts
conceit (haughtiness, 14, 21-23, 43,124
arrogance), 104—08 deviation (from Qur’an and
concordance of narrators, Sunnah), 12-18,91,102,
hadiths, 58; need for, 185 148, 175
conjecture: (general), 25, 92, al-Dhahabl, 58, 65,114,173,
126,146,153-54 187-88,190,193
in legal inference, 16—17, diwan (military register), 135
26-28, 38, 50,127 E
conservation of plants: see ends and means, distinguishing,
hadiths discussed; ‘lote-tree’ 139-44
contradiction among texts, extremism as distorting religion,
dealing with, 20—22, 27, 31— 3,12-13,18,73-74, 99,
32, 38, 70, 78-81 103-04,172,175
claimed between Qur’an and F
Sunnah, 91—92 (see fabrication of hadiths, 14, 23—
abrogation) 26
crescent, sighting of the: see fadail (virtues, meritorious
hadiths discussed ’ deeds), 22, 47, 66-68, 71,
cure for witlessness, 10 76-78,192
customs of different people(s), far-fetched (arguments,
dealing with, 8, 107—08 interpretations), 38, 176; see
D extremism
al-Daccas, ^zzat TJbayd, 56 Yatrah, 96, 98
daQif (weak): see hadith, fatwa of Ibn Hajar al-Haythaml,
categories of 65
al-Dahlawi, see Shah Wall Allah figurative expression in the
Dajjal (Antichrist), 171 texts, 155—73
Damascus, 111, 134 conveying injunctions, 163—
al-Darimi, 56, 200 66
dar al-Islam (legal jurisdiction), dangers of ignoring, 166
52 examples of absurd readings,
database of narrators, hadiths 167-69,170-72
(see concordance) examples of misreading,
death of death (see hadiths 156-57
discussed), 160—61
207
Index
Ibn Taymiyyah on, 172-73 95-97, 99,103,105,109,
preference for the literal, 112-16, 119-20, 123,127,
169-70 132, 145, 148, 152-53, 161-
fiqh and hadith, need to 62, 168, 171, 174-76, 178,
combine, 46—58 181-85, 189, 191-93, 195,
fiqh, revision of legacy of, 51— 197, 199, 200, 201,203
54 hadiths discussed
framework, Qur’an and Sunnah ‘agriculture’, 109—113
as, 20, 55, 91-98 'alâ^t (coitus interruptus),
furifi (‘branches’, contrasted to 117-21
‘roots’, nsiil), 27 ‘cat, tormenting a’, 37—38
G ‘crescent, sighting or
general attitudes of Islam, 54 calculating the’, 145—55
general texts of the Law, 52 ‘death of death’, 160—61
al-gbaraniq: see hadiths discussed ‘end times’, 171—2
gbarib: see hadith, categories of ‘every age is worse’, 84—89
al-Ghazali, 48, 50, 58, 64,180 ‘gharamtf, 81—82, 195
al-Ghazali, Muhammad, 97, ‘intercession in the
186, 204 hereafter’, 99—103
H ‘i%ar (lower garment), the
hadith and fiqh, need to wearing long of, 103—09
combine, 46-58 ‘kin; not cutting off family
hadith, categories of: relations’, 158—60
(focjF(weak) 19, 21, 23-24, ‘leadership of the Quraysh’,
26, 44, 46-54, 57-59, 62-63, 130,199
71,73, 93-96,113-15,119- ‘lote-tree, improper cutting
21,123-24,184,188,190, down of, 169—70
192—93; cited in targhib and ‘medicine, health’, 139—40;
tarhib, 66-80 (‘the fly’s wings’, 84, 175)
gbarib, 49, 200 ‘miskin, living as’, 32-33
hasan, 21-22, 25, 56, 62-65, ‘pillars (foundations) of
70-73, 76, 81,114-15,163— Islam’, 34—37
64,184-5 ‘renewal of the religion
hasan li-ghayri-hi, 76 (tajdid)\ 33-34
maifii\ 19, 49, 51, 53, 87 ‘restriction of intimacy in
mawqiif 19, 53 menstruation’, 31
muâllaq, M
‘ritual slaughter’ (weak
traditions), 49—50
rnursal, 127,188
‘settling among enemies’,
mtitawatir, 68, 176
127-28,199
sahib 21-22, 25-26, 49-50,
‘shaking hands with
52-57, 59, 62-65, 70-73, (touching) women’, 163—66
76-77, 81-82, 85, 91-92,
208
Index
'siwak, cleaning the teeth’, al-Hawari, Ahmad ibn Abi, 55
141-42 al-Haythami, Nur al-Din, 187—
‘standard weight and 88, 191,197,199, 202
volume’, 132, 144—45 heresy (innovation) 13,15—16,
‘stray camels’, 131—32 26, 70, 73, 76, 83, 148,151,
‘table manners’, 142—44 <163,175
‘Unseen, the’ (diverse Hijaz, 44
elements, aspects of), 173— Hijrah, the (Emigration), 44, 59,
79 88,127-28,199
<cUraniyyun’, 83, 194 Hour, the, 85, 110, 173 (see
‘women traveling Resurrection, Day of)
unaccompanied’, 129 huffa^ (hadith experts), 23, 47,
‘your worldly life, your own 49,118
affair’, 126—27 hujjah (justification, proof) 98
‘zakah on (all) that which humility (of the Prophet), 32—
grows’, 93-95 33,143,165
‘zakah on money’, 133—34, I
200 Ibn cAbbas, 10, 12,108,115,
‘%akat al-fitf, 137—39 119,129,142,164, 177,183,
hadith, general terms: 188-89, 200-03
matn, 18—19, 22,192 Ibn <Abd al-Barr, 106,119,189,
mustalah al-hadith. 18 191
shadhdh. 22 Ibn cAbd al-Salam, 24—25, 70
al-ta^drud wa al-tarjlh. 20 Ibn Abi Shucayb, 53
takhrij al-hadlth (see source Ibn Abi Hatim, 68—69
critique), 47 Ibn <Adi, 12
usiil al-hadlth. 18-19,117-18; Ibn al-cAlbah, 54
see also: hadith, categories of; Ibn <Allan, 60-61
preference (juristic); isnad) Ibn al-cArabi, Abu Bakr, 28, 60,
al-Hadi, Ibn cAbd, 47 71,93-94,119,161,195,
al-Hajjaj, 83—87 202
al-Hakim, 24, 33, 56, 58, 67, Ibn cAraq, 14
116,187-91,193-95,198, Ibn al-Athir, 32, 57
200 Ibn Daqlq al-<Id, 70, 87
Hamzah (uncle of the Prophet), Ibn Hajar al-Haythami, (his
17,89,116 fatwa) 65,
Hanzalah, 6—7 Ibn Hajar, 47-50, 58-59, 62-63,
al-Hasan al-Basri, 45, 83, 86 70, 73,81-82, 86-87,105-
hasan. sufficiency of, 73; see 06,108, 111, 119-20, 149,
hadiths, categories of 161,165,188,191,197-98,
hasan li-ghayri-hi: see hadiths, 200
categories of
209
1
Index
Ibn Hanbal, 17, 38-39, 41, 43, Ibn Sirin, 45
48,52,56,61,67-69, 71, Ibn Surayj, Abu al-cAbbas
77, 80, 82, 93-94,110-12, Ahmad, 151, 201
115-16,118-19,136,165— Ibn Taymiyyah, 5, 71, 76, 87
66,187-95,197-200, 203- moral courage of, 125
04 on the five pillars of Islam,
Ibn Hazm, 71,120,129,168- 35-37
69, 203 on adducing weak hadiths,
Ibn Hibban, 56, 58, 87,114-15, 76-78,191, 193,200
162,189,192-93,195, 200- on liability to bloodwit, 135
01 rejection of the figurative,
Ibn al-Humam, Kamal al-Din, 172-73
42 true respect for, 173
Ibn Ishaq, Muhammad, 69 Ibn TJmar, cAbd Allah, 34, 39,
IbnJarir, 12, 111 105,112, 125, 149,153,160,
Ibn al-JawzT, Abu Faraj, 14, 47, 189,193, 200-01,203
62, 64, 76, 202 Ibn Tlyaynah, Sufyan, 47, 69
Ibn Kathir, 57, 71, 73,176,187, Ibn Wahb, 45
202 IbnWazir, 87,189
Ibn Khaldun, 43-44, 87,130, Ibrahim al-Nakha^, 45, 53
191,199 ijmac (juristic consensus), 53, 77,
Ibn Khuzaymah, Abu Bakr 79,153
Muhammad, 56—57,123, ijtihad, 34, 45, 87, 123, 154
189,200 ijtindb* 31
Ibn Mahdi, Abu SacId cAbd al- cill'ah (ma Qlut) , 15 0—51
Rahman, 67-68, 71, 73 infallible, non-infallible (juristic
Ibn Ma^n, Yahya, 69, 71 concept), 17
Ibn Majah, 32, 49, 52, 56, 75, infanticide of daughters, 14, 95-
115,119,162, 189-90,193— 96
95,198, 200, 203 weak analogy with ‘burying
Ibn MasSld, cAbd Allah, 12, 42— alive’, 119-21
43, 49, 51, 80, 83, 86-87, injunctions, weak hadiths in
189-90,195 relation to, 75—80, 93—96
Ibn al-Mubarak, 62, 68, 71 innovation (see heresy)
Ibn Musa, 69 intent, intention, 2, 37, 95, 104,
Ibn al-Qayyim, 15, 58, 60, 71, 107-09,120,158
118,120,189 of God’s Messenger, 15—16
Ibn Qudamah, 48,130,199 of hadith texts, 19, 31, 33,
Ibn Qutaybah, 28, 38,158 160-61
Ibn Rajab al-Hanbali, 61, 68-70, of scholars, 76—77, 109
192 intercession, 64, 92; see hadiths
Ibn Rushd, 48,119 discussed
Ibn Salah, 18, 72-73,193
210
Index
al-^raql, Zayn al-Din, 49, 58, al-Khatib al-Baghdadi, 67, 73,
73, 76, 108, 190, 193 192,201
Ismacil Haqqi, 23 al-Khatib al-TabrizI, 57
isnady absence of, 14, 48—50, 72, al-Khattabi, 60
82, 196 al-Khudri, Abu Sacid, 32,100,
confusion of, 124, 192 118,160,162,176,194-95,
exactitude in, 14 203
necessity of, 13 khuyald*: see conceit
relaxation of strictness in, kin, giving to, 76; not cutting
24, 67-68, 75-78, 192 off: see hadiths discussed
strength of, 118,153, 187, al-Kirmanl, 59
189,197,203 Kufa (school of Law), 42
weakness in, 24, 63, 94—95, L
119-20 al-Laknawi, 14, 190
Israelites, 4 literal reading of texts
their traditions adduced, 64, examples of, 156—57
77 risks of neglecting, 169—70
Niâly 31 vs. figurative interpretation,
i%ai\ wearing long of: see hadiths 155-73
discussed M
J Madinah, 10, 44, 94, 109,144,
Jabir, 40,109-10,117,121,142, 165,194, 198-99
188-89,194-95, 203 mahraniy 129: see hadiths
Jahmis, 16 discussed, ‘woman traveling
Jamal al-Din al-Qasimi, 82, 185 alone’)
janabab, 10 Makkah, 33, 88,144,198-99
Jarir ibn cAbd Allah, 127 Malik ibn Anas, 43, 45, 56, 83,
al-Junayd, 55 93,121,131,149,153
al-Juwayni, 50 ma^lul: see zillah
jihad, 34-37, 44, 89,111-12, al-Mana’wi, cAbd al-Ra’uf, 60
167,199 maififi: see hadith, categories of
juxtaposition of hadiths, al-Marghinani, 42
necessity of, 103—13 niaskanah (poverty): see hadiths
K discussed, 'miskiriy living as’
Kaâh, 88, 129 matn: see hadith, general terms
KaT? ibn Malik, 142 al-Mawardi, 48
al-Kandhlawi, 60 al-Mawdudi, Abu al-A4a, 186
kharajy 48, 130 mawqiif: {see hadith, categories of
Kharijis, 16,125 al-Mawsili, Ibn Mawdud al-
I
al-Khann, Mustafa, 61 Hanafi, 42
al-Khatib, cAjjaj, 190 means and ends, 139-44
211
i
Index
medicine, 54; N
of the Prophet: see hadiths al-Nadwi, Sayyid Abu Hasan, 60
discussed naht (distinguished from taswir
Messiah, end times, 86; see and cÂf), 181—82
hadiths discussed, ‘end narrating hadiths
times’ category of: daîfi
moral courage, the scholar’s conditions of, 70—71, 78—82
need of, 125 general conditions and
Moses, 64, 84 realities of, 13-19, 70-81
Mucadh, 9, 53, 82-83,188 in taigbib and tarhlb, 66—82
mifiallaq: see hadith, categories of restriction of, 82—84; see
Mucawiyah, 17 hadith, also: hadiths
al-Mubarakpuri, TJbayd Allah, discussed: <cUraniyyun’
60 narrators of hadith (see also isnad)
mubkamat (verses of the ‘golden chain’ of, 153,177
Qur’an), 15 interrogation of, 13—19
mujtahidy 43-44,109,136,163 qualities of, 21—22, 46, 51
al-Mundhiri, 59, 65—66, 75—76, al-NasaX 52, 56, 60,104, 116,
80-81,194, 199, 203 127,187-89,192,194,196,
Murji’is, 16 198, 200, 203
mursal: see hadith, category of al-Nawawi, 18, 24, 48, 58—59,
Muscab ibn TImayr, 17 61, 73, 97-98,105-06,142,
Mushrikun: see Associationists; 192,196, 201
also hadiths discussed, nisab (see zakah)
‘settling among enemies’ non-infallible (see fallible)
Muslim (author of Sahib), 39, P
44, 49, 56, 59, 67, 70, 82-83, pedantry: see extremism; also:
96-97,100,104-05,109, literal reading
114,116-19,121,123,142, pillars (foundations) of Islam,
149,160-61,186-190,193- the five, 35-37
98, 200-03 popularity of weak hadiths,
mustalah al-haditb: see hadith, countering the, 63—65
general terms poverty: see maskanah
mutashabibdt (verses of the preference (juristic), 19, 21, 81,
Qur’an), 15 87,105, 113-21,200
fnutawdtir. see hadith, category of in light of the Qur’an, 24—
Muctazilis, 16-17, 37-38, 99, 25,192-99
101-02,157,161,175,178, preservation (of Sunnah with
203 Qur’an), 29-30
al-Mutifi, Muhammad Bakhit, pride, dangers of, 24—25, 107,
182 165, 168
212
Index
priorities, disordering the relaxing isndd norms, conditions
balance among, 15, 73—75 of, 22, 44, 66-68,71,78,192
public good, the Law and the, renewal (tajdidy. see hadiths
86, 107, 124, 131 discussed, 33—34
Q renunciation (xybdy. 54, 61, 66,
Qadaris, 16 69
al-Qadl ^yad, 59,108,114,159 ‘reprehensible’, concept of, 66,
al-Qari, <AH, 14, 60, 62 79
al-Qastalani, 59 ‘mildly reprehensible’, 119
qiyas (juristic reasoning by Resurrection, Day of, 100-01,
analogy), 72, 123, 136, 139 104-07,118,133,141,162,
‘preferred analogy’, 146 174,196
‘analogy to the dissimilar’, revision of legacy of fiqh, need
178-79 for, 51
questioning hadiths (as the examples of, 51-54
Companions did), 95-96 riba (usury), trickery for, 112,
Quraysh, leadership of the: see 197
hadiths discussed; ‘a woman ritual slaughter: see hadiths
of the’, 33 discussed
al-Qurtubl, 115—16,198 ru'yah (the believers’ seeing God
on figurative expressions, in Paradise), 28,175-76,
159-61 178-79
R S
al-Rab^, 45—46 sadaqah, 194
Rafidis, 16,150, 201 on vegetables, 48, 94
al-Rafi% 48, 50 al-Saghani, 14, 23
al-Raghlb al-Asfahani, 156 sahib: see hadith, category of;
Ramadan, fasting in, 9, 34, 37, acceptance of the, 45
99,136,145,152-53, 201- rejection of the, 26, 30-31,
02 34, 37
Rashid Rida, 127,178,185 restriction to the, 54
Rawwad ibn al-Jarrah, 68 sufficiency of the, 73
ra'y, 19, 42, 45, 50, 71, 86 Sahl ibn Sacd, 176
al-Razzaq al-Sanca*i, 57,190 salafi 22, 37, 53, 77, 84,182
reconciling (combining) consensus of, 150,172,180
differing hadiths, 21, 38, 79, salafii (method, orientation),
111, 113-21 152
‘refrain from’ certain hadiths, al-Salih, Subhi, 61
95, 97,124,161 Salman, 98
rejection of sahlh hadiths, 25-26 sanad: see isndd
examples of, 30—40 al-San^l, cAbd al-Razzaq, 57
al-Sanusi, 59, 97,195
213
Index
school(s) of Law, 41-46, 48, 50, sufficiency of the Qur’an’s
62,71,93,129,136 guidance, 29—30
sects, 15—17 Sufi, Sufism (tasawwuf). 14, 23,
sectarian interpretations, 25,55,67
excesses of, 175 related to Sunnah, 62
al-Sha^bi, 45, 53 Sufyan al-Thawri, 45, 68—69
shadhdh: see hadith, general terms Sunnah as means of solidarity,
al-Shafi% 45, 93,122-23, 200 5-6
Shah Wall Allah al-Dahlawi, 20, as confined to the Qur’anic
61,87 framework, 41, 55, 84, 91—
Shakir, Ahmad Muhammad, 49, 92
57,155, 201-02 as enabling repentance, 7
on exposure of weak its balance, 2—4, 9, 11,126
hadiths, 71—72 its comprehensiveness, 2—3,
on figurative expressions, 104,113,125-26
162-63 its facility, 8-13
on sighting the crescent, its latitude, 7, 188
147-52 its letter and spirit
Shakir, Mahmud Muhammad, contrasted: see hadiths
57 discussed, ‘medicine’; \akdt
shaking hands with women: see al-fitr\ ‘standard weight and
hadiths discussed volume’
Shaltut, Mahmud, 20,186 its major books, 56-61
al-Shatibi, 26-28, 30, 76, 87, its tolerance, 8, 9, 12, 188
175,190, 198 in relation to the Qur’an:
al-Shawkani, 14, 41, 49, 59, 62, generally, 1—2; as detailing,
87,117,191-92 clarifying it, 29, 41, 93, 103,
al-ShirazI, 48, 201 109,125,174,182
siwak: see hadiths discussed; 2 superstitions, 14
socio-economic context, al-Suyuti, 14,18, 21, 57, 59-60,
understanding the, 139-55 62, 70, 87,117,190-91,197
softening of the hearts, weak T
hadiths on, 14, 22—33, 55, al-ta^drud wa al-tatjih: see
61-63, 66-69, 72-73 contradiction, preference
source-critique (takhrij al-haditty, al-Tabarani, 32, 56-57, 80, 163,
47-49,56-58,61,63,65, 187-89,191,194—95,197,
162,189, 192-93,198 200, 203
al-Subki, Mahmud Khattab, 60 ‘table-manners’: see hadiths
al-Subki, Taqi al-Din, 154—55, discussed
202 al-TabrizI, al-Khatib, 57
Successors of the Companions, tafsir, weak hadiths used in, 23,
11,87,127,130 57-58,62
214
Index
al-TahawI, Abu Jacfar, 38, 119, <U th man ibn cAffan, 87,129,
200 131-32
al-Tahir ibn Ashur, 204 TJthman ibn HJmar, 45
tajdld: see hadiths discussed, al-TJthmani, Taqi, 59
‘renewal’ V
takhrij al-hadith: see source ‘verse of the sword’, 121
critique W
Tammam, 12, 189 wastefulness, contradictory of
taqlid, 34 Sunnah, 107-08,143,197
taqwa, 13, 22 weak hadiths: see hadith,
targhib and tarhib, 22, 24, 47, 59, category of, daQif
194, 199 conditions for use of, 70-73,
weak hadiths cited in, 66—80 78-81
tasannvuf: see Sufi, Sufism general rejection of, 65-66
tasmiyah, 49 in targhib and tarhib, 66-69
taswir (image): see Qaks not basing the Law upon,
tawhid, 14, 61, 96, 99-100, 180 75-78
tayammum, 9—10,183,189 Wisdom, the Book and the, 1—
al-Thacalabi, 23 2, 183,187
Thafiabah ibn Hatib, 74 wudil\ 9,183
al-Tirmidhi, 49, 52, 56, 60, 68,
72, 80, 95,108,113-15,123, Yahya ibn Durays, 45
127,188-90,193-96,198- Yahya ibn Ma'in, 71
204 Yemen, 9, 87
U Z
TJbadah ibn Samit, 32 Zahiri (school of Law), 71,164,
HJmar ibn cAbd al-cAziz, 85—86, 168
137 zakah, 6, 34, 37, 48-49, 93, 95,
cUmar ibn al-Khattab, 81, 111, 195
119,129-31,134-35, 200 see hadiths discussed, ‘zakah
Ûmarah ibn Khuzaymah ibn on money’; ‘zakah on (all)
Thabit, 111 that grows’
Unseen, the, 2, 86, 148, 162; %akat al-fitr. see hadiths discussed
see hadiths discussed al-Zamakhshari, 23
TJraniyyun: see hadiths al-Zarkashi, 62
discussed al-Zayla^, Jamal al-Din, 47—49
Wr, 48, 93 Zaynab bint Jahsh, 157
usul al-hadith: see hadith, general al-Zubayr cAdi, 84
terms Zuhd: see renunciation
usiil al-fiqh. 18, 20-21, 25, 51, al-Zuhrl, Ibn Shihab, 52,131
117 al-Zurqani, 62
215

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A PP ROAC HIN G TH E

The International Institute of Islamic Thought

Yusuf al-Qaradawi is one of the Islamic world's most widely

The International Institute of Islamic Thought

Translated Jamil Qureshi

THE INTERNATIONAL INSTITUTE OF ISLAMIC THOUGHT

THE INTERNATIONAL INSTITUTE OF ISLAMIC THOUGHT

This book is copyright. Subject to statutory exception and

Cover Design by Saddiq Ali

The International Institute of Islamic Thought (IIIT) has great

April 2006 Anas S. Al-Shaikh-Ali,

TRANSLATION OF QUOTED MATERIAL

Shaykh al-Qaradawi’s book is, necessarily, filled with cited hadiths,

TWO DIFFICULT TERMS: ‘LAW’, ‘ACTION’

Shaykh Qaradawl’s discussion contains many terms of the science,

The Sunnah is the second or ‘unrecited revelation’, the Prophet’s

It was a comfort to me that Dar al-Shuruq took on the publi­

Cairo. Jumada 1,1421 AH/August, 2000CE

God has certainly bestowed grace upon the believers in that He

O believers: obey God and obey the Messenger, and those

“All of my Community will enter Paradise except one who

* Literally: “bite into it with your incisors”.

The Status of the Sunnah in Islam

GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS OF THE SUNNAH

The Qur’an is the supreme sign and the greatest miracle of

God said: “And we sent down to you the Book as a clarification of

The Sunnah is distinguished also by balance - between spirit and

moderate society, with neither overdoing in it nor doing too little.

The Sunnah of the Prophet is a harmonizing or integrative way. It

whatever he has of power or ability gives freely according to his

The Sunnah is also a realistic method. It does not regard people as

The Sunnah makes allowance for the different conditions of

A WAY MADE EASY

Another of the special, distinguishing qualities of the way of the

affliction to others; on the contrary, He commissioned me as an

THE MUSLIMS’ DUTY TO THE SUNNAH

represents the Qur’an interpreted, and Islam embodied in life.

standing of the Sunnah. Their view of it is a deficient view. It all

WARNING AGAINST THREE EVILS

It is narrated from the Messenger that he indicated that knowledge

a) The distortion of the extremists

b) The deviations offalsifiers

minded narrators with exactitude in preserving what came to them,

c) Interpretation of the ignorant

Wrong interpretation is that by which the reality of Islam is de­

Just as the people of falsehood deviated so as to bring into Islam

Hence the differing interpretations of the rationalist schools of

It is necessary for one who applies the Sunnah of the Prophet to

1: VERIFYING THE FIRMNESS OF THE SUNNAH

The obligation on the learned is to be reserved on the disputed

2: PROFICIENCY IN UNDERSTANDING THE SUNNAH

The second principle is that one be proficient in understanding the

3: THE TEXT BEING SAFE FROM CONTRADICTION

This is connected to an important legal issue in both usul al-fiqh

THE SOURCE OF BOTH LEGISLATION AND GUIDANCE

if the hadith reported from him is irregular (shadhdty in that it

A DEFENCE OF FABRICATED HADITHS REFUTED

More common than such presentation of the false hadith is to find

Here we cannot help but express our consternation by saying Id

It was a comfort to me that Dar al-Shuruq took on the publi

Wrong interpretation is that by which the reality of Islam is de

and religion. But Ahl al-Sunnah applied their minds to interpret

textbooks in Hanafi fiqh. Another example is Ibn Hajar’s source

It is a tribute to the fair-mindedness of al-Bayhaqi that he criti