Khutba on Knowledge and Hadith

الحمد لله، الحمد لله الذي حفِظ سنةَ حبيبِه بالفقهاء العاملين، والشيوخِ العارفين، نحمده تعالى ونستعينه، ونشكره تعالى ونستغفره ونستغيثه، نعوذ بالله من شرور أنفسنا ومن سيئات أعمالنا، من يهد الله فهو المهتد ومن يضلل فلن تجد له وليا مرشدا، ونشهد أن لا إله إلا الله وحده لا شريك له، له الملك و له الحمد، يحيي ويميت، بيده الخير، وهو على كل شيء قدير،  ونشهد أن سيدنا و مولانا محمداً عبده ورسوله، وحبيبه وصفيه، بلغ الرسالة وأدٌى الأمانة ونصح الأمة، النبي الأمي الذي أرسله الله بالهدى والدين الحق، بشيرا ونذيرا بين يدي الساعة، صلى الله عليه وسلم وعلى آله وأصحابه ومن تبعهم بإحسان إلى يوم الدين.
أما بعد! فيا عباد الله اتقوا الله حق تقاته ولا تموتن إلا وأنتم مسلمون. يأيها الذين ءامنوا اتقوا الله وقولوا قولا سديدا يصلح لكم أعمالكم ويغفر لكم ذنوبكم. ومن يطع الله ورسوله فقد فاز فوزا عظيما. اتقوا الله فيما أمر وانتهوا عما نها عنه وزجر.

            It has become part of the modern approach to knowledge and the acquisition of knowledge to cast doubt on all that you are told and accept nothing without proof. And the definition of what constitutes proof becomes more and more narrow until nothing whatsoever meets the criteria and doubt and confusion reign. We are taught to question our senses, question our minds, question our ulema. Everything is taken with a pinch of salt and critically stripped away. And so, a society without certainty, indeed a society without knowledge, for what is knowledge but knowing something to certainly be the case, is created. A jahiliyya society, where opinion is placed on a pedestal and knowledge is ridiculed as superstition and surmise. And when there is no knowledge, there can be no action and there can be no worship. There can be no society and no culture, only anti-society and anti-culture, rapidly imploding and self-destructing.
Knowledge starts with recognition, recognition that we do not know, but have the capacity to learn, and that there is but one source for that knowledge: our Lord and those whom He has sent to convey it to us, the Prophets, and in our case, the last of the Messengers, our master Muhammad. That knowledge comes in two forms, the Divine, the unchanged and unchanging Words of our Lord, and the Prophetic, the translation of those uncreated Words into a form in which mankind can put them into practice, namely the Sunna of the Messenger of Allah, his states, words and actions. The entirety of all knowledge open to mankind, theoretical and practical can be found in these two sources. Allah says,
مَّا فَرَّطْنَا فِي الْكِتَابِ مِن شَيْءٍ

            the translation of which is, “We have omitted nothing from the Book.” And both these sources have been preserved through the rigorous science of transmission and the efforts of the men of knowledge of previous generations and of this generation. Those men, the ulema, are the guardians of this deen, they take on the role of the Prophets in their absence, for the Messenger of Allah said,
إن العلماءَ ورثةُ الأنبياء

            “The ulama are the inheritors of the Prophets.” And it is at their feet that we must seek knowledge, for they are its repositories in our time. Allah says,
fas-alu ahla-dh-dhikri in kuntum laa ta’lamun.
            the translation of which is, “Ask the people of dhikr if you do not know.” Knowledge is and always has been found with the people of knowledge, the fuqaha, not in the pages of books. And that is what the imams of the madhhabs were, receptacles for the knowledge of the previous generations, the sahaba and tabiin, preserving it and passing it down to the following generations in the way that it was understood and practiced by them, keeping it alive and in context. It is through their efforts that we are able to know the sunna of the Messenger of Allah, and therefore know how he understood the Book of Allah and put it into practice.
            And yet, today, we find large numbers of Muslims calling for abolishment of the madhhabs and what they call a return to the sunna, but what is in fact a following of whim, because they want to be free to interpret statements of the Messenger of Allah according to their own personal understanding of them, considering their understanding to be superior to that of all those who went before them. Such people should beware. They should heed the words of one who had far greater knowledge and understanding than them, a man who was considered by his contemporaries and students as a mujtahid, a man who sat with Imam Malik for many years and was considered one of his most accomplished students, Abdallah ibn Wahb. He said,
لولا أن الله أنقذني بمالك والليث لضللت.

         “If it were not for the fact that Allah saved me through Malik and al-Layth, I would have gone astray.”

فقيل له: كيف ذلك؟ فقال: أكثرت من الحديث فحيرني ، فكنت أعرض ذلك على مالك والليث، فيقولان: خذ هذا، ودع هذا

         “How so?” he was asked. He replied, “I learnt so many hadith that they started to confuse me. So I read them out to Malik and al-Layth and they told me which ones to take and which ones to leave.”
         ّIndeed Imam Malik himself, a man who had such great love of the hadith of the Messenger of Allah that Qadi Iyad devoted a whole section of the Shifa to describing that love, mentioning among other things that he never narrated a hadith without being in wudu, dressing up in fine clothing, putting on perfume and sitting down. One time, a man asked him about a hadith while standing, so Malik struck him twenty times with a whip because of the disrespect he had shown the Prophet; and on another occasion while Malik was teaching hadith, he was stung 16 times by a scorpion, but he refused to move until he had fully completed narrating the hadith. This same man, Imam Malik, said,

كثير من هذه الأحاديث ضلالة، لقد خرجت مني أحاديث لوددت إني ضربت بكل حديث منها سوطين وإني لم أحدث به

         “Many of these hadiths are sources of misguidance. Indeed, there are hadiths I have narrated that I wish I had never narrated and, for each one of which, I wish I had been whipped two times.” This from a man referred to by his contemporaries as the amir al-muminin in hadith. He knew that just because a hadith was authentic (sahih) did not automatically mean that it should be acted upon – there were numerous factors that had to be taken into account first such as the circumstances and context of the hadith, the timing of the hadith, whether the hadith was general or specific, whether the hadith was abrogated or abrogating and whether the Companions who narrated it themselves acted by it or not. Many hadith appear contradictory to one another on the surface, so by what criteria does one decide to implement one and leave another? Take, for example, the sahih hadith of Malik ibn al-Huwayrith, transmitted in the Sunan of an-Nasa’i,

انه راى النبي صلى الله عليه وسلم رفع يديه في صلاته اذا ركع واذا رفع راسه من الركوع واذا سجد واذا رفع راسه من السجود حتى يحاذي بهما فروع اذنيه

            “that he saw the Prophet raise his hands until they were level with his ears when he entered into the prayer, when he went into ruku, when he came out of ruku, when he went into prostration and when he came out of prostration.” This hadith, according to al-Hafidh Ibn Hajr al-’Asqalani, was the soundest hadith he had found with regarding to raising the hands in the prayer, but despite that, it was not implemented by any of the four Imams. Why not? Because, they took their deen not from the hadiths that they heard but from the actions of those teachers from whom they inherited their knowledge. Ibrahim an-Nakha’i said,

لو كانت الصحابة يتوضأون إلى الكوعين لتوضأت كذلك وأنا أقرأها:"إلى المرافق"

         “If I had found the Companions only washing their arms as far as their wrists in wudu, I would have done wudu in the same way even though I read ‘As far as your elbows” (i.e. in the Qur’an).”
         The books of hadith are not there for us to dip into and extrapolate our own fiqh rulings from them and if we view them in that light then we will go astray – we will come up with a deen that none of the Muslims before us practiced. By taking our fiqh straight from the books of hadith, we think we get closer to the Sunna, but rather we distance ourselves from it. We think we have access to hadith that our forefathers lacked but the truth is that they knew them and decided not to implement them. Their actions, the deen that they practiced and taught, are a closer reflection of the sunna than anything found in the books of hadith, even the most authentic collections.
         Those who came before us, our teachers, they have done the hard work. They have sifted and sorted and preserved and spared us the need. They have left us a deen that were we to put it into practice, we would be bringing the sunna of the Messenger to life and obeying the Commands of his Lord. May Allah give us the strength to follow in their footsteps.

أقول قولي هذا وأستغفر الله لي ولكم ولسائر المسلمين من كل ذنب فاستغفروه إنه هو الغفور الرَّحيم
الحمد لله الحمد لله رب العالمين، وأشهد أن لا إله إلا الله وحده لا شريك له وأشهد أن محمداً عبده ورسوله، صلى الله وسلم وبارك عليه وعلى آله وصحبه، والتابعين وتابعي التابعين ومن تبعهم بإحسان إلى يوم الدين.
أما بعد! فيأيها الذين ءامنوا اتقوا الله ما استطعتم واسمعوا وأطيعوا وأنفقوا خيرا لأنفسكم. يا عباد الله أوصيكم وإياي بتقوى الله وطاعته وأحذركم وإياي عن معصيته ومخالفته. قال الرسول صلى الله عليه و سلم: تركت فيكم أمرين لن تضلوا ما تمسكتم بهما كتاب الله و سنة نبيه

         The Messenger said, “I have left with you two matters which, if you hold firm to them you will never go astray – the Book of Allah and the Sunna of his Prophet.”
         There is a common misunderstanding which is perpetuated by many modern scholars that the word hadith is synonymous with Sunna. For example, Abdur-Rahman Doi says in his book, ‘Shariah: The Islamic Law”, “The Prime Sources of the religion of Islam are the Qur’an and the Hadith.” This is not the case! The two words refer to different things, as is shown by the fact that Imam Malik was described as being an imam of hadith and an imam of sunna, clearly indicating that the two words indicate different things:
     Sunna refers to the practice of the Messenger of Allah, while hadith refers to a verbal transmission from the Messenger of Allah, reporting what he said or did. In some cases the two terms overlap such as when the hadith reports something that was part of the practice of the Messenger of Allah at the end of his affair and in some cases they differ, such as when the hadith is not part of the practice of the Messenger of Allah at the end of his affair and which no Muslim acts upon despite its being authentic and sahih. Thus hadith is more general in meaning than sunna since it includes both things that are part of the sunna and things that are not, and more specialised since it is only one of the things upon which sunna is based, the others being ‘amal (or practice), akhlaq (qualities of character) and ahwal (states).
         The first of these, ‘amal, was the main source of the sunna for the Companions and the other early Muslims – they simply acted as they saw the Prophet act on a day to day basis, following his injunction,
صلوا كما رأيتموني أصلي

         “Pray as you saw me pray.” And the fact that they acted in a particular way indicated that they viewed that to be the Sunna. Actions speak louder than words. And that was recognised by Umar ibn al-Khattab when he said from the minbar,

أُحرِج بالله على رجل روى حديثا العملُ على خلافه

            “By Allah, I will make it difficult for a man who relates a hadith different from the ‘amal.” And by one of the famous Qadis of Madina in the time of the Tabi’in, Muhammad ibn Abi Bakr ibn Umar ibn Hazm. Ibn Hazm would often pass judgement on matters about which hadith existed, in a manner contrary to what the hadith said. And when his brother Abdallah, a man with great knowledge of hadith, criticised him for that, pointing out that his ruling contradicted the hadith, he replied that he knew the hadith but did not see people acting by it. In other words, he viewed the ‘amal of the people of knowledge around him as being a stronger proof than any hadith.  And that view was echoed by Imam Malik, who considered ‘amal to be a stronger basis than hadith upon which to base the Sunna. For it was, as Rabi’a said in his famous statement, the equivalent of a hadith narrated by one thousand men from one thousand men, all of them in perfect accordance with each other. It was by means of this method that the adhan of Madina was passed down, having been called in the same way continuously for every prayer since the lifetime of the Prophet. And likewise, the measurements for the mudd and sa’.
            And it is by means of ‘amal that every one of us today takes his deen, not hadith, for we follow the practices and teachings of our teachers who followed the practices of their teachers and so on in a continuous chain back to the Prophet. That is true for all the madhahib, regardless of their original usul. We do not cut off that chain, disregard our teachers, and go straight to the books and interpret things according to the way we want for that is ittibaa al-hawa and the surest path to misguidance.
            The Sunna, however, is not just about outward action but also about akhlaq and inward states. And it is just as important to emulate the Messenger of Allah in those, for he said,
إن الله لا ينظر إلى صوركم ولا إلى أجسامكم ولكن ينظر إلى قلوبكم

            “Allah does not look at your bodies or outer forms, but looks at your hearts.” Now one can gain a certain degree of understanding of the qualities of the Messenger of Allah and the station he held with his Lord from the Quran and hadith, but true knowledge of them can only be obtained through direct transmission, by spending time in the company of one who embodies them, by serving him and observing him until you come to embody those qualities yourself. These people are the shuyukh, with an unbroken sanad back to the Messenger of Allah. They are his true inheritors and the bearers of his light. It is through them that his sunna is preserved and kept alive among us. Allah says,
وَاعْلَمُوا أَنَّ فِيكُمْ رَسُولَ اللَّهِ

         the translation of which is, “Know that the Messenger of Allah is among you.” His sunna and his light will always be with us so long as we keep company with the men of Allah. If you truly want the sunna, then they are whom you should be with, not those who simply give it lip service  or relegate it to the superficial. We ask Allah to make us people of the Sunna. And to increase us in love of His Messenger and those who have inherited his light.

إنَّ اللهَ ومَلائِكَتَهُ يُصلُّونَ على النَّبِي يَا أَيُها الذينَ آمنوا صَلُّوا عَلَيْهِ وسَلِّمُوا تَسْليماً. اللهمَّ صَلِّ وسَلِّم وبارِك عَلَيْهِ وعلى آلِهِ وصَحْبِهِ  أجمعين.
وارض اللهم عن الخلفاء الراشدين المرشدين الحنفاء ساداتنا وأئمتنا أبي بكر وعمر وعثمان وعلي ، وعن سائر الصحابة أجمعين، خصوصا الأنصار منهم والمهاجرين، وعن التابعين وتابعي التابعين ومن تبعهم بإحسان إلى يوم الدين.
اللهم اهد أولات أمور المسلمين لما يرضيك ولاتباع سنة نبيك صلى الله عليه وسلم  وثبت أقدامهم على الصراط المستقيم وأصلحهم يا رب العالمين.
اللهم بارك على شيخنا، و على أميرنا، وعلى جميع أمراء وزعماء المسلمين. 
اللهم بارك على المسلمين في هذه المدينة ووفقهم لما تحبه وترضاه يا أكرم الأكرمين.
اللهمّ أَعِزَّ الْلإسلامَ والمُسِلمينَ (3)  واَخْذُلِ الكُفْرَ والكافِرينَ، وانْصُرِ المُجاهِدينَ في سَبِيلِ اللهِ. واجْعَلْ كَلِمََتَكَ هِيَ العُلْيَا وكَلِمَةَ الكُفْرِ هِيَ السُّفْلى.
ربنا ءاتنا في الدنيا حسنة وفي الأخرة حسنة وقنا عذاب النار.
اللهم لا تضعْ في مقامِنا هذا ذنبا إلا غفرْتَه، ولا عيبا إلا سترْتَه، ولا مريضا إلا شفيتَهُ وعافيتَه، ولا مسجونا إلا طلَّقْتَ سراحَه، ولا مسافرا في برِّك وبحرِك إلا سلِمتَهُ وغنِمْتَه.
إن الله يأمر بالعدل والإحسان وإيتاء ذي القربى وينهى عَنِ الفحشاءِ والمُنكَرِ والبغي، يعظكم لعلكم تذكرون، ولَذِكْرُ اللهِ أكبر والله يَعْلَمُ ما تَصْنَعُون. وقُومُوا إِلَى صَلاتِكُمْ يرحمكم الله