Khutba on Living Knowledge and Transmission

Video

الحَمْدُ للهِ، الحَمْدُ للهِ الذي خَلَقَ الإِنْسانَ، وعلّمه القرءانَ والبيان، وأخرجه من ظلام الجهل والكفر إلى نور العلم والإيمان، نَحْمَدُهُ تعالى ونستعينه، ونشكره تعالى ونستغفره ونستغيثه، نعوذ بالله من شرور أنفسنا ومن سيئات أعمالنا، مَنْ يَهْدِ اللهُ فلا مضل له، ومَنْ يُضلِلْ فَلاَ هَادِيَ لَهُ، ونَشْهَدُ أَنْ لاَ إِلَهَ إِلاَّ اللهُ  وَحْدَهُ لاَ شَرِيكَ لَهُ، له الملك وله الحمد، يحيي ويميت، بيده الخير، وهو على كل شيء قدير، ونشْهَدُ أَنَّ سَيِّدَنَا ومولانا مُحَمَّداً عَبْدُه وَرَسُولُهُ، وحبيبه وصفيه، بلغ الرسالة وأدّى الأمانة ونصح الأمّة، النبي الأمي الذي أرسله الله بالهدى والدين الحقّ، بشيرا ونذيرا بين يدي الساعة، صلى الله عليه وسلم وعَلَى آلِهِ وأَصْحابِهِ ومَنْ تَبِعَهم بإِحْسانٍ إِلَى يَوْمِ الدِّيْنِ.  أَمَّا بَعْدُ، فَيَا عِبَادَ اللهِ اتقوا الله حق تقاته ولا تموتن إلا وأنتم مسلمون، يا أيها الذين آمنوا اتَّقُوا اللَّهَ وَقُولُوا قَوْلًا سَدِيدًا، يُصْلِحْ لَكُم أَعْمَالَكُمْ وَيَغْفِرْ لَكُمْ ذُنُوبَكُمْ وَمَنْ يُطِعِ اللَّهَ وَرَسُولَهُ فَقَدْ فَازَ فَوْزًا عَظِيمًا، يا أيها المسلمون اتقوا الله فيما أوصى وأمر، وانتهوا عما نها عنه وزجر. قال الله سبحانه وتعالى في كتابه الكريم: هَلْ يَسْتَوِي الَّذِينَ يَعْلَمُونَ وَالَّذِينَ لَا يَعْلَمُونَ

Allah says in His Noble Quran, the translation of which is, “Are they the same – those who know and those who do not know?” And He says,

يَرْفَعُ اللهُ الذِينَ ءَامَنُوا والذِينَ أُوتُوا الْعِلْمَ دَرَجَاتٍ

the translation of which is, “Allah will raise in rank those who believe and those who have knowledge.” Today I would like to speak of a topic which is of great meaning to us all, for it is the means by which we are raised up among our fellows and the basis upon which our lives are structured and made right and great civilisations are built. That topic is knowledge, the crowning achievement of the human being, and the means through which Allah raised Adam above the angels and caused them to bow down before him. But, today, I do not want to speak of it in general terms, but rather to concentrate on one aspect of it that is of particular relevance to us in this, the information age, and that is how it is acquired. Or maybe I should say, from whom it is acquired. 
For in the present day, nearly all of the great texts of the deen are accessible – you can buy computer libraries that contain all the major works of tafsir, books of hadith and compendia of fiqh. The fatawa of scholars of this and previous generations are recorded, compiled and available at the click of a button. There is little that cannot be found and accessed in the comfort of your home without you ever having to come into contact with another human being. Never has so much been so easily available. So should that not mean that the ulama of today are the greatest ulama in history and those with the most comprehensive and rounded knowledge? You might well think that, but that runs contrary to the words of the Messenger of Allah, who indicated that knowledge would lessen over time, and that the greatest levels of knowledge were to be found in his generation, followed by the one after them followed by the one after them. Imam adh-Dhahabi, who lived more than seven hundred years ago, said,
“The ulama have only been given a little knowledge. And today, only a little of that little knowledge remains, and only a few people hold it. And only a small proportion of those few act by that little knowledge. Allah is enough for us and the best of protectors.” In his day, the great books of hadith were already compiled and large numbers of books were available to those who sought them, so obviously those books were not considered in themselves to constitute knowledge. This shows that there is a great difference between knowledge and information. They are not and never have been the same thing. Knowledge can only be taken from people. This is true in every science and every branch of knowledge – you could not expect to become a doctor just from reading books of medicine, nor a martial artist just from reading books of karate and kung fu – you must have a teacher. And not just any teacher, but one who has himself learnt from those who know, one who has himself been taught and educated by practitioners of the art, a man of experience who has lived what he preaches and teaches. This is true in every science, but is even more true in the science of fiqh, the science of obeying the commands of our Lord and avoiding His prohibitions, for it is upon that science that our long term well-being hinges. The Messenger of Allah said,

يَا أيُّهَا النَّاسُ تَعَلَّمُوا إِنَّمَا العِلْمُ بِالتَّعَلُّمِ وَالفِقْهُ بِالتَّفَقُّهِ وَمَنْ يُرِدِ اللّهُ بِهِ خَيْرًا يُفَقِّهْهُ في الدِّيْنِ 

“O you who believe, learn, for knowledge comes from learning and fiqh (understanding) comes from seeking understanding. If Allah wants good for a person, He will give him understanding (fiqh) in the deen.” For there to be ta’allum and tafaqquh, there must be ta’lim and tafqih. In other words, teaching, direct transmission from one human being to another. The use of these words in the hadith strongly implies this. There are a pair of well-known sayings, prevalent among the salaf and often quoted by them, that further emphasise this truth. The first of them is,

من لا شيخ له فشيخه الشيطان

“If you do not have a shaykh, then Shaytan is your shaykh.” And the second,

من كان شيخه كتابَه، كان خطؤه أكثر من صوابه

“If your shaykh is your books, then you will be wrong more than you will be right.” This does not mean that books are inherently bad, but rather that they are not be relied upon on their own, they are only to be used in conjunction with the directions of a teacher, especially when it comes to fiqh. They are tools, not knowledge. They are black ink written on white paper, so those who take their deen exclusively from them tend to see things in black and white. Their deen is rigid and inflexible, not organic and alive. The deen is and always has been based on example – we do what we see others do – our teachers do not just show us with their words but also with their actions. Look at the definition of Sunna – it is described as the words, actions, states, physical appearance and taqrir of the Messenger of Allah. Taqrir refers to what was done in his presence by others which he did not find objectionable. The Companions learnt from him in all of these ways, not just from what he said. They learnt from his example, and the tabi’in learnt from theirs. And so on and so forth until the present day, each generation learning from the previous. Chain of narration/Isnad is not something limited to the science of hadith, it applies to every science.
We take from people, we cannot bypass them and go straight to the source, for what has been transmitted from the source is more than just the words that are written. So we do not take from books of hadith, nor use hadith as an excuse to deny what all the generations of Muslims before us have done. If we were to base our deen purely on books of hadith, we would create a deen that none of the Muslims before us ever practised. They are not a basis for fiqh or rulings – that is what is the science of fiqh is for. 
Indeed, going straight to them for rulings, without – or even with – the necessary tools of discrimination is a great danger to your deen. Abdallah ibn Wahb, one of the greatest students of Imam Malik and a great muhaddith, a great expert in hadith in his own right, 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.”
And another of the great scholars of the salaf, Sufyan ibn Uyaynah, a contemporary of Imam Malik, said,

الحديث مَضلة إلا للفقهاء

“Hadith are a source of misguidance except for the fuqaha.”
And the great tabi’i, Ibrahim an-Nakha’i said,

لو كانت الصحابة يتوضؤون 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 as them even though I read ‘As far as your elbows’ (i.e. in the Qur’an).”
I do not say any of this to denigrate hadith, for they are a beautiful resource and a record of many aspects of the life of the Messenger of Allah. To read them is to increase in love and knowledge of our Prophet, but we must not take our deen directly from them, nor from any other book. We must always remember that the deen is living and vibrant. What gave al-Madina the quality of al-munawara, of being illuminated, was its people and the lives they led. The more we seek to bypass those people and go straight to the source, the further we get from it, and the more confused and misguided we become. We ask Allah to keep us along the sirat al-mustaqim and always gives us access to people of knowledge who have a firm and unbroken chain of transmission right back to the Messenger of Allah.

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.

One of the things that prompted me to address this subject was something I read recently regarding the topic of praying two rakats to greet the mosque. Now it is unanimously accepted by all the Muslims that these two rakats, which are called tahiyyatul-Masjid, are strongly recommended when a person comes into the mosque so long as he meets certain preconditions including being in wudu and intending to sit or remain there. But where the difference of opinion comes is in the times when it is disliked or forbidden to pray, such as between Asr and Maghrib or during the Jumua khutba. There are some scholars who say that greeting the mosque is exempt from this prohibition and they quote the famous hadith of Sulayk al-Ghatafani, narrated by Jabir ibn Abdallah,

جاءَ سُلَيْكٌ الْغَطَفَانِيُّ يَوْمَ الْجُمُعَةِ ورسولُ اللَّه قَاعِدٌ عَلَى الْمِنْبَرِ، فَقَعَدَ سُلَيْكٌ قَبْلَ أَنْ يُصَلِّيَ، فقال لَهُ النَّبِيُّ : أَرَكَعْتَ رَكْعَتَيْنِ؟، قال: لَا، قَال: قُمْ فَارْكَعْهُمَا

“Sulayk al-Ghatafani came to the mosque for Jumua and found the Messenger of Allah sitting on the minbar. Sulayk then sat down without praying, so the Prophet said to him, ‘Did you pray two rakats’ He replied, ‘No’ so the Prophet said, ‘Get up and pray them.’” And in another version of the hadith, also from Jabir, he says,

إذا جاء أحدكم يوم الجمعة والإمام يخطب، فليركع ركعتين وليتجوز فيهما

“When any of you come to Jumua and the Imam is giving the khutba, do two rakats and keep them short.” This hadith seems quite explicit and yet Imam Malik and Imam Abu Hanifa did not act by it, and nor did the khulafa ar-rashidin and the vast majority of the Companions and the Salaf, which indicates it must have either been abrogated or been specific to Sulayk. Certain modern scholars disregard this, however, in their belief that sahih hadiths trump everything. One such scholar said,

لعل الإمام مالكاً لم تبلغه هذه السُنة، إذْ ثبت عنه أنه نهى عن الركعتين وقت الخطبة، وإذا صحّت السُنة عن رسول الله لم يَجز لأحدٍ أنْ يخالفها لقول أحد من الناس

“Perhaps Malik never heard about this Sunna, for it is confirmed that he forbade any rakats being prayed during the khutba. But if this sunna is sahih from the Messenger of Allah, then no one should go against it based on the word of any one man.” In other words, this man is saying that because he has access to this hadith and perhaps Malik did not, Malikis are required to abandon Malik’s position and take his. This type of modern scholarship is breathtaking in its arrogance and astonishing in its degree of assumption. 
Firstly, there is no proof or indication that Malik did not know about this hadith. It is narrated that some of the men of the tabi’in said, upon being informed of certain hadiths,

ما نجهل هذا ولكن مضى العمل على غيره

“We are not ignorant of them, but they are not what the people have acted upon.” 
And that applied even to hadiths that they themselves narrated. You must never forget that Imam Malik was a muhaddith as well as a faqih. He had a concern in preserving the words of the Messenger of Allah because of his deep reverence for them, even though they may not have comprised part of what was acted upon. Ibn al-Majishun, one of the great early Maliki scholars, said, when asked why they sometimes narrated hadiths but failed to act by them,

ليُعلَمَ أنّا على علمٍ تركناه

“So that people might know that we were in full knowledge of them when we left them   unacted upon.”
And secondly, there is no way that a single hadith is a stronger proof that the ‘amal of the people of Madina. What is this ‘amal of the people of Madina to which we refer? It is the continued practice of the people of knowledge of that city. Reflect for a moment on Imam Malik and where he lived and what he did. He spent his entire life in Madina and must have attended not just hundreds but thousands of Jumuas in the mosque of the Prophet. He will have witnessed what took place there and what was permitted and not permitted. And not only that, but he studied fiqh. Indeed, he was one of the greatest students of fiqh. He studied with more than nine hundred of the tabi’in, he studied with the greatest scholars of his day. He was one of the great muhaddiths, and memorised and learnt huge numbers of hadith. He had a tremendous love for the Messenger of Allah to the extent that he would not wear shoes in Madina for fear of treading with a dirty shoe on a place where the Messenger of Allah had walked. And yet you are saying that he was unaware of the ruling of something basic connected to the Jumua, the most public of acts of worship? You are saying that in his entire life doing Jumuas in that mosque and that city where ten thousand of the Sahaba remained after the death of the Prophet, the wrong practice continued to be done Jumua after Jumua. It is illogical and disrespectful in the extreme to make such suggestions about him. Rather, it makes more sense to suggest that, like his students and the many ulama of the Maliki madhhab that followed him, he knew the different arguments, but considered the prohibition to be stronger based on the actions of the Salaf as-Salih.
And based on the fact that the khutba is considered to take the place of two rakats of the Dhuhr prayer. Everyone agrees that laghw is impermissible at that time, even when it is something required by the deen, commanding the right and forbidding the wrong. For commanding your fellow to listen and be silent is an example of amr bi-l-ma’ruf as thr ahadith tell us. So why is tahiyyatul-Masjid exempt? It is even more of a distraction – you cannot pray and listen and the same time, for then you are not giving your prayer the concentration it deserves and requires. And you would not do tahiyyatul-Masjid if you came into the mosque and found the Imam already having begun the prayer of Dhuhr – you would join straight in with the Imam.
And even the way people do it is illogical – giving respect to the adhan by listening to it and not praying until it is finished, but not doing the same for the khutba. It is obligatory to listen to the khutba and only recommended to listen to the adhan.
It is our strongest desire to have a deen that is as close as possible to that of the Messenger of Allah, and the actions of an entire city and community in which he lived and prayed are the strongest proof and indication of his practice. That has been preserved by the ulama of each and every generation, regardless of their madhhab, and it is from them that we must take our knowledge. Do not be fooled or swayed by those who like to quote ayats and hadith and disregard the example and practices of their teachers and shuyukh. Those teachers are the ones who really know what the Sunna of the Messenger of Allah is. We ask Allah to protect His deen and protect the ulama, and strengthen our connection to them and through them to the Messenger of Allah.

إِنَّ اللهَ وَمَلَائِكَتَهُ يُصَلُّونَ عَلَى النَّبِيِّ، يَا أَيُهَا الذِينَ آمَنُواْ صَلُّواْ عَلَيْهِ وَسَلِّمُواْ تَسْلِيماً. اللَّهُمَّ صَلِّ وَسَلِّمْ وَبَارِكْ عَلَيْهِ وَعَلَى آلِهِ وَصَحْبِهِ  أَجْمَعِينَ. وَارْضَ اللَّهُمَّ عَنِ الْخُلَفَاءِ الرَّاشِدِينَ أَبِي بَكْرٍ وَعُمَرَ وَعُثْمَانَ وَعَلِيٍّ، وعن خديجة وعائشة وسائر أزواج النبي، وَعَنْ سَائِرِ الصَّحَابَةِ أَجْمَعِينَ، خُصُوصاً اِلأَنْصَارَ مِنْهُمْ وَالمُهَاجِرِينَ، وَعَنِ التَّابِعِينَ وَتَابِعِي التَّابِعِينَ وَمَنْ تَبِعَهُمْ بِإِحْسَانٍ إِلَى يَوْمِ الدِّينِ.

اللَّهُمَّ اهْدِ وُلَاةَ أُمُورِ المُسْلِمِينَ لِمَا يُرْضِيكَ وَلِاتِّبَاعِ سُنَّةِ نَبِيِّكَ صَلَّى اللهُ عَلَيْهِ وَسَلَّمَ، وَثَبِّتْ أَقْدَامَهُمْ عَلَى الصِّرَاطِ المُسْتَقِيمِ، وَأَصْلِحْهُمْ يَا رَبَّ الْعَالَمِينَ.

اللَّهُمَّ بَارِكْ عَلَى شَيْخِنَا، وَعَلَى أَمِيرِنَا، وَعَلَى جَمِيعِ أُمَرَاءِ وَزُعَمَاءِ المُسْلِمِينَ.  

اللَّهُمَّ بَارِكْ عَلَى المُسْلِمِينَ فِي هَذِهِ المَدِينَةِ، وَوَفِّقْهُمْ لِمَا تُحِبُّهُ وَتَرْضَاهُ يَا أَكْرَمَ الأَكْرَمِينَ. 

اللَّهُمَّ أَعِزَّ الإِسْلَامَ وَالمُسِْلمِينَ (3) وَاخْذُلِ الْكُفْرَ وَالْكَافِرِينَ، وَانْصُرِ المُجَاهِدِينَ فِي سَبِيلِ اللهِ. وَاجْعَلْ كَلِمََتَكَ هِيَ العُلْيَا وَكَلِمَةَ الْكُفْرِ هِيَ السُّفْلَى.

رَبَّنَا ءَاتِنَا فِي الدُّنْيَا حَسَنَةً وَفِي الآخِرَةِ حَسَنَةً وَقَِنَا عَذَابَ النَّارِ. 

إِنَّ اللهَ يَامُرُ بِالْعَدْلِ وَالإِحْسَانِ وَإِيتَاءِ ذِي الْقُرْبَى، وَيَنْهَى عَنِ الْفَحْشَاءِ وَالمُنكَرِ وَالْبَغْيِ، يَعِظُكُمْ لَعَلَّكُمْ تَذَّكَّرُونَ، وَلَذِكْرُ اللهِ أَكْبَرُ وَاللهُ يَعْلَمُ مَا تَصْنَعُونَ. وَقُومُواْ إِلَى صَلاتِكُمْ يَرْحَمُكُمُ اللهُ.