If one knows that the person he will enjoin good upon and forbid from evil will not accept it from him, should he still enjoin good and forbid evil?

Question : No, no. Does it require that one knows whether the one commanded or the one forbidden will accept or not? We mentioned this yesterday at the end of the lesson.

Answer : Yes, indeed. Is it required that one knows whether the one commanded and the one forbidden will accept or not? Yes, no, it is not required. Some scholars hold that if you know that he will not accept, and you command him and he does not accept, or you forbid him and he does not accept, then it is not obligatory for you to command or forbid. Yes.
And people need this greatly now in our present age. For example, everyone knows that shaving the beard is forbidden. Yes. If you command him not to shave, or if you forbid him from shaving, he will not accept, because he knows. So, does the prohibition drop here because we know that he will not accept, or does it not drop because our silence may lead to the increase of people committing this evil, and silence may be taken as evidence that it is not an evil? So we admonish them, as a means of excusing them and warning them.
This is a disagreement among the scholars. Some said that it is not obligatory in this case to command this person or forbid him, because he is not obedient to you. And this may be said regarding a specific person: it is not obligatory for you regarding the specific person whom you, for example, commanded several times but he did not act, or whom you forbade several times but he did not stop. So it may be said that there is no need for repetition, because if the man wanted to comply with your command or stop from your prohibition, he would have done so. And they attributed this to the saying of the Messenger (peace and blessings be upon him) This hadith, although it is weak, has corroborating narrations, and they argued with the saying of Allah the Exalted meaning that if it does not benefit, there is no need for reminding.
And it appears to me that there is a distinction in this. It is that if this is regarding a specific person, and you forbade him and he did not stop, or you commanded him and he did not comply, then it is not obligatory, because it is repetition without benefit. Rather, it results in some mockery of this man, and ridicule, and playing with you. You say to him, "My brother, do not shave the beard," "My brother, pray in congregation," "May Allah help us in that." Every time it is said to him, he says, "May Allah help us in that," and he is lying, because he did not seek help from Allah to do this commanded thing or to leave this forbidden thing, but he only says it to you in front of you. But as for the general case, no, rather it is obligatory for you, because perhaps this man has not been forbidden from his evil or commanded to do good. So it is obligatory for you to rebuke him. So the general, well-known, apparent matters that are not hidden from anyone, everyone knows them and everyone is commanded to do them, but he is not aware of them. And as for the hidden matters, these differ: if it is a specific person whom you commanded, then commanded, then commanded, but he did not act, then there is no need to mention the command, unlike the general case. And Imam Ahmad (may Allah have mercy on him) has two narrations regarding this: one narration that it is obligatory to rebuke and command, whether it benefits or not, and a second narration that if one suspects that there will be no benefit, then it is not obligatory to enjoin good or forbid evil. And the important thing is that this is an important chapter, and one should take care of it and look into the statements of the scholars, so that a person does not sin without realizing it by leaving what is obligatory upon him.