The Meaning of the Sunnah of the Rightly Guided Caliphs
Machine translationRead the Arabic original
The questioner:
I wanted to inform you of a question. The Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him) said, “Adhere to the Sunnah, the Sunnah of the Rightly Guided Caliphs.” Does the Sunnah of the Rightly Guided Caliphs differ from the Sunnah of the Messenger of Allah? No, because it is conjoined to theirs.
The Shaykh:
No, the Sunnah of the Caliphs is subordinate to the Sunnah of the Messenger (peace and blessings be upon him); it is subordinate to the Sunnah of the Messenger (peace and blessings be upon him). They do not bring a new Sunnah that differs from the Sunnah of the Messenger (peace and blessings be upon him). Even if we were to say that they, for example, introduced something new, the Messenger (peace and blessings be upon him) made it a Sunnah, so it became a Sunnah by the statement of the Messenger (peace and blessings be upon him). This is specific to them, specific to the Rightly Guided Caliphs: what they did became a Sunnah because the Messenger made it a Sunnah. So the Sunnah is what the Messenger (peace and blessings be upon him) stated to be a Sunnah; there is no doubt about that. And this is the apparent meaning: it became a Sunnah by the statement of the Messenger (peace and blessings be upon him), not merely by their own actions. Yes.
I wanted to inform you of a question. The Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him) said, “Adhere to the Sunnah, the Sunnah of the Rightly Guided Caliphs.” Does the Sunnah of the Rightly Guided Caliphs differ from the Sunnah of the Messenger of Allah? No, because it is conjoined to theirs.
The Shaykh:
No, the Sunnah of the Caliphs is subordinate to the Sunnah of the Messenger (peace and blessings be upon him); it is subordinate to the Sunnah of the Messenger (peace and blessings be upon him). They do not bring a new Sunnah that differs from the Sunnah of the Messenger (peace and blessings be upon him). Even if we were to say that they, for example, introduced something new, the Messenger (peace and blessings be upon him) made it a Sunnah, so it became a Sunnah by the statement of the Messenger (peace and blessings be upon him). This is specific to them, specific to the Rightly Guided Caliphs: what they did became a Sunnah because the Messenger made it a Sunnah. So the Sunnah is what the Messenger (peace and blessings be upon him) stated to be a Sunnah; there is no doubt about that. And this is the apparent meaning: it became a Sunnah by the statement of the Messenger (peace and blessings be upon him), not merely by their own actions. Yes.
Source
قناة «العلامة الدكتور صالح الفوزان»، 8 من 15|السنة ومكانتها|مواعظ وكلمات في الحرم المكي|صالح الفوزان|كبار العلماء — youtube.com (51:06)
The Arabic text is a machine transcription of the audio recording.