If initiating the salam is a confirmed recommended practice, how do we understand the hadiths that make it obligatory, such as the hadith “Spread the salam”?
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Question:
May Allah reward you, Honorable Shaykh. A questioner says: If initiating the salam is a confirmed recommended practice, how do we understand the hadiths that make it obligatory, such as his saying (peace and blessings be upon him), “Spread the salam,” and his saying, “The young one greets the elder”?
Answer:
Yes, this is by scholarly consensus that initiating the salam is a recommended practice. Is it not obligatory? Allah (Exalted and Majestic is He) says:[An-Nisa 4:86] And to my knowledge, this is a point of consensus that initiating the salam is a recommended practice, and that returning it is obligatory. Yes.
May Allah reward you, Honorable Shaykh. A questioner says: If initiating the salam is a confirmed recommended practice, how do we understand the hadiths that make it obligatory, such as his saying (peace and blessings be upon him), “Spread the salam,” and his saying, “The young one greets the elder”?
Answer:
Yes, this is by scholarly consensus that initiating the salam is a recommended practice. Is it not obligatory? Allah (Exalted and Majestic is He) says:
And when you are greeted with a greeting, greet [in return] with one better than it
وَإِذَا حُيِّيتُم بِتَحِيَّةٍ فَحَيُّوا بِأَحْسَنَ مِنْهَا
Source
قناة «العلامة الدكتور صالح الفوزان»، [156 -954] إذا كان إلقاء السلام سنة مؤكدة فكيف نحمل الأحاديث التي توجب ذلك مثل حديث «أفشوا السلام»؟ — youtube.com
The Arabic text is a machine transcription of the audio recording.