Explanation of his statement: “And he was reclining, so he sat up and said: ‘Beware of false speech and false testimony,’ and he kept repeating it until we said…”

The Shaykh : Then Abu Bakrah said, completing the hadith: The Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him) was reclining—taking his ease and resting, may Allah’s peace and blessings be upon him, by reclining—so he sat up; the natural sitting, concerned with what the people would report to him; namely, the narrator’s statement: The Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him) said: This is one of the greatest of the major sins. The Messenger (peace be upon him) mentioned it in this hadith after associating partners with Allah and after undutifulness to parents, and he gave importance to false testimony and false speech greater than the importance he gave to the preceding traits, undutifulness to parents and associating partners with Allah; for he (peace be upon him) was reclining like this, so he sat up when he reached this phrase, and said: ; so he kept repeating it until we said: I wish he would stop. He repeated it, not once or twice, but many times, until his Companions (may Allah’s peace and blessings be upon him) wished, out of concern for him, that he would stop and rest from this repetition.
This action of the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him) indicates that false testimony and false speech—that is, lying—are among the major sins, and among the matters that have a profound effect in corrupting society; for many people, because of false testimony and false speech, mix up lineages; they claim that so-and-so is the husband of so-and-so, and she is forbidden to him, so the judge rules based on this false testimony and he has intercourse with her, and offspring may result from that, and the offspring would be children of zina. This is also said regarding wealth and other rights. All of this is an effect of false testimony and false speech. It is as if the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him), by sitting up after having been reclining, was pointing to the social harms that result from the spread of false speech and false testimony in a society. Then, this hadith mentioned three types of associating partners with Allah (Mighty and Majestic), while there are other hadiths that include other types in addition to these three mentioned types.

The questioner : Major sins?

The Shaykh : Among the major sins, yes.
How is that? For example, it is mentioned in some hadiths—and perhaps some of that will come up tonight—that sorcery is mentioned, and fleeing from the battlefield, and the like of major sins; is there a contradiction between this hadith which limited itself to mentioning three of the major sins, and other hadiths in which seven of the major sins are mentioned, and perhaps some of them explicitly stated by saying: ; is there a contradiction between a hadith that mentions three of them and a hadith or other hadiths that mention more than that?
The answer: No, there is no contradiction, because the number has no conceptual implication in the language; especially when another text comes with a number greater than the first number. The number has no conceptual implication. If an Arab says: I have three dirhams, or I have three houses; this does not negate that he has more than that, but it negates that he has less than that. So when the Messenger (peace be upon him)—for example—says: this does not negate that the preference is more than twenty-five degrees, but we are not permitted to speak without knowledge. So when the hadith comes with the number twenty-five, we stop there. But if we see another hadith that mentions twenty-seven instead of twenty-five; we do not say: there is a contradiction between the two numbers, between twenty-five and twenty-seven...