The Shaykh’s guidance to students on clarifying their questions and the method of the hadith scholars in distinguishing between them.
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The Shaykh : What appears from your question, first, is the division of the excuse of the one who is absent from the congregational prayer for a worldly matter.
The questioner : No, the first question is finished.
The Shaykh : It is finished.
The questioner : This is another question.
The Shaykh : I am saying this on this occasion because many of our brothers, the students of knowledge, ask a question and when the answer comes, they start speaking in a way that, at least for me, indicates that this is not a new question. Therefore, I tell them that your explanation must be clear. You must distinguish between one question and another so that one does not get mixed up with the other, using a dot, following the method of the hadith scholars.
The questioner: Yes.
The Shaykh : The muhaddithin, may Allah reward them with good, in their writings followed a wonderful convention: when a phrase ended, they used a circle instead of a dot.
The questioner : A circle...
The Shaykh : Without a dot. If the sentence ends, a circle separates it from the next sentence without a dot. The book is finished. Then, part of their precision is that they collate the book, either against the original if it has one, or against the author who dictated it to them. So whenever they finish collating a sentence, and this is the sentence, we say instead of a dot, a circle. They place a dot in the middle of the circle. What does this dot give? It indicates that the sentence is complete because of the presence of the circle, and that it was collated against the original because of the presence of the dot in the middle of the circle. And so I say you must put a dot, following the method of the hadith scholars, meaning it should be clear so that one question does not get mixed up with another, and so that the matter does not become confused for the answerer. Now, I understood that this is connected to your question. Why, then, did the scholars differ? If you consider this a separate question from the first question, then we erase what has passed of the question and answer, and we start now with a new question. What is its text with you?
The questioner : No, the first question is finished.
The Shaykh : It is finished.
The questioner : This is another question.
The Shaykh : I am saying this on this occasion because many of our brothers, the students of knowledge, ask a question and when the answer comes, they start speaking in a way that, at least for me, indicates that this is not a new question. Therefore, I tell them that your explanation must be clear. You must distinguish between one question and another so that one does not get mixed up with the other, using a dot, following the method of the hadith scholars.
The questioner: Yes.
The Shaykh : The muhaddithin, may Allah reward them with good, in their writings followed a wonderful convention: when a phrase ended, they used a circle instead of a dot.
The questioner : A circle...
The Shaykh : Without a dot. If the sentence ends, a circle separates it from the next sentence without a dot. The book is finished. Then, part of their precision is that they collate the book, either against the original if it has one, or against the author who dictated it to them. So whenever they finish collating a sentence, and this is the sentence, we say instead of a dot, a circle. They place a dot in the middle of the circle. What does this dot give? It indicates that the sentence is complete because of the presence of the circle, and that it was collated against the original because of the presence of the dot in the middle of the circle. And so I say you must put a dot, following the method of the hadith scholars, meaning it should be clear so that one question does not get mixed up with another, and so that the matter does not become confused for the answerer. Now, I understood that this is connected to your question. Why, then, did the scholars differ? If you consider this a separate question from the first question, then we erase what has passed of the question and answer, and we start now with a new question. What is its text with you?
Source
www.al-albany.com
The Arabic text is copied verbatim from the original source, without any edits.