The Known and the Unknown . . and the Muslim’s Obligation Toward Them.

The Shaykh : All praise is due to Allah; we praise Him, seek His help, and seek His forgiveness. We seek refuge in Allah from the evils of our own souls and from the badness of our deeds. Whoever Allah guides, no one can mislead, and whoever He misleads, no one can guide. I bear witness that there is no god but Allah alone, with no partner, and I bear witness that Muhammad is His slave and His Messenger (peace and blessings be upon him and his family and his Companions and those who follow them with excellence until the Day of Judgment).
As for what follows:
This is the first meeting of this year, 1417, and it takes place in the month of Muharram on the night of Sunday, the sixteenth of the month. As is known to everyone, a monthly meeting takes place on the night of Sunday, the third of every month. We ask Allah the Exalted to make this year a year of good and blessing, in which Allah gathers the Muslims together, reconciles their hearts, and prepares for them a matter of guidance in which good is enjoined and evil is forbidden. Our meeting tonight will be about enjoining good and forbidding evil. Therefore, we must first know what is good (ma'ruf) and what is evil (munkar). Is good what people have agreed upon as good and evil, sin and reward, or is good what Allah and His Messenger commanded? The answer is the latter, meaning that good is what Allah and His Messenger commanded, whether it is known among people or unknown, because some of what is good is not known by people, and some of what is good is known, praise be to Allah. But the good for which the command to enjoin it was given is what Allah and His Messenger commanded, and evil is what Allah and His Messenger forbade. This is the criterion for good and for evil; this is the criterion for good and the criterion for evil. Based on this, enjoining good, which is a recommended practice (sunnah), becomes a recommended practice, and enjoining good, which is obligatory, becomes obligatory. For example, if you see a person neglecting the congregational prayer, it is obligatory to command him to do it, because he neglected an obligation. And if you see a person neglecting the regular voluntary prayer (rawatib) of the midday prayer, for example, it is a recommended practice to command him to do it. Commanding is not the same as conveying or informing. It is obligatory for a scholar to convey the Shari'ah, both its obligatory and recommended aspects, based on the saying of the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him): . But commanding is something else; commanding is a duty and a request to act, and forbidding is a request to refrain. A person commands another or forbids another. As for calling (da'wah), one does it, for example, among people, either in a mosque or a community, and calls to Allah Mighty and Majestic.