Regarding the words of "Sayyid Sabiq" on the issue of image-making and his argumentation with two hadiths?

The questioner : As for "Sayyid Sabiq," he mentioned regarding image-making that it was forbidden in the early days of Islam because they were recently separated from the worshippers of idols, so he argued with the hadiths based on that. Then he said: Image-making was permitted, and he argued with the two mentioned hadiths; he said: What indicates the permission is what was narrated by Basir ibn Sa'id, from Zayd ibn Khalid, from Abu Talhah, from the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him).

The Shaykh : Excuse me, before you read the text, what does the permission indicate? Permission of what?

The questioner : Permission of image-making.

The Shaykh : Permission of image-making.

The questioner: Yes.

The Shaykh : And permission of possessing it, or possessing it without image-making, or image-making without possessing it?

The questioner : By Allah, my Shaykh, you are listening to the hadith.

The Shaykh : No, before I listen to the hadith, I want to understand the permission. Is the "al" here for comprehensiveness and inclusion, or for the specific thing in the mind?

The questioner : The permission of image-making and possessing it, he says.

The Shaykh : Good; please proceed.

The questioner : .

The Shaykh : Is it permissible, meaning, to make a mistake in the hadith of the Messenger? .

The questioner : .

The Shaykh: All right.

The questioner : He said: Then Zayd fell ill, so we visited him, and if there was on his door a curtain with images in it, I said to 'Abdullah - the foster son of Maymunah, the wife of the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) - "Did not Zayd inform us about the images the first day?" So 'Abdullah said: "Did you not hear him when he said: ?" And from 'Aishah, she said: We had a curtain with a statue in it.

The Shaykh : Be patient a little now so that the discussion does not become too broad for us.

The questioner: Yes.

The Shaykh : What does this hadith indicate? Possession or image-making?

The questioner : This indicates possession.

The Shaykh : And where is the image-making? You said: On image-making and possession!

The questioner : Because Sayyid Sabiq permitted it in these two hadiths.

The Shaykh : I do not want to hear anything but obedience to the instruction here. We do not want to hear names. The important thing is to keep the book, meaning, folded, with the name of its author, but you tell me: How is this hadith used as evidence for the permissibility of image-making, and the permissibility of possessing the image? That is, in brief, do you not notice with me that the hadith deals with possession and not image-making; correct?

The questioner: Yes.

The Shaykh : Good; here we stop at another point. Does the hadith give us permission to possess every image?

The questioner: No.

The Shaykh : And the claim is every image; so the claim has fallen; because two proofs... , did it become clear to you or not?

Another questioner : But - Shaykh - is it not possible that since it is permissible to possess this image in the cloth, it is permissible to make it?

The Shaykh: No.

The questioner : Why?

The Shaykh : Because I will say: This cloth is not permissible to buy; because image-making is forbidden, we do not doubt that. As for the one who doubts, we have another discussion with him. So whoever is with us on the fact that image-making is forbidden, at that time we say, reminding: . So you, O Muslim, when you enter a clothing store, and you find in it clothes with images of shapes and colors, and you buy from them for your wife and your son, let alone your daughter; there is no doubt that in this action you have helped the image-maker in his image-making, and this is not permissible Islamically. But we say: If a person bought a carpet or bought a curtain or any thing and it became clear to him that there was an image in it that he was not aware of; if he can remove it without destroying this cloth, this item, and causing in it a harm that makes it unusable, he enjoys it until it wears out and disappears. But that a Muslim intentionally buys a cloth with an image in it, this is like any person who buys something that is assistance in disobedience, this is not permissible.
The Shaykh: Good; so let us continue the topic. The hadith does not have permission for every image. Let us see what is in the hadith: Is there anything else in it?

The questioner : There is a second hadith.

The Shaykh : No, we need to finish the first one, my brother.

The questioner : No, there is nothing else.

The Shaykh : So this has no proof? There is no proof for the claim?

The questioner : There is no proof for the permissibility of the image.

The Shaykh : Good; I see that your companion on the side seems to have a question. Please proceed.

Another questioner : O Shaykh... regarding the images, and it did not come, meaning, in a specific form or a specific type of images; that is, general, including the permissible and non-permissible images?

The Shaykh : The discussion - may Allah bless you - in the book, is it about images in general, meaning the forbidden and the permissible, or about the images in which the scholars differed regarding their prohibition?

The questioner : Of course, the forbidden ones, we are done with them.

The Shaykh : Yes?

The questioner : The forbidden ones, even the permissible ones, there... exactly.

The Shaykh : Excuse me, you did not answer me this question. The question - may Allah bless you - is about images of veins, and images of mountains, rivers, and valleys; did he cite the hadith for the sake of these images?

The questioner: No...

The Shaykh : You say the discussion is general, and this is part of the general; so did he cite the hadith for the sake of which images?

The questioner : The images that have a doubt?

The Shaykh : Have a doubt or are there differences in their prohibition?

The questioner : The forbidden ones.

The Shaykh : Meaning images of living beings.

Another questioner : ... .

The Shaykh : Say, so where is the proof in this hadith for the permissibility, first, of image-making? And this we are done with, there is no proof in it. Then where is the proof in it for the permissibility of possessing these images - images of living beings -? Where is the proof in the hadith, according to what you want to say?

The questioner : In the beginning, they criticized him for the images.

The Shaykh: Good.

The questioner : Then after that... did you not hear when he said: ?

The Shaykh : Good; yes? Then what does he say in that?

The questioner : He forbade all of it, then he excepted this in his first statement, but this one did not hear it. So when he came to him... he said to him: You did not hear.

The Shaykh : Correct, but my brother, this is absolute from the scientific, usuli, and fiqhi aspect. is applied to this image in front of you. Of course, now it is not... because it is no longer there. And it is applied to any image of a living being, but it is torn, so it is an image in a cloth, correct or not? How do we interpret this exception in this hadith in a way that responds to the other hadiths and does not contradict them? Do we say: meaning: the complete image and a hanging image? And we know that the Messenger (peace and blessings be upon him) tore the curtain that the Lady 'Aishah had placed on her door. And when the Messenger (peace be upon him) came from the journey, he refused to enter and tore this curtain, and said: . So why did the Messenger (peace be upon him) tear it if he permitted it by his word, the image in the general sense? There is absolutely no text that permits the image in the general sense. But in this permission: as the Lady 'Aishah did. She took a curtain, cut it into pieces, and made from it cushions. And there were in these cushions traces of those images, so this is an image in a cloth, and indeed it became an image; therefore it is not permissible for us to take the hadiths and strike some of them against others, or to believe in part of the Book and disbelieve in part. Rather, we combine the hadiths as much as we are able to do so. This is what appears to me regarding your observation in particular: . Bring the hadith of 'Aishah, the second one remains.

The questioner : From 'Aishah, she said: We had a curtain with a statue of a bird in it. And when the one who entered, he faced it. So the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him) said: . So this means in the hadith... if it is authentic, I do not know if it is authentic?

The Shaykh : This one?

The questioner : Yes.

The Shaykh : No, it is authentic.

The questioner : Is it authentic?

The Shaykh : Yes.

The questioner : So we feel that there is no prohibition, because the Messenger did not forbid placing this, so he said: ; meaning, put it in another place?

The Shaykh: Yes.

The questioner : So the permission of keeping in a chain... a statue or.

The Shaykh : Good, is that all?

The questioner: Yes.

The Shaykh : This indeed does not benefit the prohibition; because the meaning of that is that the Messenger approved this bird, but not in front of him; because it distracts him. He approved it, but not in front of him. Approval is the weakest of the proofs of permissibility; because the ruling is taken from his saying (peace be upon him), or his doing, or his approval. And here we see that he approved this bird, no doubt. So does this approval indicate permissibility? Does everything that the Messenger (peace be upon him) approved remain on permissibility, or is it possible that a saying from his sayings comes to explain to us that this which he approved in one stage of his legislation has taken another ruling? Do you not think this premise is a reality in the Islamic Shari'ah?
I will bring you an example from early history: 'Ali ibn Abi Talib (may Allah be pleased with him). This hadith is in "Sahih al-Bukhari." While he was preparing to consummate his marriage with Fatimah, the daughter of the Messenger (peace be upon him), a she-camel of his came and knelt in front of the house of Hamzah. Then he left. When he returned, he found that the camel's belly had been slit open. When he asked who had slit it, he was told: "Hamzah." And he saw Hamzah drunk and intoxicated. So he went and complained of his matter to the Messenger (peace be upon him). The Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him) came and saw this pulpit. It appears that he rebuked Hamzah. What did Hamzah do but say to the Messenger (peace be upon him): "Are you not but slaves to our fathers?" If a person were aware of what he says... he was in a state of permissibility. Second, what did the Messenger (peace be upon him) do? Did he say to him: "Intoxicants are forbidden, and you have become drunk?" No, he remained silent. Why? Because the time for the prohibition of intoxicants, which the Arabs had been afflicted with in their pre-Islamic age of ignorance, had not yet come. The same is said about images and what is far less than that. So when we read this hadith, we undoubtedly take it as an approval of permissibility. But do we use this hadith to negate the hadiths of prohibition? This is not permissible according to any scholar of the Muslims, absolutely.
For that reason—that is, to regulate the logic of the jurist, so that he does not lean to the right or the left, and does not strike some hadiths against others, or take what he desires from them and leave what he does not desire—scientific principles of usul al-fiqh (the principles of jurisprudence) were established. Among them is that if two contradictory texts come from the category of the accepted—that is, the established hadith—it is obligatory to reconcile them by one of the means of reconciliation. These means were most fully explained by al-Hafiz Zayn al-Din al-'Iraqi in his "Hashiyah" (commentary) on "Muqaddimat 'Ulum al-Hadith" (Introduction to the Sciences of Hadith) in more than one hundred ways. The jurists, over time, found more than one hundred ways to reconcile two contradictory texts. Number one: if it is possible to reconcile two, three, and so on, you must find a reconciliation in the end by one of these means. Al-Hafiz Ibn Hajar al-'Asqalani summarized the discussion of them in his book "Nukhbat al-Fikr" (The Essence of Thought), a book on terminology that is very condensed, yet its commentary was filled with knowledge. He says in the section on accepted hadith: if two contradictory hadiths come from the category of the accepted, it is obligatory to reconcile them by one of the means of reconciliation. He is silent; the details remain in the commentaries, as we mentioned earlier. If reconciliation is not possible, one proceeds to considering the abrogating and the abrogated, knowing which is earlier and which is later. If that is not possible, one proceeds to tarjih (preference); that is, it is said—for example—this is from my side as clarification. What does tarjih mean? It means that the stronger is taken and the weaker is left. So if two contradictory hadiths come to you and it is not possible to reconcile them by any of the many means of reconciliation, more than a hundred, and then it is not possible to know which of them is the abrogating and which is the abrogated, it is obligatory to proceed to tarjih by the stronger. If one of them is hasan (a good hadith) and the other is sahih (an authentic hadith), the hasan is left and the sahih is taken. If one of them is a sahih hadith with a single chain and the other is a sahih hadith that is mutawatir (mass-transmitted) or mashhur (famous), the sahih hadith with a single chain is left and the sahih hadith that is mutawatir or mashhur is taken. If one of them is a sahih hadith that is mutawatir and the other is mutawatir, the hadith that is mutawatir and famous is left and the hadith that is mutawatir is taken. These are three ways, three stages. He said: If tarjih is not possible, the researcher pauses and entrusts the matter to his Lord, .
We now return to one of the means of reconciliation, which is the first stage for combining two contradictory hadiths: looking to see if one of them is a verbal hadith and the other is an action hadith. The first was said by the Messenger (peace be upon him) with his tongue and directed as an address to his ummah (the Muslim community), and the other was done by him in his own person. But if this contradicts that, this is left and the verbal hadith is taken.
If two contradictory hadiths come, both from the speech of the Messenger and not from his action, the examples here are actually many and very useful. For example, what people are afflicted with today due to their distance from fiqh (Islamic jurisprudence): one of them drinks while saying: It is said: "My brother, do not drink while standing. The Messenger prohibited drinking while standing. Indeed, in another narration in Muslim: he forbade drinking while standing. Indeed, in a hadith of Ahmad, he saw a man drinking while standing and said: He said: "No, O Messenger of Allah." He said: . You tell him these hadiths say to you: "My brother, al-Bukhari narrated that the Messenger drank while standing." The speech is left and the action is taken.
Why did they say: "If speech contradicts action, speech is preferred over action"? Because the action is subject to and surrounded by many possibilities. First, his action may have been in a state of permissibility, like the example we gave about intoxicants earlier. Second, it is possible that his action was for an excuse. Finally, it is possible that this was a particularity among his particularities. As long as he said to the ummah: —I forgot to tell you when he said to the man: he said to him: —, it is not said to a person who did something permissible. So if drinking had been permissible, he would not have been strict with this drinker nor would he have said to him: as the Messenger (peace be upon him) threatened in some occasions the spouses not to mention the name of Allah when they meet, so that they do not share with Satan. This is a very serious matter.
So the point is: if action contradicts speech, speech is preferred over action. But the problem is if two verbal hadiths come that are contradictory. At that time, a very important rule comes: they said: the prohibitive is preferred over the permissive.

The questioner: The prohibitive means.

The Shaykh: The prohibitive, from the prohibition of prevention, but this is their terminology.

The questioner: Yes.

The Shaykh: The prohibitive is preferred over the permissive. Now here, what is it? First: we have action and speech. We apply the first rule: if action contradicts speech, speech comes out stronger than action. Second: if the speech here contains an explicit statement of the permissibility of this thing, the prohibition of it would not come, so we prefer the prohibition; because we understand from the prohibition that the prohibited thing is in a state of permissibility, otherwise it would not be prohibited. And this is also a very important rule, which is: "Every Shari'ah text that contains a prohibition of something implies under it, and then this thing... either passed through a state of permissibility," except for shirk (associating partners with Allah), which cannot be imagined to be permissible at any time. And so, if we notice, for example, the prohibition of gold, we all know that gold was worn; even some of the Companions continued to wear gold after the death of the Messenger (peace be upon him), among them al-Bara' ibn 'Azib. They said to him: "How are you wearing it?" He said: "This is a ring that the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him) put on me, and I would not leave something that the Messenger (peace and blessings be upon him) put on me." Whether he was excused or not is another discussion, but he did this even though there are what? Hadiths that prohibit. He prohibited wearing gold, he prohibited the gold ring. We implicitly understand that these things he prohibited were being done, and this is a very obvious matter, because before the Messenger (peace be upon him) came and it was said to him: and so on, was there halal (lawful) and haram (forbidden)?
The audience: There was not.

The Shaykh : Is there any issue? If he comes and says: "This is forbidden absolutely," we understand that before it was forbidden, it was lawful; it was permissible, and then it was prohibited. When we understand these basic principles of jurisprudence, it becomes easy for us to understand that this hadith, first, in terms of its chain of narration, is in "Sahih Muslim." Second, it contains an acknowledgment. Yes, the Messenger did not come to abolish the polytheistic, shirk-based means all at once, but rather through gradual stages. How much more so when we have many hadiths, not just one, in which the image-maker is cursed, and there is a prohibition on keeping images, and a prohibition on hanging curtains with images in them, or making a pillow with an image in it. All of this clearly indicates to us that this hadith was during the stage of absolute permissibility, and then the legislation came, and the legislation included the prohibition of image-making and the prohibition of keeping images. And regarding keeping them, it said: , and whoever is afflicted with a garment containing an image, if he is able to change it, that is his obligation. Is there anything?

The questioner : ... .

The Shaykh : And whoever is afflicted with a garment containing an image and is able to change it, that is his obligation. We all know the story of Jibril's (peace be upon him) promise to the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) that he would come to him at a specific time. The Messenger (peace be upon him) was seen sad and distressed, so Umm Salama (may Allah be pleased with her) said to him: "What is the matter, O Messenger of Allah?" He said: . And when Jibril was outside the room, he went to him, and Jibril (peace be upon him) said to him: . They looked and found a puppy belonging to al-Hasan and al-Husayn that had been brought in for them to play with under the bed. It was taken out, and its place was sprinkled with water. They looked and found a curtain with images of men in it, so it was changed until it became like a tree, and then Jibril (peace be upon him) entered.
Therefore, it is not permissible to hang images, as indicated by many hadiths. And such a thing is attributed to the time of permissibility. And Allah is sufficient in fighting.