And on this basis, the hadith of Ibn 'Abbas is understood. He said: I heard the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him) hear a man performing the talbiyah, saying, "Labbaik Allahumma 'an Shubrumah" (Here I am, O Allah, on behalf of Shubrumah). So the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him) said:

The Shaykh : And on this basis, the hadith of Ibn 'Abbas is understood. He said: I heard the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him) hear a man performing the talbiyah, saying, "Labbaik Allahumma 'an Shubrumah" (Here I am, O Allah, on behalf of Shubrumah). So the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him) said: He said: A brother of mine or a relative. So the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him) approved his Hajj on behalf of this Shubrumah. But for a wisdom that Allah wills, the narrator of this hadith, Ibn 'Abbas or whoever is below him in the chain, failed to record the exact text of the pilgrim's answer to the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him) regarding "Shubrumah". This is a point of extreme precision, and I have not found any of the commentators, or any of those I have met with whom we have discussed this, to have noticed this point, or rather this subtle nuance. The Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him) asked the man, "Who is Shubrumah?" One narration says he answered, "A brother of mine or a relative." It is not correct for the one being asked by the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him) to answer with this hesitant response. If I asked a pilgrim whom I heard performing the talbiyah on behalf of so-and-so, "Who is this so-and-so?" and he answered me with this response, "A brother of mine or a relative," I would criticize him and say to him, "My brother, are we working in politics that you keep the identity of this person hidden from me? Tell me who he is, my brother, specify the answer for me, because I want to know whether it is permissible for you to perform Hajj on his behalf or not." Therefore, the answer of the one being asked by the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him) must have been very specific, such as saying, "This is my father, or my brother, or my mother, or my sister, or any other person." But to say, "He is a brother of mine or a relative," this is not from the one being asked by the Messenger directly; rather, this came from one of the narrators who failed to record the answer issued by the one being asked by the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him). Therefore, we still do not know, and will not know, for a wisdom that Allah the Mighty and Majestic wills, the identity of this person who is Shubrumah. However, the rules of the Shari'ah prevent a questioner from asking, or a speaker from saying, "So here is something that has been lost to the Muslims." We say: No, because it is not possible for a person to encompass all the subsidiary issues with knowledge, especially these subsidiary issues in which the later scholars from the various schools of jurisprudence have expanded, so they are in the thousands, if not millions. It is not possible for a person to encompass them, but rather they are encompassed by those foundational legal principles, some of which our Lord the Exalted specified in His Book and our Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) in his Sunnah, and others which the scholars have derived. Now, here we do not know the identity of this person, so we assume that he was like the father of that Khath'am woman who was unable to perform Hajj, so she performed Hajj on his behalf. We assume that he bequeathed that Hajj be performed on his behalf. If we assume he was occupied with trade and his wealth, this is difficult to imagine in the time of Prophethood and Messengership. Just as it is difficult for a person to imagine that there was someone in the time of the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him) who abandoned prayer, because that time was the purest time that has ever existed on the face of the earth, absolutely. Do we imagine a person abandoning prayer in the time of the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him), just as we imagine that there must be a procedure for dropping a prayer, as the later scholars do, or someone intentionally and deliberately abandoning Hajj, so we perform a substitute Hajj on his behalf, as they also do today? This is very difficult to imagine.