An example illustrating that there is no way to understand the Book and the Sunnah except in accordance with the understanding of the righteous Salaf, citing the saying of the Exalted: “The Most Merciful has risen above the Throne.”

The Shaykh : I want to be brief in the examples. The example is Here, there are two positions among the scholars of tafsir, both from the Salaf and the Khalaf.
The Salaf say meaning He rose above, and this is supported by dozens of texts from the Book and the Sunnah. Sufficient for you now is the saying of Blessed and Exalted is He: And in submission to His command, when we prostrate and place our foreheads on the ground of our Lord, we say, “Glory to our Lord, the Most High.” The Khalaf said, “No, the meaning of is not that He rose above, but rather that He took control. This is linguistically false, contrary to the Salaf, and also contrary to those who interpreted this meaning among the Khalaf, because they said that istawa means istawala (took control) while excluding the meaning of overcoming. Look, they excluded the meaning of overcoming, and this is part of their far-reaching misguidance. They noticed that when they say, “The Most Merciful has taken control of the Throne,” the meaning is that there was another who overcame Him and He became dominant and in control. So Allah took control, especially if we consider some of the Qur’anic verses in this verse: Yes, this is a great misguidance. So what did they say? Because they knew that their situation is like the saying in some proverbs, “He was under the rain, then he moved under the gutter.” That is, they fled from the word of the Salaf, “He rose above,” because in their misguidance and ignorance, they understood that “He rose above” means He sat and settled, and Allah is free of that. Rather, “He rose above” means He has the attribute of being above all creation, and He is free of time and free of place. So when they fled from the word “He rose above” to the word “He took control,” they noticed that “He took control” implies a meaning that is not befitting Allah, Mighty and Majestic. Therefore, they said, “With the exclusion of the meaning of overcoming, if you call the people of the verse as the Salaf interpreted it, and say as they said, ‘He rose above,’ it is a rising above that befits His Majesty and Greatness, just as we say in the questions about the attributes, where we do not say based on the saying of the Exalted: There is nothing like Him in any of the attributes, including meaning He rose above, a rising above that befits His Majesty and Perfection. The report of Malik ibn Anas in this regard is well known to you. I said that they first deviated from the language because they used metaphor instead of the literal meaning, and the literal meaning is possible, as we said earlier. If they said, “He took control, a taking control that befits Him,” when they said to exclude the meaning of overcoming, they should also say as the Salaf said, “He rose above, a rising above that befits Him, Blessed and Exalted is He.” So they contradicted the language, meaning they moved from the literal to the metaphor without necessity. The second thing is that they contradicted the Salaf, which is our argument, and this is the subject of our discussion now: that we understand the Book of our Lord and the Sunnah of our Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) by the command of the Messenger, not only because they are more knowledgeable than us in the Arabic language, but because we were also commanded to receive the Book and the Sunnah with their understanding, not with the understanding of the Khalaf. What is the evidence? The evidence is the saying of Blessed and Exalted is He: Many people, especially students of knowledge, do not pay attention to the rhetorical point in this phrase: So it is as if the verse is understood on the possibility that it was not mentioned. So now let us imagine that this phrase was not mentioned in the verse. So the verse would be: “And whoever opposes the Messenger after the clear proof has come to him, and turns away from the path of the believers, We will turn him to what he has turned to and We will cast him into Hell, and evil is the destination.” Did we lose anything or not? The answer is undoubtedly we lost something, but the loss is not linguistic, rather it is a loss of meaning. What is the loss of meaning? Here, as they say, the point is, or as it is said, the crux of the matter is that Allah, Mighty and Majestic, when He said in understanding the texts of the Book and the Sunnah, meaning it is not permissible for you, O people of the Khalaf, to be independent and to separate yourselves in understanding the Book and the Sunnah as you see within the limits of your knowledge, however high and elevated it may be. It is not befitting for you to be independent in understanding the texts of the Book and the Sunnah if you contradict the path of the believers, because Allah, Mighty and Majestic, threatened whoever contradicts the path of the believers just as He threatened whoever opposes the Messenger. So opposing the Messenger includes following a path other than the path of the believers. From here, this point appears in the saying of the Exalted: This is a verse, and there are hadiths that confirm and clarify this meaning, as is always the case with the Sunnah and the Noble Qur’an. Do not forget the previous verse: And Allah, Mighty and Majestic, revealed to the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) two types of revelation: the recited Qur’an, which brings one closer to Allah, Mighty and Majestic, through its recitation, and the unrecited revelation, which is the hadith of the Messenger (peace be upon him). And his hadith, as you know, is divided into three categories: saying, doing, and approval. Therefore, the scholars describe it as unrecited revelation. The Qur’an is distinguished from this revelation by being recited. The evidence is that in the Sunnah there is what confirms this blessed phrase: Among that is the hadith of the sects, and the hadith of the sects has been mentioned by us repeatedly, so we will not lengthen the session by mentioning it, but I remind you of its end, where it was said to him (peace and blessings be upon him), “What is the saved sect out of the seventy-three sects, one of which is saved?” He said: