What is the ruling on one who insults the Companions?

The questioner: A question with two parts, meaning, to what extent...

The Shaykh: ... is the key.

The questioner: To what extent is the hadith authentic: ? And what is the ruling on the prohibition here?

The Shaykh: What is the difference between the first and second question?

The questioner: I mean, let us assume that a person has fallen into insulting the Companions; what is the ruling that follows from this insult?

The Shaykh: The ruling is that he has opposed the prohibition. That is, when he (peace be upon him) said: ; if he insults, that means he has opposed the prohibition and has not obeyed the command of the Messenger (peace be upon him), which necessitates ceasing from what he prohibited, which is not to insult his Companions. And Allah the Exalted said: .

The Shaykh: And on this occasion, I must draw attention to the fact that the command in this hadith, meaning his (peace and blessings be upon him) prohibition of all Muslims from insulting any of his Companions, does not mean, from the perspective called by the jurists of usul al-fiqh (the principles of jurisprudence) the "concept of the opposite" (mufaham al-mukhalafah), that this hadith has a concept of the opposite. Because it is not permissible to insult any Muslim; it is not permissible to insult any Muslim on earth. Because the Muslim shares in the status of the one who insults, and it is supposed that he is also a Muslim like him; it is not permissible for him to insult a Muslim. Because the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him), who said: , also said: . Tubba' had already embraced Islam. So Islam alone is sufficient to deter the Muslim who is committed to the rulings of his religion from directing his insults at a Muslim like him. And a fortiori, it is not permissible to insult a Muslim from among the Companions of the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him), even if he was, as some of the Tabi'un (the generation after the Companions) said, "an Arab who cursed his own heels." Because you know that those who believed in the unlettered Prophet and followed him, and who were of the first group, meaning of the first century, about which the Messenger (peace and blessings be upon him and his family) said: , there is no doubt that the people of the first century, who are the Companions of the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him), and others as well, who shared with the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) in his lifetime, but it was not possible for them to come to him, yet they believed in him unseenly; all of these are from the people of the first century. So if the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) prohibited the Muslim from insulting Tubba' for a legal reason, which is that he had already embraced Islam, then a fortiori the Messenger (peace and blessings be upon him) would prohibit the insulting of any of the people of the first century, because they are the best of people, and then... so a fortiori the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) would prohibit the insulting of any of the people of the first century who came or sent a delegation to the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) and believed in him, then returned to their village, to their town, to their desert. And even more so, and more so, and more so, that any of the Companions who have a precedence in Islam, or who have efforts in jihad in the cause of Allah, and the like, be insulted. So these are all degrees, and although they vary, they fall under the prohibition of insulting any Muslim, even if it were Tubba' who did not meet the Messenger (peace be upon him) but embraced Islam like the first believers. How much more so, since it has come in Sunan Abu Dawud and Musnad Imam Ahmad and others that the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) admonished—I think—Abu Tamim al-Juhaymi, or something like that; it is al-Juhaymi.
The student: Abu Tamimah.

The Shaykh: Abu Tamimah al-Juhaymi.
The student: al-Hujaymi.

The Shaykh : What?
The student: al-Hujaymi.

The Shaykh: al-Hujaymi. Well done. He said to him, as an admonition: . So the matter is concluded. If the Messenger says: , then I say this detail because I know that among the sayings of some of the commentators is that this hadith directed the prohibition to some of the Companions who were late in their Islam, when they had uttered abuse of some of the earlier ones who were previous in Islam. This has some validity as a statement. But if you remember this sequence in relying on other hadiths, the last of which prohibits insulting any Muslim, then we know the misguidance of many of the Shi'ah who raise their voices and openly insult not only some of the Companions of the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) who are said to be among those who embraced Islam in the Year of the Conquest, but they go beyond that to insulting the elite of the Companions of the Messenger (peace be upon him), such as Abu Bakr, 'Umar, 'A'ishah, and the like. The important thing is that directing oneself to insult any of the Companions of the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him), whatever their ranks, is a Shi'ah misguidance, if we do not say it is Rafidah (Twelver Shi'ah) misguidance, if we do not say something else of what we hear today in the Muslim world, even from this vile al-Siqaf, who declared—and I heard one of the Americans who had embraced Islam, and the one mentioned was sitting, saying that this one says that Mu'awiyah is in the Fire and insults him with ugly insults—so I refuted him in his presence, "and he did not give an answer," as they say. So it is necessary for every Muslim to guard his tongue from harming the honor of any of the Companions of the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him), and to remember with me:
"Guard your tongue, O human being, *** lest it bite you, for it is a serpent."
And better than this is the saying of the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him): , and this is sufficient.
The student: May Allah reward you with good, and may Allah bless you.

The Shaykh : And you.