The Shaykh’s remarks on the hadith: “Be modest before Allah with true modesty,” regarding its chain of narration and text.

The Shaykh : ... , , , As for what follows:
Indeed, the best of speech is the speech of Allah, and the best of guidance is the guidance of Muhammad (peace and blessings be upon him), and the worst of matters are their innovations, and every innovation is a religious innovation, and every religious innovation is misguidance, and every misguidance is in the Fire.
Our previous lesson was on encouraging the remembrance of death, shortening one’s hopes, hastening in deeds, the virtue of a long life for one whose deeds are good, and the prohibition of wishing for death. We read the first and third hadiths, and those after the third; what lies between them is weak, or very weak, or fabricated, up to the ninth hadith. This is a hasan li ghayrihi (good by virtue of other supporting narrations) hadith, and it is his saying—may Allah have mercy on him—and from ‘Abdullah ibn Mas‘ud (may Allah be pleased with him), who said: The Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him) said: . He said: We said, “O Prophet of Allah, we are indeed modest, praise be to Allah.” He said: “That is not it. But being modest before Allah with true modesty is that one guards the head and what it contains, and guards the belly and what it holds, and remembers death and decay. Whoever desires the Hereafter leaves the adornment of this world. Whoever does that has been modest before Allah with true modesty.” Al-Tirmidhi narrated it and said: “A strange hadith.” And this hadith, as I told you at the beginning of the discourse, is a hasan li ghayrihi, meaning that it has some corroborating narrations. Otherwise, this path through which al-Tirmidhi narrated it is a strange hadith, as he himself said. And he means by the word “strange” (gharib) when he uses it alone, without pairing it with the word “good” (hasan) or “authentic” (sahih), that it is weak. It is not so if he says “good and strange” (hasan gharib), and a fortiori if he says “authentic and strange” (sahih gharib); that has another meaning in the terminology of the scholars of hadith. If he says “authentic and strange” or “good and strange,” it means that it is unique from this path; at least he does not know it from any other source except this path. But this path itself, if he says “authentic and strange,” means that its chain of narration is authentic. If he says “good and strange,” it means that the chain of this path is good. But if he says “a strange hadith,” it means that it is weak. This is the terminology of the majority of the scholars of hadith. And there is a continuation of his statement where he said: “We only know it from the hadith of Aban ibn Ishaq from al-Sabah ibn Muhammad.” Al-Hafiz, meaning the author al-Mundhiri, said: “Aban and al-Sabah are disputed regarding their reliability.” That is, regarding their being graded as trustworthy. In reality, both of them are weak, but not severely weak; so it is suitable to support a hadith with one like it. And this specific hadith is of that type. Therefore, we said it is a hasan li ghayrihi. And it is in reality one of the hadiths that contains profound admonition for the Muslim, and it contains a new legal term, in that it gave modesty (hayaa) a legal meaning. And so his Companions (peace and blessings be upon him) were surprised when he said to them: , so their answer was: . So the Messenger (may the prayers and peace of Allah be upon him) clarified to them that he meant a specific modesty, a legal modesty. He said, in response to their saying: , ; meaning, when he (peace be upon him) said: , he did not mean the modesty known to people in general, but rather a specific modesty, which is a legal term. And that is his saying (peace be upon him): And this hadith, as you see, is from the concise words (jawaami‘ al-kalim). “Guards the head and what it contains”—what is in the head? It has limbs; it has visible limbs like the sight, the mouth, the nose, and the hearing. And it has something that does not appear to people but is known, which is the brain in which a person thinks. So when he (peace and blessings be upon him) said in his definition of true modesty, in the first phrase of this definition, “guards the head and what it contains,” he is as if saying: Guard your sight from looking at what is not permissible for you, guard your hearing from hearing what is not permissible for you, guard your mouth from uttering or accepting what is not permissible for you, and guard your mind and thinking from thinking about what is not permissible for you. This is part of an explanation of this word.