Answer to the doubt that the Sunnah is narrated by the Companions, who are human and may have made mistakes regarding the Messenger (peace and blessings be upon him).

The Shaykh : There was a question in the previous lesson regarding a problem raised by some people today concerning certain hadiths that appear to this group to be contrary to science, or at least not proven by science. We answered that in a way that resolves the issue and removes the doubt, if Allah wills. Among the issues the questioner raised in that referenced question was that those who narrated these hadiths from the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) are human like us; they are the Companions, human like us, so it is possible they made mistakes in what they attributed to the Messenger (peace be upon him). My brother 'Ayd is reminding me now; I recall that I answered this doubt, and he is reminding me that you actually did answer it, but the issue seems to require some explanation. I said at that time that these Companions are indeed human, but they are the ones who transmitted to us the entire Shari'ah. They are trustworthy, preservers, and upright. These are the same people who transmitted to us the hadiths that those people found problematic. It is not valid in the Shari'ah, nor in reason, to consider these people trustworthy in one aspect and not trustworthy in another, when both aspects share the same entry point of transmitting knowledge. These Companions transmit knowledge from the Messenger (peace be upon him): knowledge of what is lawful and forbidden, morals, and etiquette, and so on. They transmitted all of this from the Messenger (peace be upon him), so they are a proof even for these people. But when they transmit matters of the unseen, which science cannot reach to know their essence and reality, these Companions become untrustworthy? There is absolutely nothing of this in science. Therefore, we say that the science of hadith is an independent science with its own principles and rules. It is a science without which there is no way to know the events that passed before us and which we did not witness with our own eyes. This science does not exist in any nation since nations have existed on the face of the earth except in the Islamic nation. This is one of the ways in which Allah (Blessed and Exalted is He) preferred the nation of Muhammad (peace and blessings be upon him). This is a self-evident matter, as long as Allah (Mighty and Majestic) sealed all the Shari'ahs with the religion of Islam and sealed all the prophets and messengers with their seal, Muhammad (peace and blessings be upon him). This necessitates that Islam has sound principles and foundations upon which the transmission of those hadiths and sayings that the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) spoke is built, as long as He, our Lord (Mighty and Majestic), entrusted to him (peace and blessings be upon him) the explanation of this heavenly Qur'an to the people: This necessitates certain things. First, the first generation in whom the Messenger (peace and blessings be upon him and his family) was sent with his Qur'an, and who took charge of explaining and clarifying it to them, should be at a rare level of understanding first, and of precision and memorization second. Otherwise, how would the promise of the truthful Allah be fulfilled: If we assume that the Companions of the Messenger (peace be upon him) are like those whom the Messenger (peace be upon him) invoked woe upon when he said: Yes.

The questioner : Woe to the spouts of the people.

The Shaykh : The people, yes. "Woe to the funnels of the people" What are "funnels"? It is the plural of "funnel," the kind of funnel placed on a container, for example, to pour oil so that it does not spill. So "the funnels of the people" means that words pass through them and come out without settling in them. This is a wonderful metaphor from the words of the Messenger (peace and blessings be upon him). It means: Woe to those who listen to the statement but do not preserve it and do not follow it. Since Allah promised us that He revealed this Qur'an and that He is its Guardian, He must surely have appointed people to perform this religious duty. Therefore, the Companions were not funnels; rather, they were preservers. They are cited as an example in preservation such that no nation, in its individuals—not in its groups as groups of the nation of Muhammad (peace and blessings be upon him)—matches them in the precision of preservation and accuracy. Therefore, His saying, Blessed and Exalted is He, requires that this explanation be transmitted to preservers, and then these preservers have a third obligation, which is to transmit it to those after them so that the truthful news of Allah continues. Otherwise, would this divine news be true if the Companions had preserved this explanation and this clarification and these hadiths they received from the Messenger (peace and blessings be upon him), and then nothing followed? That is, if this explained Shari'ah in the words of the Messenger (peace and blessings be upon him) did not pass to the second generation, the Tabi'un? Of course, it would not be true. At that time, the saying of Allah, Mighty and Majestic, would not be true, and it is not possible for the matter to be such that it is not true; rather, it must be true. How is that? Through these intermediaries who transmitted to us the explanation of the Messenger (peace and blessings be upon him). The first generation is the noble Companions, and they were commanded to convey, as he (peace and blessings be upon him) said, Thus, he encouraged them to convey by making a supplication for them, saying, to the end of the hadith. If we doubt these Companions in their accuracy, in their truthfulness, it means that the believer's faith that the Qur'an is the word of Allah has no value. Why? First, this Qur'an, which is the word of Allah, did not come to us directly as revelation from the sky, but to the Messenger (peace and blessings be upon him), and he to the Companions, and the Companions to us in sequence. Second, this transmission of the words of the Qur'an has no value unless they also transmitted its meaning and its explanation, as you know from the previous verse, So the Companions transmitted two things: the explanation and the explained. The explanation is the Sunnah and the hadiths of the Messenger (peace and blessings be upon him), and the explained is the Noble Qur'an. Therefore, every Muslim must necessarily believe that these Companions must be preservers and truthful in what they transmitted from the Master of the Messengers. If a doubter doubts these people in one aspect of their narration, the other aspect collapses naturally, because it is not possible to say that this person is a preserver and not a preserver, because he combined two contradictions. If we move from the first generation to the second generation, the Tabi'un, we must also necessarily conclude that these Tabi'un performed the same duty that the first generation, the Companions of the Messenger (peace and blessings be upon him), performed. Otherwise, deficiency would enter the religion of Islam. If we say, as some people say—and this is the point—that these are human beings, they might make mistakes, they might forget, and so on. Yes, we say that rational possibility is broad in scope; it is possible. The Messenger of Allah (may Allah pray upon him and grant him peace), in his humanity, could be said to be like the least of human beings. But not every possibility is reality; not every possibility is reality. I say it is possible that the Lord of the Worlds creates a person with two heads, for example, because Allah is capable of all things. But did this happen? And a person might expand in assuming theoretically possible things and then not find them in the reality of life. So it is possible that these human beings make mistakes, but Allah, Mighty and Majestic, preserved a group of these human beings from falling into what would compromise the transmission of the message and the conveyance of the trust. First, these Companions, then those who came after them, the Tabi'un. There is no doubt that among the Tabi'un were people, as the history of hadith itself testifies. Among them were people, for example, who had poor memory, and then among them were those who were accused of dishonesty, and so on. But for the argument of Allah, Mighty and Majestic, to remain standing, Allah appointed for the narrators of hadith, all of them from the Tabi'un and those after them, the imams of hadith, to distinguish the preserver from the non-preserver and the truthful from the liar. This is a science, as I mentioned earlier, that has no existence in any religion other than Islam. Take any French, English, German, or any other history; do you find so-and-so is trustworthy and so-and-so is not trustworthy, so-and-so is a preserver and so-and-so is not a preserver, so-and-so's father testifies that his son lies, and the son testifies against his father in another category that he lies? These details in the science of al-jarh wa al-ta'dil (the critique and vindication of narrators) have absolutely no existence in any nation except in the nation of Islam. All of this is to realize the truthful news of Allah, So when the speaker says, simply, or rather crudely, "These are human beings, they might make mistakes," it is as if he has not read or heard anything about the efforts of the scholars of hadith throughout the long centuries, or he has erased it from his mind completely. Because he is like the foolish son who inherits a lot of money from his father, and because he did not work for it, he does not appreciate its value, and soon this money goes away from him, because the one who did not work for a thing does not appreciate it. And so these ignorant people say to you, "These are human beings, so they might make mistakes." Yes, my lord, these are human beings and they might make mistakes, but those who make mistakes were distinguished by this long history from those who do not make mistakes in narrating hadith, and those who lie in it were also distinguished from those who do not lie but are truthful. And so on. Therefore, there is no room for a person to come in this time and say, "The narrators of hadith, from the Companions and those below them, are human beings and they might make mistakes," because this means wasting and nullifying the efforts of these scholars throughout all the centuries. And this is, of course, foolishness beyond foolishness. Therefore, perhaps this amount is sufficient to refute this last doubt regarding the hadiths related to some matters of the unseen, or medical, or astronomical, or similar to that which science has not discovered. It is said: Since these hadiths were narrated to us by those Companions whose justice, accuracy, and preservation were established, and then received from them by those Tabi'un whose justice, accuracy, and preservation were established, and then the followers of the Tabi'un, and so on, until they were recorded in the books with their chains of narration, and these chains have their criteria that clarify whether this hadith is valid or not valid, since the matter is so, it is not easy for a person who is more ignorant than Abu Jahil in this science to say, "This hadith is unreasonable, and because the such-and-such Companion or such-and-such Tabi'i narrated it, he is a human being who makes mistakes." I will address this person in his language. I will say to him: Are you a human being who makes mistakes, or are you infallible? He will say, "No, I make mistakes." So what made the mistake of the people more likely than your mistake, so that you were certain that they were mistaken and you were correct, while you are one person, your mind is one, your judgment is one, and you are completely ignorant of this science? Therefore, this hammer destroys its owner before it destroys others. And as it was said, "The circles turn around the aggressor"