Mentioning the hadith of the splitting into (73 sects), and clarifying the saved sect, and explaining the Sunnah by its three names: verbal, practical, and tacit.

The Shaykh : His saying (peace and blessings be upon him): If so, this hadith details He said, “You will split into seventy-three sects,” and then he (peace and blessings be upon him) explained what our Lord alluded to in the exception in the previous verse. Who are these the merciful ones? He said, in the completion of the hadith: And in the other narration, which explains and clarifies the first narration, he said: So, the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him) has given us the description of the saved group, which is one of seventy-three groups. This means that a Muslim should not be content with merely saying, "There is no god but Allah, and Muhammad is the Messenger of Allah," because this community that will utter this noble word will split into seventy-three groups, all of which will be in the Fire except for one. Therefore, a Muslim must be extremely eager to know the description of this group: its creed, its jurisprudence, its conduct, how they treat one another, how they deal with their opponents and enemies, and so on. Where can a Muslim find knowledge of these matters concerning the saved group? This is the point I wish to dwell on and elaborate upon somewhat, because we have stated that there is no disagreement among Muslims that Islam is "There is no god but Allah." However, reality bears witness that the fewest of Muslims are those who strive to examine themselves to see if they belong to the saved group or not. How can one know the saved group? Perhaps we all know, or some of us know for certain, but perhaps all of us present here know the following verse. Allah the Exalted said, addressing His Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him): ، the Noble Qur'an, where the Exalted said: The first verse states that our Lord, Mighty and Majestic, says in it: O Muhammad, this remembrance, the Qur'an, why is it that you are to recite it to the people only? It is necessary to know from where he recited it; had he not recited it, we would not have known it, nor would it have reached us. But is his obligation, peace and blessings be upon him, limited to merely reciting the Qur'an to the people and having them learn it from him, as has happened, or is there another obligation that our Lord, Mighty and Majestic, commanded him to perform? The answer is yes, as He said: In this verse, there are two words or two terms that can be pointed to. The first is the one that is made clear in this verse, which is the Qur'an. The second is the one that does the clarifying in this verse, which is the Messenger (peace and blessings be upon him). So, the Qur'an that is made clear is the speech of Allah, and the speech of the Messenger that is made clear is his hadith, which is his Sunnah. Therefore, there is no way for us to know what the saved sect was upon except by turning to the Sunnah of the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him and his family). This is also a fact in which no Muslim differs at all, meaning that the Messenger (peace and blessings be upon him) took upon himself the clarification of the Qur'an. One of the clearest examples of this is that we pray five prayers every day, yet we do not find in the Noble Qur'an the five prayers as the general Muslims understand them today, praying five prayers at five times. Likewise, we do not find in the Noble Qur'an the details of the rak'ahs: Fajr is two rak'ahs, Zuhr and 'Asr and 'Isha' are four, and Maghrib is distinguished from all these prayers by being three rak'ahs. Where did we learn these details? From the Clarifier, who is the Messenger (peace and blessings be upon him), in his clarification, that is, in his Sunnah (peace and blessings be upon him and his family). His Sunnah, as the scholars of hadith mention, is divided into three categories: his saying (peace and blessings be upon him and his family), his doing, and his approval. His saying, his doing, and his approval. His saying (peace and blessings be upon him and his family) is known: everything that passed through his tongue (peace and blessings be upon him) related to that clarification. This is his statement, as it came in the hadith of 'Abdullah ibn 'Amr ibn al-'As (may Allah be pleased with them both), that he was in a gathering with a mixture of polytheists, and this 'Abdullah ibn 'Amr (may Allah be pleased with him) was, among all the Companions, the most eager to write down what he heard from the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him), out of his desire to preserve it. So the polytheists raised an objection to him in that gathering, saying to him: "You are writing down what the Messenger of Allah says in a state of contentment and anger." As if they were saying: It is reasonable that you write down what he says in a state of contentment, but that you also write down what he says in this anger? They disapproved of this intense eagerness to write. It seemed as if a doubt entered his mind, so he hastened to the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) and mentioned to him what the polytheists had said to him. What did he (peace and blessings be upon him) do but raise his finger to his mouth and say to him: This is part of the Sunnah: the saying of the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him). The second part is his action; everything he (peace and blessings be upon him) did contains guidance and light, though there is no room now to detail it. The third part is what he (peace be upon him) saw others do and then remained silent about, thereby approving it. This falls within the Sunnah to which we should hold fast, without distinguishing between his saying, his doing, and his approval. Following this explanation of the Sunnah comes an explanation of something mentioned in the hadith of the Saved Sect. The situation is natural, and praise be to Allah, the weather is pleasant. He (peace be upon him) said, and I hope you will recall with me his statement when asked about the Saved Sect. He said: He did not limit himself to his saying, to his saying That is, what he was upon in terms of the verbal, practical, and tacit Sunnah. He added to that, “and my Companions.” So we cannot turn a blind eye to what the Companions of the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) were upon. Why? If you consider the third category of his (peace be upon him) Sunnah, which is that he sees another person performing an action or doing a deed and then approves it, that thing becomes part of the Sunnah. Who was the one performing this action? It was not him (peace be upon him); it was his Companions. So a Muslim cannot live a sound Islamic life unless he knows the Sunnah of the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) and knows what his Companions were upon. From this, you realize with me the importance of what came in the hadith of al-'Arba' ibn Sariyah (may Allah be pleased with him), in which he said: “The Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him) gave us a sermon that made our hearts tremble and our eyes shed tears. We said, ‘O Messenger of Allah, give us a befitting advice.’ He said: Now connect this statement with the previous verse. He (peace be upon him) said: then he added to it and said: And in the other hadith In this way, you will find the hadiths responding to one another, with each one taking hold of the next, and all of them, in their totality, draw our attention to the fact that whoever truly wishes to be among the saved sect must know not only the Sunnah of the Messenger (peace and blessings be upon him), but also what his noble Companions were upon. This last point is one that most Muslims today are unaware of. They all speak of the Sunnah of the Messenger of Allah, and they all call for following the Sunnah of the Messenger of Allah, even though they differ in applying this Sunnah because they differ in the extent of their knowledge of it, whether much or little. But as Allah the Exalted said: Most of them do not pay attention to what came in the hadith of the Saved Group and in the hadith of al-'Arba' ibn Sariyah, which also commands something additional to the Sunnah of the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him), namely the Sunnah of the Companions, and especially that of the Rightly Guided Caliphs among them. Does the Noble Qur'an, which has enumerated everything related to the principles and rules of the religion, contain even a single phrase that points to this meaning that I have gathered and compiled for you from numerous and numerous hadiths? The answer is yes. Allah the Exalted said: We note here a very, very, very important point, which is that Allah (Mighty and Majestic) was able, being the Wise, the All-Knowing, the All-Powerful, to say, for example, “And whoever opposes the Messenger after the guidance has become clear to him, We will turn him away from what he turned away from and cast him into Hell, and evil is the destination,” without appending to the opposition of the Messenger the phrase: Allah was fully capable of that, so why then? What is the wisdom behind His (Mighty and Majestic) appending His statement: upon I think you have understood the secret behind this from the hadiths we have presented to you. The secret is that these early believers are the ones who transmitted to us what they heard from the mouth of the Messenger (peace be upon him) fresh and unprocessed, and they found it applied in his time (peace be upon him) with practical application. Therefore, they are able to understand what Allah revealed to His Prophet in His Book and what His Prophet (peace be upon him) uttered in his own words better than anyone who comes after them. How could it be otherwise? The matter is as he (peace be upon him) said: Take an example. Allah the Exalted said: In language, the word "hand" is used to mean the palm, and it is used to mean the forearm along with the palm, and it is used to mean the forearm along with the upper arm. Do you see how we are to understand "hand" in this verse? Just as there is in the verse of tayammum How do we understand the hands here? Do we understand them as they are there, or in a broader sense? If we do not return to the explainer referred to in the first verse, We differed and became confused because the Noble Qur'an was revealed in a clear Arabic language, and the word "hand" has these many meanings. But when we return to the Companions and find that they reported that the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) did not cut off the thief's hand from the shoulder, nor from the elbow, but rather from the wrist. Likewise, when we return—and I ask you to pay attention to what I am saying—to the authentic hadiths, and this word "authentic" is one I must address in detail soon, if Allah wills. And if we return to the authentic hadiths that the Companions of the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) transmitted to us from his words and actions regarding the verse of dry ablution (tayammum), we found that they saw the Messenger (peace and blessings be upon him) wiping with his two palms, and they heard the Messenger (peace and blessings be upon him) say: [Q1] and it is not two palms, and he wiped with them his palms and his face. So we cannot at all do without the way of the believers, because these believers are the ones who transmitted to us the Shari'ah of Allah as practiced by the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him), and they understood this Shari'ah with a correct understanding. Therefore, the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) praised them and said: [H1] and he said: [H2] and he said: [H3] because they struggled in the path of Allah, migrated in the path of Allah, left their homelands in the path of Allah, and accompanied the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him), and they knew the Shari'ah of Allah as we have said, closely and intimately. So they are, as it came in some hadiths, the people with whom no companion is made wretched. So every person who wants to be of the saved group must not be satisfied with only knowing the Qur'an and the Sunnah. If he is satisfied and is able to reach an understanding of the Book and the Sunnah only, even with this brevity, he will lose out on being of the saved group, being upon what the Companions (may Allah be pleased with them) were upon. So we can now summarize what has passed of the speech in detail and explanation, to build upon this summary a new research... We found that they saw the Messenger, and when we return to the authentic hadiths that the Companions of the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) transmitted to us from his words and actions regarding the verse of tayammum: we found that they saw the Messenger wiping with his palms and heard the Messenger say: and not two, and he wipes with them his forearms and his face. Indeed, we absolutely cannot do without the path of the believers, for these believers are the ones who transmitted to us the Shari'ah of Allah, applied by the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him), and they understood this Shari'ah with a correct understanding. Therefore, it is no wonder that the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) praised them and said: He said: He said: The statement of the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him): “You will split into seventy-three sects.” This hadith details what our Lord indicated in the exception in the previous verse. Who are these blessed ones? He said, in the completion of the hadith: In another narration, which explains and clarifies the first narration, he said: Thus, the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him) has given us the description of the saved sect, which is one of the seventy-three sects. This means that a Muslim should not be content with merely saying, “There is no god but Allah, Muhammad is the Messenger of Allah,” because this Ummah that will utter this noble word will split into seventy-three sects, all of which will be in the Fire except for one. Therefore, a Muslim must be extremely eager to know the description of this sect: its creed, its jurisprudence, its behavior, how they treat one another, how they deal with their opponents and enemies, and so on. Where can a Muslim reach knowledge of these matters concerning the saved sect? This is the point I wish to dwell on and elaborate upon in some detail, because we have said that there is no disagreement among Muslims that Islam is “There is no god but Allah.” However, reality bears witness that the least of Muslims are those who are eager to examine themselves to see if they are of the saved sect or not. How can one know the saved sect? Perhaps we all know, or some of us know with certainty, but perhaps all of us present know the following verse. Allah the Exalted said, addressing His Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him): [The Noble Qur'an], where Allah the Exalted said: The first verse states that our Lord, Mighty and Majestic, says: “O Muhammad, this is the Reminder, the Qur'an. Why is it to be recited to the people? It must be recited from where? If he (peace be upon him) had not recited it, we would not have known it, nor would it have reached us. But is his duty (peace be upon him) limited to merely reciting the Qur'an to the people and having them learn it from him, as has happened? Or is there another duty that our Lord, Mighty and Majestic, commanded him to perform? The answer is yes, as He said: In this verse, there is something to which we can point with two words or two terms. The first in this verse is the clarified one, which is the Qur'an. And in this verse is the clarifier, which is the Messenger (peace and blessings be upon him). Thus, the clarified Qur'an is the speech of Allah, and the clarifying speech of the Messenger (peace and blessings be upon him) is his Hadith and his Sunnah. Therefore, there is no way for us to know what the saved sect was upon except by turning to the Sunnah of the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him). This is also a fact in which no Muslim disagrees at all, namely that the Messenger (peace and blessings be upon him) took charge of explaining the Qur'an. One of the clearest examples of this is that we pray five prayers every day, and we do not find in the Noble Qur'an the five prayers as the general Muslims understand them today, praying five prayers at five times. Likewise, we do not find in the Noble Qur'an the details of the rak'ahs: Fajr is two, Zuhr, 'Asr, and 'Isha' are four, and Maghrib is distinguished from all these prayers by being three rak'ahs. Where did we learn these details? From the clarifier, the Messenger (peace and blessings be upon him), in his explanation. Thus, in his Sunnah (peace and blessings be upon him), his Sunnah, as mentioned by the scholars of Hadith, is divided into three categories: his saying (peace and blessings be upon him), his doing, and his approval. His saying, doing, and approval. His saying (peace and blessings be upon him) is known: everything that passed through his tongue (peace and blessings be upon him) concerning that explanation. This is his saying, as it came in the hadith of 'Abdullah ibn 'Amr ibn al-'As (may Allah be pleased with them both). He was in a gathering with a mix of polytheists, and this Ibn 'Amr (may Allah be pleased with him) was the most eager of all the Companions to write down what he heard from the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him), out of his desire to preserve it. So the polytheists in that gathering raised an objection to him. They said to him: “You write down what the Messenger of Allah says in a state of contentment and anger.” As if they were saying: It is reasonable that you write down what he says in a state of contentment, but that you also write down what he says in this anger? They disapproved of this intense eagerness to write, as if a doubt had entered his mind. So he hastened to the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) and mentioned to him what the polytheists had said to him. What did the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) do but raise his finger to his mouth and say to him: [He said: “Write, for by Him in whose hand is my soul, I do not say anything except what is revealed to me.”] This is from the Sunnah: the saying of the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him). The second category is his doing. Everything he did (peace and blessings be upon him) contains guidance and light, in a detail that there is no room to mention now. The third category is what he (peace be upon him) saw done by others and then remained silent about and approved. This falls into the Sunnah that we should hold onto. We do not distinguish between his saying, his doing, and his approval. After this explanation of the Sunnah, there is an explanation of something mentioned in the hadith of the saved sect. Now, the natural situation, and praise be to Allah, the atmosphere is good. He (peace be upon him) said, and I hope you will remember with me his statement when he was asked about the saved sect. He said: [He said: “It is that upon which I am and my Companions are.”] He did not limit it to his saying, [“It is that upon which I am,”] meaning what he is upon of the verbal, practical, and approving Sunnah. He added to that, “and my Companions.” Therefore, we cannot turn a blind eye to what the Companions of the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) were upon. Why? If you reflect on the third category of his Sunnah (peace be upon him), which is that he sees another person doing an action and performing a deed, and then he approves it, this thing becomes part of the Sunnah. Who was doing this action? It was not he (peace be upon him); it was his Companions. Therefore, a Muslim cannot live a correct Islamic life except by knowing the Sunnah of the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) and knowing what his Companions were upon. From this, you know with me the importance of what came in the hadith of al-'Arba' ibn Sariyah (may Allah be pleased with him), in which he said: “The Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him) gave us a sermon that made our hearts tremble and our eyes shed tears. We said, ‘O Messenger of Allah, this is like a farewell, so give us advice.’ He said: [He said: “I bequeath to you the Book of Allah and the Sunnah of your Prophet.”] Now, link this statement with the previous verse. He (peace be upon him) said: [He said: “I leave among you two matters; you will not go astray as long as you hold onto them: the Book of Allah and my Sunnah.”] Then he connected to it and said: [He said: “And the Sunnah of my Companions.”] And in the other hadith: [He said: “The best of my Ummah are my generation, then those who follow them, then those who follow them.”] Thus, you find the hadiths responding to one another, and each taking hold of the other, and all of them, in their totality, draw our attention to the fact that whoever truly wants to be of the saved sect must know not only the Sunnah of the Messenger (peace and blessings be upon him) but also what his noble Companions were upon. This last point is one that most Muslims today are unaware of. They all say “the Sunnah of the Messenger of Allah,” and they all call for following the Sunnah of the Messenger of Allah, even if they differ in applying this Sunnah, because they differ in the extent of their knowledge of it, whether much or little. But as Allah the Exalted said: [He said: “But most of them do not know.”] Most of them do not pay attention to what came in the hadith of the saved sect and in the hadith of al-'Arba' ibn Sariyah regarding the command for something additional to the Sunnah of the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him), which is the Sunnah of the Companions, and especially the Rightly Guided Caliphs among them. Is there in the Noble Qur'an, which has enumerated everything concerning the fundamentals of religion and its rules, even a single phrase that points to this meaning that I have summarized and gathered for you from many, many hadiths? The answer is yes. Allah the Exalted said: [He said: “And whoever opposes the Messenger after the clear proof has come to him, and follows other than the way of the believers, We will turn him to what he has turned to and We will admit him into the Hellfire, and wretched is the destination.”] We observe here a very, very, very important observation, which is that Allah, Mighty and Majestic, was able, and He is the Wise, the All-Knowing, the All-Powerful, to say, for example, “And whoever opposes the Messenger after the clear proof has come to him, We will turn him to what he has turned to and We will admit him into the Hellfire, and wretched is the destination,” without connecting to the opposition of the Messenger the phrase: [“and follows other than the way of the believers.”] Allah was capable of that. So why? What is the wisdom of His, Mighty and Majestic, connecting His saying: [“and follows other than the way of the believers”] to [“opposes the Messenger”]? I think you have known the secret of that from the hadiths we have cited for you. The secret is that these early believers are the ones who transmitted to us what they heard from the Messenger (peace be upon him) fresh from his mouth, and they found it applied in his time (peace be upon him) in a practical application. So they are able to understand what Allah revealed to His Prophet in His Book and what His Prophet (peace be upon him) uttered with his own words. They are able to understand that better than all who come after them. How could it be otherwise? The matter is as he (peace be upon him) said: [He said: “The best of my Ummah are my generation, then those who follow them, then those who follow them.”] Take an example. Allah the Exalted said: [He said: “Cut off the hands of the thief, male and female, as a recompense for what they have earned; it is an example from Allah. And Allah is All-Knowing, All-Wise.”] The word “hand” in the language is used to mean the palm, and it is used to mean the palm with the forearm, and it is used to mean the forearm with the upper arm. See how we are to understand “hand” in this verse? Just as there is in the verse of tayammum: [He said: “O you who believe! When you rise to pray, wash your faces and your hands to the elbows...”] How do we understand “hands” here? Do we understand them as they are there, or in a broader sense? If we do not return to the clarifier referred to in the first verse, we will differ and be confused. That is because the Noble Qur'an was revealed in a clear Arabic language, and “hand” has these many meanings. But when we return to the Companions and find that they transmit that the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) did not cut the hand of the thief from the shoulder, nor from the elbow, but rather from the wrist. Likewise, when we return, and I hope you pay attention to what I am saying, to the authentic hadiths, and this word “authentic” I must address shortly, if Allah wills. And when we return to the authentic hadiths that the Companions of the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) transmitted to us from his saying and doing concerning the verse of tayammum: [He said: “O you who believe! When you rise to pray, wash your faces and your hands to the elbows...”], we find that they saw the Messenger wiping his palms and heard the Messenger say: [He said: “Wash your faces and your hands to the elbows, and wipe your heads and your feet to the ankles.”] It is not two forearms, and he wipes with them his palms and his face. Therefore, we absolutely cannot do without the way of the believers, because these believers are the ones who transmitted to us the Shari'ah of Allah applied from the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him), and they understood this Shari'ah with a correct understanding. So it is no wonder that the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) praised them and said: [He said: “The best of my Ummah are my generation, then those who follow them, then those who follow them.”] And he said: [He said: “I have left among you two matters; you will not go astray as long as you hold onto them: the Book of Allah and my Sunnah.”] And he said: [He said: “The best of my Ummah are my generation, then those who follow them, then those who follow them.”] That is because they struggled in the path and migrated in the path of Allah, and they left their homelands in the path of Allah, and they accompanied the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him), and they knew the Shari'ah of Allah, as we said, closely and intimately. So they are, as it came in some hadiths, the people with whom no companion is made wretched. Therefore, everyone who wants to be of the saved sect must not be content with merely knowing the Qur'an and the Sunnah. If he is content and if he is able to reach an understanding of the Book and the Sunnah only, even with this brevity, he will lose out on being of the saved sect, being upon what his Companions (peace be upon him) were upon. Thus, we can now summarize what has passed of the speech, in detail and explanation, to build upon this summary a new research... That is because they struggled in the cause of Allah, migrated in the cause of Allah, and left their homelands in the cause of Allah. They accompanied the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him) and knew the Shari'ah of Allah, as we have said, intimately and closely. Therefore, they are, as it came in some hadiths, "the people whose companion does not become wretched." So, it is incumbent upon everyone who wants to be among the saved sect not to be content with merely knowing the Qur'an and the Sunnah. If he is content with that, and if he is able to reach an understanding of the Book and the Sunnah only, even with this brevity, he will lose out on being among the saved sect. He must be upon what the Companions of the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him) were upon. So, we can now summarize what has passed in detail and explanation, so that we can build upon this summary a new inquiry...