The Shaykh’s advice to observe the etiquette of starting with the rightmost person, then the next rightmost, when giving drinks, and mentioning the evidence for this, along with explaining the virtue of reviving the Prophetic Sunnahs.

The questioner : The first phrase is regarding the issue of the right side.

The Shaykh : It appears, it seems, that the issue of the right side and the attention paid to it is absent from the minds of many Muslims, especially in a gathering like this, where the one who presides over the assembly may be tempted by his position, even if he was pushed into it.
What may help in his being tempted is that those who care for him—and I do not say those who honor him—start by giving him a drink without the one giving the drink starting with the person on his right.
This is a trial, and that is from two aspects that become apparent from the preceding speech.
The first aspect is that he presides over the assembly, and presiding over assemblies, as it came in the hadith, , so presiding over assemblies is a type of slaughter, and among the types of slaughter is praise; praise is slaughter. He (peace and blessings be upon him) repeated this three times. Praise is slaughter with words, but praise may also be through actions, and among that is sitting in the front of the place. So this is a trial. This is, in reality, a trial from which one may be saved if Allah Mighty and Majestic protects him from being tempted by it.
This is first. And second: that he is contradicted in the Sunnah of his Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him), by starting to give him a drink before the person on the right of the one giving the drink.
It appears that this issue, even though it may take some of your time and perhaps some of your questions, but if my feeling—which I have been open about—that many people, it seems to me, still do not know the Sunnah in starting to give drinks.
Who is more deserving? And what supports this suspicion of mine is that wherever I sit in assemblies, I see this Sunnah being neglected. The reason for that is that the prevailing opinion of many scholars and virtuous people in the present age is that the one giving the drink starts with the elder of the people, then with the person on his right. This is the prevalent view, and this undoubtedly helps in the spread of contradicting the noble Prophetic rule which he (peace and blessings be upon him) specified in general hadiths and in a specific hadith, which is what we are now addressing. So starting with the elder of the people, among those elders who go to this starting, is a doubt whose appearance is strong. But the researching Muslim jurist, if he reflects on the hadith they are arguing with, will soon see clearly, without any doubt, that the matter is not as they say.
This doubt is what came in the Sahih of al-Bukhari and Muslim from the hadith of Anas ibn Malik (may Allah be pleased with him) , despite the fact that in this hadith there is this phrase which we can consider a rule that a Muslim must not deviate from by a hair's breadth .
Despite this explicit text, the doubt of those people is that the one giving the drink started with the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him and his family). So from here they said what they said, that the one giving the drink starts with the elder of the people, then with the person on his right, because in this case they combine the actual reality with the verbal wording. The reality is that the one giving the drink started with him (peace and blessings be upon him).
As for his saying, he said: .
It could have been said with this saying if the narration had been only like this, because the Muslim jurist must combine the ends of the hadith, its words, and its narrations. So they did that.

Another questioner : Peace be upon you.

The Shaykh : And upon you be peace. So they did that within the limits of this narration, but they missed another very important narration, which is also in the Sahih of al-Bukhari. We said that the hadith came in the two Sahihs from the hadith of Anas, and I say now that it also came in them from the hadith of Sahl ibn Sa'd al-Sa'idi. So the addition that those virtuous people missed, who said that the one giving the drink starts with the elder of the people, then with the person on his right, is as they say today, putting the dots on the letters and clarifying the thing that was absent from their minds, so they said what they said. What is it? Anas and Sahl said: .
The first narration started with "The Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him) came," and they stopped there, and they have the right to stop there. But the second narration is as if it answers a question that may be raised in some souls or hearts: why did the one giving the drink, regarding the first narration, start with the Messenger (peace and blessings be upon him)? The answer comes with the second narration: . So the answer to why he started is that the Messenger (peace and blessings be upon him) asked for a drink, meaning he requested to be given a drink, he requested to drink. This is the key to solving the problem and repelling the doubt .
And at that time, his saying (peace and blessings be upon him) in the first and the other narration: or the other narration: . So "the rightmost" becomes an absolute rule that includes every person, whether elder or young, knowledgeable or not. So if there is on the right of the one giving the drink someone, even if he is a Bedouin, the one giving the drink should start with him, and so on in sequence. And in this state, after this explanation, it is not said: "The hadith says that the one giving the drink started with the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him)," because you know the answer: that he started with him only because he requested a drink. And this is a very clear matter.
Two things confirm this:
One of them is that the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him and his family), when the cup containing water mixed with milk was brought to him and he drank from it, and some remained in it, he looked to his right and found Ibn Abbas or the Bedouin, and he looked to his left and found Abu Bakr al-Siddiq.
So who is the one giving the drink now? Is it the one who gave the Prophet the cup, or is the one giving the drink the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) himself? There is no doubt that the giving of the drink transferred from the first one giving the drink to the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him), because the cup is now in his noble hand. So he asks permission from the person on his right, because on his left is the elder of the people. Why does he ask permission? Because he wants to establish this rule: the rightmost, then the next rightmost.
So when the one asked for permission refused to give it, he gave it to him and settled the matter with 'Umar ibn al-Khattab and those like him by saying to him: "The rightmost, then the next rightmost." So the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) applied the rule himself when he became the one giving the drink. He did not start with the elder of the people as the people do today, but he started with the younger one. However, he drew the younger one's attention to an etiquette that we can call Islamic etiquette, which is preferring others, so that he might prefer Abu Bakr al-Siddiq over himself, based on the saying of Allah the Exalted: . But here the strong Islamic emotions intervene, and this emotion is represented in the saying of Ibn Abbas: "By Allah, O Messenger of Allah, I do not prefer anyone, even if it were Abu Bakr, over the leftover of your drink." So he gave it to him, and said: "The rightmost, then the next rightmost." This is the first matter that confirms. This is the other matter that confirms the first matter, where we said that the one giving the drink started with him (peace and blessings be upon him) only because he asked for a drink, and not because he was the elder of the people. Because if the cause for starting with the elder of the people by the one giving the drink were the case, the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) would have applied it when he became the one giving the drink, and he would have given a drink to Abu Bakr. Since he did not do so, then this cause is not a legal cause. That is, starting with the elder of the people is not a legal cause, and the legal cause is the rightmost, then the next rightmost.
The second thing I wanted to say after this other thing is that the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) applied the rule between Ibn Abbas and Abu Bakr. The second of the two is that when the one giving the drink started giving the drink to the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him), in addition to what we mentioned first, that it was because he asked for a drink, there is another thing that should be noted, which is that this one giving the drink did not come with a container full of drink wanting to give it to all the attendees. And you all know, if Allah wills, that the Companions of the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) were not provided abundantly with food and drink, especially milk. So there was not in that house, in that residence, the residence of Anas ibn Malik, enough milk to distribute it to all the people present.
So there was no giving of drinks in the sense of including all the attendees, as happens today regarding giving coffee or tea or any other drink.
So this confirms that starting with him (peace and blessings be upon him) was not except by his request, otherwise he would have brought what was sufficient to give drinks to everyone, and that was not sufficient for them at that time.
If we understand this reality, I hope you will not forget this sunnah (recommended practice) that died out with the passage of time, and that some people have fallen into contradicting it because they did not grasp the wording of the hadith and did not look into that phrase. The Messenger (peace and blessings be upon him) asked for rain, and then he did not notice what supports this meaning derived from asking for rain, from the Messenger’s (peace be upon him) asking for rain.
And by doing so, we revive one of the sunnahs (recommended practices) of the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him), and whoever revives it receives its reward and the reward of everyone who acts upon it until the Day of Resurrection, as stated in the authentic, well-known hadith, if Allah wills, which is known to everyone.