Explaining the reality of the acceptance of righteous deeds, and mentioning the evidence of the Messenger of Allah’s (peace and blessings be upon him) concern for the rectification of words.

The Shaykh : And on this basis, if it is necessary that the deed be righteous along with the righteousness of the heart, and if words are among the deeds, then it is necessary that the words be righteous just as the deeds are. So, the presence of a righteous intention or purpose, as we mentioned earlier, does not make a defective deed righteous. Likewise, the presence of a righteous intention does not make a defective word that contradicts the Shari'ah righteous. We have many texts and hadiths from the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) in which his (peace and blessings be upon him) concern for rectifying words is manifested, just as he was concerned with rectifying deeds. Among these is his (peace and blessings be upon him) saying, and this is a very great and general principle: And what one has to apologize for. Clearer than this is his (peace be upon him) saying: This is the interpretation (ta'wil). The matter becomes clearer, and his (peace and blessings be upon him) practical handling of some words that came from some of the Companions by mistake, is evident. When the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) looked at the defect in those words, some of which you will hear, he did not look at the righteousness of the hearts of those who said them. Rather, he directed himself to rectifying those words, because he was obligated by the Lord of the Worlds to rectify deeds and words along with hearts. Among these is the hadith that Imam Ahmad (may Allah have mercy on him) narrated in his Musnad from the hadith of Abdullah ibn Abbas (may Allah be pleased with them both), that the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) was delivering a sermon one day when a man from the Companions stood up and said: "What Allah wills and what you will, O Messenger of Allah. What Allah wills and what you will." So he (peace and blessings be upon him) said with some annoyance and anger: And in the other narration: How much we hear now of the lack of response from many Muslims to this noble Prophetic guidance in this hadith. That is because many Arab Muslims have become like the non-Arab Muslims, meaning they do not know their Arabic language and do not distinguish between the one who says: "What Allah wills, then what you will," and the one who says: "What Allah wills and what you will." And most people, when they read or hear this hadith, do not understand the secret behind the fact that the Messenger (peace be upon him) became angry at that Companion when he said "What Allah wills and what you will," and the Messenger (peace be upon him) returned with disapproval and corrected the phrase for him, saying: "Say: What Allah wills alone, or What Allah wills, then what you will." The difference is that the conjunction "wa" (and) in the Arabic language implies combination. If the speaker says: "The king and the minister came," it means they came together. But if the speaker says: "The king came, then the minister," it means the king came first, then the minister came later. For this reason, the Messenger (peace be upon him) disapproved of that speaker's saying: "What Allah wills and what you will," because he paired the will of the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) and combined it with the will of Allah. And Allah says: So the will of Allah is the prevailing one, and the will of His servants is from the will of Allah, and after the will of Allah (Blessed and Exalted is He). If we return to that speaker who said "What Allah wills and what you will" and examine his (peace be upon him) saying: Meaning a partner, and we asked him: "Do you mean that the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) is a peer and partner with Allah?" He would say: "I seek refuge in Allah. I did not believe in him as a Prophet and Messenger except to escape from associating partners with Allah (Blessed and Exalted is He)." Nevertheless, the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) disapproved of that phrase from him, because it suggests the opposite of what the speaker intends. As they say, this is the crux of the matter from this hasty word. The crux of the matter is that the speaker did not intend to make his Prophet a partner with Allah in will and desire, meaning that nothing in this universe would be except by the will of Allah and the will of the Messenger of Allah. Far be it from this Companion, indeed far be it from any Muslim, to mean this explicit shirk (associating partners with Allah). But the phrase suggests this in Arabic. Of this nature is also what came in another authentic hadith, which contains a lesson for whoever takes heed, and it is: This hadith, and the one before it, and the one before that, and the one before that, all of it is for the rectification of words. Let not a person be deluded by saying, "By Allah, my intention is pure." My brother, may Allah bless your pure intention, but do you not want Allah to bless your pure words as well? It is necessary that the righteous word, as we said, be accompanied by the righteous deed. The care of the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) in guiding Muslims to excellence in speech and utterance reached a very strange matter that the majority of Muslims overlook, which is his (peace and blessings be upon him) saying: What does "luqisat" mean? It means "khabithat" (became impure). Linguistically, the meaning is the same. And the meaning is the same, but the impure word is impure in the custom of people. So let him say with a word that conveys the same meaning but is gentler in word and custom. An example from the reality of people: instead of the man saying: "My wife said to me so and so," or "My wife said to me so and so," he says: "They said to me in the house." The meaning is the same, but instead of mentioning his wife in front of a strange man and letting the mind work with that phrase, he distances himself in the wording and brings it closer in expression and meaning, saying: "They said to me in the house." This is an example that clarifies everything mentioned earlier. The point of this last hadith is that the Muslim, as came in some hadiths, is like a grain of wheat; the winds come and tilt it sometimes to the right and sometimes to the left, and sometimes it stands straight. This tilting is a metaphor for tilting with desires and lusts. Here, the person feels in this tilting that something of impurity has affected his self, so he wants to express it. So he does not say, and the expression should not be with the word "khabithat" (became impure), but with the word "luqisat." If this is the case of Islam in guiding the words of its followers, even in what concerns their impure souls, how is it permissible for a Muslim to bring a word that concerns his religion, his Prophet, or his Lord? It is even more necessary that this not be permissible. We said earlier that he (peace be upon him), as came, for the rectification of hearts and deeds, also came for the rectification of words, and that the righteous intention does not suffice for these other matters, which are the defective deeds and words.