Miscellaneous by Al-Albani-257

The Shaykh : The second hadith is an authentic hadith, and it clarifies the Islamic method by which one should walk and proceed with the funeral. The author (may Allah have mercy on him) says: "And from 'Uqbah ibn 'Abd al-Rahman, from his father, that he was at the funeral of Uthman ibn Abi al-'As (may Allah be pleased with him), a well-known Companion, and we were walking with a light pace. Then Abu Bakrah (may Allah be pleased with him) caught up with us, raised his voice, and said: 'I have seen us, while we were with the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him), walking briskly.' Narrated by Abu Dawud and al-Nasa'i, and as we said, it is an authentic hadith."
First, in this hadith, the Sunnah is to carry the deceased on the shoulders and on foot. Second, it is not permissible to delay with it. This is one of the forms legislated by the Wise Lawgiver to achieve the aforementioned matter . Even in walking, it is not from the Sunnah to walk with it step by step, slowly and leisurely, but rather briskly. And with great regret, this Sunnah was abandoned before cars, before the beginning of carrying the deceased in a car. The reason for that is the negligence of people and their ignorance of the Sunnah of the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him). And this reason returns to two things, meaning ignorance of the Sunnah, which includes walking with the funeral briskly, neither delaying nor hurrying. What is the cause of this ignorance? First, the neglect by the majority of the Muslim scholars of studying the Sunnah; they were content with it and substituted it with the study of books of jurisprudence. When we draw attention to this bitter reality, which involves the Muslims' turning away from studying the Sunnah of the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him), we do not mean, as we have said repeatedly and contrary to what some people spread about us, that it is not necessary to read the books of jurisprudence and the books of scholars and jurists. But we mean something that Muslims should pay more and more attention to than the study of traditional jurisprudence. We mean that when we teach or study jurisprudence, we should take it as a means and not an end, a means by which we recognize the legal rulings mentioned in the Book and the Sunnah. It is not permissible for us in any way to make the study of jurisprudential books an end in itself, with no study beyond that. Those who do so study jurisprudence but do not study the Book and the Sunnah. This is what we deny and we are most angry about, because the saying of Allah, Blessed and Exalted is He, applies to such people, even if not in this context: Is there any Muslim, however deep his ignorance, who can say that the books of scholars and jurists are better, more excellent, more beneficial, and more jurisprudential than the words of the Messenger (peace and blessings be upon him) and his hadith? I do not think a Muslim would see this in his dreams. So why have we turned away from what is better to what is less good? This is what we want, and this reason, which is turning away from studying the Sunnah, gives us these bad results, which is the neglect of applying the Sunnahs in many of our life affairs.
The second reason is that we know that some of them study the Sunnah, but unfortunately, they openly say that we do not study it for jurisprudence, but for blessing. And if some of you have not heard this, you must have felt its effect in your life, because there is no one among them who says in a ruling, "Allah said, the Messenger of Allah said," unless that ruling agrees with their school of thought. As for citing a verse or a hadith that an imam of the Muslim imams held, but they have not taken that imam as their imam, that does not exist in this time.
So the cause of ignorance of the Sunnah returns to two things: the first is not studying it, and the second is that if there is someone who studies it, that study, as they openly state, is for blessing and not for jurisprudence in religion. That is, they have deprived themselves of a great good that the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him) mentioned in the hadith narrated by al-Bukhari and Muslim in their authentic collections, from the hadith of Mu'awiyah ibn Abi Sufyan and the hadith of al-Mughirah ibn Shu'bah: So jurisprudence in religion is, as al-Nawawi (may Allah have mercy on him) said:
"Knowledge is: Allah said, His Messenger said *** The Companions said; it is not deception
What knowledge has placed you in the foolishness of disagreement *** Between the Messenger and the opinion of a jurist.
No, and neither denying the attributes and negating them, out of fear of ta'til (denial of the divine attributes) and tashbih (likening Allah to creation) .
So another natural result of the cosmic Sunnahs of Allah, the Mighty and Majestic, is that people lose the practice of the Sunnah because of their total lack of studying it, or because some of them study it for blessing and not for jurisprudence. And in this is a reminder.
So the etiquette of accompanying the funeral is first that it is carried on the shoulders, and that its bearers walk briskly, not step by step, and not so fast that the funeral shakes in its coffin, but rather as Allah, the Exalted, said in a context other than this one as well: So walking briskly does not disturb the deceased in his coffin, nor is it so slow that it delays the good for the funeral when it is righteous, and delays the people from removing the evil from their shoulders when it is wicked.