What does the verse indicate: “And whoever opposes the Messenger after the clear proof has come to him and follows other than the way of the believers…”

The Shaykh : I repeat this to your ears and then I support what I am telling you: Our call should not be limited to the Book and the Sunnah only; rather, it is obligatory for us to add to that what Allah (Blessed and Exalted is He) pointed to in His Noble Book, and then our Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) took charge of explaining that in his authentic Sunnah, starting from it and responding to His address to him with His saying: Among what he (peace and blessings be upon him) explained from the speech of the Lord of Mankind is His saying in the Qur’an: The point of this verse is His saying (Mighty and Majestic) in it: This verse draws attention to the fact that Muslims in every time and place must not deviate from the way of the believers, where the Lord of the Worlds said: So what is the ruling of this clause conjoined to what came before it, which is: ?? It would have been beneficial for the verse to be without this clause: “And whoever opposes the Messenger after the clear proof has come to him, We will turn him to what he turned to and cast him into Hell, and evil is the destination.” If the verse were like this, in this brevity, the meaning would be sound and straight, with no blemish whatsoever. But when Allah (Mighty and Majestic) conjoined to His saying: He said: He intended thereby to draw the attention of the believers who fear opposing the Messenger after the clear proof has come to them; it is also obligatory upon them to fear deviating from the way of the believers. How is it possible to deviate from the way of the believers while following the Sunnah of the Master of the Messengers? The matter is well known to the people of knowledge that the texts of the Book and the Sunnah can, in some cases, be interpreted in a certain way, and this interpretation is presented to the believers in the Book and the Sunnah as the intended meaning, and this interpretation is wrong because it contradicts the Sunnah of the believers and the way of the believers. To confirm this meaning contained in this conjoined clause, namely His saying (Exalted is He): We find that our Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) added this addition in some authentic hadiths as his interpretation of this Noble verse. For example, you have read or heard the hadith of the seventy-three sects, in which the Messenger of Allah (may Allah bless him and his family and grant him peace) said: Here the point is: “O Messenger of Allah, which is this saved sect among the seventy-three sects? One of them is the saved one—” Here you find that the Prophet (may Allah bless him and his family and grant him peace) did not limit himself to his saying: but rather conjoined to it his saying “and my Companions.” What is the secret of that? This hadith is considered an interpretation of the verse we mentioned earlier and repeated to your ears repeatedly to establish in your minds the intended meaning of His saying (Mighty and Majestic) in it: The Prophet (may Allah bless him and his family and grant him peace) came in the hadith of the sects and in the explanation of the saved sect, describing it with two descriptions, not one. The first description is that it is upon what the Messenger was upon. But he came with a second and final description, which is his saying (peace and blessings be upon him): “and my Companions.” This hadith with this wording is an interpretation of the other narration, which is the most famous and strongest in chain, which says in answer to the questionThe questioner : about the saved sect. He (peace and blessings be upon him) said: So his saying this is an interpretation of the previous verse: The way of the believers is the community (al-Jama'ah), and the community is the way of the believers. This means that it is obligatory upon the scholars of Muslims—especially in this late crisis—not to concern themselves only with studying the Sunnah and knowing what the Messenger of Allah (may Allah bless him and his family and grant him peace) was upon, and this is a necessity, because the interpretation of the Qur’an does not stand and there is no way to it except by the path of the Sunnah, which is the explanation of the Qur’an, as we mentioned earlier. It is not sufficient for the scholar to be content with studying the Qur’an and the Sunnah in the present age; rather, he must add to that a third study, which is to know what the Companions of the Prophet (may Allah bless him and his family and grant him peace) were upon of guidance and light, because they received the explanation from the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) through the Qur’an and the explanation of the Messenger of Allah (may Allah bless him and his family and grant him peace) in the verbal Sunnah—often by his action or his approval. These matters cannot be reached except by knowing the athar (reports) of the righteous Salaf. Therefore, this hadith also meets with another hadith—which you have always heard or read in the books of hadith—namely the hadith of al-‘Arba’ ibn Sariyah (may Allah be pleased with him), who said: “The Messenger of Allah (may Allah bless him and grant him peace) gave us a sermon, and our hearts trembled and our eyes shed tears. We said, ‘O Messenger of Allah, it is as if it is the sermon of one taking leave, so advise us.’ He said: Here the point is that he (peace and blessings be upon him) did not limit himself to this word of his, “Adhere to my Sunnah,” but rather conjoined to it, as he did in the hadith of the sects: In the hadith of Jabir (may Allah be pleased with him), he added: The point is that you hear in this hadith that the Prophet (may Allah bless him and his family and grant him peace) made salvation and deliverance from the disagreement that will occur after the Messenger (peace be upon him) consist of adhering to his Sunnah and the Sunnah of the Rightly Guided Caliphs after him. This is because the method of these Caliphs is like the method of the general body of the Companions, who were called “the community” in the previous hadith. They are the ones who understood from the Prophet (may Allah bless him and his family and grant him peace) the correct meanings of the verses and verbal hadiths, and they transmitted them to the Ummah white and pure, their night like their day. If the scholars do not pay special attention to this third aspect mentioned in these texts, the Book and the Sunnah will become a followed desire. And we find today many differences, and all these differing groups claim that they are upon the Book and the Sunnah, whatever their groupings and gatherings may be. They hum around the Book and the Sunnah, but you do not find on the face of the earth today, and on the Islamic scene, among these groups that have chosen for themselves a methodology for understanding the Book of their Lord and the Sunnah of their Prophet, the methodology of the righteous Salaf, except one group on the face of the earth. They have different names, but the designation is one. In some lands, these people are called by affiliation to the group mentioned, and they are the group of the Salaf. They say, “Our call is the call of the righteous Salaf, and we belong to them, and we say that we are Salafis.” Or they say, “We are from the people of hadith.” Or they say, “We are supporters of the Sunnah.” All of them have one call: the Book and the Sunnah, and upon the methodology of the righteous Salaf. I must point out, with an apology for lengthening the speech on this important issue, because I imagine that there will be meetings and many meetings among us where what is said today can be verified, because we will be able to put the dots on the letters, as they say today.