If a statement is reported from some of the Companions, are we obligated to follow it or not?

The Shaykh : If a statement is reported from some of the Companions of the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him), are Muslims obligated to follow it or not? The answer is: If that Companion's statement is of the nature of a marfu' report, such that it cannot be said to be based on ijtihad, which is sometimes subject to error and sometimes to correctness, then it is to be followed. Otherwise, it is left to its source. This is the ruling regarding mawquf reports attributed to the Companions of the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him). One must look at them to see if they are such that they cannot be said to be anything other than a statement of divine origin, as we mentioned to you earlier regarding Ibn Mas'ud, who said: When the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him) died, we said: "Peace be upon the Prophet." This is where he differed, because it is not possible for him to act upon his understanding of the Prophet's (peace and blessings be upon him) intent based merely on opinion and ijtihad. However, if a statement comes to us from a Companion, and it is possible that this statement is based on the original presumption of permissibility, since the original ruling for things is permissibility, and it is possible that no prohibition has been revealed that transfers it from the original presumption to a new ruling. As for the athar that have been reported as mawquf from one of the Companions, such as the statement of Ibn Abbas (may Allah be pleased with him), who said: "The Qur'an was sent down in one lump to the House of Glory in the lowest heaven, then it was sent down in separate portions according to events." This is the end of the report of Ibn Abbas, or we can say this is the end of the statement of Ibn Abbas. Ibn Abbas did not say in this statement that the Messenger of Allah said it, or that he heard the Messenger of Allah say it. So, is this to be followed or not? The answer is that such a statement cannot be said to be based on opinion and ijtihad, because it deals with some of the matters of the unseen. How would Ibn Abbas know, when no revelation was sent to him, that the Qur'an was sent down as a single block, a single lump, to the lowest heaven, and not to the second heaven or another? And how would he know that it was sent down to a place called the House of Glory? It is from the lowest heaven. These are matters of the unseen that humans have no ability to speak about except by guessing about the unseen, as astrologers, soothsayers, and diviners do. And far be it from Ibn Abbas, the interpreter of the Qur'an, to guess or to speak by guessing about the unseen. Therefore, the scholars say that this athar is mawquf but in the ruling of a marfu' report, because it cannot be said based merely on opinion. Once we know this principle that must be applied to mawquf athar, some of them are in the ruling of marfu' reports, and we have no choice but to accept them, while for some of them we have the choice to accept or reject them, on the condition that we do not contradict a marfu' text. This condition here, regarding the action of Jabir—we say on the condition that we do not contradict—we have contradicted it if we perform the action of Jabir, because of the explicit statement of the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him): . As for reconciling this hadith with the athar of Jabir, it is prohibited from two aspects. The first aspect is that one only reconciles between two texts... But since we mentioned earlier that the athar of Jabir is mawquf and not in the ruling of a marfu' report, we are then free from the obligation to reconcile it with the marfu' hadith. The second thing is that the emphatic nun (nun al-ta'kid al-mushaddadah) combined with the prohibition: , prevents that interpretation and compels us to be certain that this hadith contains a new ruling regarding the previous ruling known to all scholars, which is that it is obligatory for the Muslim to cover his 'awrah from below the navel to the knee. So his statement: , is a prohibition of prayer, and this confirms the invalidity of the prayer, as long as there is no marfu' hadith from the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) that compels us to reconcile it with it in any of the ways of reconciliation, which are numerous and known to the jurists.