The Shaykh’s advice to join the scholarly gatherings and not to disperse, and an explanation of the effect of this on the hearts.

The Shaykh : Joining together and not dispersing. So whoever wishes to listen to knowledge, let him join the circle. It has come in the Sunnah in Musnad al-Imam Ahmad (may Allah have mercy on him), from the hadith of Abu Thalhah al-Khushani (may Allah be pleased with him), who said: "When we used to travel with the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) and we would stop at a place, we would disperse into the valleys and gorges. One day he said to us: ; he said: So after that, when we would travel and stop at a place, we would gather together until if we had sat on a single carpet, it would have been enough for us." A large group walking in the desert, and when they would stop at a place, the Messenger (peace and blessings be upon him) would urge them not to disperse there, but to gather and to support one another, because gathering of the bodies and physical forms has an effect on gathering the hearts and rectifying them. And this is what was explicitly stated from the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) in the hadith narrated byThe Shaykh : al-Bukhari and Muslim in their Sahihs, from the hadith of al-Nu'man ibn Bashir (may Allah be pleased with him), who said: The Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him) said: . The point of this hadith is only its last part, which is his saying (peace and blessings be upon him): ; so in this hadith there is an explicit statement that the outward is connected to the inward, in terms of rectitude or corruption. If the heart is rectified, the body is rectified, and if the heart is corrupted, the body is corrupted. From this we take a very important principle that many of today's contemporary Muslims overlook or pretend to overlook, who have not received anything of the sacred knowledge, and whose only law is their minds and their desires. So if you say to one of them, "Why do you not pray, for example?" he says, "The point is not the prayer, but the point is the rectitude of the inward." And he ignores the fact that if his inward, meaning his heart, were rectified, his outward would be rectified, and vice versa. Therefore, every Muslim should care about rectifying his outward and not be deluded into thinking that what is settled in his heart is sufficient, because the outward is the title of the inward. This is not just the word of scholars and jurists, but this is what this authentic hadith indicates, which I am in the process of commenting on. First, the first hadith of Abu Thalhah al-Khushani, because the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) ordered them to gather and not to disperse in the dwelling place, even in a wide desert. He ordered them to gather because this gathering of the bodies brings the hearts closer to one another. Perhaps you have not forgotten what I reminded you of during the lining up for the midday prayer on this day, from what I mentioned at that time of his saying (peace and blessings be upon him): ; so straightening the rows is an outward matter to which he (peace be upon him) linked, if those standing in the row neglect it, that Allah will strike the hearts of some of them against others. So it is not permissible for a Muslim to be careless about rectifying his outward on the claim that his inward is rectified, because he is first lying to himself, let alone lying to others. Therefore, it is not part of the etiquette in Islam at all for students of knowledge, when they gather, to sit like this as they please, dispersed from one another; rather, they must join together. And finally, it came in Sahih Muslim that the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) said: "He entered the mosque one day and found the people dispersed in it, so he said to them: " ; meaning: dispersed. So we must remember this etiquette in receiving knowledge, whether the reception is by the method followed by scholars today, which is receiving questions and answering them, or by the old method that was and still is a common way of teaching people, which is that he sitsThe Shaykh : with his students and reads to them from the book, whether it is from tafsir, or from hadith, or from fiqh derived from the Book and the Sunnah, or one of them reads to him and then he comments on what was read and explains to them what may be obscure to them. I wanted to remind you of this etiquette so that we finally turn to listening to some of the questions that may have been gathered, to look into them and answer them to the extent that Allah (Blessed and Exalted is He) grants us success and facilitates for us knowledge in them.