The Shaykh spoke about the ruling on standing for someone.

The Shaykh : As long as the group is silent, let us speak. We want to draw the attention of our brothers sitting with us. This pleasant evening, if Allah wills, is about a bad habit that every Muslim should try to get rid of as much as he can. This is because the habit I am referring to is contrary to the way our Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) and his noble Companions used to do things. That is, when someone entered the gathering, they would stand up for him, standing in a show of respect. This was not part of his (peace and blessings be upon him) Sunnah; rather, it was something he (peace and blessings be upon him) disliked, if we do not say that he forbade it. Imam al-Bukhari narrated...

The questioner : Peace be upon you.

The Shaykh : And peace be upon you, and the mercy of Allah and His blessings. In his book *Al-Adab al-Mufrad*, with a sound chain, from Anas ibn Malik (may Allah be pleased with him), who said: That is, when he (peace and blessings be upon him) entered a gathering, they did not stand up for him. Why? Is it because they did not honor him (peace be upon him) or revere him? Far from it! This is obligatory upon them and upon every Muslim. However, reverence and honor are not achieved except by what our Great Lord has prescribed. Therefore, as Anas says, they did not stand up for him, and he explains the reason, saying: Why? Why did he (peace and blessings be upon him) dislike being honored by standing up for him? Because that was the custom of the people of Persia, the custom of their great ones. And it came in the sound hadith in the Musnad of Imam Ahmad and others that the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) said: And the general practice of people standing up for the elite leads the elite into trouble and causes them to fall into what is contrary to the Shari'ah. This last hadith , as its explicit indication shows, only concerns the man who enters and, deep in his heart, wants people to stand up for him in honor of him. He (peace be upon him) says to him: "Take your seat in the Fire." Not everyone who enters a gathering full of seated people can be assumed to want the seated people to stand up for him. No. But the commitment of the seated people to this custom of standing up for whoever enters them turns the custom of those who enter, who do not like standing up in submission to the hadith of the Messenger (peace be upon him), into a state where their souls become prepared to accept this honor through standing. Then, later, their souls come to dislike the opposite of what the Messenger (peace be upon him) disliked; they come to dislike those who do not stand up. This is an observed matter among people, even among many shaykhs and people of knowledge, at least in the perception of people. If they enter a gathering like this and no one stands up for them, their face becomes dark and their features change, because they consider their not standing up for him as a humiliation of him. And that is not a humiliation in any way. Otherwise, would the not standing up of the Companions of the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) for him (peace and blessings be upon him) have been a humiliation of him? Far be it from them! For that would be disbelief itself if it were so. But the prevalence of customs, and here is the place of reminder, turns the Sunnah into a bid'ah (religious innovation) and the bid'ah into a Sunnah. If it was the custom of the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him), who is the best of all people, and the Companions of the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him and his family), who are the best of all generations, and then this best generation did not stand up for the Master of Mankind, then can anyone after them be stood up for or have people stand up for them? And it appears that the importance of this phenomenon, which people have become accustomed to today, is that standing up is as if the one entering, when he enters, says to the seated people, "Stand up," and they stand up. They usually do not say this, and they do not say it with their tongues, but they say it with their state of being, because they dislike that people do not stand up for them when they enter. And it came in Sahih Muslim from the hadith of Jabir (may Allah be pleased with him) that the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) led the people in the Zuhr prayer one day while sitting, because his mount had thrown him and he was injured in his elbow or shoulder, so he could not pray standing. He led the people while sitting, and the people stood up behind him in standing, as is obligatory, in obedience to His saying, Blessed and Exalted is He: And in obedience to His saying (peace be upon him): So they stood up in their duty, that is, they stood upright for the Lord of the Worlds. As for him (peace and blessings be upon him), he sat out of necessity. And yet, look at how the outcome was. The Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him and his family) knew that the people were praying behind him in standing. This knowledge of his was either through a normal glance, as any imam who prays does when the row extends to the right or left, so he feels that the people are praying as usual in standing, or it was from his specific miracles (peace and blessings be upon him). It came in the sound hadith that the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) said: So it is possible that his seeing (peace and blessings be upon him) his Companions when they prayed behind him in standing was by his glance to the right and left, and it is possible that it was from the category of this karamah (miracle granted to a righteous person) and this mu'jizah (prophetic miracle) by which Allah, Blessed and Exalted is He, distinguished him, where He said: So when he saw them like that, he gestured to them with his hand to sit down, so they sat down. He prayed with them while he was sitting and they were sitting. And when he (peace and blessings be upon him) said the taslim, and here is the point and the lesson and the profound admonition, The place of the admonition and lesson in this incident is from several aspects. The first aspect is that everyone who hears this hadith or reads it knows for certain that the sitting of the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) in this prayer was only due to his illness, and that is what compelled him to leave off the standing, which is a pillar of the prayer. This is from one side. From another side, his Companions (peace and blessings be upon him), when they stood up behind him in standing, they only stood up for Allah, the Lord of the workers. They did not stand up to honor the Messenger, nor did he sit to be honored by them. Each of them was compelled to what he did. As for the Messenger, he sat due to his illness. As for the Companions, they stood in obedience to their Lord. Despite these great differences between the Messenger (peace be upon him) and his Companions on one side, and between Kisra and his followers on the other side, he (peace be upon him) said to them: Even though the Companions did not stand up over the head of the Messenger to honor him; they stood up for Allah, the Lord of the Worlds. The Messenger, as we mentioned, sat not to be honored by their standing, but he sat in place of the standing, which is the fard (obligatory) upon him were it not for his illness. Despite this, he (peace be upon him) said: "You were on the verge of..." or and so on. So he forbade them from a very great matter, and he forbade them from standing up for Allah, the Lord of the Worlds, even though it is a pillar, and he ordered them to pray behind him while sitting. Why? So that the polytheistic phenomenon would be removed between him and his Companions on one side, and between this group and Kisra and his followers on the other side. If you know this reality, it becomes clear to you the danger or at least the error of this phenomenon by which we are afflicted now and before this time by a long time, that whenever a man enters, whether he is a scholar or a king or a minister or so on, they stand up for him in standing. This phenomenon, first of all, does not resemble that phenomenon. They were in prayer, we are not in prayer. So if he ordered them to sit down so that the phenomenon would be removed, what compels us to realize this polytheistic phenomenon, where the disbelievers do this? They stand up for one another, so we have become imitating them and contradicting the guidance of the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him). This is what I wanted to remind you of, so that you may take as your model your Prophet and your Companions, who represented the best of generations, as is well known from the hadiths of the Messenger (peace and blessings be upon him). And after this reminder, it is necessary to add to it another reminder, and that is, due to my knowledge of the difficulty of reform and change of what people are upon today, we should, as individuals, address this custom in the best way. We should not surprise people with it, all people, because people, as I mentioned earlier, consider this standing as a standing of honor. So if someone enters and you do not stand up, they interpret that as him entering and you not honoring him. Therefore, there is no harm if the one entering upon you is a person who does not know this Sunnah, that you be gentle with him and stand up to him, and then take a reason and a means to raise this topic before him, so that when another opportunity comes and he does not stand up for him, he knows that not standing up for him was following the Sunnah and not turning away from honoring him. This is a reminder, and the reminder benefits the believers.