Discussion of the hadith (Whoever prays much at night, his face will be radiant by day) and the hadith (Religion is good conduct).

The questioner : The first path, O Shaykh.

The Shaykh : I say that one of the Shaykhs who narrates hadiths sat to narrate to the people in his gathering, following the method of the scholars in the past, where one of them would either be a memorizer with a good memory, in which case he would improvise the narration of the chains and texts, or he would not rely on his memory as he should, in which case he would prepare the lesson and review the hadiths and chains. The important thing is that this man sat...The Shaykh : ...in the text, the hadith that he agreed upon, he mentioned the chain as is customary, then the one who entered came in. The one who entered was a righteous man, with the light of righteousness and piety upon him, so he said from his own knowledge: "Whoever prays much at night, his face will be radiant by day." The students had reached the end of the chain and were waiting...The Shaykh : ...for him to teach them the text of the hadith. So when he was surprised by the entry of this man, it ignited in him when he saw this light on his face: "Whoever prays much at night, his face will be radiant by day." So he recorded that this statement which came from...The Shaykh : ...on the occasion of that vision, that it is the text of the chain. He presented the chain, and this is the text, and they went on, and the hadith spread in the town, which is Basra. And later they noticed, they started to follow up on how it happened, and they discovered the story. So I am afraid... We are talking about one of the preachers today. I prayed in a mosque, and unfortunately, most of his sermon was weak and fabricated hadiths. But this hadith that we mentioned has no basis at all. However, it is one of the phrases that are used frequently in the present age, and in reality, it implies two contradictory things. One of the things is that Islam, of course, cares about conduct and its excellence among people. But this is countered by the fact that people put this word in the wrong place. And I mentioned earlier when we advise the youth to pray and maintain their prayer, their worship, and their religion, that it is not prayer or worship; religion is conduct, and I do not cheat, and I do not deceive, and I do not steal, and so on. In any case, we mentioned it. In summary, this preacher on the pulpit said: The Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him) said: and he rambled around this phrase a lot. Then he said that one of the greatnesses of Islam is that it confined religion to these two words: "Religion is conduct." So we say that this statement, first, has no basis from the Messenger (peace be upon him) at all, and rather it is fabricated in the present age. Second, it is a counter to the authentic hadith which I think you are all aware of...