There are people who deny the sorcery of the Messenger (peace and blessings be upon him), citing the saying of Allah the Exalted: "And Allah protects you from the people." What is the response to that?

The questioner : There are people who mention the hadith of the sorcery of the Messenger (peace and blessings be upon him) and deny it, citing the saying of Allah the Exalted: Do we want to interpret this?

The Shaykh : This is a very weak argument, and it is an argument based on ambiguous meanings. His saying, Blessed and Exalted is He, is truth and veracity, and it is obligatory to believe in it like the rest of the verses of Allah. However, faith is not complete unless the Qur'an is interpreted correctly, free from desires, objectives, and sectarian bias. Moreover, this verse was revealed when some of the Companions were guarding the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him and his family), or perhaps he was in battle. So Allah, Glorious and Exalted, revealed this verse to him while he was in a small, humble hut, with one of his Companions (peace be upon him) beside him, and it was perhaps Sa'd ibn Abi Waqqas (may Allah be pleased with him), if my memory is not failing me. When this verse was revealed, he dismissed him and recited it to him: Therefore, the Lady Aisha (may Allah be pleased with her) said, as narrated by al-Bukhari and Muslim in their authentic collections through the route of Misraq, one of the great Tabi'un who was originally a slave and then freed and became one of the great scholars of the Tabi'un (may Allah have mercy on him). Through the route of Misraq, the two Shaykhs (al-Bukhari and Muslim) narrated that he said to Aisha: "O Mother of the Believers, did Muhammad see his Lord?" She said: "My hair stood on end from what you said." He said: "O Mother of the Believers, does not the Lord of the Worlds say:

⁽¹³⁾ And he certainly saw him in another descent ⁽¹⁴⁾ At the Lote Tree of the Utmost Boundary -

ولقد رءاه نزلة أخرى عند سدرة المنتهى

[An-Najm 53:13-14]

She said, (may Allah be pleased with her): "I am the most knowledgeable of people about that. I heard the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him and his family) say:

I saw Jibril in the form in which he was created, twice, and he had six hundred wings, and he filled the horizon

رأيت جبريل في صورته التي خلق فيها مرتين وله ستمائة جناح وقد سد الأفق

"
Jibril was seen by the Messenger (peace and blessings be upon him) twice, and it was not the Lord of the Worlds, even though some people are confused and attribute the pronoun to the Lord of the Worlds. The Lady Aisha said, "I am the most knowledgeable of people about that", because she asked the Messenger (may Allah's prayer and peace be upon him), and he answered her that he had not seen his Lord, but rather he had seen Jibril (peace be upon him) twice in his natural form in which Allah created him, and due to his greatness, he filled the horizon. Then the Lady Aisha continued her speech, teaching the Muslims, because she is one of the Mothers of the Believers, and she said, "Three things: whoever tells you about them has committed a great lie against Allah. Whoever tells you that Muhammad (may Allah's prayer and peace be upon him) saw his Lord has committed a great lie against Allah, and then she recited His saying, Blessed and Exalted is He:

And it is not for any human being that Allah should speak to him except by revelation or from behind a partition or that He sends a messenger

وما كان لبشر أن يكلمه الله إلا وحيا أو من وراء حجاب أو يرسل رسولا

[Ash-Shuraa 42:51]

And whoever tells you that Muhammad (may Allah's prayer and peace be upon him) knew what is in the future has committed a great lie against Allah, and then she recited His saying, Exalted is He:

Say, "None in the heavens and earth knows the unseen except Allah

قل لا يعلم من في السماوات والأرض الغيب إلا الله

[An-Naml 27:65]

And the third and final one, and here is the point, she said: And whoever tells you that Muhammad (may Allah's prayer and peace be upon him) concealed something he was ordered to convey has committed a great lie against Allah, and then she recited His saying, Exalted is He:

O Messenger, announce that which has been revealed to you from your Lord, and if you do not, then you have not conveyed His message. And Allah will protect you from the people

يا أيها الرسول بلغ ما أنزل إليك من ربك وإن لم تفعل فما بلغت رسالته والله يعصمك من الناس

[Al-Ma'idah 5:67]

", meaning that He would prevent you from conveying the message of your Lord. This is the meaning of this hadith. It has no connection to the tyranny of some evil polytheists over the Prophet (may Allah's prayer and peace be upon him) with any harm. How so? And it is established in the Prophetic biography that the Prophet (may Allah's prayer and peace be upon him) was harmed and his face was wounded in some of his battles, and his front tooth was broken. Does this contradict His saying, Exalted is He: The answer is no, because the verse, in its correct meaning, is in one place, and the claim of those people is in another place. Then they invalidate, with this wrong understanding, an authentic hadith agreed upon by the two Shaykhs, first al-Bukhari and Muslim. Then it is something the Ummah accepted, and it came with a chain of narration that is at the peak of authenticity, because it has many paths, all of which revolve around Hisham ibn Urwah from his father Urwah from Aisha. This is a chain known for being very, very authentic. Urwah is the son of Asma, Aisha's sister, and Hisham is the son of Urwah, so the son narrates from his father, and his father narrates from his aunt Aisha. This story is the furthest thing from being inauthentic in terms of narration. But the people of desires, in reality, and the point now is present, from whom you know his story, and he is the Egyptian Shaykh al-Ghazali, that these people do not give weight to the extensive, cooperative efforts of the scholars of hadith throughout these long centuries in caring for the preservation of the Sunnah, so that what is not from it enters it. They have strayed from the path of the Muslims. There is no difference between the path of the people of hadith, the path of the people of tafsir, and the path of the people of fiqh, for they have contradicted them all, because this hadith was narrated, as you know, by the two Shaykhs in their Sahihs, and then the scholars of the Ummah in all their specializations, from exegetes and jurists and the like, accepted it. Some of them, and although this and its like preceded them to such deviation, they thereby contradicted the path of the believers, and it is feared that the warning of the Lord of the Worlds will encompass them: .
Therefore, the scholars of tafsir say, and foremost among them is Shaykh al-Islam Ibn Taymiyyah (may Allah have mercy on him): If there is a verse and there are two opinions in its interpretation, it is not permissible for one who comes in the last times to bring a third opinion, because this third opinion would be an innovation in the religion and would contradict the path of the believers. So we assume that in a certain verse there are two opinions; from where did this person bring a third opinion? And if we concede by opening this door, the religion of Islam would suffer what the religion of the Jews and Christians suffered from the manipulation of the texts of their book.