What is the ruling on taking what exceeds a handful from the beard?

In the name of Allah, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful.
Praise be to Allah, and may peace and blessings be upon the Messenger of Allah. As for what follows, this is one of the tapes from the *Al-Huda wa al-Nur* series of scholarly lessons and legal rulings by our Shaykh, Muhammad Nasir al-Din al-Albani (may Allah preserve him). We ask Allah to benefit everyone with it. And now, with tape number one hundred and seventy-six.

The questioner : We see some of our brothers letting their beards grow a little, and when they get longer, meaning when they exceed a certain length, they take from them and cut them. So they are not long as the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him) said , nor are they shaved off completely. What is the ruling on that?

The Shaykh : There is no doubt that the matter here has two aspects, which can be summarized in the saying, "O my Lord, some evil is less than some." The Shari'ah-compliant beard is that which conforms to what the Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him) was upon, and that is that it should not be less than a handful. It is permissible to cut what exceeds a handful, but as for what is above a handful, it is not permissible, because it contradicts the letting grow of the beard in terms of its unrestricted nature... There is a trustworthy man from Shu'bah who used to mean by cleanliness of his garment that he would take from this and that. They said he was pointing to his sideburns. This benefits us in the matter of one who is strict in applying the command to let the beard grow in an absolute manner, no matter how long the beard gets, it is left as is. We say, no, this is an error, and the best of matters is the middle, and the love of extremes is wrong. So the one who takes what is above a handful, this is better than the one afflicted by shaving it off, because in this case he does not imitate women, so he has escaped this danger. But he has contradicted, first, the unrestricted letting grow, and the restriction mentioned by Ibn 'Umar that he used to take from his beard what was less than a handful. And upon this came some reports from the righteous Salaf, without any disagreement among them. So shaving the beard is a major sin. Letting it grow short, according to the saying of our Syrians, "The best of chins is one that is a sign" — (laughs) — because this is from the category of half-measures, they also call them half-measures. This one does not want to imitate the strict Shaykhs, so he does not leave it long, you see. And that one does not want to imitate [the shavers] at all, so he throws it away and casts it to the ground, as we mentioned. So, "The best of chins is one that is a sign." This is from the whispering of Satan due to human nature. The important thing, O our brothers, is that the Muslim must live his whole life, and always and forever keep before his eyes the saying of Allah, Blessed and Exalted is He: the complete verse is . Who is the Muslim who makes his role model the Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him) and no one else? Not from the Shaykhs, nor from the scholars, nor from the ignorant, let alone the disbelievers and the open sinners, and so on. Who is it? It is the Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him). And who makes the Messenger his role model? The one who hopes for Allah and the Last Day. So the Muslim who lives in this transient, perishing worldly life has no goal, and his goal is to live, to the extent he is able, in accordance with what the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him) was upon. This is one who lives under the name of being a Muslim. But the true Muslim is the one who always and forever tries to do as the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him) did. Of course, I mean that he should do so in what concerns the sphere of worship. As for the sphere of customs, this Muslim has the utmost freedom in it; he acts in customs as he wishes, with one condition: that he does not contradict a text, a text from his words (peace be upon him) that indicates that this matter is an act of worship, and not a customary matter.