When is the adhan called for Maghrib?

The Shaykh : Allahu Akbar, Allahu Akbar. This is a good opportunity. Do you call the adhan based on your own observation of the setting of the sun, or do you follow the general practice of the people in all the countries?
The questioner: Al-Makshilah follows the Awqaf (Ministry of Endowments).

The Shaykh : But the point is that the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) used to say: Now, we are in Oman, and we see very strange contradictions, considering that Oman consists of mountains and valleys, not like this village we see here. In some places in Oman, the sun sets, and they do not call the adhan until ten minutes later. In other places, they call the adhan before the sun has set, even though it is visible to the eye. These people delay, and thus they lose the saying of the Messenger (peace be upon him): And those others break their fast before the time and pray before the time, because they call the adhan based on what they call the unified adhan. Allahu Akbar. The only thing left for this error to manifest itself is for Muslims in all parts of the world to pray to a unified adhan, and... from the best of lands, which is Makkah. Can you imagine such a thing happening among Muslims? We hope it does not happen, but something like it has happened, if you only knew. One of the Moroccans wrote a treatise; I remember I began the sermon of necessity in order to speak about the Sunnah of the right hand, but these are interjected sentences. Even if they are long, they are not devoid of benefit, if Allah wills. It is an important benefit, because people are in heedlessness, in deep heedlessness. And especially the people who usually preside over gatherings always speak about matters that, in most cases, we do not wrong them by saying that they speak about issues in which they share...Those present : ...with that speaker in knowing them: forbidden is zina, riba, khamr, etc. As for the matters of the masses of people in heedlessness, like the examples we are discussing with you, you hardly hear any sound or focus on them. So I say, one of the Moroccans wrote a treatise titled "The Persuasion of the Validity of Praying Behind the Radio." The radio, wherever you hear it, it says Allahu Akbar and calls the adhan, so you... to another point. But I was using this sequence to reach the topic of starting with the right hand. The time has come to return to what we were dealing with, otherwise there are things now.

The questioner : No, we will return, if Allah wills.

The Shaykh : We will return, and returning is good. I said, the first thing that happened when we sat down and the server started serving you, beginning with me, thinking that the Sunnah is to start with the eldest of the group in age. And there is no doubt that, as it appears, I am the eldest of you in age. So he was not wrong if the sound rule is to start with the eldest in age. But there are other interpretations that one should start with the highest in rank, knowledge, righteousness, and piety, and the like. I began to mention that the Sunnah which many people hear is that the server starts with the eldest of the group, or their scholar, or their righteous one. This contradicts the generality of his saying (peace and blessings be upon him): Rather, it opposes the context in which his saying (peace and blessings be upon him) came: And the hadith came in Sahih al-Bukhari from two narrations from two noble Companions. One of them is Anas ibn Malik (may Allah be pleased with him). Perhaps you all know that among the special characteristics of this Companion is that he served the Messenger (peace be upon him) for ten years while he was a small child. His mother, Umm Sulaym, brought him to the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) and said: "O Messenger of Allah, this is Anas, your servant." So Anas (may Allah be pleased with him) continued to serve the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) for ten years. The purpose of this brief, short translation is for you to pay attention to the fact that when he narrates to us a story about him (peace and blessings be upon him and his family and his Companions) that took place in his presence, first, and in his house, where the Messenger (peace be upon him) visited them in their house, Anas said: "A large cup containing milk mixed with water was brought to the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him and his family)." The cup is the large vessel containing milk, meaning milk mixed with water, meaning mixed with water. So he (peace and blessings be upon him) drank, and a remainder was left in the cup. There was a Bedouin on his right and Abu Bakr on his left. And here the point begins: a Bedouin on his right and Abu Bakr on his left, meaning he is the greatest of the group in virtue, knowledge, and age after the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him). Who is more deserving of this remainder? The one who was on the right of the drinker? Or the one who was on his left, who is the greatest of the group? Those who use the hadith as restricted say the right one, meaning the eldest in age, starts first, then the one on his right, and so on, they say. But the Messenger (peace be upon him) did not do that. Rather, he gave this cup with the remainder to the one on his right, who was a Bedouin. And in a narration, it was Ibn Abbas. And Ibn Abbas, as he said about himself, that the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) passed away while he was almost reaching the age of accountability, meaning about fifteen years old or close to that. Abu Bakr al-Siddiq, the eldest in age and virtue, the first Caliph, so he gave this cup to Ibn Abbas so that he would understand...Those present : The legal ruling is exactly to follow what he (peace be upon him) said: In another narration, not from Anas but from Sahl ibn Sa'd al-Sa'idi, which is also in al-Bukhari for the same story, but the wording says: Meaning, these are the ones with whom the server should begin. So here, if you know this story, you know that what people are doing—where the server starts, for example, from here—is contrary to the Sunnah. The Sunnah says to start with the right. He does not start with the person next to him just because he is the elder of the group. This is a misconception and contradicts the hadith of the Messenger (peace be upon him). The elder of the group was Abu Bakr al-Siddiq, so if he had started with the elder, he would have started with the youngest of the group, which was Ibn Abbas. He explained this by saying: The other narration is: This is the first point. The second point is: Why did the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him and his family) have the server start with him? This is the source of the misconception. The server started with him (peace be upon him), so why is it important here to gather the wordings and chains of the hadith? Because they often reveal what is hidden in some other chains. We mentioned earlier that the narration in Sahih al-Bukhari is: "A cup was brought to the Messenger (peace and blessings be upon him)..." and so on. When a student of knowledge and a scholar come upon this wording, the first thing that comes to their mind is that the server started with the Messenger (peace be upon him) because he was the elder of the group. This is where the widespread misconception among people today comes from, and sometimes it causes social problems among those present, as I will hint at. But the other narration, as they say in modern literary language, puts the dots on the letters and says: "The Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him and his companions) asked for water, so it was brought to him." This is the answer to the question that arises in the mind of any person, and recently in the minds of many, who ask: Why did the server start with the Messenger of Allah? They say because he is their master and their elder, and so on. They are excused for this, but if they had come upon the other narration, that understanding would have gone away and been corrected to the correct statement: "The Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him) asked for water, so it was brought to him." So the reason for starting with the Messenger (peace and blessings be upon him) was only because he asked for water, just as any one of you asking for water now would be served first, not the person to his right, nor the elder of the group according to the other opinion. So it is obligatory for every student of knowledge who wants to be with the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) in his hadith to remember the first narration, added to the other narration: "A cup was brought to the Messenger (peace and blessings be upon him)" and "The Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him) asked for water, so it was brought to him." Then the issue is hidden and the answer to the question "Why did the server start?" is understood: because the Messenger (peace be upon him) asked for it. This is the second point. And the third point is that it was not the custom of the Companions at that time, and as you know, they lived in a life of hardship and narrowness. They did not have, for example, what we have today of easily available drinks like tea, which does not cost much, or coffee, as is known, and so on. They did not have this, because coffee and tea only appeared after the Messenger (peace be upon him) by a long time. So the Arab would honor his guest with what he could, with what was available. And there are many, many stories. But if there was a gathering and they were present with the Messenger (peace be upon him), and Anas ibn Malik and his mother, they had nothing but a domesticated animal, meaning they had a milking sheep that they could milk into a cup and mix with some water so that the Messenger (peace be upon him) could drink. But to serve all those present, they did not have this abundance of provision. Therefore, the cup was not refilled; rather, he drank what he drank from the Messenger (may Allah's prayers and blessings be upon him), and the rest was given to the person to his right, and the duty of the first server ended. Now, when the Messenger (peace and blessings be upon him) drank and left a remainder, meaning a leftover, and looked to his right and left, he preferred this remainder, this leftover, for Ibn Abbas. Who is the server now? This is a point you must pay attention to. The first server's duty ended when he presented the cup to the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him), and the Messenger (peace and blessings be upon him) is now the server. Why did he not start with the elder of the group? This confirms that the interpretation of the hadith that "the right one" means the elder of the group is a misconception. Because the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) was started with, as we said and concluded, because he asked for water. So when he became the server, he started with the person to his right, even if he was young, and left the person to his left, even if he was the elder of the group. We also say this is a very important observation added to what came before. So up to now, we have three things: First, the right one is a general, absolute rule that cannot be restricted. Second, the story clarified why the server started with the Messenger because he asked for water. Third, when the Messenger (peace be upon him) became the server, he did not start with the elder of the group, but with the person to his right, and then he made it a continuous rule and said: And in a very beautiful narration, 'Umar ibn al-Khattab was in the gathering, so he was watching what the Messenger would do with this remainder? And he saw that the Messenger gave it to the child to his right. And the other narration is the Arab man, and it is as if the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) was undoubtedly more perceptive and sharper in sight than 'Umar ibn al-Khattab, as if he was saying to him: O 'Umar, here there is no preference, but the honor is for the person to the right of the server. This is the third thing. The fourth and last thing, as we said in the topic of travel: What is travel? Is travel defined by kilometers? This is a burden that cannot be borne, which conflicts with Now also here we say that linking the topic of the server starting with the best or the oldest in age will put the server in a difficult position, especially since the server is usually not one of culture and knowledge, but rather one of the young men of the neighborhood or the house, or a server, or an employee of serving, as is the case in some houses of princes. So it is not supposed to be, as I say, in such a situation. Ibn Khaldun in his time would have a biography of each of those present, their age, their social status, their rank in knowledge, and so on. This is a burden that cannot be borne. But look at the difference between this: Who does not know the right from the left? So this is the Sunnah of the Messenger (peace and blessings be upon him). Finally, I say that there may be in the gathering two learned, virtuous men, each of whom thinks he is the best of the group, and so on. So if the server starts with one of them, the soul of the other will be stirred. And we see today disasters among those who claim to be scholars, because there is no one infallible except the Messenger (may Allah's prayers and blessings be upon him). So to block the door to stirring feelings, this is better than that. The Messenger (peace be upon him) ended the matter and said: Then there comes at the end a hadith we said is the first hadith, the hadith of Anas ibn Malik. The second hadith is the hadith of Sahl ibn Sa'd. Now there is a hadith from the Lady Aisha (may Allah be pleased with her) in a part of this hadith that meets the hadith of Anas and the hadith of Sahl. She said (may Allah be pleased with her): In his combing, meaning in combing his hair, he started from here, not from there, preferring the right side over the left. So take this as a rule and be at ease, because among what our Lord (Mighty and Majestic) described His Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him and his family and companions) with in the Noble Qur'an is: So take the Sunnah of the Messenger (peace be upon him) in general, and this Sunnah in particular, so that you may be at ease from what we rightly call social hypocrisy. Because any host, owner of a house, if a large number of people knock on his door as guests, as was the custom of the Arabs from old, and if this custom, unfortunately, has weakened in this time because Western customs and traditions have prevailed over the Muslims, the man, for example, comes from an Islamic country and stays in a strange country where there is no one to receive him and host him as a guest, but only in a hotel. If the guest starts with serving, he will be at ease: "Who is this or that? What do I know? Start with your right and go." So he will be excused by those who know this Sunnah. And for them to know this Sunnah, it must be spread among the people, or it will remain hidden in Sahih al-Bukhari and Sahih Muslim, not spread, not read by scholars, and if they read it, they do not spread it. So the people will remain in their customs, which contradict the Sunnah of the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him and his family). And I conclude this issue with his saying (peace and blessings be upon him): I have now finished explaining this issue, which was the reason for my coming. And now we open the door to any question from any of you. If I have its answer, it is obligatory for me to present it. And if I do not know, half of knowledge is not knowing.