Explanation of the Hadith: (Whoever turns away from my Sunnah is not one of me).

The Shaykh : For example, the hadith of the group of men who came to the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) — three men in total — but did not find him. They asked his wives (peace be upon him) about his worship, his standing in prayer, his fasting, and his intimacy with his wives. They mentioned what they knew of the Prophet’s (peace and blessings be upon him) practices, saying: “He (peace be upon him) fasts and breaks his fast, stands in prayer at night and sleeps, and marries women.” When the group heard the words of the wives of the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) — or as the narrator of the hadith, Anas ibn Malik (may Allah be pleased with him), said: “When they heard that, they considered the worship of the Messenger to be little.” Glory be to Allah! The Messenger of Allah, whose feet cracked — or in another wording, split — from standing in prayer, and these men say that the worship of the Messenger (peace be upon him) is little? Why? Here is the point and the subtlety, my brothers, so pay attention. They assumed that drawing near to Allah (Blessed and Exalted is He) is only achieved through monasticism, meaning that a Muslim dedicates himself solely to the worship of Allah and does not care about any of the affairs of this world, not caring about anything related to his wives and children. This is how they imagined it, and this is undoubtedly a conception that contradicts Islam, in which the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) said: Because of this false assumption, they considered the worship of the Messenger (peace be upon him) to be little. So they returned to themselves, saying: “This is the Messenger of Allah, and Allah has forgiven him what has passed of his sin and what remains.” The implication of their state was: “Why does not the Messenger enjoy his wives? Why does not the Prophet (peace be upon him) enjoy his sleep? Why does not the Messenger enjoy his food and drink?” So he was fasting and breaking his fast, standing in prayer at night and sleeping, and marrying women. They imagined that he (peace be upon him) was standing in prayer all night, fasting all the time, and not approaching women, as some of the early scholars said: “Knowledge was lost between the laps of women.” So they imagined the Messenger (peace be upon him) had no connection to this world. Then they attributed the littleness of the worship of the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him) to a cause that, if they had insisted on it and persisted in it without returning to his Sunnah (peace be upon him), they would have strayed far astray. For they said: “Why does the Messenger of Allah tire himself by praying all night and fasting all the time? There is no need for that; Allah has forgiven him.” As they say in some lands: “Put your feet in the cold water and rest.” This is a criticism of the worship of the Messenger (peace be upon him), of whom it is reported in Sahih al-Bukhari from a group of the Companions of the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him), including al-Mughirah ibn Shu’bah, who said: “The Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him) stood in prayer until his feet cracked. They said: ‘O Messenger of Allah, Allah has forgiven you what has passed of your sin and what remains.’” As if they were saying to him: “Be gentle with yourself, have mercy on it. Why do you stand like this until your feet split?” So his (peace be upon him) response, as is befitting the master of mankind, the best of mankind, and the most perfect of all mankind, was: So when that group attributed to the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him) a reduction in worship, they were completely wrong. They were assuming because they carried in their minds monasticism, which is not from Islam. Based on that assumption in their ears, and after they attributed the littleness of the worship of their Prophet to the fact that Allah had forgiven him and the matter was finished, they said: “As for us, we do not know that Allah has forgiven us. So what is the way to obtain the forgiveness of our Lord, the Exalted?” So the three agreed with one another to do the following. One of them said, vowing: “As for me, I will fast all the time and not break my fast.” The second said: “As for me, I will stand in prayer all night and not sleep.” The third said: “As for me, I will not marry women.” And they departed, agreeing that each of them would fulfill what he had vowed to Allah: standing in prayer all night, fasting all the time, and completely abstaining from women. And they left it like that. When the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him) came to his wives and they informed him of the news, he entered the mosque, gathered the people, and delivered a sermon to them. He (peace be upon him) said: Meaning three statements that you have known, so there is no need to repeat them. But the point is in what follows: The point of this entire hadith is the last sentence. After you have known the reason for its occurrence, this last sentence — unfortunately, most of the Muslims who worship, and I do not mean those who are ascetic in the worship of the Messenger (peace be upon him) and turn away from it completely, but rather I mean the ascetics who worship and desire the Hereafter — said at the end of the hadith: The hadith ends, and al-Bukhari and Muslim narrated it in their Sahihs. I want to pause with you briefly at his saying: “Whoever turns away from my Sunnah is not one of me.” Perhaps many of you have read some of the fiqh in any of the four schools followed by the majority of Muslims, the people of the Sunnah and the community. And you read in these books the division of worship into categories, some of which are obligatory (fard) and some of which are recommended practice (sunnah). I will not add to this, because here is the point. And they know the recommended practice (sunnah) in terms of its reward and in terms of the ruling on its abandoner: that whoever does it is rewarded for it, but not with the reward of the obligatory act, and whoever abandons it is not punished for it. Some add, and this addition has no basis: “But he is rebuked by the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him).” This addition is the saying of some that whoever abandons a recommended practice (sunnah) of the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) that is not an obligation (fard) and is not also obligatory (wajib) according to the opinion of the Hanafis, who distinguish between the obligatory (fard) and the obligatory (wajib), is below the obligatory (fard) and below the obligatory (wajib). They say, and their saying is the truth: “The abandoner is not punished.” But they add: “The abandoner is rebuked.” This rebuke has no basis in the Book of Allah, nor in the hadith of the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him), nor in any report from the righteous predecessors (may Allah be pleased with them all). On the contrary, I remind you of the hadith of that Bedouin who asked the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) about what Allah had made obligatory for him every day and night. He said: When he said to him: “Is there anything besides them?” He said: So he (peace be upon him) said: Where is this claimed rebuke? This word is, as they say, “on the passerby.” But what I want to dwell on is: Is the recommended practice (sunnah) in this agreed-upon hadith meant to be the recommended practice (sunnah) that is not an obligation (fard) or obligatory (wajib)? The answer is no. This is a term that the jurists agreed upon, and there is no dispute, as the scholars say in terminology, that they agreed upon it in order to clarify the rulings and explain them to people. So they divided the rulings, or the acts of worship, into five: they said obligatory (fard), they said recommended practice (sunnah), they said recommended (mustahabb), and so on. The intention in his (peace be upon him) saying: The intention of the recommended practice (sunnah) in this hadith is not the recommended practice (sunnah) as defined by terminology, which is below the obligatory (fard). Rather, the intention of this recommended practice (sunnah) in the authentic hadith is the path, the methodology, and the Shari'ah that the Messenger (peace be upon him) followed, including its rulings, even the permissible (mubah), which is the last of the five rulings. So just as it is not permissible for a Muslim to forbid what Allah has permitted, so it is not permissible for a Muslim to permit what Allah has forbidden. So it is not permissible for a Muslim to legislate for people and say to them: “This is a recommended practice (sunnah),” or to say to them — and here is the crux of the matter — “This is a recommended practice (sunnah) or a good religious innovation (bid'ah).” It is not permissible to say this for the reasons previously explained, that the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) condemned religious innovation (bid'ah). And I hope you pay attention to this qualification, because many ignorant or unaware people, when they are told “This is a religious innovation (bid'ah), so do not do it,” say: “What you are wearing is all a religious innovation (bid'ah). The one riding the car, that is a religious innovation (bid'ah).” This is due to their ignorance. You have just learned that the religious innovation (bid'ah) that the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) condemned absolutely and ruled that its doer is on misguidance refers to innovation in religion, as evidenced by his saying in the hadith agreed upon byThe Shaykh : The Shaykh: So, the statement of the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him): What is the indication of this hadith regarding the generality we mentioned earlier, which is explicit in some of the hadiths that condemn religious innovation (bid'ah) in a general, comprehensive manner, such that it blocks the path for anyone intending to know the truth in matters where people differ? It blocks the path for him to say, "No, there is a good innovation." We say: This is an impossible thing to come from a Muslim who truly believes in Allah and His Messenger, because it is considered a form of defiance (mushaqah) of Allah and His Messenger. Your Messenger, O Muslim, says to you: And you, with all boldness, say, "No, not every innovation is misguidance; there is a good innovation and a bad innovation." This is not said by anyone but one of two people: either an ignorant person or a heedless person who does not know what comes out of his mouth. So I say: His statement (peace and blessings be upon him), "His Sunnah," meaning the Shari'ah of Allah that He revealed upon the heart of Muhammad (peace be upon him). And the Shari'ah of Allah, as you have known from the previous explanation, has been completed, and praise be to Allah, by the testimony of that explicit verse: After perfection, there is only deficiency; as for increase, there is no room for increase in the religion ever. I told you: Is there any Muslim, however learned, ascetic, or righteous we might imagine, who can be like the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him) in worship? This is impossible, because there is no one like him (peace and blessings be upon him), neither in his knowledge, nor in his creation, nor in his worship. So what is the thing we can imagine in some of the righteous servants of Allah who come in rank in righteousness, worship, and drawing near to Allah after the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him)? We will say: It is necessary that these people be below the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him) in worship, as it was said: "So imitate them, if you are not like them *** For imitating the noble ones is success." This means that it is sufficient for the righteous Muslim and the scholar of the Shari'ah of Allah (Mighty and Majestic) to imitate the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him), and barely to approach his worship, barely. As for being like him, that is an impossible matter. So we return to the hadith from those hadiths: So, O Muslims, the door of legislation and the door of juristic preference (istihsan) in the religion have been closed, because the religion has been completed. It has been completed explicitly in the verse and explicitly in the hadith of the Messenger (peace and blessings be upon him). Therefore, he said that very great word: Let us now look at the right of the one about whom the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) said: "Whoever wants to stand in prayer all night." Is standing in prayer all night an innovation? No one, and praise be to Allah, says so, except that it is a very great act of worship, especially since there are authentic hadiths that command standing in night prayer, such as his statement (peace and blessings be upon him): No one says that standing in night prayer is an innovation. What did the others say? That they would fast forever. Fasting is also a good deed, and you have known that the Messenger (peace be upon him) used to fast. So the third one said: "I do not marry women." So, if not marrying women is from the perspective of monasticism, you have known that there is no monasticism in Islam. Now we say: As for the one who wanted to fast forever and the one who wanted to stand in prayer all night, each of them wanted to increase in drawing near to Allah (Mighty and Majestic) through fasting and standing. Fasting and standing are acts of worship. So he wanted, or they wanted, to increase in drawing near to Allah (Mighty and Majestic) by what is originally prescribed, which is fasting and standing. Did the Messenger (peace and blessings be upon him) accept that from those two men? No. He rejected it from them with words containing severity toward them, saying: As if he (peace be upon him) is saying to them: "Are you more mindful of Allah than I am? Are you or are you more fearful of Allah than I am? I stand in night prayer, and I fast and break the fast. You now want to fast forever and stand in prayer all night." This means the situation is reversed: you are more fearful and you are more mindful. This is an impossible matter. So there is no one better after the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him). So take from this hadith a clear proof that increase in the religion, even if it is originally an act of worship, is a rejected increase that the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him) rejected. So the intended meaning of this hadith, as examples that began in the time of the Messenger (peace and blessings be upon him) under the name of increase in the religion and under the name of increasing in drawing near to the Lord of the Worlds, is that the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him) rejected them decisively and drew their attention to the fact that whoever insists on drawing near to Allah (Mighty and Majestic) with this extra worship beyond what came from him (peace and blessings be upon him) means that the one who increases is more mindful of his Lord and more fearful of his Lord than his Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him). And there is no doubt that whoever imagines this superiority will not be a Muslim, because the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) is the best of all people in every respect, especially since He (Mighty and Majestic) chose him with the conclusion of the Shari'ahs and religions on this model and on this methodology. On this model and this methodology came the statements of the righteous Salaf, which agree in condemning the religious innovation (bid'ah) that is intended to increase in drawing near to Allah (Blessed and Exalted is He). From that, for example, what is narrated from Hudhayfah ibn al-Yaman, the keeper of the secret of the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him), that he said: "Every act of worship that the Companions of the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him) did not worship with, do not worship with it." Meaning, do not worship with it. Look at this universal statement from this noble Companion, the keeper of the secret of the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him): "Every act of worship that the Companions of the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him) did not worship with, do not worship with it." Allah is the Greatest. How many acts of worship do we see today in the mosques and in the homes, where they want to increase in drawing near to Allah (Mighty and Majestic) with them, and they know that the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) did not do it, that the righteous Salaf did not do it, that the Imams, all the Imams, and at their head the four Imams, did not do it. What is their answer? O my brother, what is in it? This is an increase in good, and good is good. A colloquial word they say: "An increase in good is good."