Explaining the state of the awakening and the call to Allah the Exalted, and that it is not possible except on the basis of the Book, the Sunnah, and the understanding of the righteous predecessors.

The Shaykh : This is an awakening; this is the beginning of the awakening. But we want to hear a third thing, namely: Allah said, the Messenger of Allah said, and the righteous predecessors said. Without the third and final statement, a scholar who truly believes in what came in the Book and the Sunnah can never, absolutely never, be guided by his Lord in his interpretation of the Book of Allah and the Sunnah of the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him) unless he turns to receiving that from the Companions of the Messenger and follows the path of the first believers. Allah did not say at all: Rather, He added to the disobedience of the Messenger, saying: Did Allah say: in vain? Far be it from Allah. So why this phrase? Was it not enough for Allah to say: "And whoever disobeys the Messenger after the guidance has become clear to him, We will turn him around as he turned away"? Even if it was after the guidance had become clear to him, it would have been enough if we wanted to rely only on the Book and the Sunnah. But Allah the Mighty and Majestic, for a clear and apparent wisdom, said: And the Messenger (peace and blessings be upon him), when he admonished his Companions, drew their attention and repeated in their ears, again and again, that they should hold fast to his Sunnah and the Sunnah of his Companions. He (peace be upon him) did not, when describing the saved group, say that they are only on what the Messenger was upon; rather, he added and said: Likewise, in the hadith of al-'Arba' ibn Sariyah, which is well-known, and I have no need to quote it in full; the point of it is The secret of this is that they are the trustworthy transmitters who transmitted to us the application of the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) of the texts of the Book and the wording of his hadiths. Take, for example, some of the verses of the Qur'an, and among the most important are those concerning some of the prescribed limits. Allah the Exalted said: As for the thief, no one who is an Arab can be ignorant of the meaning of "thief," and that any person who steals something, however small and little that thing may be, is a thief. Likewise, the hand the hand is also known, but the thief, as is known, has several forms: he steals a needle, he steals an egg, he steals a hen, he steals up to no end. All these thefts, in all their types, are called stealing by the thief. So is the hand of every thief cut off? The answer is no. Where do we get this from the Qur'an? The Qur'an stated generally, saying: It is not from the explanation of the Messenger (peace be upon him), where he said: So, whoever steals less than a quarter of a dinar, it is not permissible to cut off his hand; it would be an aggression and injustice against him if his hand were cut off. This is clear. But what needs more than this clarification is that when Allah said: we find that "hand" is used in some instances to mean the arm up to the elbows, and we find that sometimes "hand" is used to mean only the palms. So, when Allah the Exalted said in this verse what is the hand intended here? Linguistically, whether the thief's hand is cut from the wrist, or from the elbow, or from the shoulder, all of that is a hand. And whoever applies the text of this Qur'an in any of these three ways—the palm, the arm, or the whole hand at the shoulder—linguistically applies the Qur'anic text. But is this the Shari'ah? The answer is no. Where from? From the application of the Messenger of this Qur'anic text, namely when he cut off the hand of the thief, he did not cut it from the shoulder, nor from the elbow, but from the wrist. Where did we know this? From the Companions, from these trustworthy transmitters. They are the ones who transmitted to us this Islam with all the details we have mentioned, even if in a general term. Therefore, Imam Ibn al-Qayyim al-Jawziyyah (may Allah have mercy on him) said in his scholarly poetry:
"Knowledge is: Allah said, His Messenger said, *** The Companions said; it is not deception
What knowledge has placed you in the foolishness of disagreement *** Between the Messenger and the opinion of a jurist.
Nor denial of the attributes and their negation, *** Guarding against ta'til (denial of the divine attributes) and tashbih (likening Allah to creation)"
So what is knowledge? Allah said, His Messenger said, the Companions of the Messenger of Allah said. This is what I wanted to emphasize in your ears: constantly repeating with the Book and the Sunnah, the Companions. Up to now, few people pay attention to this addition that our Lord indicated in the previous verse: So the path of the believers, in our example—and there are many, many examples in our case—the path of the believers is cutting off the hand of the thief from the wrist, not from the elbow, nor from the shoulder. So whoever does otherwise has disobeyed the Messenger and followed a path other than the path of the believers. Now, the question was that some scholars... and this is a very long research, but I do not want to waste the session on this research, because we are in the process of answering some questions.