What is knowledge and who is a scholar?

The Shaykh : Please go ahead.

The questioner : Shaykh, what is the ruling regarding employees who work in banks now? What is the knowledge if I tell them that it is not permissible? They say that there are some scholars who issued a fatwa permitting working as an employee in a bank because he has no involvement in it. May Allah reward you with good.

The Shaykh : We seek help from Allah. Before answering this question directly, I want to mention to our brothers the reality of knowledge. What is it? Is it that so-and-so said this and so-and-so said that? If knowledge were like that, the majority of Muslims would have been lost between "so-and-so said" and "so-and-so said" and the abundance of questions. So what is knowledge? No scholar of the Book and the Sunnah doubts that it is what Allah the Exalted said: This is because the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him), as our Lord the Exalted described him truthfully when He said: This is the knowledge: what the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him) brought. There is no doubt that the origin of this knowledge is the Noble Qur'an, but the Lord of the worlds willed to lighten the burden on His believing servants by making it today condensed, as it is said today, a constitution for the Islamic Shari'ah, and He tasked His Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) to explain this Qur'an. This is what is explicitly stated in the Qur'an itself when the Lord of mankind said: So the explanation is the Sunnah of the Messenger (peace and blessings be upon him), and the explained is the Qur'an. The meaning of this statement, and this is by the consensus of all Muslims, is that there is no room for anyone to interpret the Qur'an by a path other than the path of the Messenger (peace and blessings be upon him). So whoever wants to present to the Muslims an interpretation of the Noble Qur'an from his intellect, from his Arabic language, from his independent legal reasoning, or from his opinion, is a clear loser, and he has no way to be successful in interpreting the Qur'an except by relying on the explanation of the Messenger (peace and blessings be upon him). Whoever does not do that does not believe in the Qur'an, because belief in the Qur'an necessitates belief in every verse, and even in every word of this Noble Qur'an. If Allah is addressing the Messenger saying: And there is no doubt that the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) fulfilled this duty that was entrusted to him and executed the word of Allah the Exalted: This is a reality that does not accept debate, and it is that the Shari'ah is the Qur'an and the Sunnah. So whoever turns away from taking from one of them has disbelieved in the other. And there is a third thing that is very necessary for every Muslim who wants to be clear about his Lord to be aware of and to believe in: this explanation, which is the Sunnah of the Messenger (peace and blessings be upon him). This Sunnah, in reality, is divided into three categories, and this is also a matter agreed upon by the scholars: the saying of the Messenger (peace and blessings be upon him), his doing, and his approval. What is the path of our knowing this Sunnah in its three categories? It is the Companions of the Messenger (peace and blessings be upon him). And so we arrive at the following conclusion: We cannot understand the Qur'an except by the path of the Messenger (peace and blessings be upon him) and his explanation. We cannot reach knowledge of the path of the Messenger (peace and blessings be upon him) except by knowing what the transmitters of this Qur'an and this explanation were upon, and they are the Companions of the Messenger (peace and blessings be upon him). If we interpret the Qur'an with the Sunnah, and this is obligatory as I mentioned earlier, but is that sufficient? The answer is no. There is something else that is specified in the Book and in the Sunnah, and it is following the path of the believers in what they interpreted of the words of Allah and what they explained to us of the Sunnah of the Messenger of Allah. And so Allah the Exalted said in the Noble Qur'an: Here is a very, very, very sad reality, and although we are now in a time where we feel, on one hand, and praise be to Allah, that there is what is called the Islamic awakening, but this awakening, in my belief and the belief of everyone who knows the reality of the Book and the Sunnah and what the pious predecessors were upon, believes that this awakening is in the first stage of the awakening, in the beginning of the path. Why? Because for less than half a century, we lived among a generation of people where you did not hear anyone among them saying "Allah said" or "The Messenger of Allah said," but rather "Abu Hanifa said," "Imam Malik said," "Al-Shafi'i said," "Ahmad said." These are our imams, but they are not infallible like our Prophet, and they are the branch, while the root is the Messenger (peace and blessings be upon him) who guided us to Allah. But now, this is a great glad tidings, and it is that we have begun, since a few decades, to hear "Allah said" and "The Messenger of Allah said." This is the awakening, this is the beginning of the awakening. But we want to hear a third thing, which is "Allah said," "The Messenger of Allah said," and "The pious predecessors said." Without the third and last statement, it is absolutely impossible for a scholar who truly believes in what came in the Book and the Sunnah to 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 resorts to receiving that from the Companions of the Messenger and follows the path of the first believers: Did not Allah say, "We will turn him to what he has turned to," but rather He added to opposing the Messenger and said, "and follows other than the path of the believers." Did Allah say "and follows other than the path of the believers" in vain? Far be it from Allah the Exalted. So why this phrase? Was it not sufficient for Allah to say, "And whoever opposes the Messenger, We will turn him to what he has turned to"? And even if it was after the guidance became clear to him, it would have been sufficient if we wanted to rely only on the Book and the Sunnah. But Allah the Exalted, 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, over and over, to take hold of his Sunnah and the Sunnah of his Companions. He did not (peace and blessings be upon him), when describing the saved sect, say that it is only upon what the Messenger was upon, but rather he added and said, "What I am upon and my Companions." Similarly in the hadith of Al-'Arba' ibn Sari'ah, which is well-known, and there is no need for me to quote it in full, but the point of it is: The secret of this is that they are the safe transmitters who transmitted to us the application of the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) of the texts of the Book and the words of his hadiths. Take for example some Qur'anic verses, and among the most important are those related to some of the legal hudud. Allah the Exalted said: The thief: linguistically, no one who is an Arab can be ignorant of what the meaning of "thief" is, and that any person who steals, no matter how small and little the thing is, is a thief. Likewise, "the hand": "cut off their hands." 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 chicken, he steals up to an unlimited amount. All these thefts, in all their types, are called stealing by a thief. So is the hand of every thief cut off? The answer is no. Where do we get this from? From the Qur'an? The Qur'an was general and said "the thief." From the explanation of the Messenger (peace and blessings 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 aggression and injustice against him if his hand were cut off. This is clear. But what needs more clarification than this is that when Allah said: We find that "the hand" is used in some instances to mean the arm up to the elbows, and we find that sometimes "the hand" is used to mean only the palms. So do you think that 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 applied the text of this Qur'an in any of these three ways—the palm, the arm, or the whole hand at the shoulder—linguistically applied the Qur'anic text "cut off their hands." But is this the Shari'ah? The answer is no. Where from? From the application of the Messenger of this Qur'anic text. That is, 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. How did we know this? From the Companions, from these safe transmitters. They are the ones who transmitted to us this Islam with all the details we mentioned, even if in a summarized word. 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?
No, and I deny the attributes and their negation, out of fear of denying the divine attributes and likening Allah to creation. So, what is knowledge? It is what Allah said, what the Messenger of Allah said, and what the Companions of the Messenger of Allah said. This is what I want to emphasize to your ears: constantly repeat this alongside the Book and the Sunnah, and the Companions. Up to now, few people pay attention to this matter that our Lord referred to in the previous verse, following other than the path of the believers. The path of the believers, in our example—and there are many, many examples—in our example, the path of the believers is cutting off the hand of the thief at the wrist, not at the elbow, and not at the shoulder. Whoever does otherwise has opposed the Messenger and followed other than the path of the believers. Now, the question was that some scholars... and this is a very long discussion, but I do not want to waste the session on this discussion, because we are in the process of answering some questions.