What is the criterion for declaring a person who mocks the Sunnah a disbeliever? Is it his knowledge that it is a Sunnah, or something else?

Al-Halabi : The questioner:The questioner : What is the criterion for declaring a person who mocks the Sunnah a disbeliever? Is it knowledge that it is a Sunnah, or something else?

The Shaykh : Repeat.
Al-Halabi: What is the criterion for declaring a person who mocks the Sunnah a disbeliever? Is it knowledge that it is a Sunnah, or something else?

The Shaykh: There is no doubt that it is not permissible to declare a Muslim who testifies that there is no god but Allah and that Muhammad is the Messenger of Allah a disbeliever unless he knows that what he denies is established in the Sunnah; as for if he is ignorant, he should be taught instead of being declared a disbeliever; so whoever denies something that he believes is established in the Sunnah, and despite that he denies it, this is without a doubt a disbeliever whose blood is lawful, and this answer leads us to a disputed issue from ancient times, which is that many of the later scholars divide the Prophetic hadith, in terms of how it reached us, into two categories: mass-transmitted hadith and individual hadith; and they build upon this that they say whoever denies a mass-transmitted hadith is a disbeliever, and whoever denies an individual hadith is not a disbeliever; I believe that this detailed answer is based on the previous distinction between mass-transmitted hadith and individual hadith, and both of these distinctions have no basis in the Shari'ah in terms of reality, in mass-transmitted hadith and individual hadith, that mass-transmission and individual transmission is the method of the hadith reaching an individual, but this is not of the nature of the hadith, because the hadith is what came from the mouth of the Messenger (peace and blessings be upon him) and is not from the Qur'an; so the previous distinction in separating between whoever denies a mass-transmitted hadith, he is a disbeliever, and whoever denies an individual hadith, he is an open sinner, this is not accurate, rather the correct thing is to say that whoever denies a hadith that he believes the Messenger said, he is a disbeliever, whether this hadith is mass-transmitted or individual in the view of some people; the important thing is that the person who denied the hadith believes that the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) said it, and despite that he says to you this hadith cannot be accepted because it does not enter into the intellect, to the end of the modern philosophy known today; as for it being a mass-transmitted hadith or an individual hadith, this distinction cannot be known except by one in a million Muslims, and barely does this one in a million exist; and therefore I believe that among the deceptions introduced into Islam with bad intent or with good intent, but in any case this is foreign to Islam, is the distinction between individual hadith and mass-transmitted hadith, and then linking a result that differs from another by the difference of the hadith being mass-transmitted or individual; we mentioned earlier, among what? the result that if he denies the mass-transmitted hadith, he is a disbeliever, it is a mass-transmitted hadith in the view of the scholars; we return to the same previous research to bring another example later, a mass-transmitted hadith in the view of the scholars, but millions of Muslims have no news of this hadith, so one heard of it, and one said to him this is not reasonable, not acceptable, but he has no knowledge that this is a hadith said by the Messenger, but the scholars say it is a mass-transmitted hadith, and on the contrary, he knows that it is a hadith established from the Messenger, but it is not mass-transmitted, and despite that he denies it, so the first is not declared a disbeliever and the second is declared a disbeliever, another result that resulted from the distinction between individual hadith and mass-transmitted hadith, individual hadith is acted upon in rulings, not in creed, mass-transmitted hadith it is not permissible to act upon in creed, or at least it is not obligatory to act upon in creed, they distinguished between individual hadith, it is acted upon in rulings, not in creed; as for creed, it must be that the hadith is mass-transmitted; this is among the wonders that some scholars affirm, ancient and modern, if this scholar is asked, is this hadith authentic or weak? he does not know, let alone that he knows if he is told this is mass-transmitted or individual, he will go and say to you, what do I know, this is not my job, how did he decide the distinction between individual hadith and mass-transmitted hadith and arranged upon it that whoever denies a mass-transmitted hadith in creed, there is no harm on him, because creed is not established except by mass-transmitted hadith; with great regret, the Tahrir Party fell into this trap, in the Syrian expression, meaning in this pit, in this hole; so when the Tahrir Party first emerged, it said it is not permissible to act upon individual hadith in creed, then there were discussions, of course, between them and some individuals from the people of the Sunnah, they corrected their phrase, it was previously it is not permissible to act upon individual hadith in creed, so they changed it to it is not obligatory, it is not obligatory, they were previously in the previous phrase it is not permissible, meaning the Tahrir Party is forbidden to believe in individual hadith, but when they corrected the phrase, they gave it a little room, it is not obligatory on him; so you are free, you take this hadith or you do not take it, there is no obstacle; at first it was not permissible, and many discussions took place there in Damascus and other than Damascus from Syria between me and them, so they were forced to correct this phrase, among what I said to them was, O people, when you say it is not permissible to act upon individual hadith in creed, it means that you have no creed established upon the Sunnah, there is no creed that you believe is taken from the Sunnah, from the hadith; why? because you condition that it be mass-transmitted, but this mass-transmitted hadith in its reality in the view of the scholars is unknown to other than the scholars; and let us correct the phrase and say this hadith is mass-transmitted in the view of the specialists in hadith, and how few they are, especially in this time, but in the view of the general scholars, let alone the general Muslims, they have no news except that it is an individual hadith; and therefore you will not establish a creed upon a hadith, even if it is mass-transmitted in the view of the scholars; why? because it will return to you as an individual hadith; how? I gave them an example, I said to them, your ShaykhThe Shaykh : Taqi al-Din al-Nabhani, let us assume he is the most knowledgeable person of the time in the science of hadith, and he is not, but let us assume so, he researched a hadith, a research that is his concern because he is a specialist, and it came out with him that the hadith, for example, , it was established with him, for example, that this hadith is a mass-transmitted hadith; if it includes that there is punishment in the grave; they do not believe in the punishment of the grave because it is not in the Qur'an, they claimed, okay, now your Shaykh says, the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him and his family) said: a mass-transmitted hadith with me, you, O partisan, do you have a mass-transmitted hadith? No, why? because mass-transmission conditions, in the view of the scholars, that it be sequential in every layer, meaning a hadith narrated by Abu Bakr al-Siddiq alone, and a million people narrated it from him, this is an individual hadith, a million of the Companions narrated a hadith that was transmitted to us by one person, this is an individual hadith; so this mass-transmission must be, we reduce the number a little, it is not empty, it is realistic, a hadith narrated by ten of the Companions, and from them ten of the Tabi'un, and from them ten of the successors of the Tabi'un, and so on until this hadith was written in dozens of books of the Sunnah, with this sequence, ten of the Companions, ten of the Tabi'un, and so on, Taqi al-Din al-Nabhani came and found ten routes for this hadith, and he had a certain conviction that this hadith is definitive, said by the Messenger (peace and blessings be upon him), and this is reality; but when he says to his party, this is a mass-transmitted hadith, every partisan becomes with him an individual hadith, why? because the one who transmitted the mass-transmission to him is one person, when can the partisan say this hadith is mass-transmitted with me, with the Tahrir Party, and this does not exist with him or with any other party, they have ten specialists in the science of hadithThe Shaykh : Taqi al-Din andThe Shaykh : Ahmad, Muhammad, Abd al-Rahim, and Abd al-Rahman, and so on, ten, each one researched this hadith and found it mass-transmitted, these ten announce publicly to the Tahrir Party that such and such a hadith is mass-transmitted; at that time, this hadith becomes with every individual a mass-transmitted hadith; why? because the one who transmitted the mass-transmission is mass-transmitted, he is ten people, but this does not exist, this does not exist; and therefore I said to these people, you cannot find a mass-transmitted hadith, because we leftThe Shaykh : Take Taki al-Din, for example, as a hypothetical figure you trust, because on one occasion there was a debate between me and them. I said, “I see your books are full of weak hadiths that have no basis.” They said, “We seek the help of people like you.” I said, “May Allah will it, your party wants to seek the help of men outside your party? Knowledge must spring from you and return to others, and so on.” I told them, “Suppose this hadith is established for me by the path of mass transmission (tawatur). We told you that the hadith of the punishment of the grave is mass-transmitted. This does not constitute mass transmission in your view; because I am one person, you need scholars specializing in the science of hadith from the corners of the Islamic world to say the same thing, that the hadith of the punishment of the grave is mass-transmitted. And this is not the case. Therefore, I cannot imagine that you believe in a doctrine derived from a mass-transmitted hadith, because this mass transmission does not exist. It is not that you, as individuals of the Tahrir Party, have it from your great Shaykh, Taki al-Din, because he, like any reader reading in a book, reads that this is an isolated hadith or a mass-transmitted hadith, but it did not become mass-transmitted for him because he read it through the indication of one person. And this differs greatly in the ruling on mass-transmitted hadiths in jurisprudential research. The Hanafi scholars have another philosophy regarding jurisprudence. The theologians brought in the previous philosophy that isolated hadiths are not used to derive doctrine. But what did the Hanafi jurists say? They said, “It is not permissible to specify the Qur'an with an isolated hadith. Specifying the Qur'an is not permissible; because the Qur'an is mass-transmitted and the isolated hadith is not mass-transmitted.” With this answer, they invalidate dozens of established legal rulings based on the authentic Sunnah. For example, they differ with the majority of jurists regarding the ruling on reciting al-Fatihah. The majority say it is a pillar of the prayer. They say, “No, this is obligatory and not a fard, let alone a pillar. The prayer is not valid without it.” Well, the hadith they say is an isolated hadith, and the Qur'an says: This is a general text, “what is easy of the Qur'an.” It is not permissible to specify it with an isolated hadith. And they are like what we say in Syria, “Let’s see.” The Imam of the Muhaddithin, al-Bukhari, authored a treatise on recitation, “Juz' al-Qira'ah.” If you look at the beginning of the treatise, he says, “It is mass-transmitted to us that the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) said:” How can you, O jurists, O Hanafis, say that this hadith is an isolated hadith? This is the Imam of the Muhaddithin saying that it is a mass-transmitted hadith for us, and this statement is correct. But it is correct according to al-Bukhari, not according to the jurists, because this hadith did not come to them by the path of mass transmission that brings certainty. But this is a foreign philosophy in Islam. Distinguishing between one hadith and another, as long as all of them are authentic and established hadiths from him, but one came from one path, another from two, a third from three, from ten, and so on. Each of these types has a specific name among the Muhaddithin: a famous hadith, a widely transmitted hadith, a mass-transmitted hadith. These are terms to reveal the method by which the hadith reached us. But the intention of these terms is not to invalidate acting upon the hadith because it is in such a rank and not in another rank. Therefore, it is not permissible, meaning, except that we take the hadith from the Messenger (peace and blessings be upon him) simply by it being authentic. As for mass-transmitted and isolated, this is a relative issue, first in general, and second, it is relative to the people of knowledge. As for the general public, they have no knowledge. Therefore, takfir (declaring someone a disbeliever) is not related to the method by which the hadith reached the denier of the hadith, whether it is isolated or mass-transmitted, nor is it related to the method by which the hadith reached the non-denier. The hadith may be mass-transmitted for the non-denier, while he has no news of this hadith, as we mentioned earlier. But the hadith is not mass-transmitted for all scholars, yet it is authentic. And the one who denied it also believes it is authentic, yet he denies it, so he is a disbeliever. So the issue of takfir is not related to what is in the mind of the one declaring takfir, but to what is in the mind of the one being declared a disbeliever. If the one being declared a disbeliever believes that this hadith is authentic from the Messenger, yet he denies it, then there is no doubt that he becomes a disbeliever by that. And if he says, “Even if I am ignorant of this hadith, and I doubt its authenticity, I doubt its authenticity from the Messenger, and Allah knows from his heart that he is not a hypocrite, he says what is in his heart,” this does not make him a disbeliever in the sight of the Lord of the Worlds. But if he knows that the Messenger said this hadith, but he pretends and says, “I doubt that the Messenger said this,” then he is a disbeliever in the sight of Allah; because in the depths of his heart he believes that the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) said this hadith, yet he denies it. So takfir is not permissible to be ruled based on what is in the mind of the one declaring takfir, but based on what is in the mind of the one being declared a disbeliever. Clear, if Allah wills.

The questioner : Clear. Explain to us the difference between the denier and the mocker, who is, I mean...?

The Shaykh : There is no difference. The one who mocks a hadith while believing that the Messenger said it is the same as the one who denied it. They are equal.