A word from the Shaykh on the jurisprudence of the saying, “Acquire understanding before you become leaders.”

The Shaykh : Praise is to Allah; we praise Him, seek His help, and seek His forgiveness, and we seek refuge in Allah from the evil of our own souls and from the evil of our deeds. Whom Allah guides, none can mislead, and whom He leaves to mislead, none can guide. And I bear witness that there is no god but Allah alone, with no partner, and I bear witness that Muhammad is His slave and His Messenger. In my opinion, the basis of the differences that occur today between Islamic groups in general, and within a single group in particular, is, as we always and forever say, the failure to follow the guidance of the righteous predecessors (Salaf) and the independence in studying knowledge without being guided by their guidance and following in their footsteps. I do not wish to lengthen this matter; rather, I wish to mention a word from that righteous predecessor, which says, “Acquire understanding before you become leaders.” I believe this saying and this good wisdom is from Ibrahim al-Nakha'i, who is one of the distinguished Tabi'un who received knowledge and the Sunnah from the students of 'Abdullah ibn Mas'ud (may Allah be pleased with him). With his penetrating insight, he looked far ahead and saw that many people take the lead of some groups without acquiring understanding in the religion, so they mislead and are misled. Therefore, he gave this blessed advice and said, “Acquire understanding before you become leaders,” meaning learn the knowledge of the Book and the Sunnah and acquire understanding in them before you become masters and leaders who are followed. If you do so, you can be sincere and truthful guides and directors to the truth. If you do not, you will be far astray. Perhaps one of the sources of this wisdom is the well-known saying of the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him), reported in “Sahih al-Bukhari and Muslim” from the hadith of 'Abdullah ibn 'Amr ibn al-'As (may Allah be pleased with him), who said: The Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him) said: Now, we know in the Islamic world many groups, blocs, and parties.

The questioner : Peace be upon you.

The Shaykh : And upon you be peace. Such blocs and partisanship began, to the extent of my knowledge and reading, from the day of the Muslim Brotherhood group in your Cairo, led by a man whom we can only speak well of in what we know of him. But the truth is more deserving of being spoken: he was not a scholar. So he became a leader without having acquired understanding. Perhaps you all know that understanding in the religion is the understanding derived from the Book of Allah and the hadith of the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him), and it is not that a person reads a book of jurisprudence according to one of the four schools, or reads a book of jurisprudence according to the four schools where in a single issue he finds many and numerous opinions, and takes from these opinions what suits his bloc and partisanship, and does not care about what came in the Book of Allah and the Sunnah of the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him) that agrees with or contradicts his position. Rather, his goal is to take from each school what pleases him and suits him. Based on this, you find these sects and groups, as the Lord of the Worlds said, The corruption of these leaders, as I said, the first party is that party. To this day, unfortunately, and this is a very, very important phenomenon, you do not find their leader to be a scholar. This is a very important phenomenon; the group may number thousands upon thousands, yet you do not find in it a scholar. And I mean a scholar in the Salafi sense, i.e., a scholar of the Book and the Sunnah, not of a school of jurisprudence. To be honest in describing this painful reality, we can exclude one man, and with reservation as well, and that isThe Shaykh : Mahmoud Khattab al-Sabki, because this man truly stood out from the leaders of Islamic groups by gathering his group around him, and he was a scholar. However, he deviated in some issues from the methodology of the righteous predecessors (Salaf), and I do not wish to delve into this area. His followers numbered in the millions, and they were keen, with all keenness, to adhere to the Sunnah. But here is another very, very important aspect, and there are many such aspects: the one who wants to revive the Sunnah and carry all people upon it must be a scholar of hadith, of the principles of hadith, the rules of the science of hadith terminology, and the biographies of the narrators of hadith, so that with this noble knowledge he can distinguish what is authentic of the hadith reported from the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him) from what is not authentic. If such a man is found in some of the parties that came after, he is not a scholar, neither of the Salafi jurisprudence derived from the Book and the Sunnah, nor of the authentic Sunnah distinguished from weak hadiths. Another example we have is the Tablighi Jama'ah. As you know, they reach millions and spread in the Islamic world, and even in the Western world. But they are not at the scientific level that should be realized by every da'i who calls people to Islam, especially if the da'i is in the West and in lands of disbelief. This is because the problems and doubts that come to them there are more than what comes to them in these lands. If he is not firmly established in the Book of Allah and the hadith of the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him), he is also forced to answer from his mind and from his ignorance, so he misleads and misleads many people with him. For this reason, I see that the enthusiastic youth today do not have a leader who acquired understanding before he became a leader. This is the problem of the da'is in the Islamic world today. And we ask Allah to guide us to the path of guidance.