How to reconcile the disagreement regarding the number in the hadith: “I command you with four and forbid you from four”?
Machine translationRead the Arabic original
The questioner : The hadith: Sahih al-Bukhari 3510 How do we reconcile them in this lesson?
The Shaykh : The apparent view is that we reconcile them by saying that the addition is either a mistake by the narrator, for example, he said four when it was five, or the testimony that there is no god but Allah and that Muhammad is the Messenger of Allah is counted as one, and something like this does not affect the meaning. That is, if the narrator is mistaken about the number, it does not affect the meaning.
The questioner : ... interpretation ...
The Shaykh : What appears to me, I say, this is not apparent as long as he explicitly stated the number and then added to it. What is problematic is the interpretation of faith or Islam; that is what is problematic, because the Messenger made the delegation of Abd Qais equate faith with Islam, yes.
I order you to observe four things and forbid you (to do) four things
آمركم بأربع وأنهاكم عن أربعThe Shaykh : The apparent view is that we reconcile them by saying that the addition is either a mistake by the narrator, for example, he said four when it was five, or the testimony that there is no god but Allah and that Muhammad is the Messenger of Allah is counted as one, and something like this does not affect the meaning. That is, if the narrator is mistaken about the number, it does not affect the meaning.
The questioner : ... interpretation ...
The Shaykh : What appears to me, I say, this is not apparent as long as he explicitly stated the number and then added to it. What is problematic is the interpretation of faith or Islam; that is what is problematic, because the Messenger made the delegation of Abd Qais equate faith with Islam, yes.