Dr Hamad Ghazali

السلام عليكم ورحمة الله وبركاته

In the name of Allah, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful. Dear brothers and sisters, I pray to Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala, you all safe and well, your families and our community and our Muslims all over the world and the whole world. I pray to Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala to make this hour an hour of ijabah for our dua.

May Allah strengthen and find a way to shelter and support our brothers in Gaza and Palestine and Sudan and in other parts of the Muslim world. May Allah grant them the peace of mind and heart inshallah and the shelter and the food, the drink they need to have.

Living in a New World While Preserving Our Foundations

I would like to talk to you today about how we going to live in a new world where all the fundamentals that we just learned, people are trying to find ways to destroy it and find something else. As part of the new world order that we live in and as we come close to the month of Ramadan, spiritually we need to uplift ourselves and we need to have that confidence in Islam that I talked about in several of my khutbahs.

And today I want to devote it to just how we combine the Quran and the sunnah to understand the Quran. There are several websites nowadays and several people who are just trying to present Islam as the deen of the Quran. Putting down all the imams that we have, Abu Hanifa, Shafi, Ahmed, Malik and all the fundamentals that we have, putting them down. And even just taking the whole sunnah out and depending on the Quran. And that is something that is very serious.

Maybe appealing to some of the people who may find it difficult to understand the sunnah and how we use it. But that's where we seek help from people who know.

Ask the people who have the knowledge if you don't know.

And that's where we keep our fundamentals, our values, our procedure, our manhaj intact since the time of the Prophet ﷺ and the sahaba up till now and until the day of judgement. If we really start just to listen to people here and there and take the easy way out, we'll put ourselves in trouble and we'll put our children in trouble. And we'll have no references and everybody will come up with his or her own religion and we'll end up with a chaos.

The Quran and Sunnah Complement Each Other

And all of that in the name of uniting the whole world to follow the same procedure. And that's a call that is coming out right now and many people are trying to propagate it and call for it. I want you to rest assured that in your heart that the Qur'an and the sunnah they complement each other.

Sunnah complements the Qur'an. Sunnah is a separate part of the Qur'an. You take it out and taking the seerah out of Islam, then you're really just taking the engine out of Islam. Part of the engine that we have. So it is very important to really take the interpretation of the Prophet ﷺ to the Qur'an. The practice of the Prophet ﷺ. What he ordered, what he didn't order, things that he kept silent about.

All of these are elements of the sunnah of the Prophet ﷺ. We can't just say, I'll open the Qur'an and read myself and understand it the way I feel I like or I just do a few research here and there without looking into what our scholars, those who founded for us treasures, knowledge, with connection to the tabi'een and some of them to the sahaba as well. That's the treasure that we have. We cannot live without it.

And hence the call to follow the Qur'an without looking at the sunnah is not really a correct way, is wrong and is not Islamic. I want you to be aware of that.

There Will Never Be Contradiction

There will never be a contradiction. Listen to this statement carefully. There will never be a contradiction between the Qur'an and the sunnah that is well traced to the Prophet ﷺ and is a correct sunnah. Will never be a contradiction.

And if we think there is a contradiction, then either what we think is not correct, either what we see the hadith is correct is incorrect, or we misunderstood the hadith, or we kind of use criteria that are not really the right criteria. So you put in your heart, the heart of the children that you raise, there will never be a contradiction between the correct sunnah and the Qur'an that we have.

So how do we go farther with that? When we don't have the knowledge, when we don't have the expertise, that you have one thing, you have the trust in Islam. That should not be shaken. You have the trust in what the Qur'an says. You have the trust in what the Prophet ﷺ said. Should be a strong foundation. And then we dig, we find out, we ask. But when we go shaken, when we go with no solid belief in our hearts about these two sources, then we really go in to learn about Islam without a compass.

Somebody driving to the east coast, to the west coast and doesn't have a compass, doesn't have a GPS, doesn't have a guide, then you really do not, you are not going to reach your destination.

Examples of Apparent Contradictions

And let me share with you some of the examples that, you know, when you look at them and you wonder, what is this and how would this be Islamic? And one of the things that I personally witnessed when I was reading in an Islamic book, two things that came and that was the child born of adultery is going to go to hell. And I said, wait a minute, this can't be. What is the crime that child committed so that he faces that fate? And then I just remembered some of the verses that we have.

That we are not going to hold somebody accountable for somebody else's crimes.

Every human will be held for what you earn, what you do, what you say. That is the Qur'an, what the Qur'an says. So this must not be right. So what is the next step? The next step is to do some research with the confidence that the Qur'an is correct. And either I reject that hadith or I interpret it in such a way that agrees with the Qur'an. This is the methodology. But I cannot just accept it. And then you go, you find some research, it says fabricated hadith. It's not correct.

Another example, find in the Islamic literature, "The person who committed the heinous crime of killing the female baby alive and the baby are in hell." Wait a minute, again. What's the crime of the baby? The baby didn't commit any crime. In fact, it's in contradiction of the verse where Allah said:

And when the female baby who was killed alive will be asked, What crime did you commit so you be killed? You can see the contradictions.

And this is just an example of how we look at things. Then, what should I do? I follow the same procedure. Do some research with tools in my hands. Either I reject this hadith totally, or I reinterpret it to agree with the Quran. That is how the scholars follow that. And every one of us says, whenever you see something like that, that is not in common senses, in disagreement with something in the Quran, should say with full confidence, something wrong. I gotta find that.

Not to reject the hadith and totally, Oh, I don't know, this is complicated, I don't wanna deal with that, I'll take what the Quran says and ignore everything else. Then how are you gonna pray? How many rakahs are you gonna have in each salah? What duas are you gonna say? What are you gonna say in your sujood? What are you gonna say in your ruku? How are you gonna finish the salah? How are you gonna do the siyam? How are you gonna do the hajj? Tons of things.

Whatever the Prophet ﷺ said in the Quran, Take it, and whatever he forbade you of, just stop it.

Confidence in Our Deen

These are the rules that we should always keep in mind, so that we keep and preserve our deen intact, and follow the steps and the sunnah of the Prophet ﷺ. Dear brothers and sisters, you gotta put in your heart, you have a deen that is very solid. You have a deen that doesn't have contradictions. You have a deen that agrees with signs, with all the discoveries.

And if there is any, again I repeat it, if there is any disagreement, then maybe we have to re-examine. Is what I know Islamic or not? Is what I know as science is science or not? And if I'm confident that this is Islamic, the clear verse, clear hadith of the Prophet ﷺ, or a group of hadith, then I drop. Then what I know as science is no science. That confidence should always be there.

Practical Examples of Methodology

And let's take an example. You know, you read that whatever is underneath your ankle here is in hell. And we understand that this is an expression about people who do it, and this is like proud, pride. But what if traditions that we all wear pants, and the pants sometimes go down, and long enough to touch the floor. What are we going to do with this hadith?

And here comes the importance of looking at other hadith, and finding out what is the rule in this matter. And we hear story of Abu Bakr radiallahu anhu, rushing to the Prophet ﷺ. And his dress is long enough and touching the floor. And ask the Prophet ﷺ, Am I one of those who will go to hell for such a deed? And the Prophet ﷺ tells him, No, you are not of those. You don't do it in pride. You don't do it just to show off. You just do it because it happened that you are like this.

Then our understanding is going to be adjusted by looking at other hadith. And so I just explore just a little, to show you that it is not, I shouldn't jump to conclusions based on one hadith. Or based on something that is in contradiction with the verse of the Quran.

Have the confidence again and again, that there would never be contradiction between a correct hadith and the Quran. And if there is, then I reinterpolate.

And maybe one final example, is an example of the Euphrates, has its origin in Jannah. The hadith says, What am I going to do with this? We know where it started and where it ends. Then I reinterpolate, reinterpret the hadith before rejecting it. Maybe that's a metaphor. Maybe it doesn't mean it literally.

So I have either to reject it or reinterpret it. And it's better to reinterpret it. If I find it that is correct after research, then it didn't mean it literally. Then that is as good as the rivers that are originating in Jannah. That is how confident we are. That is the procedure we do. What if I reject it? It's okay. There will never be a contradiction between the hadith and the Quran and the sunnah of the Prophet ﷺ.

Conclusion and Du'a

That is the point that I wanted to share with you today, so that we all aware of what our deen is and the new trends that are coming on the internet and in the world and people who are trying to create a new trend for Islam, rejecting all the thawabit, all the fixed fundamentals that we have and coming up with something new, where people have no real knowledge, can contribute to it and create something new.

May Allah protect us all, protect our children and make us the best nation in joining the good and forbidding the evil.