Suhaib Webb – One Hundred & Fifty Hadith on Character and Tazkiya Hadiths One Five
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Praise Allah
Some peace and blessings upon our beloved messenger,
Muhammad
upon his family, his companions, those who follow
them until the end of time.
Every Saturday evening around this time,
going to gather together
to read from
a collection of a hadith of the prophet.
And this hadith this collection of hadith
is dealing with character.
And
is dealing with character,
and we know that character is very important.
The prophet
said,
that the prophet
said in a sound hadith that the closest
of you to me and the hereafter will
be those of you who had the best
character.
And the prophet
he was asked
very importantly, he was asked
asked what,
are the 2 things that will take someone
to Jannah?
And he said,
is to be mindful of Allah, to be
obedient to Allah,
and to behave well with other people.
We ask Allah to cure your father
May Allah bless him and protect him.
So every Saturday,
we'll come together. We'll read,
there's a 150
hadith in this collection.
We're going to read, try to read like
10 or so, 5 to 10 every week,
so that we can work on our character.
That takes us to a very important
idea in Islam, and that is that character
is something that you can,
control by the will of Allah azza wa
jal
and that you
are responsible and I am responsible for.
We find this on the in the authentic
hadith of the prophet
who
said
that I promise
a home
in the highest level of paradise for the
one
The person who improves
his or her Islam.
And the prophet sallallahu alaihi
wasahe wasaheem come
out. Say the imam Muslim he narrates that
the prophet
Sallallahu
Alaihi Wa Wa Salam.
He said, Whoever
he or she improves his or her Islam.
Then Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala will multiply their
good like in infinite ways.
So what do we understand from these,
a hadith? Is that a person can indeed
improve their character?
And if it was impossible for us to
improve our character, then why would Allah
command us to do so?
And it's from the foundations
of Quranic interpretation
that Allah
will not
command us to do something we are unable
to do.
So Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala says,
Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala does not burden
someone with what they can handle. Meaning in
his Sharia, there is taisir.
In the sharia of Allah
there's ease as we'll talk about later and
facilitation.
That's your husband's responsibility.
I'm so sorry that this has happened to
you. May Allah
bless you and give you whatever you is
making you happy. You you are not responsible
or should you blame yourself for
his behavior. He's responsible for his behavior,
but he is responsible for changing himself.
We ask Allah to bless you,
and to protect you and bless your family
inshallah.
So we'll start with the first hadith.
And, of course, this text is written by
the sheikh of one of my sheikhs,
sheikh,
Abi al Sheikh Abulfhadl Abdullah
Muhammad
Of course, those of you from from Morocco,
perhaps you heard of Ibn Sadiq
Radiallahu Anhoon.
May Allah be pleased with him. And in
this short collection of ahadith, 150hadith,
he's gathered together some very beautiful ahadith
that touch on how we can be inspired
to improve ourselves. And I see myself in
this moment with you as the one who's
most in need, alhamdulillah,
of of taking benefit from from what these
hadith,
have to share with us. We
know that Abdulrahman ibn Qasim
Abdulrahman ibn Qasim was
the greatest one of the greatest students of
Imam Malik ibn Anis.
And Abdur Rahman ibn Qasim,
he said as is mentioned by Al Qadi
Iyal.
He said that I studied with the Imam
Malik or radiallahu anhu
20 years.
20 years.
He said 17
of those years,
I learned character
And 3 of those years, I learned filk.
And I wish
that I could exchange those last 3 years
to continue learning character.
I say this
as someone who,
means to say this in the best way
I can.
But the way that we are educating ourselves
currently
as a community is problematic.
And in fact, it doesn't really
equate to knowledge.
That is that we may bounce from here
to there,
we catch up on the latest
kind of,
scandal in the community because we mirror, right,
the dominant,
we mirror the culture of the occupier.
And whether that occupier is occupying our land
or occupying our hearts and minds,
we tend people tend to have Stockholm syndrome.
So it's very interesting that you see
the same type of entertainment
avenues within non Muslim circles
are now being given the laws of Islam
and reproduced
in Muslim circles.
As people people will spend hours and hours
and hours listening to people talk about other
people
or to talk about the latest
controversy.
But where are the people who are really
engrossed in the Quran?
Engrossed in the hadith of the prophet sallallahu
alaihi wa sallam? Do they feel that they
don't have a need for that?
Do people feel they don't need the Quran?
Do they feel they don't need to study
the hadith of the prophet sallallahu
alaihi wa sallam?
What's more important is to get caught up
in all of the kind of really shallow
things that are happening.
That's why Sayna
If Allah has willed for someone
evil,
That then if that's the case, then that
person will find, like, the entry points into
meaningless discussions
and arguments
is facilitated for him or her.
And if the Prophet salallahu alaihi wasalam, he
said if Allah wills for you good, then
you will find the entry points into a
bada
and service
facilitated for us.
So we especially English speaking Muslims,
they have to really
think about
realigning themselves with studying
tafsir,
studying
hadith of the prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam,
because that's what
made the early Muslims great.
And then calibrating that as a source of
interpretive
inspiration. So I feel
it's very, very important
to read hadith of the prophet salallahu alayhi
wa sallam at least once a week.
And every one of these hadith, we are
relating with the chain
back to the prophet.
The second is that you're going to find
within,
this collection mini week hadith.
And this is one of the greatest catastrophes
of the Sunni community
is that we have confused
weak hadith
for a hadith which is fabricated.
But a hadith is fabricated is maldur.
And a hadith that is weak is da'if.
And you have to be very, very careful
if you are young and Sunni now
that you may inadvertently
be exposed
because of the amount of,
influence that certain
ways of thinking have into the community because
of funding and because of access given to
the ummah,
you may actually be being taught what were
considered
fringe opinions within the Sunni community for years.
For example, a fringe opinion
that was in the Sunni community for years
for years was that a hadith, which is
Da'if.
Right?
Should be completely
rejected
and not acted upon.
This was a fringe opinion
held by
a a small minority
of scholars in the science of Hadith.
Whereas now because of contemporary salafism, and this
is an academic analysis, this is not, to
attack anybody,
But contemporary Salafism, especially in areas of Akida,
especially in the areas of Tafsir
and especially in the areas of the science
of Hadith
have popularized
and made mainstream
opinions about issues that were were once considered
on the margins
of mainstream Sunni Islam.
And one of the most important is that
a Hadith Da'if
should be treated like it's poison or cancer.
This is not true.
This is not the opinion of the majority.
Look at the statement of Sayna Imam and
Nawawi
in his introduction to the 40 hadith. He
said,
He said, the scholars agreed
that you are allowed to use weak hadith
and
in issues related to virtues.
That's Imam Manawi,
Sheikh Albani, Ala Yohamu, Sheikh Ibn Uthaimin,
and
other,
people who come from the Salafi madrasa,
but especially Sheikh, Sheikh Al Bani, Alaia Hammel,
criticized
Imam Anawi and said, no. There's no Ijmaat
here.
But that's not what Imam Anawi'i
meant.
I read, Alhamdulillah, 40 hadith more than at
least
60 to 70 times with the shoo. What
he meant
is
most most of them
Most of them. He didn't say
They have this opinion.
So this is a a a problem now
within,
contemporary Sunni,
thought is that oftentimes they find themselves and
that's okay if you want to adopt that
opinion. That's fine. But that opinion should not
be opinion,
positioned and presented as the mainstream.
This is my point. The mainstream
as mentioned by Sayedee Imam Manawi, as mentioned
by Sayedee Imam Ibn Hajar for the Allahu
Anhu that it is allowed to act on
a Hadith Daif in what are called the.
Those hadith that talk about virtues
under the following conditions. You wanna remember this.
The first condition is it should not be
extremely weak.
What what do they mean by extremely weak?
Hadith maldur.
Because, of course, hadith maldur as mentioned by
Al Hafiz,
Iraqi and imam.
Right? Hadith
is a branch of weak hadith,
but it's like
not allowed to narrate it, not allowed to
act on it, not allowed to even consider
it. This is called.
After
that's a whole different discussion.
Then after maldur
is is a what we can say a
a less weak type of hadith of da'if.
But what the scholars meant by that the
hadith should not be extremely weak, number 1,
it's not.
And number 2, there's nothing
in the character of the,
like the narrator is a liar
or the narrator is someone who's known
almodellus for example.
So in other words, maybe in this hadith,
the person has like, they weren't they weren't
as a they weren't a good scribe,
Maybe his or her memory at that time
wasn't as strong as it used to be.
Maybe they narrated from someone, they were known
their narrations from that person weren't quite as
strong as from others and so on and
so forth. So this is not the same
as Hadith Mauduah.
Hadith Mauduah
is a famous one
that
you you know, Imam Masiyuti mentions a guy
who was selling melons in front of a
masjid, and he said whoever buys melons enters
Jannah.
Absolutely fabricated.
The narration that the prophet made the deal
with the that I'll worship your gods for
you for a few days. You'll worship my
gods for you for a few days.
The hadith
hadamal dua.
The second it's a great question, by the
way,
The second,
condition
that a hadith is not super weak,
that we should mention, that that can be
used, excuse me, in Fada'il
is that it does not deal with and
explicitly. So like it says, this is haram,
this is halal, this is so on and
so forth.
This this hadith has to be.
Although sometimes there are weak hadith that the
scholars used, we'll talk about this in the
future because
because the
salaf acted on the hadith.
Exactly. So is a fabrication. Right? A will
for fabrication.
So the Hadith should not deal with the
Aqidah. It should not deal with issues of
The third is that it should be supported
by other more authentic text either implicitly or
explicitly.
So much it has other support
in other areas. Although in firkan, I said
this earlier, we can talk about it early
in the future. Sometimes we find hadith that
are weak
are used because the salaf used to act
on those things.
Like the Hadith
right? That you cannot
bequeath anything to someone who's going to inherit
from you. It's hadith related by Abu Dawood,
hadith Da'if.
It's a weak hadith, but we found the
early Muslims acting on it.
And we know that some of the of
Islam
that sometimes the actions of the salaf are
given preference like in the
and others.
So inshallah,
we're gonna start with the first hadith.
This is a very beautiful hadith
that the prophet
said, and I have it here also for
you so you can see this hadith.
Yeah.
And again,
this is for people who, you know, have
some kind of basic
decency.
We see some of these
Some of these,
colonizers and
murderers jumping into the, chat to share
their filth. Just ignore them.
Don't give them any any any, attention. So
So this hadith of the prophet says
actually should be a better.
Means to always bring the good.
And the the letter bat, which is not
mentioned, but it's it's connected to the hadith
at.
The means from
the same word as Sahabi.
Meaning wherever you go,
you're with good.
Wherever you go, you're with with
and here means 2 things. Number 1, obedience.
What Allah
has commanded.
And number 2, what
the righteous Muslim community
deems as acceptable for which there is no
text.
The prophet
my will not disagree agree on misguidance.
So the prophet
he starts good character. What does he say?
I want you again to to appreciate the
word. It's not there in that Arabic print
that I took from the Internet. But the
hadith actually says
The word means
here. Wherever you are,
whatever situation you're in,
it is though you're with good.
Exactly. Ignore them. Allah says in the Quran,
turn away from the ignorant. And the fact
that they are here
to,
that they have enough time to come and
bother us, it tells you a lot about
their life,
May
Allah bless them,
And, we hope that Allah will bless our
character to shine into the hearts of these
people. So the hadith says,
and this actually is running counter to ideas
of postmodernity
and especially
postmodern secularism.
That religion, you should be pious only in
certain places,
but in other places, you can act however
you want. Let
whatever you are,
Whatever you are, whatever situation,
be with my. Be with what's good.
That's why Allah subhanahu wa
ta'ala said,
and stay away from sin. Means
actually to completely break away, to abandon.
And the word
when found in the Quran
is a command in whatever the object of
the command is is forbidden.
So Allah
says about.
Abandon it and you'll be successful.
The prophet sallallahu alaihi wa
sakhi wasallam,
he said,
whatever I prohibited you from,
you have to abandon it.
Then he says and here's the part. It's
very beautiful.
Look at what causes and hear your. It
means something that you hear and it makes
you feel good.
Something that you hear, you're a jibook and
it makes you feel like, wow,
pertaining to what people say about you.
So look at those things that people say
about you that bring you a sense of
value and happiness.
And what it means here is when you
go somewhere and someone says,
you're such a good person, or you're online
and someone says,
you're such a nice,
person. Or someone says, maybe you got sin
and evil. Maybe I have sin and evil
in my life, but people when they see
you somewhere or they engage with you, they
say good things about you. The prophet says,
when that happens,
do what they say
even if you're not doing it.
Do your best to live up to what
their expectations
are.
Of course, within the realm of
responsibility.
Right? So let's say that somebody,
like, he he struggles with some issue.
And then
he he doesn't tell anybody. It's between him
and Allah or her and Allah this sin.
And then they maybe somebody they struggle to
pray, would take an eat, or they struggle
to have good relationship with their their spouse
or their parents or whoever.
And subhanAllah, then they meet some people and
they say, your
marriage is so good or like,
you're so good with your kids or you're
so good to your parents or
you're you're so you're so studious with your
salah.
If that is not actually the case,
then you should treat this as a zikr
reminding you of what you should be.
So the prophet said, if that happens, don't
allow it to make you feel oh, man.
These people, they don't know how really I
am, dude. Like, I'm so nasty. I'm so
evil.
He says
then try your best to do it as
long as it's not, like, you know, irrational
or beyond
your normal kind of means of behavior.
Then he says, sallallahu alaihi wa sallam,
Then look at those things which you hate
to hear about yourself,
that people say about you.
Either
like when you're amongst the people
and they say things about you that maybe
it's not true,
but it's it's bad.
Then stay away from it even if those
people, they don't like you, even if they're
they're your enemies, even if they're people who
hate you,
stay away from, subhanAllah,
those things that they said that are bad.
And if you're doing it, then immediately stop.
However, there's an important commentary here, and that
is the people who
should cause you to act this way
in general should be people of taqwa.
Or if they are not people of taqwa,
what they say aligns with religious values.
What they say aligns with Islam.
It could be anybody as the prophet said,
al Hikmahtudaratul
mumin, that wisdom is the lost treasure of
the believer.
But we have to make sure that what
they say aligns
with 3 important things.
Number 1, it's not going to break you.
Like, it's not like something that's way beyond
your ability
because then you're doing something that goes against
the sunnah of Allah.
Number 2, that it aligns with religious values.
It aligns with revelation.
And number 3,
that as we said earlier, those people should
at least be people of islah,
like people who have good intentions
or what they say
aligns with good.
So this is the first hadith that we
took.
Right? You must always be with good, and
you must always be away far away from
sin.
And look to those things that make you
when you hear it or when you see
it online, right? Something that makes you feel
good about yourself. Look at that.
And
if the people say that and you're not
doing it, try to do it as best
you can.
And look at those things that you hate
to hear about yourself.
And if you're doing it, stop.
If it's evil
and if you're not, then Alhamdulillah,
then, right,
you should do your best.
We'll take the second a hadith of the
prophet and then I think we have to
we'll take,
2 more a hadith and then we have
to stop inshallah. We were going to read
5, but we're running out of time. But
every Saturday evening
will come together. We're reading a 150
Hadith. We're gonna read them quickly.
By the time,
they're done, you're gonna say like
it went so quickly.
The second hadith,
The prophet
said in this hadith related by and
the great scholars from the Hambary School
and others. The prophet
said that Abu Bakr and Amar are to
me like hearing and seeing is to the
head on a body.
And, of course, these this hadith shows us
the
important role
of Saydina Abi Bakr Radiallahu Anhu and Saydina
Amar Radiallahu Ta'ala Anhu.
And that the prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam
teaches us the importance
of having good friends
and good supporters.
Even though the prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam, he
doesn't need
support from any people
because Allah
Allah has his back,
but the prophet
also teaches us
that we cannot do it alone.
So we learn from this hadith 2 important
3 important things. Number 1, the great virtues
of Saydina Abi Bakr
and
Saydina Amrara
Number 2,
the importance of having supporters
and in people
there to support us in our lives, not
to be by ourselves.
And this is one of the dangers
of this whole self help movement. I can
do it alone. I can do it alone.
Is is to place a person
as the center of of of the orbit
of their life, not to see themselves as
part of a community. You know, the age
of the individual is new. A 150 years
ago, people didn't live alone.
Individualism
is the cult of this era.
And the third
is the importance to be volunteers and helpers
because here we see
and ready to help and assist
the prophet
The next hadith
that we'll take is the 3rd hadith from
this collection
on good character
inshallah. Actually, it's like super, super beautiful.
And for those of you who are
involved in environmental
allyship and working for the environment and trying
to help,
you know, think about climate change. Climate change
is going to impact the Muslim world,
is impacting the impacting the Muslim world now
as we speak in places like Pakistan, Afghanistan,
in places like Bangladesh,
in places in Africa.
But look at the prophet
who said
I I want you to think about this.
The prophet said that this hadith is related
by saying, Imam Ahmed,
Radhi Allahu Anhu.
At the prophet said,
That
is a
mountain that loves us and we love it.
Can you imagine that the character of the
Muslims and the behavior of the Muslims and
the engagement of the Muslims
was such that even they cause mountains to
love them.
That the the great sincerity and honesty
that the early Muslims had to human beings
and to the world around them was such
that
even a mountain
loved the first generation.
Also, who couldn't love them then? Who couldn't
love
Even the mountain of Uhud
loved them and loved the prophet.
That's why we find the hadith related by
Sadie
He said that the prophet they
ascended the mountain of Uhid during the battle
of Uhid.
And suddenly, subhanallah, as they were ascending it,
the mountain begin to shake.
The prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam,
he said,
as they were going up the mountain of
Ohad and it began to shake,
he said calm down.
The only thing upon you now is a
prophet,
salallahu alaihi wa sallam.
A truthful person
and 2 martyrs.
So the early Muslims were such that even
mountains love them.
Thank you for those people who are are
shown the support. It's appreciated. But if you
really wanna support the work, go and enroll
in my school at Swiss, man. That's the
best thing to do. May
Allah bless you. And some of you I
know already are Swiss supporters.
We know that,
mountain of Ohad
has an incredible baraklofic,
an incredible
place
in our history.
Halas,
We know that it is in the in
the neighborhood neighboring areas of Medina
and we know that there was an incredible
battle
that took place
there.
And we know also that there were a
number of
important people who were murdered there
from amongst them with say, Namza
And we know that on that battle on
that mountain, sayin Jibril, he descended and sayin
Mikael, he descended.
Sayna Jibreel was on the right side of
the prophet, said sayna Mikael was on the
left side of the prophet.
And they fought with the prophet
and
we know that,
he saw him.
He saw them.
Also, there's an important lesson here from Fiqh
that it is allowed to love the environment.
The Uhud is a mountain that loves us
and we love it.
So the ulama,
they said here something very nicely.
That we took from this hadith, and I'm
gonna give a kind of a clearer translation
that it's acceptable to love and to be
loved by the environment.
That's why Allah said
when
and his armies drowned, pay attention.
That when they drowned, the earth and the
heavens didn't cry for them. Why?
Because they weren't they weren't
When Sayidna
Saydna,
Yunus was in the belly of the fish,
and he was saying,
even the fish were making thicker with him
as mentioned by Saidni ibn Kathir
Radi Allahu ta'ala.
The prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam when he
was given the Khutba in Sahib Bukhari and
he stopped giving the Khutba, we know that
that piece of wood begin to weep
because the prophet was no longer given the
on that on that stump of the tree.
And we know that the prophet
he said
in in Mecca,
the prophet he did not pass by a
stone
before a
except the stone, sometimes he heard them say,
So here and we know that Sayidna Adi
Karamalallahu
Wajah Amiramotminin.
On more than one occasion,
he heard this
and another occasion in authentic hadith. He said,
I saw stones
in the hand of the prophet
making Tasbeeh.
Sallallahu alaihi wasallam.
So if we need to find support
for,
and not being co opted by either the
right or the left. We have to escape
these two frameworks.
We treat the environment
with justice
and equality
because we have a relationship with him. Because
all of us are the creation of Allah
who subhanahu wa ta'ala. Here the prophet says
mountain that we love.
The next hadith, al Hadith of Robert. I'm
gonna mention it quickly. The next week we'll
start from here in on the 5th hadith.
Next week, I'll be in New York City
inshallah
back to the old stomping ground,
and we will continue from there inshallah.
But this hadith is very important.
That the prophet
and this hadith is related by Sayna Imam
The The prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam and what
we wanna take is
5 things that we should not delay.
But we need we need to actually, 4
things that we should not
delay. But one of them, if the conditions
are right, we should not delay.
Bless you. Thank you so much.
The prophet
If somebody comes to you and his character,
bless you. You guys don't have to buy
badges, man, but,
you know, just make dua. That's the best
badge you can give. And also for those
of you
interested,
may Allah bless you. You can enroll in
my schools. $9 a month, man.
Swaheebweb.com.
That's gonna be something that really helps us
grow. But may Allah bless you. Super appreciate
it. The prophet
he said if
somebody comes to you and his character pleases
you and his deen pleases you, then marry
him.
Because if you don't,
evil will appear on earth
an incredible corruption
incredible
corruption. This hadith next week, we have a
lot to explain about. Like, does that mean
you have to marry him? Number 2, does
a woman have a right to say no?
Does a woman have a right to choose
her spouse? Because we see this a lot,
unfortunately,
in community.
What are the things we should be looking
for in a potential spouse?
What are the steps to getting married
next week?
We're gonna talk about that.
But the importance of this hadith is very
clear.
If you pay attention here, the prophet mentioned
character before deen. Isn't character part of deen?
Isn't character part of religion?
Isn't character part of religion?
Why would he mention character
in isolation from religion?
This is called the
where you mentioned something specific and then you
mentioned something general after. Like you say, Damian
Lillard and the Portland Trail Blazers,
Jayson Tatum and the Boston Celtics,
same kind of thing in in in English.
So the one who comes to you
with good character
and religion
as if to say the most important part
of religion
is character.
Not to separate them, but to emphasize that
one of the most important components
of deen
is character.
This is called.
Next week, we'll continue.
This hadith of the prophet
We ask Allah
who every Saturday night inshallah around this time,
11 eastern.
We're gonna continue till we finish this entire
text
from my teacher's teacher
on character. We have to work on character.
Abdullah
said we are a community who needs a
little character more than a lot of knowledge.
We are a
a a community who needs a little character
more than a lot of knowledge. It doesn't
mean we have to be perfect. Doesn't mean
we have to be like angelic. Of course
not. But we try
to get better.
Next week also, we'll take questions and answers.
I'll share this. Some people asking,
immediately,
on the Instagram page.
And also let me post,
the other hadith so you can see it,
and also people can,
see it.
Another narration
Inshallah, next week, we'll continue to read this
hadith and explain some important issues related to
it regarding marriage.