Tom Facchine – The Story Of Imam Al-Bukhari And The Thief

They say that the ulema

are the warithun

alambiya.

They say that the the scholars are the

inheritors of the prophets.

And so the scholars throughout our ages

have preserved this quality of being trustworthy.

Some of you know the story of Imam

al Bukhari,

the famous Muaddid,

author or compiler we should say of the

most

authentic book of hadith in Islam.

And we know that he traveled around the

Muslim world from the Hejaz

to the south, to Yemen, to Sham, all

over in order to collect the sayings of

the prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam.

Well, one day,

Imam Abu Ghari was on a ship,

and he had all of his things with

him, his books, and his ink, and these

sorts of things.

And he also had the money, think about

it, it's not like today. You don't have

your bank card.

You don't have the ATM.

You can't buy it on credit.

If you're gonna go traveling for a month,

or 2 months, or 3 months, you gotta

carry it all on you, or you've gotta

find a way to make money on the

road.

So the Imam al Bukhari, he had his

money with him.

And one night,

he's in the ship down below, and he's

in his bed, and he's counting out his

money to make sure it's all there, and

someone's watching him.

There's a thief on the ship,

and he's watching Imam Abu Khali count his

money, and he's counting up the money too

right along with him.

The next day,

sun goes up, alarm sound

on the ship.

There's a thief. There's a thief. Everybody's

called up to the top of the ship.

What happened?

The thief is standing there saying, somebody stole

my money from me, It was such and

such an amount, and it's the same exact

amount that Imam Abu Khari had counted in

his bed the night before.

You see, he's trying to set him up.

So the captain of the ship, he does

what any good captain will do, everybody stand

in a line, pat you down, where's your

belongings, let me check your bags. You think

TSA is bad? I'm sure that the captain

was much worse.

He looks through everybody.

He doesn't find anything.

Absolutely nothing. It's as if the money just

vanished.

Well, you can imagine how the thief feels

about now.

He wants his money,

and so he can't even hold it inside.

After the search is over, he finds Imam

Abu Khary and he confronts him. He said,

I know I saw you count out that

money last night. Where did it go?

Imam Abu Khare, he said, I threw it

overboard.

I've been working my whole life on this

book of hadith.

If someone even accuses me

of stealing money,

nobody's gonna believe in anything I say.

So I'll happily throw it overboard,

and lose something small in the dunya

to have the reward. Think about it. We

have the book on one of the shelves.

How many people have benefited from imam al

Bukhari?

How much

mountains

of rewards in the afterlife.

Because Imam al Bukhari understood

the value

of being trustworthy.