Why the Mu'adh hadith is deeply misunderstood

Brothers and sisters respected guests thank you for joining us on our latest installment of zed authored by the late and esteemed scholar of islam shem siddin ibn a scholar a distinguished scholar of the 7th and 8th century of islam we left off in our previous episode speaking about what the prophet salallahu alaihi wasallam would usually recite or at least the length of his recitation during salat elisha it's been narrated that he recited surah 13 which is fairly it's about a half a page he says.

[Silence]

Roughly the length of surat shems surat al-ali surat and that length which does not exceed more than a page while he had the ankara muay the bin jebel for leading his people in salat alasha as an imam and reciting surat al-baqarah the longest chapter in the quran and he asked muad are you someone who hinders people from the path of allah he says he says but this narration has been taken out of context now this is that this narration of the narration is collected in he mentions that this has been taken out of context by people who tend to laziness or tend to just to stir up trouble and controversy he says people usually look at this narration and take it out of its context not looking to what the story was the environment and the context in which this chapter then was in which this hadith actually was said by the prophet sallallahu alaihi what is that context let us discuss that context now so that we understand why as we mentioned in our previous episode is one of the most knowledgeable scholars of islam one of the most knowledgeable scholars from amongst the companions of the prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam he has many merits and in muslim ahmed the prophet said he said the most knowledgeable of this nation with regards to the laws of prohibit prohibition and lawfulness meaning in the religion of allah is was a very young man in the time of the prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam despite his youth he was dispatched by the prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam to entire lands of not muslims to call the people of those lands to islam and to act as a judge and governor of those lands and so was sent to yemen he was sent to yemen in the narration of ibn abbas and also collected by a muslim the famous narration in which the prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam you arrive in yemen you will come upon a people of the people of the book and the first thing that you are to invite them to and to call them to is to testify that none is rightfully worshipped but allah and then muhammad is the messenger of allah he said and if they agree to this and they submit themselves in this sense then you are to inform them about the five obligatory prayers that allah has made binding upon his servants etcetera etcetera a well-known narration well adam and jebel died at around the age of 34 early 30s and he died in the plague of amwas which took place in hashem during the time of a few years after the prophet salallahu salem's death and so during the prophet salallahu alaihi wasallam's time in jebel was in his 20s and despite this youth he was already being dispatched and sent to lands as a scholar and representative of the prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam now that's a little bit of a back story about moab now we understand his stature and his standing amongst the rest of the companions of the prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam now we discuss this story here that evening is speaking about there's a narration in which this narration many people memorize the wording of this narration but very few people know the backdrop and context of this narration the narration goes as follows the prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam rebuked and he said to him he asked him rhetorically moab are you somebody who hinders away from the path of allah do you wish to turn people away from allah subhanahu wa ta'ala what is the context of this narration so the prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam would pray in his mosque would join prayer behind the prophet.

[Arabic recitation]

Alaihi wasallam after salat was concluded in the prophet muhammad sallam's mosque and jebel would then go to his village in in medina in the outskirts of medina and he would find his people there in their local masjid waiting for him and he would come and then he would lead them in salah why did he do this well he did this because he wanted to have the virtue of leading his people in salah but he also wanted to have the virtue of praying behind the prophet muhammad sallallahu alaihi wasallam and in the masjid of the prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam due to the multiple rewards that a person will get and so we take a number of evidences from this narration but one of them is that the imam can have a different intention in his prayer than the one who is praying behind him right how is that praying obligatory prayer of reisha with the prophet muhammad then he is going to his masjid and he's leading the people in in salah but he's already prayed asia and so he has already prayed isha and so he is counting this prayer as a sunnah as a nafilah as something which is not binding but the people behind him are counting this prayer as the obligatory salah so we see that the imam and the person praying behind the imam they have different intentions but that's okay as long as the imam has the intention to lead others in prayer and so he went a little bit overboard with his zeal and his love for the quran in the sense that he would go back to his village people are already waiting it's already night time people are tired they're waiting to go home to sleep and they also have fajita which is coming very soon and so muad would arrive there at that masjid only to then oftentimes lead his people in an extremely lengthy prayer some of the time he was narrated to have recited the entirety of surah till baqarah the longest chapter in the quran well there was a young man praying behind and this young man had work and he actually when he saw that the recitation was continuing and continuing and that was reciting and reciting and reciting this man broke out of salah went to a vacant corner of the masjid prayed salah on his own and then he left who finished his prayer others that were present said to muath you know there was this young man he did x y and z that this individual is clearly a hypocrite and that was based on the way that he is seeing it that who would not want to sit there and listen to the quran there there was no way to listen to the quran at that time unless you're in prayer there was no recordings there was no recording of the quran that you could put into a tape recorder or you know listen to on the internet or stream it or something there's no radios the only way that you can listen to the quran is if a you know how to read which was a very very rare skill to have literacy was extremely rare in the time of the prophet or b you went to to listen to it recited by a scholar and usually that would be insulted and so why would you forfeit the opportunity and the very rare opportunity to hear the words of allah and so based on these circumstances who made this comment later this was brought to the attention of the prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam who was also approached by this young man this young man heard what had been said about him and he approached the prophet alaihi wasallam complaining about what had occurred and so he said we're tired comes and he leads us in prayer of irisha with suratul bakr and i'm very tired and i have work et cetera et cetera and the prophet salallahu asked him what do you say in your prayer when you pray he said i am a simple man i'm not very good with words you and moaeth i ask allah for paradise and i seek forgiveness from allah and protection from the hellfire he said he said and i am not good with words you and wife to you know with all these to to expound upon those meanings any more than that i'm a simple man i i basically my prayer revolves around asking allah for paradise and seeking refuge from the hell fire the prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam said he said this is the main concept that all of our talk revolves around in our prayer that's the essence of prayer essentially and so then he said to moab this very famous statement this is the concept this is the context in which this statement was made muhammad is already arriving late for isha not late because he's not on time late meaning that was the time of isha to be made that they had agreed upon it was a later time because again he had to pray with the prophet so moab would muhammad there find the people waiting for him and then after all of that he's going to lead them in prayer for two or three hours for salah so in this context under these circumstances the prophet muhammad sallallahu alaihi wasallam rebuked and he said essentially saying this behavior this action of making salah too long will cause salah to be in the people of in the minds of some people will make salah out to be a kind of nuisance a kind of heavy daunting task and people will not want to pray anymore so you will essentially by doing this with good intentions obviously we do not in any way bring the intentions of or look at his intentions with any suspect rather with good intentions you are inadvertently causing prayer which should be something that relieves and brings a sense of relief and solace to the people you are now turning it into because of your lengthy prayer into something which is a daunting task right and so what will happen yeah i mean this could continue for a while and there will be some people who will continue to pray behind with a heavy heart and people will start to stop going to the masjid et cetera et cetera right and so this statement now taken out of context has become something that is memorized and and regurgitated by people so if the mamm recites for two minutes right now we we find it appropriate to bring up this narration this statement the prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam's rebuke of was under these circumstances if the imam stands and leads people in salat al-ashaf for an hour or two hours yes this is the proper place and the proper context in which to bring the rebuke of the prophet salallahu alaihi wasallam as a rebuke for this kind of imam not because the imam recited a few seconds longer than you are accustomed to right the longest recitation an imam is going to usually have in these times for especially in you know a place here where people are working and they have schedules to abide by etcetera is not going to exceed 10 or 15 minutes this is not the right context to say afternoon the prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam never rebuked for 10 or 15 minutes the rebuke was for two or three or four hours right and so we are to understand the prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam's words in the proper context so after this after he rebuked moab he then taught moab and said if you when you lead people in prayer lead them with chapters such as surah the shems surah etc that length right that length he says now we've discussed what the prophet salallahu asallam was narrated to have recited in all of the five daily prayers and the length of these prayers now let's discuss what he would recite and lead people in prayer on the day of jumu' friday prayer and also the aid prayers if no question goes on to say well is.

[Silence]

Which is roughly approximately two pages each he says and sometimes and oftentimes which.

[Silence]

To merely recite portions or the tail ends of these chapters then this is something that the prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam has never done it's never it's never something that he had done right what does that mean well because people are so hasty because people are in such a haste and in such a rush to finish prayer and get out of the masjid some imams wanted to recite the chapters that the prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam would recite during jumu' salah but if they recite the entire thing it would be too too much for them for the people listening so sometimes many iman started to recite just the end of these two chapters and even the end of surah till allah and surah till russia so often times you'll go to salah the imam in s and finish the chapter from there and then when it comes to surat al-munahfir they will oftentimes begin starting at the end of these two chapters so you can't recite the entire chapter you just recite a few verses from its end ibn al-qayyam says this is not something that the prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam ever did and we have a principle to take and that principle tells us from the sunnah that the nature of recitation of the quran should would usually be in the time of the prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam if he started a chapter he would end the chapter right so if he started in surat al-araf he would end the entire chapter in the first record or in both two rakah in the entire prayer in its entirety collectively either this or this but it is extremely rare that the prophet salallahu alaihi wasallam ever recited a few verses from any particular chapter when he would recite a chapter and not finish the entire chapter he would always start from the beginning this is something that's actually very very important does this mean that we cannot recite any verses of the quran from anywhere the answer is no you can recite any portion of the quran because allah subhanahu wa ta'ala gave us a command he said recite whatever is easy for you to recite right so you can recite any portion of the quran any verse taken from any chapter that is fine but just because you can do it doesn't mean that it is necessarily the sunnah of the prophet sallallahu alaihi doesn't necessarily mean that that's what he used to do and we mentioned this before we mentioned the difference between with the scholars of usual with the scholars of hermeneutics that the prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam would do something and he would allow something there's a difference between the two there's a difference between something which is ja is permissible acceptable and something which is the sunnah meaning that the prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam used to do this there's a difference not everything that is acceptable is necessarily the sunnah of the prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam so the prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam he would recite in the first raqqa suratul in the second surah but to just snip out a couple of verses from each chapter and make that the norm that you always every juma will recite that that is not the son of the prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam this is the point that ibn al-qaeda is making now how was his recitation well he would always start from the beginning and if he is and usually finish the chapter no matter what chapter it is in prayer however if he did not he would usually start at the beginning very very rarely do we have anywhere where it's narrated that the prophet salallahu would begin with any portion of verses that are not the beginning of a particular chapter this is something very rare and if no qualium will get into this later and there's a very good reason for this and that is that the beginning of the chapter is oftentimes a it is the place where the theme of the entire chapter is going to be derived from the theme and the climate of the rest of the chapter is found in the beginning verses the opening verses of any given chapter of the quran it's going to give you a few key principles and then is going to expound upon those principles throughout the chapter and then we'll usually conclude with referring back to the beginning in some way this is how the quran usually works right and so if i just snatch certain things it becomes very easy to take things out of context and context is part of the text people oftentimes do not understand that context is part of the meaning of the actual statement that context is absolutely necessary to understand he says and as for in the eid prayers sometimes he would recite surat and surah which is he would recite them completely so he would recite surat of about two and a half about two and a half pages which is about two and a half pages as well and sometimes he would recite surat and suratul each in each recast so the first raqqa of salat he would recite surat sabbah and in the second record he would recite surat he says this is what the prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam customarily did all the way until he passed away and met allah subhanahu wa ta'ala and for this reason the successors of the prophet muhammad would recite this length and these particular chapters when they led salah after his death he says he said and abu bakr had led the companions when he was the successor of the prophet salallahu he had led the companions in surat al-baqarah in salat al-fajr in fajr he recited surah till baqarah and this recitation was so long that when he made tesleem concluding the prayer he the sun was almost going to rise meaning it took several hours he says and likewise after abu bakr's time in the era of and his successorship he would lead the companions and lead the people in salah and he would recite surat yosuf chapters that are roughly that long right if we took that in today's terms in the way that the companions used to recite the quran we're talking about a prayer that would last anywhere from 45 minutes to an hour and fifteen minutes roughly for salat elisha right now you may say well wait i can read the quran faster than that yes but to read the quran properly aloud this takes a lot of time something surah yusuf surah nahil suratud suratul israel this will take at least about an hour why because it's not just the recitation but it is also the rest of the prayer that is involved and as ibn al-qaeda will get into it we'll mention later that the prayer is supposed to be similar meaning a person when he stands to recite his should complement that recitation it should be similar in length when a person makes sujud their sujud should be similar in length to the roku and the recitation not that a person recites 20 minutes and then rukur is 20 seconds and then sujud is 30 minutes again this is not correct this is a lopsided prayer it is all supposed to be proportionate to one another right he says he says and as for the statement of the prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam when he says if any of you leads the people in prayer then he is to make that prayer brief he says he says what is meant by brevity here in this narration brevity here is relative relative to what relative to what the prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam used to do right so if i say brief and you say brief we may have very different meanings right brief for me might be an hour and brief for you might be 10 minutes which one of us is correct if no clayim says the yardstick of brevity here what is meant by it is it is relative brevity meaning that the prayer is brief with regards to how brief the prophet.

[Arabic recitation]

Alaihi wasallam would make his prayer so the sunnah is the yardstick of brevity here what is not the measuring stick the yardstick of brevity would be whatever people desire you know people want it to be 30 seconds so that's now the sunnah that's not how it works he says and the customs of the prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam those things which he did continuously until he left this earth this is the judging factor in anything that is different upon amongst the people amongst contenders in debates what is the yardstick of correct and incorrect what is the yardstick of appropriate and inappropriate we look at the sunnah of the prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam and we see what it is that he used to do and what was his constant pattern in that particular thing that is the yardstick that is the measuring stick now there are other narrations and again this is something which goes back to alma facet it goes back to greater good and greater evil right it's very good to be in prayer however the evil that may happen is causing people to not listen to the quran anymore and maybe even cringe at hearing the quran because the quran will then signify to them a daunting task this is not correct what does that mean well let's say the prophet salallahu alaihi wasallam would recite in salat yusuf okay and let's say you live in chicago or you live in a metropolitan area and you have to be to work at a particular time right and especially in major urban cities we see that traffic starts at a very specific time and that traffic or the distance of your work or whatever it is all of these factor into you being late or on time affecting your livelihood is it better for the imam who is the imam that's usually his job is to lead people in prayer right as far as he is concerned he's on time he's doing what his job is there's people behind him that are praying that are under time constraints that is for jummah that is for fajr that's for any prayer is it better for me at this point to as an imam to lead someone who is under these set of circumstances to lead them in fajr with surat yusuf yes they heard the quran but on the flip side they'll probably stop coming to the masjid for fajr anymore altogether because it's now affecting their livelihood perhaps now while you're reciting in that same prayer the recitation went from listening to the quran with an open heart to all i can think about is i need to go to work now and i wish this man would stop reciting and finish this is not the point of prayer right and this is not correct and for this reason the prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam assad to one of the companions one of the companions said make me the imam of my people my village in prayer he said.

[Silence]

You are the imam of your people in your village i appoint you as such take for yourself and appoint a vin someone to call it then who will not take pay for his ad then right for his services and him follow and make your recitation and make your prayer according to the weakest amongst your followers right there's people who are sick there's people who have things that they need to do there are people who are under time constraints there's people that are tired there's women that have to tend to their children there's men that have to tend to their children whatever it is right and so you don't want to make a dichotomy right between the religion religious duties and worldly duties you don't want to have those two clashing if at all possible sometimes they clash and there's no way around that and in those rare circumstances we go with preserving our religion and our religious duties and that takes precedence over our worldly duties but that's not the case all of the time we don't want to set up any clash that doesn't have to be there if you can do a portion of each that is better than choosing one or the other right and so he says use as your guide the weakest amongst your followers meaning if i'm going to pray let's say the weakest amongst them whether it's because of illness or because of something that he has to do or somewhere he has to be whatever it is let's say that that person can only handle a five-minute prayer or ten minute prayer but there are those who are praying behind me that can handle an hour prayer no in this case i need to make the prayer five minutes or ten minutes whatever it is why because this way everyone gets what they came for from the salah and again it's not just about length it's about quality the quality of prayer right intensity is much more important than extensity as the scholars tell us he says as another general rule as a general rule there is no prayer in which the prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam specified a particular surah that would be recited every single time this way during this prayer except for the prayer of jumu' and the prayer of eid this is what ibn is tells us now there are other prayers which he would most commonly recite certain things salat al-fajr on the day of jumu' he would commonly recite in the first raka surah sajdah in the second surat in sen right and the two deka of the sunnah of fajr in the first he would often recite suratul kafirun and the second he would often recite surat al-ikhlas right etc etc these are common things that he would do but it's not something that he would never diverge from contrary to salat he would always recite in jumuah and read the chapters that we mentioned previously it would be.

[Silence]

These are the only prayers in which he was narrated to have recited these particular chapters every time during these prayers any other prayer this is just something that was commonly narrated but not necessarily the absolute norm that he would not diverge from next episode insha allah we will start to discuss how the prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam would recite in each prayer what kind of recitation it would be we'll get into more details with regards to that foreign.