Lesson 8 on the explanation of Usool us-Sittah (The Six Principles) is now available. You can listen to or download it here:

Lesson 8.mp3

The Fourth Foundation

An explanation of [what is] knowledge and [who are] the scholars, and [what is] fiqh (understanding), and [who are] the fuquha (jurists). And an explanation of the one who tries to resemble them but is not from them.

Allah has explained this foundation at the beginning of Surah al-Baqarah in His statement: “O Children of Israel. Remember my favour which I bestowed upon you, and fulfil my covenant and I will fulfil yours” (2:40), up until His saying: “O Children of Israel. Remember my favour which I bestowed upon you and how I favoured you over all the worlds” (2:47).

And what increases this in clarity is what has been explained by the Sunnah concerning this [affair] with abundant, clear and manifest speech [that is clear] for the common person.

Then this affair became the strangest of things, and knowledge and understanding were considered to be innovations and misguidance, and the best of what was with them was truth mixed with falsehood. And the actual knowledge that Allah the Most High obligated upon His creation and which He praised, then no one spoke of it, except [that he was considered] a heretic or insane person. And as for the one who rejected [this knowledge] and authored in warning against it, and prohibiting it, then he was considered to be the insightful jurist and scholar.

The text of Usool us-Sittah can be found here: The Six Principles (Arabic and English).pdf

Points or topics discussed in the lesson:

• This fourth principle relates to knowing who are the genuine scholars/people of understanding and contrasting those scholars with those who pretend they are from the scholars but aren’t really.
• Just because someone appears as a scholar of tafsir or scholar of fiqh or scholar of this or that, doesn’t automatically mean he is upon the Sunnah and the Jamaa’ah.
• This is an important principle and a foundation in the religion because ultimately our knowledge of the religion has to come through scholars.
• The situation became turned around such that the people who showed enmity and opposition to the actual Shariah knowledge were considered to be scholars and the actual scholars who are presenting the sound knowledge, creed and methodology, they are the ones considered to be misguided or to be mad.
• Explanation of Shaykh Zayd al-Madkhalee (rahimahullah) speaks about knowledge itself, the excellence of knowledge, and how the scholars expend great effort and time to acquire knowledge and to benefit the people, hence they have a lofty status and a tremendous reward for doing what they do.
• The scholars/learned people are the most noble of a society and they are the leaders of a society. Why is this? Because they expended tremendous efforts and spent most of their time in understanding and studying the Deen of Allah.
• The more time you are spending of your life, of your year, of your month, of your week, of your day, engaged in increasing in knowledge, memorising knowledge, comprehending and understanding the religion with evidences, this is a clear sign that Allah is granting you goodness. Hadith in which Messenger (sallAllaahu ‘alaihi wasallam) said: “To whomsoever Allah intends to show goodness, he will give him comprehension or understanding of the religion”.