Following Madhab

Auto-generated transcript: In the name of Allah, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful. The third one is, if Rafayat-e-Dain is proven in multiple Sahih Hadith, why does the Hanafi Madhab not practice it? And in such cases, should a person follow the Hadith or continue following their Madhab? Also, what is the correct concept of strictly following one school of thought in Islam? Very good question. First and foremost, please understand that the Mahaddiseen have criteria based on which they follow Hadith. So, let me answer your second question first, which is, can we directly follow the Hadith? Answer is no. Because you do not have enough knowledge to just pick one Hadith and follow it. Because there may be other Hadith, there may be Ayat of the Quran, there may be the Azbab and Nuzul of the Quran. There may be the Azbab of the Hadith and so on and so forth, which either support it or negate it and so forth. So, you do not follow a Hadith by yourself. You do not invent your own religion. You follow one of the four Imams of Fiqh, Imam Abu Hanifa, Imam Shafi, Imam Malik or Imam Ahmad bin Hanbal. Rahmatullahi alaihim ajma'in. That is the first thing. As far as Rafayat-e-Dain is concerned. Rafayat-e-Dain refers to lifting your hands up to your ears after Takbir-e-Tahrima. So, Takbir-e-Tahrima, you lift, everybody does that. You say Allah Hu Akbar. But after the Takbir, then lifting the hands again. So, people who do Rafayat-e-Dain, which is the Shafa'i do it. The Hanbalis also sometimes do it and so forth. They lift their hands before going into Ruku. Then they lift their hands again after they come up from Ruku, which is before going into Sujood. And then they lift their hands when they get up for the third Rakat. There are two Hadiths. One is the Hadith narrated by Abdullah ibn Mas'ud. Radhi Allah anhu. Who said, That Rasulullah s.a.w. lifted his hands only once. Which is when he was making the Takbir-e-Tahrima. And he did not lift his hands after that for anything. This is the Hadith that Imam Abu Hanifa rahmatullahi took. And his Fatwa is based on that. It is a correct Fatwa. There is nothing wrong with that. Alhamdulillah, this is very good. Ibn Mas'ud, Radhi Allah anhu, is the Sahabi about whom Rasulullah s.a.w. said, Whatever Ibn Mas'ud gives you from me, take it. That is the level of Ibn Mas'ud, Radhi Allah anhu. He also said, That the recitation of Ibn Mas'ud, he said, It is as if the Quran was revealed at the time it was revealed. So, it's so beautiful recitation. Imam Ash-Shafi, rahmatullahi alaihi, on the other hand, took the Dalil and the Hadith and the narration of Abdullah ibn Abu Hanifa. Abdullah ibn Abbas, Radhi Allah anhu, the cousin of Rasulullah s.a.w., who used to live with him. And Abdullah ibn Abbas, Radhi Allah anhu, he said that Rasulullah s.a.w. lifted his hands in Takbir-e-Tahima and then he also lifted his hands before he went into Ruku and when he got up from Ruku and when he came up for the third rakah. So, Ash-Shafi, rahmatullahi alaihi, took that Hadith. Now, you might say, why are there two Hadiths? The reason why there are two Hadiths is because Ibn Masud, Radhi Allah anhu, stayed with Rasulullah s.a.w. in the initial days and then Nabi s.a.w. sent him off to Yemen and he sent him off for different things. He was an older person and so he did not observe the Prophet s.a.w. and his Salah throughout his life until his end. Whereas Ibn Abbas, Radhi Allah anhu, because he was the cousin of Rasulullah s.a.w., he literally stayed in his house. And he stayed with Rasulullah s.a.w. from the time he was about 10, 20 years old. 12 years old until Nabi s.a.w. passed away, which by the time he would have been about 20 to 23 years old. And he said that I observed him doing this. So, what do we learn from this? We learn that Rasulullah s.a.w. initially used to pray in this way and later on he changed the way he prayed and he started also lifting his hands, Rafayadain, in the other places in the Salah. So, Alhamdulillah, his Hadith is also perfectly valid. He is Sikha. He is a highly, you know, very, very, very reliable narrator. There is absolutely no fault with Ibn Abbas, Radhi Allah anhu ma, whatsoever. Ibn Abbas, Radhi Allah anhu ma, one of the most beautiful Hadiths of his. He said that I saw Rasulullah s.a.w. getting up for Tahajjud. Now, imagine this boy. He must have been maybe 10, 12 years old. He is saying, I saw him get up. He is not saying he got up and woke me up. He is saying, I saw him get up. Which means that what was he doing at the time? So, the sense of Adab and the sense of Ihtiram and the sense of Azama of being in the company of the Rasul s.a.w. was so strong, even in the small boy, that when he was in the same room he was sleeping, he didn't say, oh, after all, this is my cousin. No. No. This is the Rasul of Allah s.a.w. So, he said that I saw him getting up and I ran to get water for his wudu. I brought the water. I poured the water. He made wudu. And then he put his blessed right hand on my chest and he said, Ya Allah, give him the fiqh of the Quran. Give him the understanding of Quran. This is the dua of Rasul of Allah s.a.w. for Ibn Abbas directly. He put his blessed hand on his chest like this and he said, Oh Allah, give him. The fiqh. Fiqh means understanding of the Quran. So, Ibn Abbas r.a. is a great scholar of the Quran. He is the first mufassir of the Quran. He has such an understanding of the Quran that Sayyidina Umar ibn al-Khattab r.a. used to always invite Ibn Abbas r.a. to be in his council. Sometimes, after one time, some of the senior sahaba who were there, they objected. They said to Sayyidina Umar ibn al-Khattab, Why do you call this boy into our council? We have sons who are older than him. Right? We are all senior people. We have sons older than him. Why do you call him into our council? Sayyidina Umar did not reply, Radha Allah. Next council meeting, he called Sayyidina Ibn Abbas also, as usual. And then he said to everybody, he said, What do you understand by the surah? An-Nasr. Iza ja'a nasrullahi wal-fatih. What do you understand by the surah? So, each person said, the surah means this, surah means this, Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala said this, that when the help of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala comes, then you see the people coming, entering into Islam and so on and so on, as we know the meaning of the surah. When it came to Ibn Abbas r.a., he said, this surah was the prediction of the death of Rasulullah s.a.w. This surah was the prediction. This was Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala telling his Rasul, r.a. that your time in this world is coming to a close. Sayyidina Umar said, that is why I invite him into our meetings. Because he knows more Quran and he understands it more than any of you. So now, Ash-Shafi'i r.a. took his dalil. So, alhamdulillah, both the dalil are sound dalil. You can follow whichever one you want. There's no problem with Rafay there. Now, third part of the question was, how do we follow our mazhab? Should we follow? Should we follow the mazhab strictly? Or can we follow our mazhab? And can we also follow some other mazhab? Very simple question. Following strictly does not mean asabiyat. It does not mean that you are now a dushman of everyone who has some other mazhab. Right? I will not pray behind this man because he is Shafi'i. That's not the meaning of it. Following strictly means that, alhamdulillah, as I said right in the beginning, you don't invent your own deen. So, when, alhamdulillah, you are following mazhab, follow the mazhab. But if there is a time and a place where there is something in the other mazhab which makes it easier for you to follow and which makes it, you know, helps you to follow. For example, one of the most common things, you are travelling. Now, in the Hanafi mazhab, jama'at bainat salatain is not permitted. You cannot combine salats in the Hanafi mazhab. At the moment, most, the fatwa is, pray, for example, Zohar and Asar. Pray Zohar at its last time and pray Asar at its first time. Which is effectively, you are praying at the time of the salat. You are not combining. Whereas, jama'at bainat salatain means that you pray, you can combine Zohar and Asar in the time of Zohar or in the time of Asar. And similarly for the other one. So, now you are travelling. And you know for a fact that you have to leave at the time of Zohar. You know for a fact, you know for a fact, that for Salatul Asar, you are not going to get a place to stop. Even if you stop, there is no place to pray and so on and so on. Now, what do you do? Miss your Salat? No. You take the fatwa of Imam Shafi'i Rahmatullah Ali and you say, Alhamdulillah, this is also the sunnah of Rasulullah S.A.W. I am getting a chance now to follow another sunnah of Rasulullah S.A.W. with the niyyah of following the sunnah of the Rasul Alayhi Salatu Wasalam. You can follow the Shafi'i fatwa on this to say, that you can join between the two Salat, no problem, absolutely. Then when you are in your place and so forth and you want to, you are following the madhab, you follow your own madhab, no problem. Whether you are Hanafi or Maliki or whatever it is, absolutely no hassle. Right? To give you another beautiful example of how people of knowledge do this. All this asabiyat and this enmity is in the johala, among the jahilin. They have no knowledge and all they can do is fight. People who have knowledge, they don't fight. They understand. It's a beautiful story and this was told to me by one of the shuyukh of Masjid-e-Nabawi-e-Sharif, Sheikh Hassan Burek, Rahat-ul-Ali. He said to me that there were students of Imam Ahmad who was the Imam of Masjid-e-Nabawi-e-Sharif. So obviously, that's Hanafi Masjid. So their ustad, their teacher from Madinah Munawara, he said to them, when you go to that Masjid, if they put you forward to lead the Salah because this is our manners when somebody comes and especially scholars and so on come, you ask them to lead Salah. Right?