Nasihah to His Messenger
This involves:-
Believing the Prophet’s, sallallahu ‘alayhi wasallam, message.
Believing in all that he brought and came with as being divinely inspired.
Loving him more than everything else, than we love ourselves and our families – it is the second level of love after the love of Allah.
Our love for him should result to other obligations like obeying him.
Helping him, protecting and defending him (for those who were alive during his time) – defending his honour and respecting his status.
For the people who came after the Prophet’s, sallallahu ‘alayhi wasallam, life, we should respect and love his Sunnah which is an implication of loving and respecting him.
To say “sallallahu ‘alayhi wasallam” whenever we hear his name mentioned.
To accept his Sunnah as a scale or standard by which we judge things, actions and sayings.
To accept him as the true leader and only human’s final word with respect to the religion
he is the only true human authority and everyone else’s statements/opinions or sayings come after his.
To love those who love him and hate those who show hatred towards him.
Reviving his Sunnah by learning, comprehending, teaching and spreading it. However, when we invite people to the Sunnah – as advised by Imam Ahmad – we should do it in a nice and proper way in order not to end up fighting about it. One challenge today is that many Muslims are unaware of the Sunnah and the status of the Sunnah – so one of the things we should do is to make these people become aware of and love the Sunnah, and we should not do so in an aggressive or confrontational way as this might lead to the people being confused, offensive and rejecting the Sunnah.
There are so many innovations ( bid’ah) being practiced today and the way to remove bid’ah amongst the people is to revive the Sunnah (The Salaf said: “Bid’ah only arises when the Sunnan is not known or practiced.”). To bring back the forgotten Sunnah, we should not start with the condemnation of bid’ah but rather with the introduction/presentation of the Sunnah. We have to set good role models of those who love, and follow and practise the Sunnah and we should teach others in a nice, proper way so that others too can comprehend love and appreciate the Sunnah. Then they will use the Sunnah as a scale to judge things. Slowly, insha Allah, bid’ah will be decreased and minimized.
When we try to educate and enlighten people about the Sunnah, we should be careful not to confuse them by focussing on minor issues. Sunnan can be broken into different levels and categories and we should start from the highest level. We should not teach people about the lower levels (details) when they have not been taught the higher levels (basic concepts). We should let the people understand and love the higher level Sunnan first before we go bit by bit into the lower levels, slowly covering more details. This, insha Allah, will result to the revival of the Sunnah. To love both his family and his noble companions. Most Islamic sects or groups love one or the other and not both. There are some deviated Islamic sects who are propagating their false beliefs by creating doubts about the Sahabahs (Companions) with the aim of making people hate them. This will lead to the rejection of the Sunnah. Some sects only believe the Sunnah that comes or is transmitted through their imams, e.g. the Shi’ah. We should be aware of the sources of narrations about the Sahabah as some of these narrations are false and may create doubts. To love those who follow, defend and strive to revive the forgotten Sunnah of the Prophet, sallallahu ‘alayhi wasallam.
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