To proceed: Shaykh Sayyid Sabiq’s Fiqh al-Sunnah is one of the finest works I have encountered in its field. Its chapters are well arranged, its style is fluid, and it steers clear of the convoluted phrasing that hardly any book of jurisprudence is free from. All of this has attracted Muslim youth to read it, to seek deeper understanding of Allah’s religion through it, to open for themselves new vistas of research in the purified Sunnah, and to spur them on to uncover the treasures and sciences it holds—knowledge that no Muslim whom Allah intends good can dispense with. As the Prophet ﷺ said: “When Allah intends good for someone, He grants him understanding of the religion.” Agreed upon, and recorded in Silsilat al-Ahadith al-Sahihah 1194.

In my view, the appearance of this book was a pressing necessity of our present age. Many Muslims have come to realize that there is no escape from their current state of deviation, division, decline, and subjugation to disbelievers and sinners except by returning to the Book of Allah and the Sunnah of His Messenger ﷺ, taking from them alone—and from the Quran—their religious affairs and legal rulings. For that reason, the general public needed an accessible source they could rely on and consult whenever the need arose, sparing them the many cross-references required by lengthy encyclopedic works for only a few—or many—issues.

Accordingly, Allah, exalted be He, inspired Ustadh Sayyid Sabiq to present them with this book, Fiqh al-Sunnah, thereby shortening the path for them and illuminating the way. May Allah reward him with the best of rewards.

Therefore I have always—and still—urge every lover of the Sunnah and supporter of the truth to acquire it and benefit from the Sunnah-based material and sound positions it contains. From the moment the first, small-sized volume appeared, its copies have spread among our Salafi brothers and others in Damascus and the rest of Syria and beyond, with the result that