1329 – Muʿāwiyah (may Allah be pleased with him) reported that the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him) said, “When Allah intends good for a person, He grants him understanding of the religion.” Agreed upon (1).
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Vocabulary of the ḥadīth
• man: a conditional particle that governs two verbs; yurid is the protasis and yufaqqihhu the apodosis, and both are in the jussive.
• yurid: with a ḍamma on the initial yāʾ, from irādah (divine will). Irādah is an attribute that determines which one of two possible outcomes will occur. Al-khayr here means the opposite of evil.
• yufaqqihhu: from faqaha (with kasrah) meaning “to understand,” on the pattern of ʿalima; faqaha (with ḍamma) means “to become a jurist.” Thus yufaqqihhu means “He makes him a jurist in the religion.”
– Linguistically, fiqh means “understanding.”
– Technically, it is “knowledge of the subsidiary sharʿī rulings derived from their detailed evidences through inference.”
• ad-dīn: with a kasrah on the dāl. Al-Miṣbāḥ states that when coupled with “Islam,” it is likewise restricted. Here, fiqh in the religion is meant to cover both fundamentals and branches.
Lessons drawn from the ḥadīth
- This narration demonstrates the exalted status of fiqh in the religion, for it embraces the fundamentals of faith, the laws of Islam, the realities of iḥsān, and the knowledge of what is lawful and unlawful. “Religion” encompasses all these weighty matters. When Gabriel questioned the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) about these pillars and received his answers, he said, “That was Gabriel; he came to teach you your religion.” [Al-Bukhārī 50; Muslim 29].