ibn Ḥanṭab that the Messenger of Allah, peace and blessings be upon him, said, “I have left nothing of what Allah Most High has commanded you without commanding you to do it, nor have I left anything of what He has forbidden you without forbidding you from it.”
Al-Rabīʿ narrated to us; he said: al-Shāfiʿī narrated to us:
515 – Sufyān ibn ʿUyaynah related to us, from Sālim Abū al-Naḍr, from ʿUbayd Allāh ibn Abī Rāfiʿ, from his father, that the Messenger of Allah, peace and blessings be upon him, said, “Let me not find one of you reclining on his couch; when an instruction from me reaches him—something I have commanded or forbidden—he says, ‘I do not know; we follow only what we find in the Book of Allah.’”
516 – In the same way, Allah—exalted is He—has enjoined prayer, almsgiving, and pilgrimage in His Book, while the Messenger of Allah, peace and blessings be upon him, explained what Allah intended: the number of the prayers, their appointed times, the number of their bowings and prostrations; the rites of the pilgrimage—what the pilgrim must do and avoid; which types of wealth are subject to zakah, in what amount, and at what time it is taken.
517 – Allah—exalted is He—said: “As for the male thief and the female thief, cut off their hands” (5:38).
518 – And He—majestic is His remembrance—said: “The adulteress and the adulterer—flog each of them a hundred lashes” (24:2).
519 – Were we to act on the outward wording of the Quran alone, we would sever the hand of everyone to whom the name ‘thief’ applies and flog a hundred lashes everyone to whom the name ‘adulterer’ applies.
520 – Yet when the Prophet cut off the hand for a quarter of a dinar and did not do so for anything less, and when he stoned two free, previously-married fornicators and did not flog them, we understood that Allah—exalted is He—intended the penalties of amputation and flogging for some thieves to the exclusion of others, and for some adulterers to the exclusion of others.
521 – Wiping over leather socks falls under the same principle.
522 – Allah—exalted is He—said: “When you rise for the prayer, wash your faces and your hands…” (5:6).