—of the Messenger ﷺ.

The point, then, is that the Sunnah of the rightly guided caliphs comes only after the Sunnah of the Messenger ﷺ. Ibn ʿAbbās (d. 68 AH) once said, “Stones are about to rain down upon you from the sky! I say to you, ‘The Messenger of Allah said,’ and you answer, ‘Abu Bakr and ʿUmar said!’” If this rebuke was directed at those who set the words of Abu Bakr and ʿUmar against the Prophet’s—despite their lofty rank—what can be said of anyone who opposes the Messenger’s statement with the words of people who fall far short of those two?

You will find some individuals, when told, “This is the Sunnah,” respond, “But Shaykh so-and-so said such-and-such.” These are blinkered partisans who merely imitate. As for someone who cites a scholar’s opinion because he himself does not know the Sunnah, there is no blame on him; imitation is permissible for one who lacks personal knowledge.

The Prophet ﷺ then said, “Hold fast to it”—meaning my Sunnah and the Sunnah of the rightly guided caliphs—“and bite onto it with your nawājidh (the furthest back molars).” The nawājidh are the last molar teeth, and the expression is a metaphor for intense adherence. When a person grips something with both hands and clenches it between his back teeth, he holds on far more firmly than if he grasped it with one hand, or even with both hands without biting. This shows that the Prophet ﷺ commanded us to cling with the greatest tenacity to his Sunnah and to the Sunnah of the rightly guided caliphs who came after him.

After instructing us to follow his Sunnah and that of the rightly guided caliphs, urging us to hold fast to it and bite onto it with our molars, the Prophet ﷺ added: “And beware of newly introduced matters.” In other words, I warn you against innovations—practices newly invented in the religion. The phrase is an example of attributing a descriptive term to the noun it qualifies.