Rather, the designation of what is right (maʿrūf) and what is wrong (munkar) belongs exclusively to the divine Law-giver.

When loudspeakers first appeared, some people objected and declared, “This is wrong; how can we conduct the prayer or deliver the sermon through these horns that resemble the horn of the Jews?” Yet scholars of sound insight—among them our teacher ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Saʿdī—responded: “These devices are a blessing from Allah; He has facilitated for His servants a means by which the voices of truth reach His creation. Their role is comparable to eyeglasses: when eyesight weakens, it needs to be strengthened by wearing glasses. Would anyone say, ‘Do not wear glasses because they enhance vision and enlarge small objects’? Certainly not.”

In summary, determining right and wrong rests with Allah the Exalted and His Messenger ﷺ, not with a person’s taste, whim, or independent thinking.

Consequently, one must first know with certainty that a given matter is right and another is wrong. What is right he commands; what is wrong he forbids. How is that knowledge attained? Solely through the Qur’an and the Sunnah—then through the consensus of the ummah or sound analogical reasoning, both of which are themselves grounded in the Qur’an and the Sunnah. Without these two fundamental sources we would not know that consensus is authoritative or that analogy is a valid proof.

Condition Two: the admonisher must be sure that the person addressed has actually committed the wrong or neglected the right. If he lacks this certainty, he is merely conjecturing about people. Take, for example, a man who enters the mosque and sits down: prudence dictates that you first ask him, “Why did you sit without praying?”—do not rebuke or censure him. This is supported by the fact that the Prophet ﷺ was once delivering the Friday sermon