Sunna Notes: The Binding Proof of the Sunna - Adapted from ʿAbd al-Ghanī ʿAbd al-Khāliq's Ḥujjiyyat al-Sunna, with Ibn Ḥajar al-ʿAsqalānī's the Ḥadīth of Gibrīl from Fatḥ al-Bārī


Sunna Notes: Volume 3

About the Book

❝The Sunna is the first subsidiary source (masdar farʿi) after the Qurʿān among the sources of Islamic law. We describe it as a subsidiary source because it is the Qurʿān that actually indicated that it is a source, and the basis of everything is the Qurʿān. The Qurʿān commanded us to follow the messenger of Allāh: therefore we follow the messenger of Allāh.❞

— Shaykh Muḥammad Saʿīd Ibn Mullā Ramaḍān al-Būṭī.

❝The meaning of the expression Binding Proof of the Sunna is that the Sunna points to the judgment of Allāh Most High, either as definitive knowledge (ʿilm) or as as probable knowledge (zann), bringing it out and disclosing it for us. We understand the Divine rulings by means of the Sunna and it becomes binding upon us to put its content into practice, So the real meaning of the Sunna as binding proof is exposition and proof-inference necessitating obligatory practice of their results because the latter is the Divine decision.❞

— Dr. ʿAbd al-Ghanī B, ʿAbd al-Khāliq.

The book also contains the translation of Imām Ibn Ḥajar al-ʿAsqalāni's explanation of the ḥadith on Islām, Imān and Iḥsān also known as Jibrīl's ḥadīth from the Fatḥ al-Bārī.

About the Author

Shaykh Gibrīl Fouad Ḥaddād holds a doctorate in French literature from Columbia University, New York. He is a prolific author and translator of classical Islamic works into English. He has recently published Sunna Notes Vol. 1: Ḥadīth History and Principles, and Vol. 2: The Excellent Innovation in the Qurʿān and Sunna, at Birmingham's AQSA Publications and Hellenthal, Germany's Warda Press. He currently resides in Damascus, Syria, where he has been studying ʿaqīda, ḥadīth and fiqh since 1997.