Nawawi Hadith 28: Holding Fast to Sunnah

Part One: A Sermon That Moved Hearts to Tears

Brothers,

Today’s khutbah is based on the 28th hadith in Imam Nawawi’s 40 Hadith:

On the authority of Abu Najih Al-Irbad ibn Sariyah (may Allah be pleased with him) who said: The Messenger of Allah ﷺ gave us a sermon by which our hearts were filled with fear and tears came to our eyes. We said, 'O Messenger of Allah, it is as though this is a farewell sermon, so counsel us.' He said, 'I counsel you to fear Allah, and to listen and obey, even if a slave were to become your leader. Verily, whoever among you lives long will see great controversy, so you must keep to my Sunnah and to the Sunnah of the rightly-guided caliphs. Cling to it firmly with your molar teeth. And beware of newly invented matters, for every invented matter is an innovation, and every innovation is misguidance.' (Ahmad, Abu Dawud & Tirmidhi (hasan sahih))

Al-Irbad ibn Sariyah tells us something important before he even reports the words: the sermon itself shook the companions. Grown men, some of the strongest and most tested believers in history, wept. They sensed they were being given something final, something they needed to carry for the rest of their lives, because the one delivering it would not always be with them.

He was right to sense that. What follows is one of the most complete instructions for surviving the centuries after the Prophet ﷺ that we possess.

Part 1: Taqwa as the First Counsel

Before anything else, he told them to fear Allah.

O you who believe! Fear Allah as He should be feared, and do not die except as Muslims ˹in submission to Him˺. (Aal-i-Imraan, 3:102)

Every other instruction in this hadith rests on this foundation. Obedience to leadership, adherence to Sunnah, avoidance of innovation, none of it holds without a living taqwa underneath it. A man without the fear of Allah will obey leadership only when convenient, follow Sunnah only when comfortable, and resist innovation only until it becomes popular enough to accept.

Part 2: Listen and Obey, Even Under Difficult Leadership

Then he commanded listening and obeying, even under a leader as lowly, in the eyes of that society, as a freed slave.

O you who believe! Obey Allah and obey the Messenger and those in authority among you. (An-Nisaa, 4:59)

This is not blind obedience to sin. Every scholar of this religion agrees that obedience to any authority ends the moment that authority commands disobedience to Allah. But short of that line, the Prophet ﷺ is teaching a discipline: do not let your personal opinion of who is in charge become an excuse to reject order and structure. Chaos born of contempt for leadership is a greater harm to the ummah than an imperfect leader.

Part 3: Great Controversy Is Coming

He warned them plainly: whoever lives long will see great controversy, ikhtilafan katheeran. This was not vague pessimism. It was precise prophecy. Sects, movements, competing claims to truth, each one convincing to someone. The companions did see this in their own lifetimes, and we see it magnified today, in every direction a phone screen can point.

And hold firmly to the rope of Allah all together and do not become divided. (Aal-i-Imraan, 3:103)

The instruction for surviving controversy is not to argue your way through every new claim that appears. It is to hold, firmly, to something fixed: the rope of Allah, His Book, and the way of His Messenger ﷺ.

Part 4: Why the Rightly-Guided Caliphs

The Prophet ﷺ did not only tell us to hold to his own Sunnah. He named a second anchor alongside it: the Sunnah of the rightly-guided caliphs, Abu Bakr, Umar, Uthman, and Ali, may Allah be pleased with all of them.

Why name them specifically? Because they governed the ummah in the years closest to revelation, applying the Quran and Sunnah to real situations the Prophet ﷺ had not lived to see: new lands, new wealth, new disputes, new threats to the faith. Their example shows us how sound principles are applied faithfully to changing circumstances, without inventing new religion to do it.

Hold fast to my Sunnah and the Sunnah of the rightly-guided caliphs after me. Cling to it and bite onto it with your molar teeth. (Tirmidhi (hasan sahih))

When a matter arises that the Quran and Sunnah address only in principle, we look to how the earliest and most trusted generation, closest to the source and least corrupted by later disputes, understood and applied that principle. This is why the scholars of Ahl al-Sunnah anchor themselves not only to the text, but to the understanding of the salaf, the righteous predecessors who received it first.

Part 5: Cling to It With Your Molar Teeth

The Prophet ﷺ used a vivid image: hold to the Sunnah and the guidance of the rightly-guided caliphs with your molar teeth, the strongest grip the human body has.

I have left behind two things, and you will not go astray as long as you hold fast to them: the Book of Allah and the Sunnah of His Messenger. (Malik, Muwatta)

This is not a passive grip. Molar teeth do not slip. They are used for the hardest, most demanding work the mouth performs. The Prophet ﷺ is telling us that holding to authentic guidance in an age of controversy will require real effort, real strength, not a casual hand-hold that lets go the moment something more exciting comes along.

Part 6: Every Invented Matter Is Misguidance

Finally, the warning: beware newly invented matters, for every invented matter is bid’ah, and every bid’ah is misguidance.

Today I have perfected your religion for you, completed My favor upon you, and have chosen Islam as your religion. (Al-Maaida, 5:3)

The religion was completed in the lifetime of the Prophet ﷺ. Nothing needs to be added to it in matters of worship and belief to make it more relevant, more modern, or more appealing. Every addition, however sincere the intention behind it, is a claim that the Prophet ﷺ left something out, and that claim cannot be true.

Whoever innovates something in Islam, regarding it as good, has claimed that Muhammad ﷺ betrayed his messengership, because Allah says: Today I have perfected your religion for you. So whatever was not part of the religion that day is not part of it today. (Imam Malik)

Part Two: Standing Firm When the Ground Keeps Shifting

Brothers,

This hadith was given to prepare the ummah for exactly the condition we live in now: a flood of competing voices, each claiming to speak for Islam, each pulling in a different direction. The Prophet ﷺ did not leave us without an anchor. He named it precisely: his Sunnah, and the example of the four rightly-guided caliphs who governed most closely after him according to that same Sunnah.

Part 7: Sincere Questions, Not Every New Idea

Holding to Sunnah does not mean refusing to think, or refusing to learn, or refusing to ask sincere questions of qualified scholars. It means refusing to accept every new claim about the religion simply because it is confidently stated, emotionally appealing, or popular online. Test every claim against the Quran, the authentic Sunnah, and the understanding of the earliest generations, not against how it makes you feel or how many people repeat it.

Part 8: The Prison Context, Guarding Against Deviant Voices

Brothers, this hadith has particular weight in a place like this one. In an environment where men are searching for identity, for meaning, for belonging, all kinds of voices arrive claiming religious authority, some sincere but mistaken, some deliberately manipulative, some feeding on isolation and anger to pull men toward extremism or toward movements that call themselves Islamic but abandon its actual teachings.

You do not have unlimited access to verify every claim a fellow inmate makes about the religion, or every pamphlet that circulates through a unit. This is exactly why the anchor matters. Hold to what has been transmitted from the Quran and the authentic Sunnah through recognized scholarship, the same anchor Muslims have held for fourteen centuries, and be deeply cautious of any teaching that asks you to abandon that anchor for something new, something angrier, or something that flatters your circumstances instead of correcting them.

If a teaching pulls you toward hatred of other believers, toward violence, toward rejecting the Sunnah in favor of a charismatic individual’s private interpretation, that is precisely the invented matter the Prophet ﷺ warned us about, however religious its language sounds.

Part 9: A Practical Anchor

Ask, before accepting any new religious claim: does this come from the Quran or an authentic hadith? Is it consistent with how the earliest generations of Muslims understood and practiced the religion? Does it match the character and mercy the Prophet ﷺ himself embodied? If a teaching fails these tests, no matter how convincingly it is delivered, leave it, and hold instead to what generations of trustworthy scholarship have preserved for you.

Part 10: The Reward for Holding Fast in Hard Times

There is a special reward promised for holding to the Sunnah precisely when it is hardest to do, when the surrounding culture, or the surrounding unit, has drifted far from it.

Verily, behind you are days of patience, in which holding on to your religion will be like grasping a hot coal. The one who acts righteously during that time will have the reward of fifty men who act as he acts. (Tirmidhi)

When the companions asked, fifty men from among us, or from among them, he said: fifty men from among you. This means the very difficulty of holding fast today, surrounded by confusion, weak knowledge, and competing voices, is itself the reason the reward is multiplied, not diminished. Do not see your struggle to stay anchored as a disadvantage. See it as the exact condition the Prophet ﷺ described as most rewarded.

May Allah make us among those who hold fast until they meet Him, unmoved by every new wind that blows through the ummah.

O Allah, fill our hearts with the same fear that filled the hearts of the companions at that sermon.

O Allah, make us people who listen and obey in what pleases You.

O Allah, protect us from the great controversies of our age, and keep us anchored to Your Book and the Sunnah of Your Messenger ﷺ.

O Allah, give us the strength to hold to guidance with the grip of our molar teeth, not a loose or half-hearted grip.

O Allah, protect us from every invented matter that leads away from the straight path.

O Allah, guard our hearts from voices that twist Your religion for anger or for personal gain.

O Allah, keep us firm upon the Sunnah until the day we meet You, content and accepted.

O Allah, grant us the reward of the patient ones who hold fast when others around them let go.

O Allah, let the example of the rightly-guided caliphs light our path in every matter we do not fully understand.