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Saying “Sayyidina” during the prayer

Answered as per Shafi'i Fiqh by Qibla.com

Answered by Shaykh Hamza Karamali, SunniPath Academy Teacher

I’m currently teaching at the Islamic School, and while teaching the kids the tashahhud, I told them to say “Sayyidina Muhammad” (may the greatest blessings and peace be upon him). A mother came to the principal and said that this constitutes equating the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) with Allah the Majestic. I explained to the principal that this is not the case and that this is what our scholars have said past and present and she agrees with me on the issue. The mother said to the principal that she took it from a fiqh book so I requested to see it. The book is called Fiqh al-Sunnah, by Muhammad Sayyid Saabiq. Looking through where it was indexed to it did not mention anything about it being wrong to say Sayyidina but it just tried to indicate that one should say it without it, and it quoted many hadiths where the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) said it without the word sayyidina.
Question: The principal agrees with me and wants me to explain to the mother why this is not wrong. Do you know any hadith evidence (with sources quoted) of the permissibility of referring to the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) or anyone else as one’s sayyid?

Answer:
In the Name of Allah, Most Gracious, Most Merciful

In the Name of Allah, Most Merciful and Compassionate

Permissibility of calling someone one’s “master” (sayyid)

The Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) himself described himself as our “master” (sayyid) in many, many hadiths related by Bukhari, Muslim, Tirmidhi, Abu Dawud, Ibn Majah, Ahmad, and Darimi. Here is a sample:

I am the master of mankind on the Day of Judgment. (Bukhari)

I am the master of the people [al-qawm] on the Day of Judgment. (Bukhari)

I am the master of the children of Adam; –this is not a boast. I am the first from whom the earth will split on the Day of Judgment; this is not a boast. I am the first interceder and the first one to be granted intercession; this is not a boast. The flag [liwa’] of praise will be in my hand on the Day of Judgment; this is not a boast. (Ibn Majah)

I am the master of mankind … (Muslim)

I am the master of the children of Adam on the Day of Judgment, the first from whom the grave will split, the first interceder, and the first to be granted intercession. (Muslim)

Imam Nawawi commented on the last hadith:

He (Allah bless him and give him peace) said, “[I am the master of the children of Adam] on the Day of Judgment,” even though he is their sayyid in this world as well as the next because [on the Day of Judgment] his being thesayyid will be clear to everyone and no one will remain to argue or be obstinate or the like, as opposed to this world … This qualification is like what He Most High says, “Who’s is the dominion today? It is Allah’s, the One, the Over masteringly Powerful” [40:16], even though the dominion is His even before that.

… The scholars say that he (Allah bless him and give him peace) did not say “I am the master of the children of Adam” in order to boast; on the contrary, he explicitly negated the fact that he was boasting in other narrations not related by Muslim in the famous hadith, “I am the master of the children of Adam; this is no boast.” He but said this for two reasons. The first is out of obedience to His Most High’s saying, “As for your Lord’s blessing, relate it.” [93:11] The second is that this is obligatory for him to convey to his people so that they may know it, believe it, and act in accordance with it, and so that they may respect him (Allah bless him and give him peace) as his rank demands and as Allah has commanded them. (Sahih Muslim bi Sharh al-Imam Muhyi’l-Deen al-Nawawi, 15.39, Dar al-Ma‘rifa)

If the Prophet himself described himself as our master–both in this world and the next–what hesitation should we have about referring to him as such.

The permissibility of referring to someone as one’s master (sayyid) is not confined to the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace). In Sahih Muslim, the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) said to his companions when Sa‘d b. Mu’adh entered upon them: “Stand up for your master (sayyid) …”

Is this shirk?

We venerate and love our Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) not because we worship him (Allah be our refuge), but rather because Allah himself commanded us to venerate him in the Qur’an.

One of the greatest bid‘as of our times is that whenever the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) is referred to with veneration, people get uneasy and whenever he is referred to as “just another person,” they get happy. Veneration for the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) is something we have been commanded to do by Allah, Himself.

How many of us would refer to our parents by their first names? Anyone–Muslim or non-Muslim–with the slightest bit of good breeding (adab) would cringe at the very idea of it because of the extreme disrespect that it entails. The Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) has an infinitely higher standing than our parents. How awful it is to hear people these days refer to him by his first name as if he was “just another person.”

Allah commanded the Muslims not to call upon the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) by saying, for example, “O Muhammad.” He said:

“Do not call on the Messenger like you call on one another” (24:63).

Imam Sawi explained in his supercommentary on the Jalalayn that this is a prohibition from calling the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) by saying, “O Muhammad” or “O Abu’l-Qasim” and that he should be called upon with veneration, honour, and respect by saying instead “O Messenger of Allah” or “O Prophet of Allah” or “O Leader of the Messengers” and the like. He said that the verse tells us that it is not permissible to call the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) in any manner that does not imply veneration, and that this applies both during his life and after his departure from this world. (Hashiyat al-Sawi ‘ala Tafsir al-Jalalayn, 3.149)

The Urdu-speaking ‘ulama of the Indian subcontinent (Allah be pleased with all of them) have done a tremendous favour to Islam by embedding veneration of the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) into their very language itself. In Urdu, the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) is never referred to by his name. Instead, they always refer to him as “you” (aap). When quoting a hadith, common folk will say: “You (Allah bless you and give you peace) told us … etc. etc.” Referring to him by just his name is considered something gross indeed.

Can we say it in the tashahhudduring the prayer?

After agreeing on the fact that it is permissible (if not praiseworthy) to refer to the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) as one’s master, the fuqaha differed whether or not it was desirable to say it in the tashahhud.

The hadiths that have come about the tashahhud do not mention the word sayyidin them. Some of the Shafi‘is preferred to follow the precise wording of the prophetic command rather than the way of adab (i.e., by adding “our master”). Others preferred to put the way of adab before the precise wording of the prophetic command.

Imam Ibn Hajar al-Haytami (Allah have mercy on him) said in his commentary on al-Muqaddima al-Hadramiyya, “There is no harm (la ba’s) in adding ‘sayyidina’ before ‘Muhammad’ [during the tashahhud].” Shaykh Muhammad ibn Sulayman al-Kurdi (Allah have mercy on him) said in his supercommentary that al-Khatib al-Shirbini said in his Mughni that it is not desirable (mustahabb) to add ‘sayyidina’, whereas Imam al-Ramli said in his Nihayatu’l-Muhtaj that it is desirable. He also says that the I’ab (a book by al-Mazjad that Ibn Hajar has a commentary on) said that it is desirable to add ‘sayyidina’. (al-Hawashi al-Madaniyya, 1.259).

One of Ibn Hajar’s students said in his oft-quoted hashiya: “It is better (awla) to mention masterhood (al-siyadah), since the better approach is to tread the way of adab” (I‘anatu’l-Talibin, 1.163).

I have heard one of the scholars mention that one of the proofs of the fact that it is better to put adab before the precise wording of the command is that during the end of the Prophet’s (Allah bless him and give him peace) lifetime, he asked Sayyidina Abu Bakr to lead the prayer and Sayyidina Abu Bakr refused to lead a congregation that comprised the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace). In other words, he adopted the way of adab over what the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) told him to do.

Similarly, at the treaty of Hudaybiyyah, when the disbelievers objected to the wording of the treaty, “Messenger of Allah”, the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) told his scribe, our master Ali (Allah be pleased with him), to erase it, but our master Ali refused. So the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) ended up erasing it himself.

This remains a point of disagreement, however (the Mughni and Nihayah are among the best and most reliable commentaries on the Minhaj al-Talibin of Imam Nawawi), and so if someone believes that it is better not to say sayyidina in the tashahhud, they would be following a valid and strong position in the Shafi‘i school. At the same time, they should respect, acknowledge, and tolerate the fact that some of the greatest Shafi’is were of the opinion that to say sayyidina in the tashahhud is desirable. And in any case, no one considers it wrong to refer to Allah’s Messenger (Allah favor and salute him) as “our master,” but they only disagree on what is superior in the context of the tashahhud.

May Allah bless our master Muhammad and give him peace, and grant us his company on the Day of Resurrection.

And Allah knows best.

Hamza Karamali and Mostafa Azzam.

This answer was indexed from Qibla.com, which used to have a repository of Islamic Q&A answered by various scholars. The website is no longer in existence. It has now been transformed into a learning portal with paid Islamic course offering under the brand of Kiflayn.

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