Editorial Board
December 17, 2017
“Branches of Iman” is predominantly a book of hadith. It was written by Imam Yassine, God have mercy on him, some thirty years or over. Imam Yassine mentioned the book a couple of times in other books, he says: “We have divided the seventy-seven branches into ten attributes and compiled then in one book.”
The newly-published book is composed of two volumes and includes an expansive assortment of more than 2500 hadith. Imam Yassine has enclosed hadiths that ignites Muslims towards spiritually purifying their hearts, and other hadiths that spur them into seeking good deeds on earth. God’s Messenger –God bless him and grant him peace- said: “Iman has sixty odd or seventy odd branches. The uppermost of all these is the Testimony of Faith: ‘La ilaha illallah’ (there is no god except God) while the least of them is the removal of harmful object from the road. And bashfulness is a branch of Iman.” [Bukhari & Muslim]
The book’s hadiths were reviewed by Prof. Dr. Abdellatif Ait Ammi, professor of Sciences of Hadith –Qadi Ayyad university, and presented by Prof. Dr. Abd al-‘Aali al-Masoul, professor of Sciences of Qur’an –Muhammed Bin Abdellah university, who also explained its difficult and strange words and phrases, and took care of its coherence and consistency.
The book was compiled on an unprecedented way of arrangement that differs from the approach of Imam al-Halimi, Imam al-Bayhaqi and others who had written about branches of iman. Imam Yassine’s modern work is arranged in a practical way that meets the needs of the individual and the community; he has ranked all the seventy-seven branches under ten attributes and each attribute consists of many branches. The ten attributes are as follows:
1: Spiritual Companionship and Community 2: Remembrance of God 3: Sincerity 4: Giving 5: Knowing 6: Working 7: Being Outstanding 8: Self-discipline 9: Economy 10: Jihad.
It should be noted that the branches of iman are acts of worship (physical, intellectual, moral, social, and spiritual) that strengthen iman and qualify their authors to start their journey towards ihsan. Scholars of hadith like al-Bayhaqi and al-Ḥulaymi compiled them and enumerated them in the sixty and seventy odd branches. In his “The Prophetic Model” [al-Minhāj an-Nabawi], Imam Yassine grouped them into seventy-seven branches. The latter are in their turn arranged in ten attributes within a context of training believing man and women (physically, intellectually, morally, socially, and spiritually) to ascend the three stages of Islam (islam, iman, and ihsan). The ascent is done inseparably from serving the other top-priority objective of uniting the umma worldwide.
