In one of our recent classes a question came up around this statement of the Prophet, peace be upon him. It is part of a longer hadith which is mentioned in the 40 hadith collection of Imam al-Nawawi. The hadith is as follows:
On the authority of Jurthum bin Nashir (may Allah be pleased with him) that the Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him) said:
Verily Allah the Almighty has laid down religious obligations (fara'id), so do not neglect them. He has set boundaries, so do not overstep them. He has prohibited some things, so do not violate them; about some things He was silent, out of compassion for you, not forgetfulness, so seek not after them.
A common question around this hadith is how we can understand large portions of the body of Islamic law in relation to this? This is because there are things that are in Islamic law that are directly mentioned in the textual sources and there are other things that are either indirectly mentioned or derived from the general indications of texts that are not directly related. So, are these things that we should not have asked about? Or is there another explanation?
Considering that this hadith is well-known, it does not seem likely that the scholars completely neglected its import and built out this body of knowledge without considering it and other hadith and verses from the Quran that seem to indicate similar meanings.
Imam Ibn Hajar al-Haytami mentions a couple of different possibilities in his commentary on the 40 hadith. One is that the hadith means that there are things that are clearly obligations and others that are clearly prohibitions and that when one searches too much in the matters that are in between then confusion can develop around what is actually a requirement and what is not. Anecdotally, I have seen this with community members from time to time. They become so concerned with knowing the ruling on every single detailed thing that they start to conflate recommendations with obligations and end up making things harder than they need to be and having a religious experience that is very anxiety ridden.
Another possibility that he mentions is that this command was specific to the time of the Prophet, peace be upon him. This is because excess questioning during his life, peace be upon him, could lead to more and stricter rules. The general rule with the Companions who lived around the Prophet, peace be upon him, was that they did not ask questions unless they really had to. Why? Because everything they needed to know would be clarified by Allah in the Quran or by the Prophet, so they need not ask extra questions.
This differs from what the scholars did after the life of the Prophet, peace be upon him, because although their efforts were vast, they were still simply efforts to explicate what was already laid out directly and indirectly by the Quran and the Prophet himself, peace be upon him.
And God knows best.