Library Chat #14: On the Najdī Dawah (and the Issue of Istighātha) | Shaykh Dr. Yasir Qadhi

he alone do we worship and it is his aid that we seek he is the lord of the oppressed and the one who answers the call of the week uh so today inshallah in this uh library chat this library chat is actually going to be probably the longest video um i have on youtube i'm going to be recording it in multiple parts it's a very very technical lecture and it is only a benefit for those who are well aware of the najdi da'wah in school and are interested in hearing uh my thoughts about one or two key issues uh pertaining to this this movement and also the issue of istiratha so if you are not aware of this movement in detail you're not aware of technical terms you're not aware of the uh the relationships that are taught between rububy and urugia uh then frankly uh this lecture is probably not gonna be of a lot of benefit for you it's really not meant for beginning students and one of the reasons why uh i've been you know so delayed in even giving this lecture is that i genuinely uh don't believe that this lecture uh should should be one that causes more confusion nonetheless um uh a longer lecture is warranted so my sincere advice if you don't know these basic issues of najd theology and of uh their positions about rubobia and urugia and of uh their issues about isla and these terms are alien to you my humble advice is go listen to lectures that are of benefit i have lots of lectures online that are completely generic in nature and uh leave this to an inshallah you are ready uh now this is going to be now with that caveat so this is nazi this is probably one of the more technical lectures i'll ever give and it will also be very long uh because i will uh i don't plan to record uh multiple uh lectures and put them online i simply want a very long lecture i will take multiple sessions to record uh but it's gonna be one lecture so uh take your time pause if you need to if you're gonna be interested in listening and you know take notes if need to be my genuine methodology is not to talk more about the mistakes of other movements or of other people that's not my main priority nonetheless sometimes it needs to be done and it's about time that i issued my own you know explanation about my own trajectory in the last few years and i do understand that this video will bring a ton of refutations um so be it that's not the the goal here that's not the point that i'm even uh doing this for it's not what i i'm interested and i sincerely believe i sincerely believe that all mainstream movements uh that all uh people who believe in the arkhan uh in the hadith of judah the sikhs are kind of iman and have iman and taqwa that they are insha allahu ta'ala uh upon enough and goodness as long as they have genuine iman that they shall insha allahu ta'ala be forgiven for their sins if they avoid the major sins and they shall enter jannah and what that means for me is that all of my sincere critics who genuinely believe in in this theology insha allahu ta'ala i i hope and pray one is i don't think it is healthy for the religious folks of the ummah to bicker amongst themselves and to have these refutations and counter refutations and i don't want to be a part of that subculture so this lecture is not intended to get involved in that even though of course it will be perceived as such that's not my goal or aim it's not even intended to be a defense really of of my positions even though obviously it's going to come off like that but that's not the the knee the knee for me is that i do believe it is it is time for an explanation for my own uh students i feel that i owe it to my students who are genuinely wondering uh why i have moved on from a theology that i myself introduced them to uh you know so uh many many years you know i have been teaching classes uh with animal with other institutes even alkother and others and i've written books even about uh this theology uh the light of guidance class that i taught from institute literally no exaggeration tens of thousands of students from across the globe uh attended it was one of al-marib's flagship classes and it was one of its most successful classes ever and uh not just this but obviously i have uh you know videos and lectures where i taught this theology i wrote books about this theology but obviously i as everybody knows i'm no longer uh you know associated with that movement and i think i owe it to my own students really that's the motivation uh to explain and to clarify to them and leave it to them and i i leave them upon her and good like i don't i don't think that their evil people or the movement is is is bad i do think it has potentials for danger and it has some you know issues that need to be clarified but insha'allah all mainstream movements are upon her and good and allah shall forgive the mistakes and sins of the pious and the righteous now uh that all of that having been said so the point of this series of mini lectures is going to be lumped together in one lecture because again i don't want to keep on giving uh more and more lectures that needs to be but a mini class does need to take place in this regard uh that um it's very clear for for all of my uh students that um i have not hidden this fact that i have moved on from the theology and as i said it's about high time when i explain in a little bit more detail uh about why this is the case and obviously recently there was a q a that i gave uh in which somebody asked about um how a person should deal with relatives that are visiting the graves and calling out to the saints and i explained there are three historically there are three opinions uh just factually speaking uh and one a one b i said uh and then uh the the third strand which is like the the more extreme you know um mystical strands they they think it is good to invoke the dead and then i said the position i now hold uh which is the bulk and the majority position uh uh of the um not that majority in and of itself means it's right but it should be said it's not something i'm inventing uh myself but uh that it is only shirk if some conditions are uh met and i even mentioned that it was researching this question that caused me to leave uh the movement now as was expected a lot of discussion was generated a lot of refutation videos came out i expected all of that it's not my goal to get involved in in defending uh myself or in attacking uh the critics nonetheless once again i feel that i owe it to my students and those who are genuinely curious to explain in more detail it's only fair that they ask me and this lecture will therefore be divided into multiple parts like i said i don't know how long it's going to be right now but you will see by looking at the youtube link or the video is going to probably be a few hours all lumped together and it's going to be divided into a number of sections um the first section will be personal it's going to be my story it's going to be my own uh uh interactions with this movement and the causes that really made me begin to question and then move on the second is going to be the more academic stuff which i'm going to mention um three key points three key academic points and then you shall allow to add a conclusion and advice and realize that i'm intentionally going to make this long i'm not going to um i'm i'm not going to look at the time to be honest i'm going to be uh opening up and and being very frank in this one long video and then insha'allah after all of this is done and this video is done for me inshallah move on to other topics that i've been used to doing from before and after so my advice to all of you if you're still with me take your time and take breaks don't expect to watch all of this together because i'm not recording it all together and also fyi i don't really plan to engage in a back and forth now i'm going to start off with uh you know my own uh my own quick uh story in this in this movement um the first time i was exposed to this movement was really as a child as a teenager um 1986 i believe is the year 1987. uh i came across billah philip's book on on taheed the book of monotheism and obviously nothing like that have ever ever been written and uh you know the the engaging style and um uh just you know the the interesting facts presented there obviously it was very convincing i i i was very attracted to that in the early 90s i got involved in the official set of hidalgo of north america the quran and sunnah society everybody who was involved knows me from back in the day i became a key player traveling to the cities attending the conferences all of the major duat of that era knew me as their student every one of them that you can ask anybody who was involved in the early 90s scene they knew me personally they all in fact wrote tescus pretty much all of them wrote for me to get into the university of madina uh obviously i went to medina in 1995 to 2005 and i thank allah azzawajal for uh one of the most blessed and one of the most fortunate times of my life i i look back at that time with a lot of fondness and i thank allah for for all that i you know studied over there obviously in medina i did my bachelor's in in hadith and i fell in love with akhida over all not just i loved and i still love you know the small sifat and this is beautiful i mean how can you not love this field and um i applied to the the masters program in theology right in the islamic university of medina and i was planning to do my phd but 9 11 happened and i felt that i need to come back and and do it over here now again i don't want to say this any boasting or bragging but so that you understand that uh i'm not somebody that is not aware of the arguments that are being presented you can look this up and you can ask the teachers you can ask the students that were there that the the masters level program was not easy to get into when i applied and alhamdulillah had the highest grades in the entire university in the entrance entrance exam the entire university hundreds of people applied i had the highest grades of the entrance exam and then within the ma class i was the top of my class i was competing with surudis and kuwaitis and mauritanians the only westerner the only english speaker nobody else was there at the time at that level and whatnot and alhamdulillah i mean and again i say this because you understand my story you understand where i'm coming from i'm not some you know a person outside or just was bad at turned away no i mastered pun intended i mastered the field of najd theology and i firmly believed in that theology and everybody is aware if you know your history of the dawah my name is mentioned in every single history book written about the western salafida was of the 90s and the 2000s my name is mentioned there in academic articles and books as somebody who was very active and one of the main activists when i came back even before i came back 1996 i think 1996 i think or 97 uh i gave the the first comprehensive explanation of kitabato hait you know cover to cover and it was a huge hit the internet was just coming out if you remember those you remember and i gave an entire series of kitabato hey i went on and did my while i was doing my masters you know i translated which is the four principles uh you know of shirk this was a book that i did and then i wrote uh you know critical study of shirk okay and this book uh remains to this day this is a 200 plus page book okay it is an exhaustive critical study of meaning of one of the most deep books which is a question clarifying the doubts and i did my own exhaustive commentaries based upon six or seven of the largest commentaries i studied the book myself with multiple when i was there and i went into a lot of detail and i humbly suggest to my critics that before they quote me uh snippets here and there of what they've read please read this book i am with my utmost humility i am well aware of whatever things you're quoting and please read the book you will find quotations you can think you can use it in your in your own videos allah almost time so i know this theology and i believed in it and i really really thought that it was the religion that the prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam came with it made perfect sense to me everything fit into place and i can still see why it makes sense to people i sympathize with that i'm not hostile to them i'm not antagonistic to them i i finished off 2005 and i intentionally i mean my teachers wanted me to study the phd but i i wanted to benefit my people the english-speaking world i wanted to i it was it was a difficult thing for me because i would have been the first you know american you know to to finish off over there with a phd but i i i thought that my people have more rights over me uh and i came back intentionally wanting to give uh da'wah especially after the 9 11 environment where you know things were changing so radically and as soon as i came back i started teaching the akita that i thought was the akrita of this religion with as much wisdom as i thought possible and i was very careful not to spread tak fear not to spread animosity and hatred and inshallah my students can testify that at the tens of thousands of students that took light of guidance i kept on emphasizing that you know uh i mean hamdana much of the course is good i'm not saying the entire course is about it ninety percent ninety-five percent is generic stuff good stuff you know five or ten percent i now disagree with that i used to teach and you know even those elements that i that i now disagree with of considering certain uh actions to become what i would always say we make excuses for the people you know we're gentle with the people but their actions or actions of kufr their actions or actions of shirk and i always would you know advise them that there must be humility and kindness and you know don't break up the ummah etc etc but in the course of all of this teaching in the course of teaching thousands upon thousands and of getting questions and of giving da'wah and of interacting and of seeing the global scene and of going back and forth in the course of being in the real world outside of one's books you know one begins to question and one of the things that one of my teachers told me if you want to learn something teach it to others if you want to learn something teach it to others it's so easy to memorize a few snippets and i think you know when you start teaching you are forced to think far more deeply than uh when you're just reading books and when you're challenged and when students come to you and when you interact with other people and so throughout the course of you know from 2005 honorism uh i taught uh you know light of guidance and the other courses with other institutes many many times and as you know that was seen as progressing and as i'm seeing the effects as well and as i'm being forced to critically reanalyze and think you know doubts that were there but i would cast them aside in my medina days they were there doubts would flickers like why is this theology so small why why is something so clear-cut you know not the mainstream of the ummah this is not a filthy issue it's taheed and shirk it's iman and kufr and yet we seem to be up against al-azhar and deoband and you know the scholars of morocco and the scholars of syria everybody seems to be on a different wavelength and in medina i dismiss it now we are the other islam is going to be not but you know i mean those things are cast aside okay but in the course of thou in the course of teaching and preaching you know you begin to really think uh deeper and the repercussions of being in the da'wah field and of seeing firsthand you know the realities of what you're doing uh it it forces you to rethink through and i i really began to feel that this is not the best use of my time or my talents or my energy or my knowledge to go and tell other muslims to hate other muslims to go and teach other muslims what's wrong with other muslims it really began to bother me that my the bulk of my efforts in in this theology in this methodology was to point out the faults of the religious folks and you know the religious folks are a small percentage of the ummah and this interpretation really began to say to to come to my mind like what is going on with uh the the emphases on the faults of other practicing muslims you don't need to be you know historically point out that nasd theology is a small fragment it's a minority of the percentage of the ummah and the vast majority of the ummah disagrees with the nasdi theology's analysis and for example invoking the saints and what not the majority of dhuma thinks that it is haram but not shirk this is the default as i said of the bulk of the ummah so for me who is seeing there's the theology to be as clear as the light of day to me it is crystal clear why can't the rest of the world see it the way that i do what is what is it with this movement that this movement seems to be so clear and yet it is such a small minority now again to be to be very explicit majority vote does not mean it is right you know majority does not mean that that it is the correct opinion i'll be the first to say that but at the same time this isn't like a small issue this is toheid this is the kalima this is the essence of islam how could the bulk of the ummah not understand the kalima the way that i am understanding it why is it that you know al-azhar university's official position on their if their website by the way log on and check their ifta website this is university did the ubuntu position on officially the obama or literally i checked it a few days ago to make sure it's still there the official position of the scholars of morocco the higher committee of morocco of the shaffers of syria you know of yemen you know why do they not see the the our understanding you know the way that i've been taught what is what is it with these other movements out there again this is me problematizing that's not that's not an excuse it's just problematizing that's not excuse meaning that doesn't mean it's wrong it it it caused me to really start wondering what is going on to me it is so clear dua is ibadah and directing an act of ibadah to other than allah is shirk and so making dua to the dead is it is so clear 1 plus 1 equals 2 right no ifs ands or buts about it the theology seems crystal clear and yet still the majority of ulama and when you read and one thing that also troubled me why was ibn abdul ahab so late in the ummah where were the rest of the revivers why didn't you know it happened uh before and and it made complete sense to me and ila is an object that is worshipped okay this is a summary of an illah is an object that is worshipped even if you don't intend to worship they say your actions that constitute ibadah when they're done they will make that object into an iraq and dua is the essence of worship the prophet saw says so hence if you make dua to other than allah you have directed an act of worship two other than allah subhanahu wa ta'ala that's the definition right and what is the definition of shrikant to ask other than allah what only allah subhanahu wa ta'ala should be asked of to ask other than allah that which only allah is capable of doing as i said it's a very nice foolproof water-tight definition everything makes sense along with this it appeals to one's fitrah because we don't like turning to other than allah you know and my fitra was alhamdulillah pure it still is inshallah pure like you don't want to it's haram to do that we're not going to justify this is haram but still why do so many other groups disagree and um the the main you know uh the main point here as well is that for me uh the theology of the quraish right the the the religion of the quraish as presented by ibrahim clearly paralleled what we find amongst these other movements and groups that i'm criticizing so to me it is like the light light of day what they're doing and that's basically the entire thrust of kashville right the whole point of khashoggi is that he paints a picture of the quraish right and then basically that that corresponds with uh these you know mystical sufi movements or the beliefs or whatever you want to call them and to me it's like okay very very clear now the problem with this is that for me emotionally is that the bulk of the scholarship of the ummah for the last thousand years for the last thousand years did not see it the way that ibn aduahab did and i didn't have an answer to that i would ask people of the other movement and i i spoke and i'm not going to mention any names here i can assure you every senior figure of every trend you know um and there are spectrums amongst them as you're aware right they are the mainstream i would say who consider these actions to be haram but not shirk and then you have you know the the minority uh again in the in the spectrum of things you have the the salafis the the bandits the believers that type of spectrum there right so the ubandi or the mainstream of the uh moroccan and shafiris of of of damascus and what not generally speaking you will find many among some say that it is haram and it should not be done and it is and then you find you know probably a lesser quantity i don't have a statistics but i mean from my own interactions and you see online as well generally speaking a smaller quantity say that it is mubarak and it is not a shirk the bulk of them are not on the theology and this really troubled me and i did not have an answer and i spoke with many many people in this regard i'll only mention one name because i think that's the only name i'll i don't mind mentioning but i can assure you every single major diary of other persuasions of nand and you all know this from 2005 to um i don't know exactly when two thousand whatever you know i was considered to be one of the most active you know najdi or or salafi duat of the western world i mean this is something that is um well known and in that capacity i would be very frank my one of the things everybody knows me for is my bluntness my bluntness is what gets me into a lot of trouble and i understand that i i don't i don't mince my words and i'm very blessed so i would talk to people point blank i would speak to other duatis like and i remember speaking to i'm not going to mention this person's name one of the main founders of one of the main schools of north america and you know very bluntly like you know this idea of yours of of you know uh uh saints and whatnot this is this is shirk according to us you know literally said you know to one of the the senior people and yeah in his adap and whatnot he didn't um uh uh respond back to me but i accused him of preaching not of being about preaching [ __ ] one of the most major senior duata of the western world that's how that's what i'm trying to say i'm i i i i wasn't any uh this is who i was the one person i'll mention is um uh i had the opportunity to study with uh may allah guide him and me uh to all that he loves uh this was back before any of that uh others new fitna had begun uh 2006 i think 2007 i had an opportunity to study with shakha i got to know him and i met him multiple times after that but of course what happened afterwards i haven't met him in the last few years and uh um that's not related to this talk so no need to mention anything more but those who don't know uh i uh at the end of our our few days with him there was a few days we studied with him and ham that i got to know very well and i was very frank with him i said all of these differences between these various movements you know no big deal i can i can i can tolerate we can get along but how do you expect me to tolerate shirk between so and so i mentioned one of the people that's there in the gathering and he's advocating shirk when he says that you can uh you know call out to the uh to the saints you know and this is how can you there is no reconciliation i remember that's what really like struck me at the time this is 2006 you know very year after madina or whatnot you know his face became like you know angry he goes what they're calling for it is haram and it is biddah and it is munkara but it is not shirky yes he told me with simi he's like but what what struck me and that's what i remember was that the fact that he hated that so much but he didn't say it [ __ ] and i was like you know i like that attitude you know i like that you don't want them to do that but to me again the the the way nejdawa teaches you everything fits into place there's a holistic scheme there's there's a beautiful you know lego block structure built up everything fits in and it's like no it is [ __ ] how can it not be [ __ ] how are you telling me it's just haram and so i remember this but it didn't you know still it didn't really uh intellectually change me it's like okay well that's good to know that you you think it is um you know hard on but not [ __ ] nonetheless so years go on and the final catalyst for me to really just say i need to i need to do uh more research the final category believe it or not it was the rise of isis now i am not going to say and i'm not saying that isis is the same as the nasdaq it's not there are many differences however there are many differences but there are also way way too many similarities if you know your isis theology if you know their key points about toheid and about takfir and about wala and you understand that and and the fact that they're quoting some of the main founders of the movement and the notions that are coming or coming from this movement you understand that isis is way too similar it's too comfortable it's not the same i'm not saying it's the same but it is too similar to the original movement of muhammad ibn abdullah and i realized that just like how all of us in the modern world are shocked at the fanaticism of isis at their takfir of the rest of the world after executing everybody who disagrees with them you know i realized that there's too many perilous not the same there's too many parallels about how the rest of the world was shocked for pretty much the exact same reasons at the early nazdi da'wah and if you read the fatah of global ulama at the time you know ibn abidine's fatwa against ibn abdul wahab al-sani in yemen who's coming from the athali paradigm you see i've said this many many times i am sympathetic to the athari critiques of najdism i am not advocating buddhism or sufism not not extreme sufism i'm not advocating that and i think it is haram but my sympathies lie with the bulk of the ummah which is the official position of the bulk of the ummah which is that these actions are a stepping stones to [ __ ] but not in it of themselves they are they are um haram and their bidda uh but they're not they're not you don't make techfeed you don't even forget it's not even silk such that the issue of utility comes right that's the position of the dominant the mainstream movements of the globe from morocco all the way to the uh basically that's what they're uh they're saying now for me the last straw really was uh uh seeing that i am so disgusted by isis uh and how can i be disgusted at a movement that is so similar theologically and i'm saying this academically i'm saying this as a sympathizer and as a critic that is genuinely loving of the people of the movement the the similarities between the theologies of isis for those of you that have not studied please study don't just dismiss understand the architects of that theology and the notions that they're bringing in are very much the notions of first wave nesdidawa okay so for me the final straw was that i realized that this is not the religion that the prophet saws came with it's not the religion you know of allah these people are crazy fanatics and if they are then something is wrong with the theology that i'm i'm attracting i need to see what's up with that and by the way these are all things that my colleagues at maghrib they can attest to my closest students at the time these are conversations that are beginning uh almost a decade ago you know from now and uh i i basically you know told them institute i can no longer teach light of guidance give me the other courses but that course i i'm not going to teach it and for a few a few months i immersed myself in uh other books that typically i would only read to select and refute right because see here's the key point here is the key point and i'm now addressing not just my students but uh the many um critics that will be watching uh this video to find their 10 second uh snippets in order to refute you see um when you're when your knee is just to refute you literally have a wall you literally have a barrier that will not allow the the evidences and the perspective of the other person to be understood by you and i'm not trying to be dismissive but think of trump supporters when you quote them whatever fact that you want think of the flat earthers think of anybody who is already convinced of a paradigm no matter what you say to that person they are even more convinced because of what you said right and uh that is why i do not get involved with the refutation culture refutations only cater to your own audiences by and large generally the default when you refute you're only validating to your own followers right and those that are outside the movement or those are outside of who you are they are not interested in what others are saying uh to you so what happened for me around a decade ago was that i psychologically unlinked myself to the seraphitawa and i said i want to see genuinely i want to see open-minded not in order to find fault and refute which is what i was doing pre you know that era i'm not i have i have a whole section of shady books a whole section of sufi books here they're all i have them and i have read them for my masters i read them for my phd i'm reading them but i'm reading them in order to find that one you know nugget that i think i can refute not even know it's not that bull's-eye is the appropriate word just like many of you are just listening to me now to find that 10-second bullseye to refute and you know for that audience nothing you can say is of use because they have already made their minds up you can't preach to somebody who's not interested in hearing the sermon if you like right so you have to psychologically be ready to listen like what exactly is being is being said here and that's why all of the writings i had read before this didn't really impact me because i was wed to my world view of negativism i was committed to that world view and anybody who was outside of that world view i'm not i'm not they there's no chance of them being right in my mind that's really what it is there's no chance of them being right so once once there's no chance of them being right well then no matter what they say i'm just gonna find what i need to and then uh refute it i've already had my mind made up these incidents the global politics um you know the the da'wah uh seeing the effects of teaching and overall the uncomfortableness that i began to feel of always having to talk about issues that only bother you know a small group of people they're only the religious group and finding fault with other religious people i really d-linked myself from the nez de tawa spiritually psychologically i said you know let me understand really what is going on and and i say this because again i i mean i've studied the books i my phd is in theology my master's from m.a in in medina is an aki that i took from the great rural i studied with them right i'm an expert in their theology yet still everything that i read up until these incidents that changed my mind i'm not interested in what the other group is saying i'm really not i'm only interested in how to refute it i'm only interested to find that snippet to show how wrong they are so i made a conscious decision a conscious effort to let go of my biases i made dua to allah to help me understand what's going on and then i read and i read and i read with a genuinely open mind this began as i said around a decade ago and it eventually culminated um in me uh not just stopping teaching light of guidance but eventually leaching leaving uh alma ribs which i love immensely it has done a lot of good and a lot of is in it alhamdulillah i thank allah for that opportunity as well but i felt that as a part of my my moving on i should also you know move on to other institutes and whatnot i publicly wrote an article stating that i'm no longer considering myself a sadafi i have said multiple times that i've moved on from the teachings of ibn abdul wahab the latest q a was nothing surprising i mean obviously i moved on i don't understand why the backlash was so severe when this has been my position for so many years but anyway i do understand at some level and you'll see why i understand also i want to make one one other point before i get to the technical stuff all of this uh transition all of these these um changes that are happening they have they had nothing to do with my uh education or phd you know uh at the institute that i did it from uh i didn't take any classes on najdism over there i didn't have any uh quote unquote shibuhat exposed from that university on the contrary you know no doubt the university shaped me in many ways for other aspects and i've spoken about them but in this issue of najdism in this issue of uh understanding the definitions of of tawheed and shirk and whatnot really it was my own da'wah to the people and masses and to become one of the icons and leaders of that movement for so many years and to see the harms that these types of teachings are causing and to see global events that are linked to these types of theologies that's what shaping my views and my changes nothing to do with my um education and uh another point i'd like to also just mention for the record not that it's a big deal at all but i mean a lot of people are associating me with uh particular shaykh uh in mecca uh of the ashraf or the descendants of the process and by the name of dr sharif and they're saying that i am basically his student and i've taken from him uh again for the record i want to be very clear here and my colleagues at the maghreb institute can testify to this actually uh interestingly enough i don't want to mention his name but you can figure out from the context one of the senior people of al-maghrib uh one of the one of the the people i i still i'm a good friend of mine i love and respect him i i hope the feeling will always be mutual um that when i began approaching him and constantly going back and forth he was the one who said ya ya sir you sound a lot like hate malani i'm like why does he say the same thing he goes yeah haven't you read his writings i said no and of course i'd heard of him but i haven't read his writings until that point and so he's the one who introduced me to the writings of of shaykh and so i started reading and i was like this is what i've been saying this is it right here i've been this ex so i discovered those teachings uh and i came to these conclusions before i read i read shirkhatim and my colleague can testify to this right and once i discovered him then i contacted some of his students and i visited him and we discussed and we continue to discuss and we are on the same wavelength but i want to be very very clear here and not nothing that it wouldn't i'm not astough for allah if that worthy kiss is nothing i'm ashamed of but no shaykh atem did not influence me writings did not cause me to change my my world views on this issue on the contrary i discovered him after i had come to my conclusions and not knowing that i'm not the only one there are many other people out there and i do encourage all of you to listen to shaykh a great adam and sheikh and somebody who's gone through pretty much the same thing because he was uh you know salafi in his younger days and then what he is saying is basically what i am saying as well which is what the bulk of the ummah um says now i left you know as i said all of that teaching i stopped you know i i did a sharp turn as well in my lectures if you you know i i don't i don't i don't view uh talking about the mistakes of other practicing muslims to be uh the best use of my time and i've really uh you know moved on from from that dawah but i never explained in detail why and as i said this lecture is meant for those whom i feel they have a right over me that's their hack on me right in the end of the day i acknowledge that i introduced many people to ibn abdul wahab one of the most prominent i i i hope this doesn't come off as a post because i'm not proud of it anymore but i think after bilal phillips i would have been the one that was the most instrumental in introducing the ideas of the nazdi movement to the english-speaking world for a long period of my 20s and early 30s and the books that i wrote and the lectures that i gave are all the manifestation of that now i think it's only fair that now that i've moved on from from that that i explain to those that are genuinely sincere that have a right over me especially my students i explain why that is the case and then they are free to do as they as they um decide and and choose and i i do understand that i'm entering into the refutation counter refrigeration territory i do just humbly request all of you that are watching this in order to um to refute and you think that that is uh the most beneficial to the ummah before you do that just read my book uh the critical study of shirik and then don't rehash the same arguments because i've written a book on the subject don't rehash the same stuff out there and anyway if you if you if you are sincere in your refutations i pray that allah subhanahu wa ta'ala grants me sincerity uh and forgives my sins and i pray that we see each other in jannah because i am certain i am certain that in allah's mercy anybody who has iman and taqwa anyone who says the kalima and especially those who believe in the arakan the sikhs in the hadith of jubilee and they have iman taqwa that they are upon good and upon guidance and upon rightly guidance guided and insha allah they will enter jannah all people of iman and taqwa anybody who turns to allah wanting to purify their soul what is sincere in this regard and especially those who have the six uh arkan if you don't have the sikh sarcan then you are upon uh misguidance and that's what that i is are those who reject the status of the sahaba they reject the concepts of the sunnah these are even if they say the kalima okay but anybody who says the kalima and follows the hadith of juba and and and and exhibits iman and taqwa and avoids the major sins i i don't want to make them a target of my animosity and hatred at all the ummah has far bigger you know issues and problems and i think that it is a problem uh to problematize other uh pious muslims even as i understand that many pious muslims are taught something that makes them problematize other muslims uh uh beyond other problems with uma uh i hope that i hope that that makes sense insha'allah i'm going to take a quick break and then inshaallah resume uh so i said that i'm going to um uh discuss the theology uh by mentioning three uh specific points about it so this is now the more academic side i went over some of the personal you know my own history and uh the the issue comes before i begin on the academic side is that the uh the construction of any theology whatever strand of islam you you ascribe to is actually a very complex multi-linked and multifaceted field and therefore if you critique one aspect uh automatically you're critiquing other aspects what i'm trying to say here is that uh every single uh theology whether it is you know najdi uh you know salafism uh whether it is a various strands of sufism they have constructed an entire holistic model and the issue comes that when somebody comes along and critiques one aspect of the model the immediate defense oh hey that doesn't that doesn't match up because i'm believing so if i critique x you're gonna say oh but hey y leads to x and then z also leads to x and so y and z are connected to x they're like oh that proves x here but you see then you go back and look at z and you look at y and you realize they're also you know mistaken or out of line or something so it becomes far more complicated than uh one you know 20-minute lecture which is why it's difficult to introduce a student who has studied one entire theology to another theology in a quick short lecture you really do have to take a step back it deals with definitions it deals with the interconnectedness between those definitions you know so uh what i'm going to try to do and there's going to be gaps because even as i point out you know certain uh you know uh certain points that definitely inshallah will be a benefit to the advanced students i understand the instinct and i know what the the concepts are going to be are going to bring be bring to bring in other aspects linked to these particular fields that i'm going to bring so what i'm going to try to do insha'allah uh is to concentrate on three particular areas uh which i believe that the students of the nezidawa should be familiar with so that you can understand the perspective of other movements the first of them is the the the claim that muhammad ibn abdul wahab completely misunderstood the reality of paganism in general and especially paganism specifically and because he misunderstood the qurashi theology he could then make the argument which the average najdi believes that what uh some members of the muslim community are doing in terms of reaching out to uh you know the the the dead and what not is the same or in fact even worse because he says this multiple times than what the quraysh did so if you set up the model of qurashi paganism incorrectly then yes you can link you know modern trends that i disagree with i dissociate from i say they are wrong they are haram they are keep on making that disclaimer uh to to make sure people understand those that are open might understand i'm not endorsing it but to say something is haram and the brother is still a muslim is very different than saying this is shirk and either uddr or you know outside the fold of islam so that's the first point that ibn abdullah misunderstood qurashi paganism and because of that he was then able to make an invalid class an invalid analogy to what the uh the uh the people of our times do the second is to look historically at the reality of the repercussions of this type of theology what happens when you believe and you subscribe to this type of understanding of toheid because this isn't a fikri issue this is like toheid versus shirk and if somebody is propagating shirk and if an entire country or an entire daula such as the ottoman empire is subscribing to an ideology that you have deemed to be shirk that's going to have repercussions legal repercussions is going to have ramifications and to give you an idea of that so you we're going to take a little bit of a quick look at that that's going to be the second point and then the third very briefly because this is the easiest to do and you can even google it yourselves you know very easily and a lot of people have done this is to simply demonstrate that the position of the vast majority of pre-najds and of the other schools of law so you have the shafir is the malikis and the hanafis and you have of course the the hamburis the vast majority of them have fatawa that clearly demonstrate throughout the last more than millennia more than millennia literally 1200 years you have fatawa that demonstrate that the norm was very different than the way that the najdis are preaching it so you really have to conclude that either the bulk of the ummah was religiously misguided about the meaning of the kanima and the implications of tohidan shirk or that ibn abdul wahab's understanding uh simply was novel and new and in fact a very key point which i'm not going to elaborate in this lecture because i actually believe it deserves much more research than has actually been done i've done a very preliminary amount of research i've been you know flirting with the idea for many years to do more research and that is to compare ibn tamiya with imran abdullah there are marked differences and that's one of the reasons why i have said uh very clearly that you cannot equate shaykh ibn tamiya's positions anywhere with any fashion or form with ibrahimohab this is not the lecture for that but i want to put it out there and i encourage uh you know this type of research i hope that insha'allah somebody does a far more detailed research about this issue but that's not what uh today's you know whenever we get there that's not going to be something i'm going to go into a lot of detail because that requires more research but the third point is that the bulk of the fatawa with regards to all of the issues that the theology uh you know problematizes seems to be that you know uh the the uh of the past said macro or haram this notion of it being shirk or whatnot is something that is very very atypical and one does not find it i'll give you some examples so to summarize this is an introduction to my part two of this lecture uh we're going to talk about ibn abdul ahab's complete misunderstanding of the reality of paganism and quranism uh the repercussions of that theology and very quickly number three not very long the majority of the ummah pre ibn abdullah and even post you know everybody outside of that movement simply does not agree with those notions now first point the reality of paganism and how even abdullah clearly misunderstood the religion of the quraish so what ibm abdullah did was that he he cherry picked specific verses of the quran and he extrapolated an image of the quraish that is contradictory that is uh contradicting uh not only what the quraish actually believed but in fact it it contravenes every single uh paganistic system in in in the in existence ever in humanity he created a religion that never existed the qurashi version of ibn abdulhab's version it never existed anywhere in the world and because of this because of his constructed notion of uh qurashi theology he was then able to uh premise his entire dawah on the notion that what his adversaries are doing are the same things in fact worse than the religion of the quraish by the way no one in islamic history no one as far as i'm aware ever said that the practices of these you know mystical trends and and some of the mutasa are worse than that of the quraish says this multiple times i translated it in his kashmir multiple times he says this multiple times now again much can be said and this is the the big debate taking place between some of the you know far bigger scholars back and forth happening between them and in my humble opinion i still think that both of them haven't done a simple a manner that's easy and accessible i think they're kind of anyway that's besides the point their methodologies of writing but i'm going to try a little bit in the next few minutes to explain and i do understand that uh the amount of time i have can never do justice to this but hear me out and then insha allah take it from there so the basic premise of the theology is that the mushrikun when they worship their gods or their idols they did not ascribe independent powers of rubobia to their idols rather they only directed acts of worship to them and they knew that these idols were totally incapable were completely powerless to actually do anything for them hence the argument is that shirk of the of the quraish was primarily almost exclusively in uluhi in directing the act of worship to that being and the mushrikun of the quraish believed in allah as the now the response to this is to say that uh this construction of paganism contradicts every single paganistic philosophy ever in human history and the realities of worshiping uh statues and icons and structures is very different and the quraish were following those realities the notion of separating completely so there is something called uru here there's something called there's no question about that uh the notion of completely separating uluhiya from when it comes to worship simply does not exist when an end when a mushrik when a pagan when an idol worshiper uh directs a prayer directs an act of he makes a plea he makes a case he makes an offering to one of uh the gods that uh that he worships whether it is the ancient greek religion or the roman religion or hinduism whatever it whatever it might be let's give an example i mean uh the the greek religion let's say the god um apollo okay there's a god called apollo now apollo is not the ultimate god see here's the point every single paganistic religion believed in a hierarchy of gods without exception and now you know there's always one creator figure one creator god in all religions so uh in greek uh in greek mythology it is uh zeus okay in norse mythology it is odin in hinduism the creator god is brahma you know and now sometimes footnote here sometimes the creator god himself has a longer story and maybe even an origin that's beyond our world that's besides the point for our purposes in every pretty much every single philosophy of paganism there is one supreme god of all the other gods there is a king god and that king god the ultimate god sits at the head of the hierarchy of all of the other many gods and the many gods don't have to be at the same level you know depending on which paganistic religion you follow there could be a hierarchy uh within that but the point being is that the the supreme god the god uh the king god right the the creator god is deemed to be somewhat aloof from uh the daily routine of men and that this supreme god can intervene whenever he chooses to and the supreme god can uh cancel out you know the many gods whatever they do so the supreme god is the most powerful but those other gods those many gods are independent powerful beings semi-independent meaning that the supreme god is always more powerful than them and if he wanted to you know he could whatever zeus is lightning thunderbolt whatever it might be he could get angry and you know deal with that other god after a bit of a tussle after back and forth whatever the supreme god will always win and that's why there are interactions in hindu theology and even in greco-roman theologies where sometimes the supreme god is actually you know engaging with violently the other gods and obviously always wins out in the end now the point being that the notion of uh there being a system that there's only one lord and one all-powerful entity and the rest of those beings that are being worshipped are non-powerful are people that are not capable of listening or caring or hearing or responding that notion is simply non-existent that's the reality of the uh so the reality of the qurashi faith is that these independent these semi-independent gods some of whom they call the daughters of allah banatu allah that they were all in their own ways powerful not all powerful and that they were all capable of helping them and capable of averting calamities and giving them what they want and of hearing them and the supreme god was also capable obviously but the supreme god was too far away too aloof too disconnected from the realities of day to day and that is why uh the the the dominant perception was that you're not gonna worship that god except rarely like when when the time gets really tough you know when they're about to drown and now khalas at that point in time now experience had taught them that indeed the supreme god is the most effective but theologically they affirmed powers for all of the other gods and they felt that that supreme god is aloof and there are many examples of this for example uh the quraish clearly felt that allah subhanahu wa ta'ala was not aware of much of their daily routine and this is in the quran this one of yours that you have has destroyed you in the famous hadith in bukhari and muslim even says that i was hiding behind the uh the curtains of the kaaba and i heard uh three of the uh korashi three of the people talking one uh qurashi and uh two people from the uh and uh one of them uh one of them said that yes one of them said do you think allah can hear what we are saying here and the other two said if we speak loudly maybe he can hear and if we don't speak loudly he cannot hear okay now this even masaru was hiding behind the the curtains for long story uh you can listen read it up and whatnot he was hiding behind the the curtains of the uh the the kaaba right the the star of the kaaba and he is listening to this conversation and the quraysh are now debating do you think allah hears us or not that's what the notion was that allah is too aloof and the notion is that you have to go through the gods that have a connection to our lives there's lots of many gods that you know they've assigned various tasks many domains many kingdoms and they're approachable and we can go through them to get to allah and there's no doubt that those many gods were not completely all-powerful those many gods were given their dominion by allah and that's something that is mentioned in the tell me of the quraysh that there is we we respond to your follow allah you have no partners except for a partner that belongs to you and he his kingdom belongs to your kingdom or he controls or he or you own what he owns now very explicitly the quraysh are saying that allah has shariq what is a shaddiq a shariq is a partner and a partner does not mean 50 50. i mean this is something that that again in my own classes i do i would do all the time a partner can be 90 10 99 1 if you're in a business firm and one you know there's the ceo or the founder has you know 80 and the rest of the 20 all have a little bit they're all partners but they are partners right and this is the point the quraish felt that god the father or the supreme god and of course they called him allah was indeed the most powerful but allah azzawajal had assigned independent when i say independent i mean they are now independent allah has now let them be who they are and they're capable of doing whatever they want to do unless allah chooses to intervene right so they have independent powers over these many gods and the quraysh clearly affirmed that dominion belongs to other than allah as well the quran says allah is praising himself by negating the belief of the quraish right alhamdulillah to allah azzawajal who has not taken any child the quraish ascribed daughters to allah by the way means as you know boy and girl and allah does not have a shariq in the kingdom because all paganisms all of them assign kingdoms by kingdoms i mean i should say dominion is a better word not a kingdom a dominion all paganistic religions assign dominions to various gods those gods are in charge of certain things look at hinduism look at the ancient greeks and the quraish were no different they believed that had their own you know mulki they had their own dominions and allah azza was indeed the one who assigned and the one who was the greatest of all but these other gods were very very clearly independently powerful and could do as they pleased and that's why when allah uses uh quranic terminology to describe these other false gods he uses two very interesting phrases of them is the phrase and of them is the phrase mindunilla that allah mentions that you have taken verse 96 those that have created uh besides allah okay other illah they shall know uh what the reality is okay so they have taken it was well known they have taken an illah and multiple illahs and then what do men do they took from mindunilla and mindunillah does indicate lesser than allah okay they never made these ali above allah they never made these arbab above allah subhanahu wa ta'ala they took these arbab and they took these ali as lesser than allah and that's why allah subhanahu wa ta'ala says here in this verse so that they could be aided the gods could aid them the gods could help them the gods could give them victory allah ascribes this belief to the quraish the quraish believed these gods could give them independent victory allah says they cannot help you and they can't even help themselves that allah azzawajal explicitly negates now here's the point that the quraysh believed that the gods could help independently and they believe their gods to be uh powerful beings surat al-anbiyah verse 98 that allah says you and all that you worship besides allah subhanahu wa lesser than allah again these other gods they worship were not above allah in their power they were lesser than allah but they were gods if these beings were actual gods they would not be going into jahannam meaning you thought that they could protect themselves they cannot protect themselves so and this is something that uh tabari himself says in in the tafsir of this verse he says the one who is capable of doing whatever he wants and no entity is is is able to uh do something that the illah does not want to be done so allah azzawajal is saying these illah that you thought could help you and help themselves i shall round them up and throw them into jahannam how can they be once again they're ascribing that power to their illah they believe their gods would give them sustenance right verse 17 those whom you worship besides allah they do not control your risk so search for your risk in front of allah and worship him and be thankful to him notice they thought that these gods would also give them rich now it is true that at some level the quraish ascribed uh and this is the problem of ibrahim is that he took certain verses and ignored others and he cut off basically i mean not cut off intentionally he ignored is the better word he ignored many verses that pre that that puts the whole picture and he claimed that the quraish only that the quraish believed that allah solely gives it his and allah is the only one that harms and allah is the only one that independently sends the rain down if you ask them who sends their in they will say allah subhanahu wa all of this is true they also believe this that the supreme being the creator god does all of this but they also believe that their many gods had powers and had the capacity to send the rain down to give risk to them to protect them to harm them to benefit them and that's why once again the uh the the notion of the gods should be feared allah says in the quran they try to make you scared of those gods that are lesser than allah mean he says in taser of this verse they're threatening you that if you abandon their gods their gods will afflict you with a punishment okay now they're threatening you if you abandon their gods and worship allah and you don't worship these gods these gods will punish you meaning these gods have the power to harm you these gods are separate from allah their will is separate from allah and their power is separate from allah and if you abandon them they will be angry at you and this is proven in multiple stories of the sahaba when they converted perhaps the most famous of the multiple stories but perhaps the most famous is that of imam the famous conversion of the imam that he came to makkah and he embraced islam and then he returned to his people this is reported in the muslim and in his books of seerah as well that he returned and he said to his people i have rejected allah you know i believe in allah subhanahu wa ta'ala and so his people said to him what has happened to you old imam be careful that you don't be afflicted with leprosy you're going to go crazy you're going to be crippled down and they felt that by the imam rejecting allah and he said to them nobody no no one can harm him benefit other than allah subhanahu wa the point being that the pagans felt that these other gods are independent and they would harm the imam this is the paganism of all human civilizations those other many gods are real they exist they have the power to benefit and harm independently of allah subhana wa ta'ala and they are partners along with allah surah al-an verse 94 we do not see those whom you used as intercessors will get to intercession those whom you thought were our partners allah explicitly says all of these other entities you made them as partners unto me they affirming them to be shuraka in surat al-baqarah verse 165 nasi we studied this so many times from the theology and they flipped it around 180 and they said of course the verse translates there are those who uh take besides allah a partner and they love the partner like they love allah and the believers of allah even more now the nez took this to a very unreasonable unrealistic you know notion which uh if you talk we should have time to talk about this and that's why there's so many tangents here uh they derive things which are uh mutually contradictory amongst themselves they said if you love something strongly passionately you know in a manner that uh is is is you know and they didn't have the technical language here they did not have the technical language here because they can't they're basically saying that uh uh can be divine which is of course true but they can't define what type of hope is what type of herb makes it divine and allah defines it in this verse because they pretty much ignored the first part of the verse the allah is saying there are people who took mindunillahi and this is the key underline this they took lesser than allah partners anid again like i said a partner doesn't have to be 50 50. there's a nid a shariq there is an entity that they believe is another god besides allah and then they love that entity like they love allah now here's the point here that the the the shirk of love occurred when they believe that this entity is a need besides allah if you believe there is a need besides allah and then you love that nid this is now generic love of something in that you do not deify generic love of something that even causes you to do haram things on islamic things that generic love is not going to be shirk if you don't believe that this entity is a nid besides allah otherwise every sin that you do the drunkard when he drinks his alcohol he loves the alcohol more than he loves the sharia of allah doesn't make him a kafir or mushrik how many lovers are there that you know have died in their grief of love and they didn't die out of fear of allah subhanahu wa or love of allah it doesn't make them kafir or mushrik because the love of the beloved of for amongst human beings is not shirky love it's not the love of a nid so to love a god other than allah is shirk to love something strongly passionately powerfully even if it causes you to disobey the sharia does not reach the level of shirk unless there is a arab or a god involved besides allah so the point once again these quraish believed their gods could help them and they were semi-powerful and at times even challenging allah subhanahu wa ta'ala because this is the reality of paganism look at hindu mythology the the war is taking place i'm not familiar with that much i can't i don't want to say something you know that's going to be incorrect but you know i'm talking about um if you if you read the mahabharata and you read the the mythologies that take place that type of notion the greeks as well the romans as well and the quraysh as well at times their gods even clash with the supreme god even though eventually always the supreme god wins that's the notion of uh of paganism and in surah al-anbiya verse 43 do they think that they have gods that can come between us and them look how they're giving the powers to their gods allah is rhetorically asking do they think that they have their ali has that will come between us and them these entities cannot even help themselves and they are not going to be aided against us so the claim that the quraish perfected allah as a rabb and didn't believe in any rabbs and gods besides allah subhanahu wa ta'ala it is a false claim you cannot have uluhiya without aspects of that's the technical way of putting this you cannot have worship except that the entity that you worship you must by default of your worship ascribe certain powers of arab certain constraints not concerning certain uh characteristics i meant of a god to that entity you cannot worship without believing that the entity that you're worshiping is a god and gods by their definition they combine between being venerated in worship and between having certain powers now you don't have to necessarily worship every entity you think is a god but you will not worship anything that you think is not a god now in the paganistic system you don't have to worship every god but any god that you worship right any god that you present your your your um you know food or your sacrifices to or you call out or invoke you are giving them powers that you believe the divine entity should have and one of the most powerful verses that really demonstrates and there's so many again uh it's like let me put it this way anytime you study any one theology you are being taught to read the text in a certain manner it's like being put blinders on you right so everything you read or a filter or glasses everything you read is going through those glasses and as i explained you know an hour or something or however long it's been that i made a conscious decision to take off those glasses and let me see what the glasses of the other side or if i can get the metaphor correct see what they're trying to say that's the point is that the the the subscribers to the energy theology they've just it's been drilled into their minds that they have to somehow reinterpret or read in everything in the quran that talks about the quraish as somehow implying that the quraysh did not believe that the gods that they worship were actually gods that's just illogical that's something that has never existed in human history so the series of verses that uh uh i think are very powerful uh verses 86 to 92. look this up surah munu verses 88 6 90 now uh kitabato he quotes the first you know half of this or section of it and other uh writings as well but read the entire section they say ask them who is the rab of the heavens and the earth the rabb of the magnificent throne they will say allah remember here's the point these verses that uh even uses of course they're valid and allah is the supreme rabb allah is the rabb of the of all of the other arab allah is the medic of all of the other allah is the founder the the term that is used is the the creator god that's the technical term in mythology there's always a creator god allah for them was the creator god so allah is saying ask them who is the rabb of the heavens and earth they will say allah why don't you fear why don't you you you understand say who who is the melaku in who is the one who controls everything they affirmed allah controls everything it's not that they negated that their gods also control certain things again this is the point ibrahim derives something that the other verses clearly show is an incorrect derivation to affirm allah's supreme uh does not imply that they didn't affirm ruby of other of other gods so the verses go on uh that uh sorry i'm just fixing my my camera here sorry uh the verses go on that uh uh say who is the one uh who controls uh he controls everything and he is the one uh whom everyone turns to and no one can turn against him no one can protect you against him if you truly know they will say allah subhanahu wa so how are you bewitched uh then what's the next verse here now here's the key point okay if you don't understand i'm sorry for going so quickly go read the verses yourselves the first three allah affirms that the quraish understand that there is one god of god supreme god okay now what's the next verse if that were the case every ilah would have taken what that elah created and they would be fighting with one another subhanallah siphon allah is above what they describe this is paganism the quintessential reality of paganism every illah has the power to create according to the quraish every illah would be a control of dominion and doing things in their own you know many dominion and every illah is a mini rabb and a mini god in his own right either if that were the case then every illah would go with what he created with so to ascribe powers of arab to other than allah and to worship any illah other than allah this is the essence of shirk the key point therefore the quraish like all paganisms ascribed to their gods power and the right to be worshipped and their levels of power and levels of you know worship that are done but all of them are semi-independent other than the one supreme who is the god of gods or the king of gods or call them the creator god all of them are creating they are harming capable of harming capable of benefiting and they act independent of allah and they are more accessible than allah allah according to the quraish is too lofty allah is not accessible maybe even most quraish like the quran says that you thought that allah is not aware of what you're doing he's too distant you know from you and that standard you know the average you know person in ancient greece zeus is inaccessible zeus is not the one you go to because zeus is in charge of bigger things according to them you go to the lesser gods and these are all independent gods that's the message of the quran and the quran then uses uh the qurashi theology to show that that theology is illogical and it doesn't make sense if you believe that the supreme god is the creator and all-powerful then there's no need for these semi-powerful intermediaries that you worship and acknowledge besides allah also there's a really good book that i encourage all of you to read those of you that you speak that speak arabic it is uh one of the earliest treatises ever written in our religion it is a famous uh book that is called kitabul-osnam the book of idols by ibn kalbi uh it's an ancient book don't quote me i think 200 something is the other 300 something hijri and it is one of the earliest treatises written on paganism and if you read these treaties you will see that the jahili arabs were just like all of the other pagan religions that they believed in these independent semi-independent beings for example uh al-khalibi mentions the story of adeb nehatim and the gods of his people when somebody did something sacrilegious said just wait and see what the gods will do to to harm you and when nothing happened to that person that's when adi said i don't believe in these gods let me accept christianity and then he invented the process and accepted islam the notion is that it's very clear they believe these gods to be all powerful and when i say all-powerful not compared to allah but independently powerful now all of this boils back to one simple thing an ilah is an entity that is worshipped right by definition and an entity that is worshipped the only reason that you would worship an entity is because you believe that entity is a god and a god is an entity that has powers that are divine uh and that's why ila uluhiyah and rubobia are at some level intertwined you cannot have uluhiya and completely independently from one another that's really the main point of contention uh between ibr abdul wahab's message and between the quranic uh painting of the of the mythology uh the quranic description of the mythology of the quraish ibrahim cherry picked some verses of the quran and constructed an alternative reality to the message of the quraish and he believed that the quraish said that all of these many gods were powerless completely they were completely dependent on allah they were not semi-independent but no paganistic religion ever posited this right in illinois lesser than allah they took their gods in order that they be helped and allah says they thought that these gods would give them strength there is zaheer means strength not to not is that the way that we think of israel so uh this this construction of ibn abdullah which is a false construction then allowed him to compare the mistakes and there are mistakes as we're going to come to the mistakes of those who have fallen into uh some versions of the soul of some versions of asking the graves of saddam the prophet and they say or he said what they are doing is exactly what the quraish did but that is not the case you know the the the uh person of those trends who goes to the grave of the prophet salallahu the construct that he has and the ver the vision that he has of who the prophet is and the powers he gives the prophet shallallahu said i'm talking about you know obviously there must be some extremists who might think that he is a type of god or something but no muslim no person of a positive iq is going to say i am worshiping uh the prophet salallahu because he is a a god besides allah so we're going to come to the notion of of course asking and what now we're getting there right but the point being the the sower of this person when he comes to the cover of the prophet sassing is completely different than the tasawa of the uh of the uh quraish when they did what they did and another example there's so many examples for example the famous verse uh that is again in in the even quoted this uh um very clearly in his book um again this is a very clear verse which again we were taught to understand and read in a certain way and you just take a step back and you find the refutation of this najdism in the very verses that they quote you those whom you make dua to besides allah they do not own a single date pit i.e the quraish felt they owned a lot more than a date pit complete independent ownership and allah says so this is this is mulk this is you have a milky here you have complete ownership and allah is saying they don't own anything if you call out to them they cannot even hear you so they affirm that their gods can independently hear them if they could hear you they wouldn't respond to you the quraish felt these gods could respond to them and on the day of judgement they're going to reject your shirk of them the point being in this verse allah describes the belief of the quraish with regards to these gods these gods controlled and had power these gods had creations that they're in charge of and allah says no they don't own even a kritmir these gods heard their prayers and responded to their prayers they had the power to respond independently and allah says no they can neither hear you nor can they respond to you so the the notion therefore of comparing this with somebody who is not a god somebody whom allah has given powers to that is very different and we're going to come to this uh right now inshallah uh two main verses that need to be mentioned here in light of all that has proceeded proceeded uh surah yunus verse 18 and zuma verse 3 is always used uh surahs verse 18 they worship besides allah lesser than allah that which will neither harm them nor benefit them and they say these are our conduits and intercessors to allah subhanahu wa ta'ala it's a valid verses it is what it is ibn kathy himself comments on this allah criticizes the pagans who are worshiping their gods thinking that these gods can benefit and harm them independent of allah and thinking that allah wa ta'ala is too distant for them so they go through these intermediaries and they say we will come to allah subhanahu wa to go through an intermediary that allah wants you to go through is the essence of to mistakenly make an intermediary uh to allah that allah has put there is a problem and it is haram and to create an independent intermediary that is a god and to say that this god can harm and benefit you that is where shirk occurs and we're going to talk about this in a clear example in a while the point being the quraish clearly affirmed an entity they felt they felt this god could benefit them and harm them and the same goes we're only worshiping them so that they can bring us closer to uh allah subhanahu wa ta'ala we need to understand this verse in light of all other quranic verses which is in harmony with all other paganistic theologies of the globe there's a pantheon of gods the supreme god is too high is unaware you need the many gods to give your food to to give your sacrifices to you need the many gods to have a direct relationship with and those many gods are going to take your case up to the highest god remember the quran itself affirms that the quraysh worship these gods for benefit uh that uh so allah mentions this excuse and he mentions this theology and allah azza also mentions the term worship is something that the quraish understood they were doing and they understood that they're worshipping a god and this is something that is very clear your actions whatever they are are going to be based upon your intentions this is the hadith so whatever you do if it is not done with the intention of worship it cannot constitute worship it can be haram it can be sunnah it can be wrong it can be tawheed but if you are not intending worship it can never be a type of because you're not intending worship and with the issue of asking someone for something the issue of asking someone for something this is an entire spectrum and again this requires a much longer topic in lecture i'm going to have to summarize this issue and even though it's very important but inshallah with this summary you will understand the mere asking of someone could be something that is completely permissible maybe even musta or maybe even wajib seeing what's being done to makru to haram it could be sunnah or or biddah but as long as the asking is done to an entity that you believe is not a god is not created there is no ibaadah in your heart you are not assuming this entity should be an illa or to be arab that the action that you're doing cannot constitute a shirk you can be doing something haram because the sharia does not allow you you can be doing abida because it's going against what you have been uh told to do by the prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam it can be a major mistake it can be a stepping stone but it is not going to be an action of worship if you don't consider it an action of worship and you will not consider it an action of worship if the entity you are asking is not in your eyes a a god and a number of examples can be given i mean obviously the most obvious example is this sajdah how the sajdah can be an active to haid and it can be obligatory when it is done what allah's command and it can be haram or makuru and it can be shirk all of it depending on the knee and this is something that very clearly we can uh you guys can understand the concept of the sajdah when uh the angels are told to do sajda and the sajdah is of the highest actions of worship right says of the highest actions of worship if you can understand this that has a spectrum the the point that majority of dua also has asking is a better term because there's a technical du'a and there's a generic dua this is another key point there's something called a technical dua the technical dua is an action of worship and there's generic asking generic and this is one this is not a point of theology all of the advanced students no the quran uses sometimes generically the word dua that um don't call the prophet and the quran uses the term technically that one messiah are overlapping in that all of them are a request but the technical dua is the request of worship so that's something well known no questions there the point being that you can make a mistake in the generic asking the the generic dua it will only become a technical dua if you intend it to be a technical dua now let me give you a two examples inshallah ta'ala that helps clarify that there must be intention and if you don't have intention that in fact uh it cannot be considered to be worship if your paradigm is different let me give you two simple examples uh let me ask you a question here that when you give charity uh for the sake of allah subhanahu wa without a religious cause can you give to impress uh a person can you give to impress or i i attend fundraisers you know all the time i give lectures at fundraisers all the time it's something that as i pardon parcel of who i am i've attended thousands of fundraisers uh if somebody were to to raise his hands and give a thousand dollars or ten thousand dollars and the goal is to impress other people the goal is to impress me as the speaker we all understand this is a minor shift this is a showing off this is a minor shift that the sharia has forbidden because the giving of charity is an act of worship and it should not be done to allah subhanahu wa it should not be done except to allah okay now imagine uh the time of the prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam the battle of taboo he stood up salah salam and he said you know we need uh you know fundraise we need people to give okay the sahaba here's the question when they gave their charity put yourself in their shoes when they gave their charity did they intend to please the prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam as well when they gave their charity when they're putting it in front of him are competing with one another right they're seeing the effects of the smile on the prophet sallam's face i mean this is and it is human psychology put yourself in their shoes okay when you give uh you your charity for the islamic any cause for the sake of allah and it is the prophet salallahu he is the one telling you to give would you not want to please him question is that shirk is that shirk to want to please the prophet sallallahu islam for an act of worship i mean i'm sure some najdes will say it is but nobody said it is it's not it's it's it's something with it in the seerah books of hadith and human nature you want the prophet susam to be priest pleased why is it not to please the prophet system in this act of worship what why why is it not i will tell you why because they understood that the pleasure of allah azzawajal the pleasure of the process and will come and the pleasure of allah that the pleasure of the prophet saw will bring the pleasure of allah they are making a linkage but that linkage is not shirk because they understand that the prophecy is not an illah he's not a god none of the sahaba felt this and they understood to please him to make him happy to show him their good deeds and what they're doing that's not like showing me or anybody else right so there's the clear notion of what you're what your paradigm is to what uh to the entity that you are doing the good deed for a second example which is a little bit more complicated and it's been mentioned by a number of scholars but i've uh i can develop on that the second example the uh the the and by the way this is an actual conversation that took place between me and a madinah student i went over this with with him so i said what is the of dua so he said the shirk of dua is to ask a created entity for something that only allah azzawajal is capable of doing i said okay life and death uh who is capable of that he said only allah allah is the one who gives life and takes it away i said okay jesus christ jesus christ allah azzawajal did he not give him uh the power to with his with allah's permission didn't jesus christ get that power to resurrect the dead he said yes but allah gave him that power i said ah okay bear with me allah gave him that power okay now put yourself now let's go back to the time of jesus christ and let us imagine that jesus christ has just resurrected lazarus from the grave he's just resurrected somebody from the grave and uh one of his sahaba one of his muslim believers he believes in allah azzawajal he believes in isa he's a follower he knows isa has been given this this right he sees lazarus resurrected and something stirs in his heart he says my mother passed away recently can you please you know resurrect her as well okay this is a muslim believing in allah understanding who jesus is and he asks jesus to resurrect the dead i asked him my my interlocutor i said is this [ __ ] he goes no because allah gave jesus that right i said by the way five minutes ago you said it would be sheik but okay fine you understand now that the the muslim who comes to jesus in his lifetime in front of him and asks jesus to resurrect the dead knowing that allah has given him that power that is not shirk suppose now while the scenario is taking place there's a roman centurion okay and he believes that there's titans and there's god's walking on earth and he believes in his whole mythology and he sees jesus you know snap his finger and and resurrect the dead in front of his eyes and this roman believes that you know this jesus entity is a walking god he is one of the i don't know titans or whatever you want to call it he is one of the the uh the pantheons you know here on earth right and he rushes forward and he says hey my mother died can you resurrect my mother from the dead okay and the man thinks that jesus is a walking god okay what is this i asked the brother he goes this is shirk he's basically asked him of something that uh you know uh he feels that uh uh allah azzawajal that he that this is what allah is i said look the exact same two things right the exact same two questions when the muslim asks it understanding who jesus is and the rights of jesus is the other person the centurion when he thinks jesus is god and he's asked him to resurrect the dead with the assumption that jesus is god it becomes shirk what is the difference the actions are the same it's the knee it's the paradigm okay bear with me now okay and this shows you that the exact same action can change from being permissible and being a part of toheid to becoming shirk based upon the paradigm now bear with me these are two uh you know two extremes here right so isn't dua ibada yes here's the point listen to me now when the muslim asks jesus to resurrect his mother he doesn't think he's making dua as an ibada to jesus he's making a request an action a a statement of of you know give me something that this muslim would never say this is dua this is ibadah he is asking jesus something that he knows in this case we know allah gave jesus that power the muslim wouldn't even think of the term ibaadah or dua now the centurion the the pagan centurion when he sees jesus do this he is thinking this is a god and i want to worship this god and i'm going to ask this god like i ask you know the other gods hey god give me you know life or resurrect my mother or what not and this centurion in his own mind is making dua to this entity that he thinks is an illah that's the point if you understand this example right where the actions are exactly the same but the paradigms that are the two are coming from are so different that the one is tawheed and the other is shirk now if you understand this realize in between these two there are many many variables and many different shades in between going from you know to all the way to shirk there's many different variables here and so to elaborate on that now so in jesus's lifetime we all agree that if a muslim believer in jesus were to go up to him and say hey jesus can you resurrect my mother you know i know allah has given you this power and i'm asking you what allah has given you we all understand that this is not uh not at all not even problematic it's completely and jesus can say okay fine and jesus can say no i don't know it's up to it's up to jesus allah gave him that power right this is in the power of jesus christ and the same action if it's done by a pagan with the assumption that jesus is a walking titan or walking god that would be the essence of now let's get into a little bit of a gray area here which is where uh it gets problematic imagine jesus is lifted up to the heavens he's no longer walking on this earth okay a tabari of jesus is time so a student of this sahabi a tabari he believes that jesus is alive and up there and he says you know we have been told in our tradition that the angels you know they believe they take our salams to jesus let's just say okay uh and so this stabbery says why don't i ask uh the angel to take it up to jesus because i know that he has that power now the paradigm of the stabbery the holistic you know uh um uh framework of where he's coming from is the same as the tabari in terms of his own internal iman what's chain as as that of the sahabi of jesus i mean what's changed is that the connection now right he is inventing it the notion of an angel going and taking it to jesus it is not something that the sharia has told him so we say this is haram and it is biddah we say allah didn't allow you to do that we say it is religious innovation but it's not shirk because from the taber is paradigm he's exactly the same the tabery of jesus you get my point he's exactly the same as the sahabi who was talking to jesus directly right there's no difference in how they're viewing it in in in the emotional and the psychological and the theological ramifications of all their asking is exactly the same but we say to him this is haram by the way in this case jesus is actually alive now right so that's a an interesting point here now next scenario okay next scenario imagine in the time of the prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam imagine a muslim you know a bedouin not very knowledgeable okay he reads the quran or he leads the quran and he hears that allah gave jesus the right to resurrect the dead and he's in the time of the process imagine he comes up to him and he basically says ya rasool allah allah gave jesus the right the power to raise the dead i know that you are more beloved to allah he will say this let's say than jesus surely allah must have also given you that power can you raise you know my mother for me so now he is making a request based on his misunderstanding based on his mistake what is going to happen he will be told he should not ask that but it's not going to be considered shirk because why because he is assuming mistaken but he's assuming that allah gave the prophet some that power it's not independent he's assuming that that that power is something that is gifted from allah to the prophet sallallahu alaihi was said them now pause here anything that the process was gifted we can ask him directly when we're in front of him right the fact that we are no longer in front of him the max that can be said is that it is haram it is it doesn't change the hate to [ __ ] because your paradigm is exactly the same that's the key point that people need to understand here so this sahabi of you know hypothetical scenario asking the prophet system to resurrect the dead he will be told you can't do that uh you know the process you know uh allah gave issa that power you know now one step further and yes we're becoming more dangerous yes this is haram yes it is very you know opening up the door for evil but it's not shirk is my point here the next paradigm is that someone has the exact same theology as the sahabi of jesus same theology but now he's added to it that surely the prophet saw must have this power and surely in his khabar he's still alive and surely you know allah must have given him this this kudra and i know that in his cover the prophet is alive i know that he can hear i know that he can hear me if i go to him now he goes and asks directly from the prophet shallallahu there is no doubt this is dangerous there is no doubt it is haram there is no doubt it is bid why because allah didn't allow you there is no evidence for this right the prophet system did not allow us to do that and that's why we say it is haram and it is but it is not because you are the the framework of this man in front of the grave of the prophet his own internal theology is exactly the same as the theology of the sahabi of jesus the only difference is that the sahabi of jesus you know is speaking to jesus directly as for this person he has invented a linkage between him and the prophet saws that linkage it is not shirk that the processor can hear me and he has given him powers that he believes the procession has giving him that power is not [ __ ] because risa has that power right it's a mistake so here's the point the mistake of this muslim is problematic and it is haram and it is biddah but it cannot be shirk because the asking is done from the same paradigm as the sahabi of jesus did i hope you understand this example here um it's a it's an interesting spectrum we can work this even further by giving other examples along the spectrum but the point here is that making and this is please please understand what i'm saying here making a mistake in giving a power to a created being that is given by allah let me repeat that making a mistake in giving a power to a created being that is coming from allah that mistake cannot be shirk you are wrong it is haram it is sinful but it is not shirk the shirk would be that you are assuming that this entity is a god this entity is independently powerful and even abdullah basically created a theology of the quraish that allowed him to go there and say when a person asks uh you know the prophet sallam this is what the quraish did and we say no he did not do that i just explained to you by this analogy of jesus and being a created servant and one whom allah has given powers to versus a demi-god who is independent and can benefit and harm and there is a pantheon of gods here and the notion of the entity being alive and dead this is where haram and sunnah and comes in okay once the entity has moved on there is no connection between you and so we say it is haram you haven't been given that permission permission but it cannot be shirk because the paradigm as i said internally is uh the same and what makes it shirk is not the asking what makes it shirk is the belief that the entity that you're asking is worthy of being worshipped it is an ila it is somebody that has the power to bestow independently okay so uh this is in a nutshell uh the first uh point that i wanted to mention uh so to summarize when you direct an action of worship you know it is an action of worship and the entity you are directing that action to must by necessity be a god in your eyes and a god is not a god unless it has powers of a god okay and so ribada and uruhiya and are all linked together you cannot do ibaadah of an entity that you don't believe is an illah it's as simple as that okay and it really goes against the simple hadith the irony of ironies the najdee say and this is correct that for any action to be accepted two uh two two conditions must be met uh and mutava are following the process and this is correct okay but they don't apply the same thing on the opposite that for any action to be considered there must be niya how can you claim that an action is shirk when there is no niyyah to commit shirk so the najdee say you're committing shirk and the the the person of the sufi background over says extreme sufi says i'm not committing [ __ ] and then this is i don't care what you say you're still committing [ __ ] and this goes against basic theology your actions are only going to be shirk if you intend to commit shirk and that's why the quraish said we're only worshiping them they understood ibn abdul wahab said and this is of course famous in him that the quraysh were smarter than these sufis because they understood the reality of worship and we say no the quraish were not smarter the quraish understood what they're doing is worship because they're directing it to many gods and as for these people that are making mistakes and it is wrong and it is and it is a stepping stone uh to evil they do not intend worship and they don't make these beings into gods just like the sahabi of jesus understands jesus has these powers and he's asking of those it is possible for extreme muslims to make a mistake in giving powers to entities that don't have them and it is possible for them to then ask those entities thinking that allah has given them those powers that's wrong if allah didn't by the way if allah allowed us if allah told us then yes we do and so what we know is that we're allowed to ask the prophet salallahu alaihi wasallam when we are in front of him things that allah has given him and that's why some of the sahaba asked him directly for example the hadith of the the famous freed slave of the process of that the prophet said to him what do you want me to gift you you know you're gifting him a parting gift what do you want me to gift you and look at what he asked him i ask to be your companion in jannah right now the sahabi knows that the keys to jannah belong to allah subhanahu wa ta'ala the sahabi is not making the prophet the creator of jannah the lord of jannah but this is what that asking and in his lifetime we could ask him right i'm asking this is not i'm asking you to ask allah this is i'm asking you ya rasulullah to be your companion agenda this is like somebody asking jesus christ can you resurrect the dead for me he knows that this is something that you know it's in his domain but he didn't doesn't consider him to be a god doesn't consider him to be an illah now when the process has moved on he's gone to the cover we're not allowed to ask him this it is haram to do so those that do so they make mistakes they make mistakes by thinking the prophet system can still hear me by thinking that we can have this conversation by thinking it is allowed to do this those mistakes don't reach the level of shirk just like ask the i want to be with you in jannah ya rasulullah right that paradigm a modern practitioner of those trends will have the same internal theology when he goes in front of the but we say it is wrong because why allah has not allowed us to ask after the going of the prophet salallahu it becomes a haram issue and it becomes a munkar and it becomes a bidha but it does not become shirk that's the key point here and that's a point number one uh so again to summarize the theology of the quraish was like all paganistic theologies across the globe across all times and places and it is the theology that the quran affirms ibn abdul ahab cherry picked a few verses and constructed an alternative reality and based on that alternative reality he could then make the outlandish claim that what these extremist sufis are doing is worse than what the kuffar of makkah we're doing which nobody in human history ever said before him shall i'm going to take a quick break and then come back and continue so the point that um the first point that i made was that not every asking that is done to other than allah automatically becomes the dua that our prophet salallahu all of these of course are authentic and valid but everybody admits that an asking doesn't automatically become the type of dua so the question arises what type of asking becomes the type of dua prophet said and allah says so the point was that when you understand uh the religion of the pagan arabs and you understand the religion of the quraish and then you understand the the dua that they were doing to their idols obviously that is clearly the type of dua that is forbidden because they intended to make dua how can you accuse somebody of worship when he himself says i'm not worshiping my mindset is not that of worship in malu bin niyat and therefore when a person is intentionally wanting to worship he knows intrinsically this is a dua and the explain the example i gave of of of jesus christ uh it inshallah should make it very clear that the same action there's a spectrum the exact same action it can be completely permissible and it can be absolutely shitty depending on the paradigm of the one depending on the beliefs depending on the ideology of the one asking and our examples are in between the roman centurion and the sahabi of jesus who's alive and speaking to him directly our examples are in between and that's where all of this um uh controversy occurs now that was the first point that now we're gonna move on to the second point by the way somebody gifted this to my wife uh you can have a bit of a laugh here okay i don't need google okay um uh you can uh move on to the second point the second point uh is something that i have um uh you know shied away from getting a full lecture about and it's not something that i like to do to point out the faults of other movements it's not something that i like to do but i feel especially responsible because in the end of the day you know i i was the one who introduced this person and this movement to many many people and it's only fair as i said that my students have a hack over me that i clarify and explain you know why i've had this change of heart and one of the reasons being that this message was presented to me in the 90s and remember by the way the internet has changed a lot of things it's one of the reasons why we are forced also uh to be so more vocal about so many things you know uh unfortunately it's not good but unfortunately the the democratization of knowledge i've called it or others have called it as well the the notion of just putting everything out there for everybody that's not how knowledge is taught knowledge is taught by building the basics and foundation and working your way up unfortunately the the internet has flattened the curve and so things are thrown out and people hear things that are very confusing they don't understand and it's not good for one's tarbia you know to to to be exposed uh to every single facet of controversy and whatnot it's not good and that's also one of the reasons that i uh avoid the refutation culture because i don't think it builds our iman and taqwa and that's also one of the reasons why this particular segment is coming so much after i have begun i don't know how many hours have gone by and uh i hope that inshallah you understand the wisdom behind this that i don't like to to to emphasize even the title of this i'm gonna make it a generic title topic so that it's not explicit and only those that are uh aware and interested should be listening to this type of stuff otherwise i keep on saying from the beginning i've said if you don't know these movements and you're not familiar with these concepts then go study something that is more beneficial to you nonetheless some awkward facts have to be mentioned and that is that um i was going to say when i was taught this theology um i was taught a uh what i now consider a romanticized version and this was pre-internet era and you know you you're only exposed to what your teachers tell you and also by the way one thing i think a lot of people don't understand is that uh free internet era you didn't even have access to scholars and books except with great difficulty i mean i myself was not able to even read or purchase books that i was in the kingdom of saudi arabia obviously it is banned it was bad i don't know what's going on now everything seems to be halal right now you see things are changing so radically but um it was banned at that time to even uh have any treatises or pamphlets or books that are critical of the theology and i remember to this day that the first time i acquired such books the university library did not have these books you had to get special permission and i was not able to get as an undergraduate uh i don't know if that is the case now but when i was in medina they have a special uh section called you know the books for example you know and it is not allowed to go there except by applying or if you are a master's student in akrida you have the right to go there and so you have to get special permission and uh only when i got into the masters program uh was i able to um to to go to that section and you know they had plato and aristotle and other books over there and other you know these things are forbidden uh you know to to be read outside i don't know what the situation is right now this i'm talking about the mid 90s uh late 90s but in any case i remember that the first time i i managed to get uh those books was uh when i traveled to egypt for the first time um uh as an adult in my life for the first time i traveled to egypt and you still see this series ironically i was teaching uh the theology of ibn abdullah for what is that tv i mean this is 2001 i want to say 2001 and you see that's the first time that i'm doing a television show you know my beard masala tabata is full you have clips online from that and i'm summarizing in my own way kitab tohit and it was the first time that i went to to egypt and i went to all the bookstores and i purchased and acquired for the very first time treatises and books that were critical and this is actually one of the books that um i bought at in that bazaar in egypt which is um a book that has been translated uh into our english as well uh and it is the criticism of sulaiman ibn abdul wahab for his younger brother muhammad it's actually a very scholarly book a very uh erudite book and i remember reading this book cover takara so excited to get this book back in 2001. i remember reading it thinking that you know i'd be able to refute this instantaneously and i remember being very confused like wow this is not something i'm able to refute and i put it aside saying maybe i don't understand i'm still you know a graduate student my mashaykha are so much more knowledgeable than me and you know this is a reality when you're part of a movement there's a psychological and emotional connection that a lot of people they don't even understand there is a psychological connection to your movement a group think that that is and it's it's natural there's nothing wrong with that you automatically want to associate with your group and think like your group and when somebody comes and basically criticizes your entire group or shows something wrong with it there's a natural defense mechanism that kicks in i could not i read this book cover to cover and i was shocked as a hard word i was like confused is a better word like because that's not the image that i had of the critics of ibn abdullah the image that i had was basically a bunch of whirling dervishes and you know wanting to go and uh and worship any uh you know other than allah trying to justify that worship and reading this book it seemed to be a very erudite a very scholarly uh and actually i was like i can't even answer some of these things and i just left it for many many years until you know the idea came like i said finally a click like i need to understand what's going on and i read the book again but this time with an open mind when i first read it i read it as a critic when i first read it i read it wanting to refute and defend the ideology i was upon and that's why i'm not gonna get to it but the second time i read it i'm like okay i agree with everything here it's actually exactly what i you know my myself concluded without you know directly reading the book if you get my drift i had already reached those conclusions and then i read the book and like oh okay that's exactly what i have been saying and the point that needs to be mentioned here is that uh the the the theology of ibn abdullah um it does uh the beliefs that he's teaching it necessitates a certain level of fanaticism that is dangerous for the ummah right now see here's the point it's no big deal if you say that uh um you know going to the qabar and asking the khabar is in and of itself it's it's just it's a you know it's no big deal honestly it's a it's a position that if that were it no no problem okay and it's good that people are warned from doing that right throughout this whole lecture i've been saying you should not go to the grave it's no problem to say that it is [ __ ] you know in the sense that you're preventing people from doing it the it's good you're closing the door the problem comes that what do you do then with those that don't agree with you okay it's one thing if you feel it and you don't do it i mean let me give you an example if you said that you know drinking alcohol makes you a kafir for example okay if that's the way you felt okay good for you don't drink alcohol we don't want you to drink alcohol but the problem comes what are you gonna do when you see somebody else drinking alcohol and it's haram and you think it's right that's the problem and this problem is compounded when you are dealing with practices that are prevalent in almost every single muslim land and practices that are sometimes sanctioned sometimes considered muba sometimes considered macro sometimes you know considered haram but nobody considers them to be shirk and you come along and you say that these practices that nobody ever considered to be shirk or kuffar akbar you consider them to be shirk or what are the implications of that right those implications were manifested in the early najd and the fanaticism of this movement is not an aberration that goes against their beliefs and ideals and theologies it is a logical consequence of their own beliefs muhammad ibn abdul ahab made claims that no human being before him ever made such as the muslims of his time those that did some of these practices were worse than abu lahab and you're talking about you know senior scholars of the shaafiri and hambali and hanafi and mahadaki schools the imams of haram he's talking about them by name the ones that are leading the salah in the haram and he is saying these people are worse than abu jahl because you have to do that when you come and you say that you know these practices are all shirking and this is exactly what sulaiman the older brother says and i have this actually uh you know i don't know if you can see that actually i have this you know marked when i read this like um it's it's very intriguing like he he literally says uh he mentions certain things and he goes you know somebody made these things macro some made them haram some made the permissible you know but none of them uh made them none of them made the people who did these murtad until you came along and you derived these interpretations and you broke it's because you said that whoever does these deeds is a kafir kaffir kafir and whoever doesn't make kufur of the one that he that is doing them is also a kafir and then listen to this this is the older brother of suriman ibn suriman ibn abdullah the older brother muhammad right he's also a scholar he's a trained humbly he studied you know with the udama of his time now listen to this okay these things these matters have filled the muslim lands uh uh what um where sorry i say that these things have been around for more than these practices such as visiting the graves traveling to visit the graves even asking the people of the grave or to baruch with the grave these things he doesn't agree with that's the point suleiman does not agree with these things he says they're wrong he says they're you know haram or or bida you know don't do them but he's saying you guys made takfir you guys took her to a level of kufur and then he goes these practices were prevalent amongst the people for more than 700 years and none of the people before made kufur until you came along rather all of the scholars of the previous times considered those muslims who did these things to be muslims they consider them to be muslim as for you you have considered them to be kuffar and mur ted and uh you have made even the haramain sharif you have considered makkah and medina and the people who live in mecca and medina to be murdered even though we know from our sharia that the prophet said islam is going to be preserved in these places and even the the jal will not be able to enter makkah and madina and you have made the people of makkah and medina mushrik and kafir and you see this is the necessary uh corollary what's going to happen when you say that uh you know uh whoever doesn't consider this to be shirk is himself a mushrik what's going to happen is the entire world becomes mushrik the entire muslim ummah becomes mushrik other than you and of course you will be forced to say that and even suriman challenges his brother he says bring me uh who said this before you bring me and he by the way as for ibn tamiya this is a much longer discussion maybe one day i'll have it but the scholars of the hanabila who opposed muhammad ibn abdullah including his brother and including ibn afar and including the senior hambali scholar of mecca at the time they all said that ibn abdul ahab has completely misunderstood in fact you know what if i can find it quickly here um the key point here uh yes here okay there's a chapter here i don't think right and um he is saying if somebody asks you know with the intention that the and the person doing it uh can can have the power to save them and whatnot this is nobody says anything other than this and then he goes as for your the bringing of ibn tamiya's statement that uh whoever calls out uh to uh the entities and puts makes and puts his trust in them then this is he goes look at the ivara look at the wordings of ibn tamiya and others that they are saying whoever calls out and puts their tawakkul there is an and here and the tawakkul is put in the one that you know has the power to benefit and harm you the mere asking he says is not necessarily and he says that you have taken your mephahim from these then you're also saying a large group of hamburi scholars my simple point is that don't don't make a simplistic assumption that even abdul ahab is the same as ibn tamiya i have said many times and maybe one day i'll give a longer lecture but there is more more uh research that needs to be done ibn tamiya was very different than ibn abdulwahab there is no correlation between them in terms of the takfir of the masses and the point being you know when you come and you say that the entire ummah is kafir because of my understanding you're going to have to admit that my understanding is unique that nobody before me had this understanding and this is exactly what ibn abdullah says this is the sarudi publishing of a dura rasa this is the one printed in riyadh this is the famous uh one by uh muhammad al-qasim najid in others this is the edition that is the official edition i'm not getting some you know uh edition from somewhere else and volume 10 page 51 and they don't teach you this in medina they do not teach you these things in medina what they teach you is a selection that is as i said a romanticized third wave uh uh da'wah and uh muhammad al-wahab says okay uh literally you can see min muhammad you cannot see sorry but muhammad ibn and i'm pretty sure that those who know me they know that you know uh i have uh knowledge and from that time frame when i was learning my my studies is i need you to understand this okay he is saying that i did not know the meaning of until allah blessed me with this knowledge of islam and none of my scholars knew the meaning of okay admitting that he is the first person in human history to bring forth the type of theology that he is bringing forth he has to do that because he can't quote the people that are you know are necessary to be quoted and so he is saying none of my teachers understood now by the way he studied with uh his own father he studied with uh humbly scholars of najd he studied with basra and iraq he studied with uh scholars of medina who were very well known scholars in medina the qurani school i go over this in more detail and so he's basically saying i'm the first person coming and uh and saying these types of things and that's why you need to understand he considered the entire world to be mushrik and kafir except for his followers now the problem comes that the nezidawa spoon feeds you certain phrases and i did the same in my book in which he says i don't make techfeed of anybody who does this ignorantly and that's if you go back to my lectures position 1b but his actions are all one a he literally killed people and i'll give you some examples today as well he murdered people he massacred entire tribes because they disagreed with his interpretation there wasn't no bill and he considered makkah and medina to be pagan mushrik territories imagine mecca and medina and there are too many examples for this you know for example in the famous uh uh um uh the history uh volume 1 page 261 uh there is a letter preserved from abdul aziz the founder of the kingdom right the surrounding kingdom this is why it's called surveillance right this is the size to all of the people to all of the people of mecca and the aggawats and the quality of the sultan this is now the official salah the the of the sultan of the ottomans in makkah right he's right writing a letter this is not so muhammad ibn al-wahab did not um conquer mecca in his lifetime he did not conquer mecca he they conquered in his lifetime as soon as he passed away within a few years the first sarudi state attacked mecca and conquered and conquered makkah to the for the survey territory okay this is the letter that was written i think three years after the death of ibm by the very people who who studied with him right these aren't some you know a thousand years later this is his students this is his sons and grandsons this is his batch that was with him they write a letter to the people of mecca that letter is preserved what is that letter from aziz the turkish term that they had over there and the quality of the sultan not even and then uh uh he says that you are uh the neighbors of the house of allah and you have been protected by the protection of allah meaning you are in the ka'ba there's a big thing there right now and i am now calling you to embrace the religion of allah and the religion of his messenger allah so if you do so then you are going to be safe you are going to be safe you are going to be safe follow this okay he is literally saying to them i am inviting you to embrace the religion of islam this is what the prophet saw wrote to heraclius in rome right he's writing this to the kaabi of the of the muslims he's writing this to the uh the the ulama of makkah and he's saying enter into the embrace embrace the religion of islam if you do so you will be safe can you imagine the arrogance to assume that makkah is a pagan land and the ulama of makkah have to embrace islam their imams of the haram have to embrace your religion this is the logical fanaticism that takes place this isn't a misinterpretation this is ibn abdul ahab's theology and he surrounded mecca there was a siege for many months the people of makkah began to die from hunger and starvation uh very sad and tragic you know realities finally the sharif clan was forced to surrender and the terms of their surrender and the letter that they had to write is preserved in a dura okay this is the the famous book is if you know your theology and again i ask the advanced students to read this and ask yourself would you like this type of islam do you think this is the religion of the prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam volume 1 uh page 314 okay volume 1 page 2 314 that after he negotiated the surrender he forced the ulama of makkah to all of them make this signature now i didn't translate the arabic please if you don't trust me go and look at it yourself they are saying here that all of the undersigned all of these imams of the haram and the mufti's of the various methods we testify that what muhammad ibn abdul hab is calling to and sees that that is the tawheed and it is negation of shirk and it is the religion of allah and it is the haqq that there is no doubt in it and that what used to happen in makkah and in medina and in masar and in syria and in all other lands until now from all types of shirk that are mentioned in these books meaning the books have been about the mohab and weathers others that this is all kufur and it was allowed to kill us and it was allowed to take our properties and it would have caused us to be in the fire of hell forever deen whoever doesn't enter into this religion what is he talking about this religion the muftis of the hanabil and shaffer is in maliki's work and so the religion of this religion and so they're entering into the religion again guys will light your your heart and it really it hurts wallahi and the humiliation that must have happened these are people that are starving to death they're going to be killed if they don't accept it and ibn abdullah enters makkah with his army uh sorry not ibm sorry he had passed away his army the first three state the people that met that's associated with him they're the ones who conquered mecca again um don't quote me is it 1803 1804 i mean a few years after he passed away and don't quote me on that you can look it up but uh makkah was conquered uh just after the death of ibn abdullah by the first sarudi state surah abdul aziz conquered makkah and they're forcing the imams and the mufti's to sign that we used to be kuffar and we've accepted islam we repent to allah azzawajal we confess that our properties were halal our lives were halal when you attacked us you didn't do any wrong you had the right to attack it because obviously the accusation was you shouldn't have attacked us we're muslims and they were forced to confess that we were dumb until we accepted this deen and the people of mecca and medina were all kuffar until they embraced this deen you see this is the problem of the fanaticism and the same goes as well um uh the the ruler of makkah uh that's the next page if you turn the next page here that uh the the sheriff was his name the ruler of mecca was also forced uh the shari family the descendants of the prophet saw they were forced to admit to that uh the same pretty much same language here that uh we were not muslims we're not embracing the religion of islam what used to happen was uh all types of shirk and now uh you know we accept this religion this is what they forced the khalib sharif to sign the i think the 34th descendant of the prophet sallallahu alaihi not that the lineage automatically makes you a better person but it hurts well it hurts this is a direct descendant of the prophet sallallahu alaihi directly you know from uh the lineage of ali uh and hasan radhiallahu and you're gonna come along and you're gonna say that he was a and the ruler of makkah his family ruled makkah for hundreds of years and thousands really and now you're going to say that you know they were dumb they were outside the fold of islam until ibn abdullah came along and you know taught them to heed and then he is forced to confess that the people uh who disagree with this teaching from the people of masar and sham and iraq and whoever is following their religion that they are upon now is a kafir and mushrik what is their religion the people of sham and iraq they are the ottoman empire right what is their religion their religion according to them is simply outside the fold of islam and that's really again it is a necessary fanaticism when you come to this notion that these types of practices that the max that you should say they're haram and i say it is haram and don't do it and avoid it but when you start tinkering with the definitions of tawheed this is the repercussions that that happen the entire ottoman empire becomes like the crusaders like a pagan mushrik empire and this is something that is explicitly clear ibn abdul ahab's followers explicitly without a doubt may take fear of the entire ottoman empire and in fact there are many places but look at volume 9 volume nine page two hundred and ninety one volume nine page two hundred and ninety one family music whoever does not make takfir of the pagans like the ottoman empire and like those who worship the graves and like the people of makkah is a kafir like them listen if you think that the ottomans are not kafir you're a kafir right if you think that the people of mecca are not kafir you're a kafir this is coming straight from the first generation the people who studied with by the way this particular treaty is volume 9 page 291 it might be from ibrahimo or it might be from his students there's a bit of a you know discussion there but even if it's from his students this is what is being taught and there are so many instances of this but one of the most um uh explicit and clear-cut uh manifestations of the fanaticism of this uh of this theology is the assassination that ibn abdul ahab directly commandeered the assassination that he commandeered against his one-time ally before ibn sarud before the the this particular uh tribe there was another tribe uh and his name was ibn muhammad the leader of the person that ibn amber was the first person to give him uh protection and uh after after a while ibn muhammad just began to doubt and and didn't realize this seems too fanatic and whatnot and so uh ibrahimohab took refuge with ibn sarood right and ibn mohammed was still the the leader of his uh of his tribe now what was the cause of ibn muhammad's doubts and what not eben the greatest humbly scholar alive at the time and of the tradition of al-assad which is a totally different tradition even wrote a treatise you know i should have brought it down it's actually it's actually behind me over there he has a treatise it's online you can all find all of this stuff online here even um wrote a treatise in which he refuted uh uh theology he criticized ibn abdul wahab as being a takfiri fanatic and he started writing letters to ibn muammar begins to begins to change change his ideas and you know start you know start uh doubting you know what is uh what is going on and uh this doubting between vacillating between ibrahimohab and ibn afalik was enough to consider him to be murdered and so the details are in the books and this is the irony these details are not found in the books of the enemies they're found in the first najd historians they're writing as praise they're writing from within the tradition you know then others you know if you look up page one or three of the territory and whatnot they they mention this with glowing praise you know this isn't this isn't something that is embarrassed they embrace it because it is a logical manifestation of their theology what did ibrahim do he found some people from within the tribe that didn't like him and he basically said it is obligatory on you if you love allah and his messenger it is he emotionally blackmailed them right he literally told them if you understand tawheed then your leader is a mushrik murtad and he needs to be executed okay and they felt okay well the sheikh is saying it okay and so this is unbelievable in rajab of 1163 hijrah that group of renegades okay they stalked and they attacked ibn muammar after salah and they executed him in the masjid after salat al-jumu'ah believing that he is a pagan mushrik murtad and the books of nasty history revel and and embrace and praise that they kill the murtad and they you know the deen allah azzawajal was you know uh you know helped and what not and see here's the point the the assassination of ibn muammar wasn't like a political thing that you know you don't like a journalist and you chop him up in an embassy i mean that's something that politicians do and they have to answer to allah azzawajal and they will have to face allah's wrath on that day this isn't one of those things this is a scholar giving a fatwa that a person is a murdered and should be executed for theology for heresy right and this is because it's not that ibn muhammad himself went to a grave it's not that he's invoking the dead it's not that he's justifying ibn muhammad is thinking that maybe even abdul ahab is too fanatic it's too you know off the spectrum and to prove that point you know ibrahim responds with basically executing and killing ibn muammar and therefore the point is that you know you need to and this is again so back to a little bit of my personal story is that the one of the main causes that really just bothered me was that you what are you going to do when you say that this is shirk and the bulk of the ummah doesn't agree with you there's going to be a sense of isolationism and a sense of hatred i mean even not even hatred but a sense of like okay all of you guys are bored and and that's just dangerous for the ummah even those that don't make uh requests to those of the qabar they don't think it's shirk and that notion for those who think it is not acceptable so there's no way around it the repercussions of this theology are quite dangerous and we see those repercussions and like i said with the rise of isis i understood that if you understand early in as the history you see the same fanaticism the religious zeal that is in them you see that over there and i i realize that something is not right here either this is the religion of allah in which case okay we're gonna have to figure out what to do with this or else i have it wrong and the as i said the main catalyst for me was to see that level of fanaticism and to recognize that this is not something that i'm comfortable with right i'm not comfortable with considering medina uh to be pagan lands i'm not comfortable with considering the ottoman empire to be dola mushrika and whoever doubts that himself becomes a kafir and the the the reality is that even if you add the udur you're saying that essentially they are kafir the actions and that's dangerous and not to get personal here but if you look at the the viciousness you know of uh even the the fatwa um or the the the video that i gave right about well it's haram and and stepping stone to kuffar look at the the viciousness of the reactions of the people online and i am saying something that is the position of the majority this is the position of deoband the official position of dilba this is the position of this is the position of the scholars of morocco of syria absham you know and i said it is haram and it is but see theology teaches that it is shirk and there's nothing worse than shirk and so the fact that i've said it's haram and not shirk right subhanallah you know i've had to feed enemy you know by isis but generally speaking generally speaking for the previous quote-unquote controversial views that i felt uh the nezidawa has not made take fear of me you know the my i understand my position as a minority position i'm not a child to not of course it's a minority position i know i understand have other views that some might find problematic but generally speaking um uh they haven't made feed of me uh for for these views but after this video you know i got uh my my have an admin you know that deals with them facebook and twitter and youtube and the admins telling me like you know you're getting threats of execution uh the phrase zendaka is used multiple times and you guys are heretic now and uh you know one guy posted you know on on the facebook or something that if we lived in an islamic state you know ya they would have been executed by now okay now we can dismiss this as as that of a fanatic jahil but we see what happens when those fanatic jihads are given power like isis right we can dismiss this that and by the way i'm saying we can dismiss this i don't want to mention names i still love my teachers immensely but we know for a fact that some of the most beloved and respected icons of the najidawa of our times people that i have met muftis and let's not say any more than that requested the kings of their times to execute to execute uh people that disagreed with their fatwas this is in the 90s this isn't any back in 1700 this is in the 90s this is when we were i was studying and what not they consider some of the icons no no need no problem to mention the names of the other side muhammad and i also made statements about him as an agent that i regret and i don't i still don't agree completely with that theology i he's may allah give him jannah he has a position he has said of that he said this but i don't agree with it but he's not he's not an evil person he's not a baal mudil for saying these things right he is following a tradition and i'm following another tradition and i agree with ibn tambien that these things should be avoided i agree that they're not any something that we should encourage and they're a stepping stone uh to to deviancy but to claim that they're more than this that anybody who practices this issue you're going to get to this notion of petitioning the king king fahd gets a petition from one of no not what the i don't want to say i love these people i love them even if they are mistaken they are sincere in sha allah and it was my emotional attachment to my teachers and to the great icons of this movement it was my emotional attachment to some of my teachers and some of my the great mentors that delayed my departure just because in your heart you're like come on i love these people and they're good people but you see you can be good and still have a mistake in theology and ideology right so the point is they actually asking fahad to execute uh one of the most prestigious scholarly you know uh people of uh a strand of islam you see muhammad he represents pre-najdy uh pre-nudged the scholarship he he's following that line that's you can imagine the people that ibn saroon is forcing to confess their kuffar and murtagh that's branch that's basically they're going back because obviously uh that interpretation of islam it became underground but it was preserved you know for a while taught halaqaz in the haram then he was banned he continued privately and what not and you know what and of course there are many people i met many of them myself i didn't study with them because at the time i was nicely but i met them and i knew you you knew who they were you knew their scholars you knew they're teaching private halacha but i i never attended because obviously i was not of that um understanding uh but the point being that we can dismiss this level of fanaticism um as being uh from ignorant you know jihad oh yeah they should be executed but the point is it's it's a natural corollary to what they're being taught right it's not an aberration if you're going to say that this is shirk then the natural repercussion is the bulk of the ummah is condoning shirk and if that's how you're going to define it then ninety percent of the ummah is basically and and so here's here's the the main issue for me that really troubled me the inevitable conclusion of this methodology is that you prioritize refuting other muslims you prioritize problematizing religious folks that disagree with your interpretation because for you that shirk and for you that's kufur and you turn a blind eye to the 90 95 of the ummah who doesn't care less about your internal disputes between the religious folks and they're not even on any wavelength to to study islam and they're far away from the deen and your in your the bulk of your efforts the the the the thrust of your you know tawa and what not it becomes refuting other religious folks people that want to come close to allah and his messenger and because you think that these are very important things and i haven't even begun and we're not going to do that today but i have another lecture so the modern salafi its two key points are its interpretation of tohit and its interpretation of okay its interpretation of and its interpretation of both of these are contested both of these are somewhat unique both of these are minority positions within the grand scale of the ummah if you follow nasdi theology in tahid and the inevitable consequence of this is that the priority becomes other muslims who don't agree with their interpretations of torah than bidah and you then not that it's intentional but it's not that important then to deal with the problems of politics the problems of the world the problems of globalization the problems of uyghurs of china the problems of muslims not practicing all of this is put to the back burner because all of a sudden you have to refute the mushrikun or the deviants and you know again i say this i say this coming from a position of genuine love for my teachers and my movement a genuine i know how it feels to be a part of that they are good people many of them are you know uh genuine abedin but you see that's not how you decide the veracity of a movement the movement itself prioritizes refutations of others because that's what the movement is about and look at again online uh look at what this movement does look at the the i mean i'm sorry to use the word obsession but it seems to be like a pathological obsession of exposing the deviances and it can do it's just like bro okay move on even if a person is a deviant how many people listen to fulani how many people listen to him versus the rest of the ummah are you may allah protect all of us suppose you think i'm a deviant okay move on and do something for the rest of the ummah but that's not going to happen because the da'wah teaches them that there is nothing more important than correcting torhidan and sunna and you know most uh salafis of our times most of them they make fun of the midhalis other than the matalas themselves most of them they consider the merchants to be outlandish and and and just you know crazy folks and whatnot always kicking off and on whatnot you know with with utmost love and gentleness and genuine concern modern salafism is a type of medicalism all of it all of it modern salafism modern not classical atheism modern nasdi salafism is a type of madridism because all that you're worried about is who's on and off your understanding of islam and you don't understand that you know maybe if somebody has a different interpretation maybe they're not the worst evil out there maybe there's bigger things out there the grand scale of things somebody who disagrees with you about your intervention islam is not an evil person somebody who genuinely loves allah and his messenger reads the quran you know uh believes in the arcana sit prays to hajjud wants to be good wants to be pious and then they disagree with your definitions of tohei their sunnah have an academic discussion and you know make dua for them shake hands and part and then do something else but you see when you have defined taheed and shirk the way that salafinasis do and then you have to find sunnah do what happens you start concentrating on the faults of other practicing muslims and you ignore far bigger problems you know every single every single movement has a certain reputation to it right every single you know um stereotypical reputation the views are like this the the tables like this that you know let's be honest here you know and it really troubled me and i tried to defend the movement a lot when this was going when i was a part of it the the reputation of of the nejd movement is that in many communities it just causes havoc it wreaks havoc it breaks the bonds it just brings up issues that are of little uh relevance and you know for the longest time i was blaming the akhlaq and the wisdom and and whatnot but you come to the conclusion that it is what this strand of islam itself prioritizes right this obsession of correcting the mistakes of shirk and toheid from their perspective maybe if you just thought deeply and you realized your definitions are wrong and the majority of the ummah their definitions are you know more accurate than yours what what extremist sufis do is not good and it is wrong but it is not shirk once you get to that all of a sudden you can breathe and you don't go to sleep hating other muslims and you go to sleep wanting to refute other muslims and that is why i say may allah forgive me may allah forgive me i know that myself and others i know and i confess and i admit and allah forgiveness that a lot of this refutation culture that we are seeing and a lot of this harshness and nastiness between practicing muslims this is a direct consequence of the and i ask allah's forgiveness that even though for my defense i never and my students know this i never taught that type of of harshness and whatnot but it is the inevitable consequence of it's the inevitable consequence that you start hating other muslims so much and to me it was one of the biggest wake-up calls that it doesn't make sense to me it really doesn't but if you hold on to your definitions of tuhid and shirk and sunnah and there's no there's no way out you're gonna have to feel this and i understand you know the harshness that um is being generated against me uh because of my claim that invoking the dead is uh potentially shirik subhanallah i said it clearly as potentially shirk potentially kuffar but not inherently just to say this and people are saying amazing and i should be executed i thank allah i thank allah that the wahhabi state is not actually in effect or else they might drag me and execute me like ibn abdullah executed ibn muhammad and others simply for questioning and doubting and subhanallah and what a level of you know interpretation is that but nonetheless um uh you know i say this and i'm gonna take my other break here and then continue uh that i ask allah's forgiveness from my own mistakes of the past and you know to my critics i say i know insha allah many of you are sincere i know that i know that you feel that the religion of allah is being destroyed by these types of opinions and i would have felt the same way 20 years ago and i maybe even did feel i'm not going to say to that level i never went to you you know you can see my videos whatever i did i didn't um go to this level of ridiculous refutations and whatnot i i spoke with the people i disagree with directly by the way i'm not going to mention names i said this in my last 20 30 minutes or whatever i literally went up to some of the main icons of other movements and other institutions other institutes of north america and i literally said to their faces politely however that is here politely uh excuse me you're a mushrik i know politely i said that um you know this fatwa that you said i have to say i strongly disagree with it because it is a fatwa of shirk i literally said this to multiple people and back and forth between them because that's the way i was i didn't go behind their backs and release youtube videos by name well having said that i think once when i was nineteen twenty i think once when i first taught kitabator i mentioned a brother by name that i shouldn't have mentioned and i publicly apologize for that but um you know and and this is the inevitable consequence you know of of the da'wah but anyway i'm going to take my next break and then i'm going to come back for another video as for me i say clearly that all of my critics who are sincere and who genuinely think they are defending the religion of allah subhanahu wa ta'ala that insha allah allah will reward you for your efforts in your refutations allah will reward your niyah and insha allah i pray that allah rewards my efforts as well and i pray that allah subhanahu wa ta'ala unites all of us in jannah together i'm going to take them out of the break and then come back for the next video insha'allah um so i was talking about um the ways of responding to certain aspects of nativism that is problematic and i move on to the final point which uh will not be as long and also the conclusion and this is the easy part to do and this is something that every single student of nisdidawa is well aware of and that is the very long long long list of scholars from the 3rd 4th century of islam up until modern times who disagrees with many aspects of the theology and the more you study the more you learn how to refute these scholars but you can't deny that they existed and the uh disagreements uh that najdism has with other strands of islam is something that is well known and the the entire the fact that there's so much uh between the najdis and these other movements about key issues of nasdaq about issues that they deem to be turhed and shirk it should be at least at the very least uh pause for us and um i was going to quote you the fatawa directly from the websites but i thought you know you can simply google it i just quickly looked up so that make sure that it's on their website i looked up the ubuntu.org and they have an entire article about the reality of shirk and of asking the dead and they basically say the exact same thing that if you give powers of rububa if you believe that that entity is a god it has independent powers then this is a shirk i looked up the darul ifta the official ifta they have a similar photo even though they go more than they do bandits and i again for the record i i disagree with some aspects of the azadi fatwa when you look it up but this is the official ifta so if al-azhar and deuband are mushrik institutions which is what najde theology would uh you know entail and then honestly you really have to think long and hard you're basically making and and then i looked at morocco and of course you know i did not look up but you can look it up it's well known you know the the the syrian uh you know shafir is the uh the the various movements in yemen you if you keep on looking it's well known i've interacted with these movements and i don't need to quote you specific uh names but uh just for your reference i did look up just to make sure that it's online the official uh fatwa of al-azhar and the official fatwa from the ubuntu so that to make sure i can say hey you know these are something you can look up yourself and they explicitly have fatawa that it is not shirk unconditionally and again to claim therefore that the nez dida is correct which is a minority which is a later interpretation and the mainstream trends of the ummah are not just incorrect it's not a issue but actually preaching shirk you see the the remnants of original negativism to this day right this is an interesting point najdism was forced to tone down in the book that i'm still writing i keep on telling you all writing it i i delineate a demarcate three phases first wave second wave third wave of negativism and then there's a fourth wave that we're currently seeing right now with mbs and whatnot this is the fourth wave of the nasdaq which is an interesting wave which i'm not discussing now but the what we were taught was third wave and third wave was very toned down and they exaggerated the udurabil that their first wave really dismissed right the main difference between first wave negativism and third wave of negativism is the issue of utter uh bill and third wave negativism the default position is basically but still you can't what do you what urdu of the great mufti's of the hanafi method in pakistan they don't have urdura if this is shirk right what would you say to the people who are coming from these institutions so the uh the official position therefore of the bulk of the madahib is well known the shafiris the malikis the hamballis it's something that is well known and the reason why i don't need to quote you is because a simple google uh the the movements that refute have done a lot in since the 90s ever since i was introduced to the movement uh well known they've they've they've produced a lot of fatality i'm not saying that every single fatwa is correct obviously uh there's a spectrum from that movement and i personally am against as i said many times because many of them are saying it's permissible to ask the dead and i'm saying it's impermissible uh to ask the dead but the doesn't reach the level of shirk and kufur that's the point here and you find even pre-najds you find plenty of tawa in this regard and if you open the door to not just issues of asking that if we open the door to the issues of uh uh you know other bidders that the najdee is considered to be either major badass or even shirk and this is what uh surah himself mentions there's entire chapters you've taken things that might be macro might be haram and you've made them into shirk and he talks about nether and to baruch and others of these things and he just uh and he considers this to be one of the biggest problems of the najdee da'wah if you open this door uh issues of tawasu issues of tabbarook issues of visiting the grave issues of asking the prophecism directly in front of him when you're in when you're and asking him to ask allah you find that in reality uh the strand that you know that was preaching is atypical it is a minority and even ibrahimi and actually have a few aspects that the next multiple times which is why you know the the hard corners these they really have an awkwardness with some of it writings is well known and i will tell you from being in medina you know they they say oh he used to be a sufi and whatnot so the remnants of the wolf still were over there and also by the way uh one point for the advanced students is that the nesdida obviously it claims to link itself to the early athletic creed and the early hambadis but obviously realized that the nez didawa is a far later development the nez didawa and its emphasis is absent in early hambali islam imam ahmed ibn humble with the prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam the early explicitly explicitly said that you should travel to medina and get the barakah of the grave of the prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam they did multiple early hambadi scholars allowed asking the prophecism in front of his grave you know to make sure i'm not saying it's allowed i'm not saying it's allowed but be consistent here here you are with this vitriol and animosity against me and anybody else how about you know and [ __ ] others how about the was explicitly asked about somebody who calls out to the prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam for help for when he's lost her something and his response was he is he is mistaken for help is sought from allah alone and the prophet sasha has now passed away this is the technical language he is mistaken he should not uh do this it is well known you know one of the greatest icons of the hambali school and ironically he actually wrote an entire book about visiting the graves and the proper etiquette and what to do what not to do full of quotations everybody mia there and when you read it you might think that he's sympathetic to his princely but he's sympathetic to judaism but in reality here's the point the next claims people to be of their creed when they're not and is is one of them that when you read that particular book you might you might say find passages that you'll read in theology but when you read uh al-karmi's poetry and when you read when he's talking about the prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam he's literally addressing the prophet sashimi's poetry and he is talking and asking his directly in his poetry and the the najdy said that you know the al-busadi's poem is of course full of shirk al-karmis is very very similar ibn badaran perhaps the greatest hambadi a jurist under the ottomans was asked about istiratha you know with the dead and he says that if the person intends that that being can help him it is kufur but if he is using this as a type of dua to allah then this is not allowed is this is ibn badran you know perhaps as i said the most famous of the ottoman hanabila this is technical language now again you know when you say this to your modern day he doesn't even know what to do with it and typically he'll just dismiss it or they're all wrong in blood and okay be consistent make take feed of them if they were alive you would have executed ibn badran so again one needs to be very uh consistent in one's methodology and as for now again this is now i'm going to spend a few minutes here but i want to make a disclaimer ibn tamiya deserves a much more detailed study and i have not to this day come across somebody that i believe has done uh justice to comparing ibn tamiya i've read a few attempts but if anybody knows you know send me an email or something i haven't i i i wanted to do this and i started a project many many years ago and i have some basic points and whatnot but um ibn taimiya is somebody that has been interpreted by many of the modern najdis to be basically preaching uh protonation theology but this is simply false and it can be it can be proven you know indisputable you can say you can say ibn tamiya had views that were on the more harsh side against the other you know in terms of visiting the graves of course he's one of the first to prohibit visiting uh traveling for the grace he is probably the first probably the first ever uh to say that it is to travel to medina to with the intention of visiting the grave of the prophet saw maybe he is one of the first i don't know if anybody who said it in that particular wording with that explicitness uh as much as he did uh but still okay ibn tamiya has his views and we respect himetemia immensely but there is no question that ibn temiya is not on the same wavelength as ibn abdulwahab and there's numerous evidences for this and this is one of the problems of uh negativism is that they spoon feed you specific you know paragraphs you know with my utmost you know love i say this you know that the critics that are releasing these videos i know for a fact that they haven't read eben tamiya cover to cover they haven't read many of his writings and absorbed they literally are they go to the refutations of the najdees the phds and masters written at the university of medina sometimes by some of my own colleagues or people even after me and they open up these books and they find the quotations of him tamiya and they say bentemia says that all dua is etc etc and eben has a far more nuanced a far more critical view it's a much more interesting spectrum and it requires more study still it hasn't really been done even kathie writes even cathedral is a student ibn kathir is the student of mitamiya ibn kathy writes uh in the in the events of the year 707 hijrah he's he says that al-birzali the famous his teacher anibin tamiya student al-birzali is the teacher of him kathy and the student also eventually me and the kali government that al-bazadi uh was there and he narrates this eyewitness that in shawwal of 707 the sufis of qahira they complained to the rulers about ibn taymiyyah and about what he accused ibn arabi of and other issues of his so ibn tamiya's views about ibn aurobi and about other issues they were found to be problematic and so uh they they took his case to uh the the court is one of the reasons sorry one of the times he was jailed was after this uh this trial and so they set a trial for him and ibn al-tha accused him of various things ibn al by the way this is this is the famous author of right the one that uh this book is is is very famous and beloved by many sufi movements this is the same ib he was ibn tamiya's adversary and contemporary he did not like him in tamiya he used to like him and then he flipped on him uh later on ibn al-taw accused ibn taymi of various things uh ibn kathy does not mention what they they are but of the things is that he accused ibn tamiya of disrespecting the prophet uh sallallahu alaihi he was by saying that the prophet saws should not be asked of anything okay so this is one of the things that he was accused him of so uh iben tamiya responded and he said listen to this now la yusta rathu illa billahi right which means any help supernatural helper is only sought from allah and you do not seek help from the prophet sallallahu alaihi he was telling them a help that is in the genre of ibadah walk and you may do use him as the to get to shafa of the prophets of allah azzawajal some of them said what he said is okay and uh he said this is uh this is this is being disrespectful to the prophet saws and that that thing goes on the point is this is ibn tamiya's terminology right why did he have to add that phrase in the end i'll tell you why we see why he added that phrase because ibn taymiyyah did not view the mere asking of the prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam in and of itself to be shirk and this is something that is crystal clear and it is proven in multiple places okay simply to ask the prophet seem to go to his grave and ask i'm talking about asking him directly we're not talking about asking him to ask allah subhanahu wa ta'ala this is asking the prophet saws directly and there are many many uh evidences for this and of them is the uh the famous book that he wrote uh which is called kitab is tiratha which is also called bakri right was a mufti appointed by the state of the shafiri school and well-known shaffer school scholar and he wrote a book he wrote a treatise defending asking the prophet sasham directly after his pastor right now defending so uh al-baqari wrote an entire treatise ibn taymiyyah wrote his kitabo istirata and he refuted this book very very harshly and he said that al-baqri is a paul and he says that this is jihad and he says that this is not allowed but he never once called bakri he never even used the adjective shirk against al-baqari never used you know the adjective this is shirk that you're calling to he did not make takfir of bakri right bakri by the way he had some clout and power and he riled up uh you know uh some of his uh some of his his followers to to to basically manhandle ibn timmy it's really sad they physically uh you know surrounded ibn timmy and one of the streets and you know they kicked his turbo not kicked not kick the they they hit i don't know if they i don't know if they hit him in the face or not but they they accosted him ibn tamiya this is al-baqri's you know uh students and whatnot al-baqarah gave a fiery thing against him his students surrounded him in tamiya and you know just man handle him his turban you know fell off and what not really sad and that shouldn't happen to this level anyway it happened uh later on al-baqarah got into trouble with the state and uh the circumstances changed and the state wanted to punish him you know for something well-known story ibn taymiyyah got involved directly ibn tamiya himself got involved and protected al-baqri now al-baqri is the guy he didn't repent quote-unquote from his treaties that you should ask the prophet sallam contrast this to ibn abdullah who literally executed ibn muammar for reading the letter of ibn afaalik and thinking that ibrahim might be right and he kills him in his masjid after jummah i mean i'm sorry but please don't don't make a fool out of yourselves and compare ibn tamiya to ibn abdul ahab the two are not even in the same ballpark they're not even in the same galaxies to be honest intellectually reading wise uh writing wise in any field there just there is no comparison and that's all i'm going to say and especially there's no comparison in the actual verdicts and the actual uh uh realities of considering these things to be [ __ ] and the people who practice them uh to be sure now i'm going to just uh um ask the advanced students uh of ibm tamiya who read arabic to please read um i don't know maybe i should quote some things i don't i mean we don't have time for all of this and it leads to a back and forth i know so again i'm not planning to release uh other videos to defend go ahead and you know you do your refutations and whatnot because you've already made up your minds but for those that haven't made up their minds for those that are genuinely interested and for those who in their heart of hearts they know something is wrong about a small strand of islam that is claiming the entirety of the ummah is misguided and that all that it does is that it refutes and uses nasty language and considers everybody else to be moved today and mushrik if you find that to be problematic then you're going to have to be willing to to to read and to explore you're going to have to be willing to listen to the other side with an open mind which is what i decided to do a decade ago and not with the intention of refuting and taking a 10 second clip but genuinely seeing where they're coming from so for those of you that are advanced students the famous book of ibm in which he you know again he's very uh he talks quite a lot about um he talks quite a lot about uh having a path that is different and he you should be different in your rituals and your habits from uh those who uh are against the muslim meaning uh the the non-muslims and um he has so many interesting uh passages in this but especially i ask you for the this is the standard edition by the nasser the famous there's one famous edition that did i have uh uh that copy here i ask you to read from volume 2 uh page 169 onwards read the next you know 70 80 pages and read not with the intention of trying to find the nesdidawa but rather read with an open mind what is ibn the mia trying to tell you because honestly this is eye opening eye opening and i'm genuinely worried to say anything because it's gonna for those that have never read this which is the majority of the najd's and the majority of those who look at emia for those that have never read this you are going to get angry at me for for explaining what ibn tamiya you know has has written over here it's a very very delicate and a very nuanced uh uh 50 60 pages read it i'm really worried to summarize it but he does not consider the mere asking of the dead to in and of itself be shirk and in fact he goes so far as to actually say sometimes they might even give you what you want but that doesn't make it halal sometimes the the prophet or even the the saudi hain might you know respond but it's not that it doesn't make it halal because the sharia is not based upon based upon uh he's not saying that he does say sometimes the tajimas imagine he does say that it's exaggerated but he actually does affirm that sometimes it does happen and that's the amazing things you know he he mentions that uh uh he mentions that many of his teachers you know would actually do stuff like this and he knows that they were great people of ilmanza and zohan and whatnot and he doesn't deny that it is a reality uh and uh i'm on page 253 again and please don't just read this one snippet i'm asking you to read if not the entire book at least this entire section page 169 onwards um he mentions on page 254 253 he mentions the hadith the famous hadith that allah don't make my grave the process i'm saying don't make my grave into an idol uh that is uh worships and he's against you know i'm doing all of this. and then he goes walai he is saying it might even be that they heard the salaam of the qabar from the prophet or other people he is literally affirming what the najdes he is saying it might happen but it doesn't make it permissible for others to go and seek it and then he mentions the the narration that it is it is mentioned that a man came to the cover of the prophet alaihi wasallam during the time of the drought and asked him to to you know fasci complained about the drought and he saw the prophet sallallahu alaihi he was who told them to go to umar and umar then listen to this this happens to those that are at a lesser level than the prophet saws and i know things that happened of this nature the better one comes and asks and he sees the process i'm not saying whether the incident is authentic or not ibn tamiya affirmed it ibn tamiya said it might have happened it doesn't justify us doing it this is the nuance of ibm tamiya he is saying if an ignorant person did it right it doesn't mean we should go and do it if he was successful in the process and heard him and gave him what he want and here and this is very explicit okay um he didn't call it shirk he didn't call it kufr he does think it is even if they did it and it was successful this is the nuance of ibm tamiya and this is my position 110 he does not consider this to be shirk i'm not going to translate this because if you don't understand this then maybe it's best you don't because it is frightening if you if you think ibente me as an ejdie and then you read this stuff you're going to make techfeed of ibm and i'll just put it that way um i want to repeat that right listen where what is he saying is happening here right he is saying laissez it doesn't indicate that it's good to go ask him because he is the one who said sometimes you ask me things and uh i give it and it will still you know be harmful and lead you to the fire of hell and sometimes the prophet saws was asked things and he responded they continue to ask me and i have no uh you know a choice except to give them because allah and his messenger are not stingy me i don't want to but i sometimes do it is this is again most of these people that are begging and pleading in front of the grave of the prophet sallam if they were not responded to meaning by him their iman would go away just like those people that begged the prophet susan in his lifetime for money and whatnot and he gave it to them you know reluctantly because it's not should be done but he still gave it to them because he says allah and his messenger are not going to be stingy and although he gave it to them not because it allow it shows that it's allowed but because it's not befitting that somebody keeps on asking asking asking and you know uh the response is not given if this happens this is a karama for the one in the cover it doesn't show that it is good to go asking and again for uh the reality of it is there it doesn't justify us going to the border is basically saying that it's possible that sometimes the prophet saw person might hear this and somehow you know do give what you are asking to do it doesn't make it halal it should not be done can you believe this is even tamiya go read now i know the response you're going to quote me from here and there remember is one of the most explicit books and it's one of the later books so please don't take an ambiguous statement of ibn miya and then you know say that you bring all of it together and most importantly this is the point a lot of najdes they and not just najib this is unfortunately one of the problems of uh the way that islamic studies occurs in the in the eastern lands is that they don't study history and they don't study the context you can't just read kash for subuhat without looking at ibn abdulwahab's actions in his lifetime and you cannot read ibn tamiya without looking at how he dealt with his own opponents ibn taymiyyah did not make takfir of a single person in his lifetime because of the issue of asking the dead ibn tamiya did not say al-baqri is a muslim he didn't even accuse him of of of doing actions of shirk but i'll give you udr he didn't even say that so please don't quote me and i know the quotations i've read have been tamiya alhamdulillah you know for 25 years i'm really given to me and anyway i don't want to say much more i've read it been tamiya much of it i'm not going to say i write every single you know book of it been saying did i love to read ibn taymiyyan believe it or not i do consider myself to be a tamiyen if you like in my epistemology in my overall framework and that doesn't mean i have to agree with everything that he says but there is no way you can compare bentaymia to to ibn abdul wahab look at the fanaticism of the nest and then look at how eben tamiya dealt with al-baqri and so please be be more cognizant of those differences in any case um and and more research needs to be i'll be the first to say more research needs to be done and i've been wanting to do this for the longest time myself and perhaps if i were in fully academia and i didn't have to you know do all the videos and the all the stuff that i do with other responsibilities perhaps i would have you know that's one of the paper topics i would love to have written on uh a contrast of eventemia and ibn abdullah in any case that was my uh my third point so um to summarize my three main points to bring up when it comes to my personal quick and easy issues that you need to think about about the nezidawa is that number one nejdism and ibn abdulwahab totally misrepresented the uh religion of the quraish and because he misrepresented it he could then mistakenly claim that what these sufi groups do and what not that they are the same and they are not the same okay that's the uh the first point the second point is that one of the things that you need to understand is that this type of of thought and this type of definition it inherently breeds a level of fanaticism and intolerance that not just is theoretically dangerous is demonstrably dangerous and the nez didawa itself and its own history is the best indication of this attacking hundreds of villages killing tens of thousands of people attacking and laying siege to the haram itself until its people are dying of starvation and they're forced to surrender considering the people of makkah and medina to be mushrik and kaffir calling the daughter of maniya to be a dawla mushrik and it's a paganistic empire everybody other than his movement and his followers are you know kufar mushrikun and if you doubt that then you are a kafir and this entire paradigm of najdism that it is darul islam and anybody who opposes it is for all of this you if you read you realize it's not a misunderstanding this is najdism and then you still see it to this day in the whips that you know to this day the refutations that take place and the hatred and the the the fit and the discord against pretty much every other movement out there why concentrate on the religious folks there's 90 of the ummah doesn't care about these controversies look at what's happening social politically globally but see if you feel that your religious brother is preaching shirk then obviously there's nothing bigger than shirks they're problematic wise right so then of course you prioritize you know somebody who has a misunderstanding of this regard but if you understand okay i disagree this is haram but you know there's so many problems happening then you uh reorient your frame of looking at the world so my argument in the second point was that uh najdi theology inherently is divisive and when you couple their notion of sunnah and their notion of along with the notion of you understand why wherever this dawah goes unfortunately it pains me to say this but wherever this tawa goes it's in its followers generally speaking they cause issues and problems in their communities because that is what the dawah teaches and this is a whiff of original negativism that's first wave negativism would kill their opponents third wave of negativism anathematizes their opponents everybody is a muster and kafir al-badan that whiff is still there why prioritize the people coming to the masjid and make them the enemies why cause hatred amongst them you have even if you think they're wrong dear brothers and sisters there's an ummah out there so many other things out there but again if your paradigm is as it is you cannot help but then uh you know uh make these issues to be the biggest problems and i think that that's a huge issue and as i said on a personal note that deep down inside i realized that uh you know i myself by but by even preaching generically you know to heiden sunna and by even preaching these things generically in those definitions that it does problematize these things and then i realized after my own research that that is a minority opinion historically and there are other alternatives i've given a longer lecture about the definitions of i know you can listen to that and even ibn tamiya again and his actual stance on the motive is not like modern satives and everybody who's an advanced student you know this so this is the second point i mentioned that the the theology is inherently divisive it is inherently prone to hating other religious folks it is inherently uh refutation culture and you know madhhabism is but a logical consequence and all of sadism in its own way is a type of soft medicalism modern selfism it is a type of soft medicalism this is the theology and then the final point that i mentioned was i didn't go into a lot of detail but open your eyes to uh the fact that so many scholars from the third century you know there are hamburger that talk about traveling to medina to the cover of the prophet salallahu making dua you know around the graves tawasul and yes even istiratha there are fatawa and you know if you say that it is haram at least you say okay it's haram and it should be avoided but nobody said it was shirk the way that and ask for the quote of ibn taymiyyah that it is kufu and i know this quote and it is found again that we can go back and forth and back and forth please the same the person you think that is quoting that look at what he himself says look at how he himself dealt with al-baqri and also look at the quote in more detail there is this notion of the point is here asking the dead is potentially shirk some aspects of it are could be shirk your paradigm could make it shirk but in and of itself it is not going to be shirk unless other conditions are met and ibn tamiya understood that point this is my my point so this is the third point that look at what other scholars have said and look at the fatah of the vast majority of scholars of this ummah who either said it is haram and left it at that and that is ibn akhir and so many others or some of them said it is permissible and any at least you can see this between them as being within the fold of islam now as i finally wind down i don't know how many hours have gone as i finally wind down and conclude if you're still here i have no idea how many people are going to be watching this i realize that there is a lot of loose ends and please understand and i'm not trying to suffer allah may allah forgive me i'm not trying to toot my own horn or brag but i fully am cognizant that there are many loose holes i fully am cognizant that we can take this this is this is like a healthy what talked about in my other lecture level one level two level three this is a healthy level two with aspects of level three okay and i fully understand that you can now go to a level three and then bring back your refutations and do it and back and forth it's not as if we're doing this for the first time you know i mean a few years ago you know um uh sultan and dr sultan ramirez protected both of them and i liked the other between them and i liked the back and forth and i've read the entire thing back and forth you know that's an interesting back and forth and you know there's interesting points on both sides you know i actually believe it or not you know i appreciated much of sultan rambedi's you know um uh refutations and benefited from that and i do believe by the way that uh it needs to be responded to uh from the other side and i don't know if they plan to do that or not i mean but it is possible to respond it's not dandy it's not as if his position was divided decisive he had some good points and they needed to be uh responded to uh but in the end of the day as i wind down the series a series uh long series meaning all of these lectures i fully understand that uh there is potential for you know gaps and for you know part threes and of uh level three refutations and whatnot and i want to make it very clear that generally speaking i really at this stage i really don't plan to uh go further in this regard for the public even this i think was more than enough not because time does not permit me to uh but because i really don't think that uh this is uh this is uh useful see the the point that i'm trying to make throughout these entire many hours that i've spoken i think three four or five i don't know how many hours i spoke and i'm gonna now slice together the videos at the end here um the point that i'm trying to make is that i genuinely believe that it is a problem to problematize the pious of the muslims even if they disagree with you and if i want to embody that spirit then i have to also try my best to not get involved in the refutation culture as allah is my witness i didn't intend uh for this long long lecture to be a refutation uh or even a defense of uh my fatwa it was long overdue that i explained to my students especially my students those that i taught physically one-on-one and they number in the hundreds of thousands alhamdulillah because of the institutes i've worked for because i travel the world teaching uh this subject and the many tens of thousands that have read my books and listened to my akita lectures and series you know i taught this subject for al huda tv i had a whole series with them and then for islam channel and then for other for the peace tv as well i had series and whatnot and i've done this and i was a very much admirer and follower of ibn abdul wahab but as i said things troubled me and i have now moved on from that but even as i have moved on i want to make it very clear that i have never and to the best of my knowledge i have never in the past nor in the future uh intend to disrespect any of my teachers uh they are sincere people insha allah many of them i consider them to be of the awliya of allah azzawajal many of them i consider to be of the uh uh people of nusuken and they have all shaped me i am grateful to allah for all of them and i am very very very thankful to allah and i want to say even islamically proud in a humble sense proud i'm thankful to allah that i spent 10 blessed years at al james namiyah phil and even if i have moved on from the theology of that jamia i have never ever once spoken a word against that institution it is a shining beacon of beauty and light even if i politely have moved on and disagree with certain aspects but overall i am thankful to allah subhanahu ta'ala it is one of the best blessings of my life to have spent 10 years you know in the city of the prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam and i would never say anything against that institution or against the people in it even if as i said you know i have now other interpretations but you know they're good people over there the university is a blessing to allah it's a blessing to the ummah from allah and it produces many fine duat and ruler and in the end of the day you know one of the most difficult things for me in order for me to move on i had to think about you know my own you know my own teachers and my own uh involvement with the jammer and you know i was very blessed and fortunate you know allah blessed me to be uh in that university during i think the the last of its great days i'm not trying to talk about the modern you know what's happening and i'm not going to talk about that but those who don't know but i i am thankful to allah that i studied there in the 90s uh and the early 2000s before all these changes took place and i think that i caught uh the the the of the best days of the best days of the jama and i also thank allah that i was there during the time frame when i could meet great great uh you know teachers and murabis and uh interact with some of the greatest icons uh you know of the movement and i respect them immensely i am immensely grateful to allah subhanahu wa'ta'ala that i interacted with shaykh in baz multiple times i literally sat at his feet literally those who know know the story you know for an hour and a half they're literally over there and with the microphone and interesting story one day maybe i'll say it publicly but those who don't know uh had iftar with him in his house spoke with him one on one uh you know um as well went to his house sat in his car he put me in his car we had a i have a recording somewhere of a conversations we had q and a with him i'm immensely one of the one of the most profound impacts that i've ever uh that has had that i've had uh the honor to uh study with sheikh mean for an entire summer in reneeza the year that through the year that the year before he passed away the very final summer program that he held in his masjid of verneza and it was a time frame where where um certain things that happened in the jammeh that um you know i wasn't accepted to the masters program and he heard of that story in the details and i met with him privately and explained to him and he wrote me in his own handwriting he wrote me a descript with my name on it and it's one of my most treasured and prized possessions his handwriting i still have it in my file somewhere and i put that paper of teschia when i applied for the masters again i talked about that story um elsewhere so um so it's not it was not easy for me that's why i thanked you you know sheikh martin as well in my phd uh in my first page or whatever i thanked him and my parents and i thanked him and uh and others and um and uh you know i'm not going to lie here it was difficult for me well it was difficult for me to come to the conclusion that some asp some aspect because again guys it's not as if every single thing that ever comes from their mouths is wrong no it's just certain things alhamdulillah you know love of allah and following the sunnah generally speaking very excellent stuff but there are certain things certain things about the movement that i now disagree with and it was very difficult for me because i genuinely love genuinely love uh these great ulama and i consider sheikhan raithi mean to to be uh he impacted me at a spiritual level at a spiritual level more than at an academic level and so it's not easy for me to move on but you know i it took me a while to understand that those emotions don't mean that the theology is right just like i can see the obandis immensely respecting their cabinet ulama an understanding that doesn't make the obandism right you know to love a sheikh and to love a teacher is good and it's important and it's a part of tarbia it doesn't make the teacher right imagine if i had been studying at another institute i would have loved another whole group of ulama and that as her scholars and the scholars in morocco and studying in you know al-qaeda and studying in yemen with the anybody who studies with a group of teachers loves them and it becomes almost impossible almost impossible to break away and when they break away understandably the people of the movement feel very hurt and very very troubled and therefore the bitterness against them is much more than to an outsider so i fully understand that this the the the refutations against uh yours truly they're coming from a sense of disappointment and it's so easy then to blame all of these other factors you know i've even been accused of being a cia agent or yale corrupted me or this or that but i tell you as allah is my witness this issue this issue was not related to my education at the phd level it was not related to any other factor it was related to troubles from within my own heart about the repercussions of this da'wah and about seeing that some of these things just don't add up and about seeing the reality of isis and all of these things triggering me to really set aside my prejudices and uh biases and see is it possible that i might be wrong is it possible after all these years and i did this in my 30s and i you know left the movement in my 30s and if i were to change my movement to another i'm not the first and i won't be the last to do so and the truth is more beloved to me than inshallah my ego and i was mistaken for a few years of my life on some issues again it's not as if the entire thing is about some things i was mistaken on and i now believe it's not as if i convert it to another movement i i i'm not uh you know on the sufi tariqas i'm not a bravi i'm not a uh the ubandi or whatnot i actually now believe that every single mainstream strand of sunni islam has good in it every single and that includes it has good it has contributed a lot to the ummah and also every single strand has certain things that they can work on and and benefits see this is now i am post cdf now uh post ethity if you like i'm still annie i'm still athletic overall and i i i do consider myself to be uh tamian as i said in my epistemology and paradigm but that doesn't mean that i'm literally mukallid and wed to everything ibn tamiya says you know he is a great alim and i overall out of all of the udama that i have read i find myself agreeing the most with the usual with the paradigm of ibn tamiya that doesn't mean that i have to agree with each and every thing but no movement is divine every movement is composed of scholars and the scholars are not mao only the ijma of the umm of the prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam that is what is every single person and every single movement and every single group of scholars can be taken from and left except for the prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam in the end if you are still with me after all these hours success is with allah subhanahu wa ta'ala alone i do not plan to go back and forth with my critics even though i know that this long long video will be sliced and diced and you know 10 seconds here and 30 seconds there and zandaka and kufur and whatnot will happen but in the end of the day uh to all my critics i say if you are sincere i expect to see you in jannah ta'ala if allah azza forgives my sins i expect to see you there and if you are not sincere and you have other issues in your heart then you have bigger problems and allah will take care of that in this world before the next as for me i don't see the need to defend myself or to defend uh the views that i'm preaching or to get involved in the refutation culture because there's far bigger problems facing the ummah and i don't think it is the best use of my time and the talents that allah has given me and the knowledge that allah azza has blessed me with it is not the best use of my time to speak ill of other religious muslims practicing muslims who is a deviant who is not a deviant who is a threat who is the this is all trivial all religious folks insha allahu ta'ala that are upon uh the love of allah and wanting to follow the sunnah of the messenger of allah everybody who says the kalima and follows the six arkan of the hadith of juba is upon even if they have some mistakes i'm not saying they're assumed they're upon good and it is not from the the my you know current understanding uh to to now prioritize them as a threatened enemy and anybody who says the kalima and has religiosity even if they are not uh following the six arkansas i mean here for example you know the the groups or the uh um uh you know zaidi's or whatnot okay they have bigger mistakes but they're still muslims we don't make feed of them anybody who prays who has the arkhan of islam and says the kalima anybody who does to pray anybody who lowers his head to allah subhanahu wa with allah and follows the kaliman by this i mean if you believe in the prophet after the process that's it no no no you have gone against the kalima that's what i mean but uh to to to make asking and i don't want to go all the way back here even said if you ask the dead you make him a god and i disagree with that no you don't you don't and in fact hardly anybody ever said that even ibn tamiya clearly did not say this as it is in his writing so that's why um they don't go against the kalima when they ask others then allah if they have the right paradigm but as i said anybody who says the kalima and lowers his head to allah subhanahu wa with allah is a muslim anybody who does wudu and practices the five arkhan or wants to practice i should say because even if you fall short and you don't manage to do but you want to you want to uh uh be a good muslim you want to love allah and his messenger uh and you have some tab bud and what not and shall allah allah there within islam and now we work with them to see how to be better but it's not a priority to speak about uh you know other um individuals and whatnot and one final point in sha allah take it or leave it that my sincere sincere advice to those who really wish to to refute and to uh call out deviancy and heresy i understand that everything i say is going to fall on deaf ears i understand you will still want to refute may i humbly suggest that after you've done the refuting can you also provide uh lectures that are of benefit to the non-practicing of the ummah can you talk about if you think that so-and-so is a deviant and so don't listen to his seerah and his heaven and hell series and his comp lives of the companions if he's a you know then i ask you humbly to produce something that is for the masses that their iman that comes closer to allah they can find comfort and strength they they feel proud to be muslim can you preach to the average non-practicing muslim in a manner that empowers him even as you dismiss all of the major duat and all of the successful preachers as you try to kick them out because you discover their deviances okay i understand that some of you really think that that is the priority surely you understand that as you kick all of them off you should also produce something for the rest of the people so may i humbly suggest that also do this and you know may allah bless your efforts in preaching islam to the masses of the ummah that's what i want to see may allah azza increase your your your your iman and taqwa and your contributions so that the ummah benefits and i understand if you think that needs to be refuted that's your paradigm okay once you've done the refutations can you move on to that which is a benefit for all and ask allah azzawajal for me and for all of you and tawfiq and hidayah foreign [Music] foreign

Channel: Yasir Qadhi

Views: 113,345

Rating: 4.5681906 out of 5

Keywords: yasir, qadhi, official, islamic, scholar, shaykh dr. yasir qadhi, Islam, Quran, Sunnah, Hadith, Bukhari, Muslim, Tirmidhi, Peace in Islam, Mercy of Allah, Blessings of Allah, Qadr of Allah, Islamic Questions Answered, Islamic Q&A Session, Ask Shaykh YQ, Prophet Muhammad, Shaykh Dr. Yasir Qadhi, Yasir Qadhi, Salah, Zakat, Hajj, Charity, Jannah, Halal, Haram, On the Najdi Dawah (and Istighatha), The Paganism of the Quraysh, Aspects of Najdī History, Non-Najdī Views & Conclusion

Id: dRtYCJ7bE5I

Length: 207min 45sec (12465 seconds)

Published: Sun Feb 07 2021