Insha’Allah,
we’re going to begin where we left of with the lessons on Aqidah,
insha’Allah we’re going to start a new text called “Kashf
ash-Shubuhat fit-Tawhid” or
the
“Clarification of the doubts of the misconceptions regarding
Tawhid”. In Arabi, it’s
about 25 or 30 pages depending on the version you get and translated
into English, it’s about 65 pages.
So just to start of talking about this book, it was written by Muhammad ibn Abdul-Wahhab and just a bit of background on who he was and why there’s so much written by him on issues of Tawhid and Shirk. He lived in a place called Najd which is in the Arabian Peninsula and it’s the area in Saudi Arabia which is towards the middle of the peninsula. The da’wah of these Imams began in Najd, it began in a place called Huraymala which is beside Ar-Riyadh currently, and the Shaykh Muhammad ibn Abdul-Wahhab, his father was a Islamic judge in that area. The reason why this da’wah began was because in that time, Shirk became quite widespread, people would go to graves and make du’a to the people in the graves and they would sacrifice animals for the people in the graves, and they would make oaths to them and they would seek blessings from trees and stones.
Essentially, reverting back to what the religion in the Arabian peninsula was before the sending of the Prophet (saws), except that they were doing the same things, saying the same things, believing the same things, except that they claimed to be Muslim, so that was the only difference. So a book was written called “Kitab at-Tawhid”, in which the Shaykh put together a number of chapters discussing many issues on Tawhid, so showing the obligation of Tawhid, what Tawhid is, what Shirk is, what actions are only deserving by Allah etc, clarifying this from the Qur’an and the Sunnah and understanding of the Sahabah, trying to call people back to the correct religion and to teach them that which the Prophet (swas) was sent with.
At that point, there began a backlash against this da’wah, so this calling back to the pure Islam, people didn’t like the idea of being told “you can’t bury people in the masajid”, “you can’t build masajid around graves”, “you can’t light up lamps at your graves seeking blessings”, “you can’t slaughter for other than Allah”. People became so used to this issue, there became a backlash to this. Some people actually began to understand this to be the correct meaning of Islam so obviously they fought back. They would begin to send out letters warning against this da’wah and trying to bring evidences from the Qur’an and the Sunnah to prove that their actions were correct and to prove that this da’wah to Tawhid is actually incorrect and that it’s not supported by the Qur’an and the Sunnah and so on.
So just to start of talking about this book, it was written by Muhammad ibn Abdul-Wahhab and just a bit of background on who he was and why there’s so much written by him on issues of Tawhid and Shirk. He lived in a place called Najd which is in the Arabian Peninsula and it’s the area in Saudi Arabia which is towards the middle of the peninsula. The da’wah of these Imams began in Najd, it began in a place called Huraymala which is beside Ar-Riyadh currently, and the Shaykh Muhammad ibn Abdul-Wahhab, his father was a Islamic judge in that area. The reason why this da’wah began was because in that time, Shirk became quite widespread, people would go to graves and make du’a to the people in the graves and they would sacrifice animals for the people in the graves, and they would make oaths to them and they would seek blessings from trees and stones.
Essentially, reverting back to what the religion in the Arabian peninsula was before the sending of the Prophet (saws), except that they were doing the same things, saying the same things, believing the same things, except that they claimed to be Muslim, so that was the only difference. So a book was written called “Kitab at-Tawhid”, in which the Shaykh put together a number of chapters discussing many issues on Tawhid, so showing the obligation of Tawhid, what Tawhid is, what Shirk is, what actions are only deserving by Allah etc, clarifying this from the Qur’an and the Sunnah and understanding of the Sahabah, trying to call people back to the correct religion and to teach them that which the Prophet (swas) was sent with.
At that point, there began a backlash against this da’wah, so this calling back to the pure Islam, people didn’t like the idea of being told “you can’t bury people in the masajid”, “you can’t build masajid around graves”, “you can’t light up lamps at your graves seeking blessings”, “you can’t slaughter for other than Allah”. People became so used to this issue, there became a backlash to this. Some people actually began to understand this to be the correct meaning of Islam so obviously they fought back. They would begin to send out letters warning against this da’wah and trying to bring evidences from the Qur’an and the Sunnah to prove that their actions were correct and to prove that this da’wah to Tawhid is actually incorrect and that it’s not supported by the Qur’an and the Sunnah and so on.
So this book
“Kashf ash-Shubuhat fit-Tawhid”, was written in response to some
of these misconceptions that were being spread, particularly as the
Shaykh mentions in this book, that one of the scholars in the area of
Ahsaa, which is an area in the Arabian Peninsula, he wrote a letter
with a number of supposed evidences trying to prove that these
actions of Shirk were actually Islamic and they didn’t contradict
Islam. After him, this da’wah continued from his sons, Hasan and
Abdullah ibn Muhammad, and his grandsons, Abdur-Rahman ibn Hasan ibn
Muhammad and Sulayman ibn Abdullah ibn Muhammad, may Allah be pleased
with them all, as well as other Ulama' from that area. The da’wah
became stronger and throughout a matter of years and decades even,
alhamdulilah a lot of the Shirk was erased.
The reason why I’m beginning with this is because this book has a number of sections to it. One of the sections is just clarifying what is exactly Tawhid, what is Shirk, what was the beliefs of the kuffar at the time of the Prophet (saws), why they weren’t actually considered Muslim despite as we will see the kuffar at the time of the Prophet (saws) believed in Allah, they believed he existed, they believed he was the Creator and the one that sustained everything and so on, but why weren’t these people Muslimin, and he clarifies this. Then he goes onto another section and begins to discuss some of the evidences that are supposedly used by the people who try to say that these actions are allowed as well as just some of the arguments that they make. Then he has a conclusion in which he discusses the importance of acting upon tawhid and to show how just having this belief in your heart isn’t sufficient and you have to act upon Tawhid, you have to have these statements as well as have these beliefs in your heart, so all of these things are important in order for the person to be Muslim and he has a section on this as well.
So this was how this book is divided up and in explaining this, there’s a number of books that were written by his sons, his grandsons and the scholars after him as an explanation or commentary on this book. One of them was “Mufid al-Mustafid”, which was by Ibn Abdul-Wahhab himself. So some of this explanation will be taken by this as well as the book “Taysir al-Aziz al-Hamid”, which is an explanation of the book “Kitab at-Tawhid” by Muhammad bin Abdul-Wahhab and the explanation was written by his grandson, Sulayman ibn Abdillah who didn’t actually finish this book because he was killed by the viceroy from England, who at the time gave a command that this person should be killed due to the resistance that this da’wah was being put up to the colonialisation of that area at the time and he was ordered to be executed and killed. So this book actually remained unfinished, also the book “Al-Intisar”, by Abdullah Aba-Butayn, who was from the scholars as well, and a book by Abdul-Latif ibn Abdur-Rahman called “Minhaj At-Ta’sees” and lastly a book by Abdur-Rahman Ad-Dawsari. May Allah have mercy on all of them, in which they clarify these issues and they add commentary because very often you’ll find that some Shirk will disappear and people will come up with some sort of new Shirk. So, clarifying Tawhid is easy because it’s very simple and it remains constant all the time but Shirk will change. People may come up with new types of Shirk depending on the time and the area so often that needs extra commentary and explanation is needed for that so that’s why you’ll see that throughout history since this book was written, different commentaries were put towards this book. This is just an introduction as to the reason why the book was written and some of the issues about the book.
To start of, the author says:
“In the name of Allah, the Most Merciful, Every-Merciful to His believing servants. Know - may Allah have mercy upon you - that Tawhid (monotheism) is to single out Allah, free is He from all the imperfections, with all forms of worship (Ibadaah) and this is the religion of the Messenger sent by Allah to his servants. The Messenger and their peoples, the first of them was Nuh, Allah sent him to his people whom they exaggerated the status of their righteous people (such as) Wadd, Suwaa, Yaghuth, Ya’uq and Nasr.”
So here the author begins with Bismillahi al-Rahmani al-Rahim and we talked about this before. So the Basmallah was used by the Prophet (saws) when he would write his letters, particularly the most famous one was the one he wrote to Kisra to Herackle that’s narrated in Sahih al-Bukhari, in which Hercules received a letter from the Prophet (saws) and it said Bismillahi al-Rahmani al-Rahim, from Muhammad ibn Abdillah to Hercules, the leader of the Romans. So the scholars have taken from this that it’s Sunnah to begin any sort of interaction, with the Basmallah. The only difference of opinion is with regards to what is best to begin with because Bismillahi al-Rahmani al-Rahim is what the Prophet (saws) would begin his letters with.
Also we know in the Qur’an when Allah mentioned about Prophet Sulayman when he sent the letter to the Queen of Sabah, that it began with Bismillahi al-Rahmani al-Rahim as well and Allah began the Qur’an with Bismillahi al-Rahmani al-Rahim and we know that every Surah begins with this as well, except Surah Tawbah. So obviously beginning with the Basmallah is something that’s virtuous and some you’ll find that they’ll begin their speeches with Bismillahi al-Rahmani al-Rahim or they’ll begin their letters or books with “Alhamdulilah” or “Inna al-hamdulilah” and so on.
There’s a dispute amongst the scholars as to what is best because if we look to the letters of the Prophet (saws), anything written from him always began with the basmallah and whenever he spoke, there’s nothing specifically narrated from the Prophet (saws) that when he spoke, he began with the Basmallah. What we have is the hadith of Abdullah ibn Mas’ud in “Khutbah al-Hajah”, when he would begin with Inna al-hamdulilah… to the end of the hadith. We also have a hadith of Jabir in which a people came to the Prophet (saws) and he began it with some Ayat from the Quran. So this is the dispute, if we look at all of these evidences, we can say that the Sunnah is to begin speeches with Alhamdulilah or Ayat from the Qur’an particularly "Ya Ayyuhan nasu-ttaqu rabakum - O mankind, fear your Lord" or anything with these types of verses and when you’re writing something, you being it with the Basmallah. So if you’re writing a book or a letter or a letter to somebody else and so on, this would begin with the Basmallah as this is the most precise of what the Prophet (saws) did. So if you were to do this, you’re following these ahadith where they apply and you’re following these ahadith where they apply so this is the strongest way of going about things, Allahu a’lam.
This is the first issue that the author mentioned the Basmallah. After mentioning the basmallah, he went on and said:
“Know – May Allah have mercy upon you”,
You’ll often find throughout his letters and some of the other scholars, they’ll continuously say “Know – May Allah have mercy on you”, “Know – May Allah forgive you”, when they’re saying this, when they’re saying “Know”, they’re obviously telling you, have knowledge about this issue. So they’re calling your attention to what’s about to be said because it’s something of importance and they want your attention to be 100% to this so they want you to focus on this. So they’re telling us to have knowledge, meaning don’t be ignorant of this issue that I’m about to speak about.
So if we understand, what is knowledge? Knowledge, in reality is knowing something in the way it actually is. So if someone says “This thing right here is black”, then obviously it is black, if they know that it’s black then it’s knowledge because the reality of this thing is that it’s black, knowing that it’s black is knowledge. If someone came and said, “what is this colour?”, and you said “I don’t know”, obviously that’s not knowledge, it’s considered ignorance.
The scholars divide ignorance into two types, one is called ‘Al-Jahlul Basit’ or simple ignorance and the second is ‘Al-Jahlul Murakkab’ or compound ignorance. So what is the difference between the two? If I say “What colour is this?”, and you say “I don’t know”, you don’t know it, you’re ignorant of that colour. If I come and say “What colour is this?”, and you say it’s blue, you don’t know the colour and you think it’s something else so you’re ignorant of the colour and you’re ignorant of your ignorance so it’s compound now. So this is the danger of things, if someone is just ignorant of an issue, you can tell them and then they will know, but if they tell that it’s blue and they want to argue with someone, they already have in their mind, “I know the answer to this issue”, and now you have an argument on your hand, and that’s why ignorance in and of itself is dangerous but compound ignorance is even worse because they don’t know and they don’t know that they don’t know. So this is why speaking without knowledge is such a dangerous issue because if you’re not correct, then not only are you not giving the right answer, you’re giving a wrong answer, so you’re spreading something that two things will need to be done to get through to this person. First you have to show to them that they don’t know what they’re talking about and second thing is that you have to teach them the right answer. So this is when it comes to knowledge and ignorance, this is just more of an issue related to Usul al-Fiqh, this is just to comment on what the author said about this issue.
Next, the author says:
“May Allah have mercy on you…”
It shows that there’s some sincerity in what the author is saying so he’s telling you that you should know this, may Allah have mercy on you. So it’s not that it’s something that this person just wants to tell you what they think, and there’s not a point behind it. The point of it is that “May you know this issue, so that Allah will have mercy upon you”. So there’s a goal behind it, it’s a sincerity from a Muslim to another, or from a Muslim to a non-Muslim, wanting to bring them to the correct beliefs.
Then he says:
“that Tawhid…”,
So here, he talks about Tawhid, he’s talking about a specific type of Tawhid. As many of you may know, Tawhid is divided in a number of categories, so there’s Tawhid ar-Rububiyyah, or the Tawhid of Lordship. This is the belief that Allah created everything, He has power to manipulate anything that is within His Will or change anything in His Will, to provide sustenance to anything He wants, anything is under His control. So this is Tawhid ar-Rububiyyah, there’s Tawhid al-Uluhiyyah, and this is the Tawhid as we come to see that the Messengers were sent with. So this is the Tawhid which is the belief that Allah is the Only One who deserves to be worshipped. So not only do we believe in His existence and power and His Might and His Wisdom and His Knowledge, we believe that He’s the Only One Who has the right to be worshipped, and we only worship Allah in any aspect that’s an act of worship. So, anything that is a right of Allah, then we only do it for Him and we don’t do it for anyone else or anything else. So this is Tawhid al-Uluhiyyah and sometimes it’s referred to as Tawhid al-Ilahiyyah. Lastly, Tawhid Asma was-Sifat, the Tawhid of Allah’s Names and His Attributes. Allah mentioned that He has Names, and he mentioned about Himself He has specific Attributes, and the Sahabah affirmed these Attributes from the Prophet (saws) for Allah. These are the three types of Tawhid, sometimes you’ll see them referred to as “Tawhid al-Kast wal-Talab wa Irada”, which is referring to what the slave does for Allah, and also the Tawhid of Knowledge and Affirmation.
So these are, in the end whether you take this division or this division, the point is that anything that belongs to Allah, we affirm it. If Allah mentions something about Him, we affirm it, if He negated something off of Himself, if He said He doesn’t have a son, He doesn’t have a wife, He doesn’t sleep, He doesn’t become drowsy and so on, anything that Allah negated off of Himself, we negate off of Him. Anything He deserves, we give Him, anything that only He deserves, we don’t give to anyone else so on. So this is just a general explanation of all these types of Tawhid.
Specifically here, the author is talking about the second which is Tawhid al-Ilahiyyah, which is what does Allah deserve and what is from the rights of Allah that we can’t give to anyone else. So this is where the dispute came between the Messengers who were sent and the people who they were sent to. As we will see in the Qur’an, no group is mentioned as completely disbelieving in the existence of Allah. So we know that the Prophets weren’t sent to tell people that Allah exists because everyone in the Qur’an that’s mentioned, knows that Allah exists. So why would Allah send someone to teach the people something they’ve already accepted, this wouldn’t be within His Wisdom. So as we will see, the Tawhid that is being discussed here is the Tawhid of Ilahiyyah.
Then he went on to say that:
“and this is the religion of the Messengers sent by Allah to His servants.”
It is, meaning Tawhid, is the Din or the religion of the Messengers. So the next to discuss is that he’s saying it’s the religion of all the Messengers, what does the word “Din” actually mean? So we can see that the word Din has a number of meanings that are mentioned in the Qur’an.
The first is the Mulk or the Sultan, which is the control or the authority. So Allah referred to the story of Yusuf (as) when He said,
“He could not have taken his brother within the religion of the king except that Allah willed” [12:76]
So we know that according to the rule of the king, what Yusuf did as a means to get his brother back to him, he wouldn’t have been able to do if he had followed the law or the authority of the King at that point. So here we know that the word “Din” in this sense refers to authority and control.
Also, it can be the “path”, when Allah said,
“Say, “O disbelievers…” [109:1-6]
All the way till the end till Allah says “For you is your religion, and for me is my religion.” So Allah referred to the Muslimin as having one way and the kuffar as having another way and He used the word “Din” for that.
Another meaning of “Din” is what laws are implemented, as Allah said,
“And fight them until there is no fitnah and (until) the religion, all of it, is for Allah.” [8:39]
So here what is meant is the rule or the actual governing in the land. So here, this is what is mean by “Din” in this verse because we know that the Prophet (saws) commanded his armies when fighting kuffar, to first call them to Islam, if they accepted Islam, then everything was done, if they didn’t accept Islam, then the next choice that they had was to submit to the law of Islam and to pay the jizyah, and if they didn’t then the Muslimin would fight them. So here we see that when Allah ordered Muslimin to fight the kuffar until there’s no more fitnah and the religion is all for Allah, but at the same time, we know that there’s a certain point in which the Muslimin by the command of the Prophet (saws) couldn’t fight the people anymore, even though they hadn’t become Muslim. So we obviously know from this verse that what is meant is the actual rule in the land.
Also, another meaning of “Din” is actions or a way a person acts. This is based upon the saying in Arabi that you say,
“As you act towards people, they will act towards you”.
So the word “Din” here just refers to the way a person acts towards another, and also the last meaning that “Din” has is the actual legislation or the law that is followed, not necessarily in the land, but can even be in the sense of a religious law, as Allah said,
“He has ordained for you of religion what He enjoined upon Nuh…” [42:13]
And then he mentioned other Prophets after that. So these are the meanings of the word “Din”, and also there’s other meanings as well such as the recompense when Allah said,
“Sovereign of the Day of Recompense” [1:4]
The point here is that when we say “Din” in this sense, the meaning is that it was the law in which all of the Prophets came with, as we will see that every Prophet was sent with teaching the people Tawhid, warning them from Shirk and calling them to give Allah His Rights and to not give these things to anyone else.
Then he said (the author):
“The first of them was Nuh (as)…”
And I’m not going to go into too much detail because we discussed this before in the lesson of “Al-Usul ath-thalatha”, but there’s a difference of opinion on the Messengers. Who was the first Messenger? So the majority hold the opinion that Nuh (as) was the first Messenger and the evidence that they use for this is the hadith [Narrated in Bukhari] in which the Prophet (saws) mentioned what will take place on the Day of Judgement and when the people will want the Judgement to begin due to the harshness and the severity of that Day, that they will go to Adam (as) first and ask him to make intercession with Allah to begin this Judgement so that we can be done with it so he will say, “Go to Nuh, because he’s the first Messenger that was sent to the people of the Earth.”
So this is the evidence which is used by the majority. Some of the scholars such as Ibn Hajr al-‘Asqalani and Hadifh bin Hakami, and others say that the first Messenger was actually Adam (as) and the evidence that they used for this is the verse when Allah said,
“Indeed, Allah chose Adam and Noah and the family of Abraham and the family of 'Imran over the worlds –“ [3:33]
So they say that, Nuh and Adam, what they were chosen with, or this choice Allah picked them with was that they were given the Risalah, and that they were Messengers, but Allahu A’lam. It’s quite clear in the hadith of the intercession that the first Messenger that was sent to the people of the Earth, was Nuh (as), and Adam (as) and any Prophets that were before him were Prophets and not Messengers.
So the issue then is what’s the difference between them, and again I’m not going to go into too much detail on this, because we’ve discussed it before but there’s a number of differences of opinion as to what is the difference between a Prophet and a Messenger. Some say there’s no difference, some say there is a difference and the difference is that a Messenger brings a new Shari’ah and a Prophet merely abrogates certain parts in the general Shari’ah.
So for example, they’ll say that Musa (as) was a Messenger and that he came with the Taurah and the laws that was in the Taurah, and the Prophets after him would either rule with that Shari’ah and they wouldn’t bring a new Shari’ah. They’ll use for example a verse when Allah mentioned about the Taurah, that the Prophets would judge with it. So they’ll say that this was actually what the Prophets were, they would judge with it.
Others say that if they came with a Book, then they were a Messenger and if they came without a Book, then they weren’t a Messenger.
Some will say if Allah spoke to them directly, then they were a Messenger, and if he spoke to them through Jibril then they would be a Prophet and so on.
Allahu A’lam, there’s nothing clear on what the difference is between a Prophet and a Messenger, all we know is that for sure there is a difference between them because Allah mentioned them together, obviously for a reason that they were different. He mentioned that there were Prophets and Messengers, so we know that Allah wouldn’t mention two groups of people in the same verse, if they were the same people because there would be no point in doing so.
So this is just a little bit of a discussion, the only thing to make a note on here is that there’s a widespread opinion that Prophets are those who receive revelation from Allah, but aren’t told to go amongst the people and convey it, while Messengers receive revelation and they have to convey it but if we look at the Qur’an and Sunnah that this is an incorrect opinion because there’s a number of evidences in the Qur’an and the Sunnah that indicate that the Prophets are actually sent and they’re ordered to convey.
So first of all, from a ‘aql or from a intellect point of view, Allah gives revelation for a reason, he doesn’t do it for no reason. So why would he give revelation to a person and they don’t actually have to convey it, what would be the point in this and what would be the benefit to humankind for them to receive this revelation and not have to tell anyone about it.
But obviously we go to the Qur’an and Sunnah first, so from the Sunnah, the clearest hadith is the hadith [Narrated by Bukhari] when the Prophet (saws) mentioned that he was given five things that none of the Prophets before him were given.
So he mentioned that the ghanimah was made permissible for him, so the spoils of war were made permissible for the Prophet (saws), and he mentioned that he was given the all-encompassing short word, meaning he would say a very small number of words and it would contain a lot of meaning and benefit and that the third was that the Prophet (saws) is the last of the Prophets, obviously every other Prophet before him wasn’t the last, and the fourth is that all of the earth was made as a masjid and as a means of purification for the Muslimin. So we know that anywhere in the earth we are, we can pray, and anywhere in the earth, we can use the land for taharah if we have no water. This is something which wasn’t present in the Ummah of the nations before us, and the issue for this hadith or this topic is when the Prophet (saws) said, “And the Prophet used to be sent specifically to his people, and I was sent to all of the people”. So we see here that he mentioned that the Prophets before were sent only to their people and I was sent to all of the people. So obviously we know that misconception people have that Prophets were those who received revelation but weren’t sent out to the people is false because the Prophet (saws) said, “And the Prophets used to be sent specifically to their people and I was sent to all of the people”. So the point to take away from that is that this is misconception and we know that the Prophets, whether they are a Messenger or just a Prophet, they’re all commanded to convey what they received from Allah.
The reason why I’m beginning with this is because this book has a number of sections to it. One of the sections is just clarifying what is exactly Tawhid, what is Shirk, what was the beliefs of the kuffar at the time of the Prophet (saws), why they weren’t actually considered Muslim despite as we will see the kuffar at the time of the Prophet (saws) believed in Allah, they believed he existed, they believed he was the Creator and the one that sustained everything and so on, but why weren’t these people Muslimin, and he clarifies this. Then he goes onto another section and begins to discuss some of the evidences that are supposedly used by the people who try to say that these actions are allowed as well as just some of the arguments that they make. Then he has a conclusion in which he discusses the importance of acting upon tawhid and to show how just having this belief in your heart isn’t sufficient and you have to act upon Tawhid, you have to have these statements as well as have these beliefs in your heart, so all of these things are important in order for the person to be Muslim and he has a section on this as well.
So this was how this book is divided up and in explaining this, there’s a number of books that were written by his sons, his grandsons and the scholars after him as an explanation or commentary on this book. One of them was “Mufid al-Mustafid”, which was by Ibn Abdul-Wahhab himself. So some of this explanation will be taken by this as well as the book “Taysir al-Aziz al-Hamid”, which is an explanation of the book “Kitab at-Tawhid” by Muhammad bin Abdul-Wahhab and the explanation was written by his grandson, Sulayman ibn Abdillah who didn’t actually finish this book because he was killed by the viceroy from England, who at the time gave a command that this person should be killed due to the resistance that this da’wah was being put up to the colonialisation of that area at the time and he was ordered to be executed and killed. So this book actually remained unfinished, also the book “Al-Intisar”, by Abdullah Aba-Butayn, who was from the scholars as well, and a book by Abdul-Latif ibn Abdur-Rahman called “Minhaj At-Ta’sees” and lastly a book by Abdur-Rahman Ad-Dawsari. May Allah have mercy on all of them, in which they clarify these issues and they add commentary because very often you’ll find that some Shirk will disappear and people will come up with some sort of new Shirk. So, clarifying Tawhid is easy because it’s very simple and it remains constant all the time but Shirk will change. People may come up with new types of Shirk depending on the time and the area so often that needs extra commentary and explanation is needed for that so that’s why you’ll see that throughout history since this book was written, different commentaries were put towards this book. This is just an introduction as to the reason why the book was written and some of the issues about the book.
To start of, the author says:
“In the name of Allah, the Most Merciful, Every-Merciful to His believing servants. Know - may Allah have mercy upon you - that Tawhid (monotheism) is to single out Allah, free is He from all the imperfections, with all forms of worship (Ibadaah) and this is the religion of the Messenger sent by Allah to his servants. The Messenger and their peoples, the first of them was Nuh, Allah sent him to his people whom they exaggerated the status of their righteous people (such as) Wadd, Suwaa, Yaghuth, Ya’uq and Nasr.”
So here the author begins with Bismillahi al-Rahmani al-Rahim and we talked about this before. So the Basmallah was used by the Prophet (saws) when he would write his letters, particularly the most famous one was the one he wrote to Kisra to Herackle that’s narrated in Sahih al-Bukhari, in which Hercules received a letter from the Prophet (saws) and it said Bismillahi al-Rahmani al-Rahim, from Muhammad ibn Abdillah to Hercules, the leader of the Romans. So the scholars have taken from this that it’s Sunnah to begin any sort of interaction, with the Basmallah. The only difference of opinion is with regards to what is best to begin with because Bismillahi al-Rahmani al-Rahim is what the Prophet (saws) would begin his letters with.
Also we know in the Qur’an when Allah mentioned about Prophet Sulayman when he sent the letter to the Queen of Sabah, that it began with Bismillahi al-Rahmani al-Rahim as well and Allah began the Qur’an with Bismillahi al-Rahmani al-Rahim and we know that every Surah begins with this as well, except Surah Tawbah. So obviously beginning with the Basmallah is something that’s virtuous and some you’ll find that they’ll begin their speeches with Bismillahi al-Rahmani al-Rahim or they’ll begin their letters or books with “Alhamdulilah” or “Inna al-hamdulilah” and so on.
There’s a dispute amongst the scholars as to what is best because if we look to the letters of the Prophet (saws), anything written from him always began with the basmallah and whenever he spoke, there’s nothing specifically narrated from the Prophet (saws) that when he spoke, he began with the Basmallah. What we have is the hadith of Abdullah ibn Mas’ud in “Khutbah al-Hajah”, when he would begin with Inna al-hamdulilah… to the end of the hadith. We also have a hadith of Jabir in which a people came to the Prophet (saws) and he began it with some Ayat from the Quran. So this is the dispute, if we look at all of these evidences, we can say that the Sunnah is to begin speeches with Alhamdulilah or Ayat from the Qur’an particularly "Ya Ayyuhan nasu-ttaqu rabakum - O mankind, fear your Lord" or anything with these types of verses and when you’re writing something, you being it with the Basmallah. So if you’re writing a book or a letter or a letter to somebody else and so on, this would begin with the Basmallah as this is the most precise of what the Prophet (saws) did. So if you were to do this, you’re following these ahadith where they apply and you’re following these ahadith where they apply so this is the strongest way of going about things, Allahu a’lam.
This is the first issue that the author mentioned the Basmallah. After mentioning the basmallah, he went on and said:
“Know – May Allah have mercy upon you”,
You’ll often find throughout his letters and some of the other scholars, they’ll continuously say “Know – May Allah have mercy on you”, “Know – May Allah forgive you”, when they’re saying this, when they’re saying “Know”, they’re obviously telling you, have knowledge about this issue. So they’re calling your attention to what’s about to be said because it’s something of importance and they want your attention to be 100% to this so they want you to focus on this. So they’re telling us to have knowledge, meaning don’t be ignorant of this issue that I’m about to speak about.
So if we understand, what is knowledge? Knowledge, in reality is knowing something in the way it actually is. So if someone says “This thing right here is black”, then obviously it is black, if they know that it’s black then it’s knowledge because the reality of this thing is that it’s black, knowing that it’s black is knowledge. If someone came and said, “what is this colour?”, and you said “I don’t know”, obviously that’s not knowledge, it’s considered ignorance.
The scholars divide ignorance into two types, one is called ‘Al-Jahlul Basit’ or simple ignorance and the second is ‘Al-Jahlul Murakkab’ or compound ignorance. So what is the difference between the two? If I say “What colour is this?”, and you say “I don’t know”, you don’t know it, you’re ignorant of that colour. If I come and say “What colour is this?”, and you say it’s blue, you don’t know the colour and you think it’s something else so you’re ignorant of the colour and you’re ignorant of your ignorance so it’s compound now. So this is the danger of things, if someone is just ignorant of an issue, you can tell them and then they will know, but if they tell that it’s blue and they want to argue with someone, they already have in their mind, “I know the answer to this issue”, and now you have an argument on your hand, and that’s why ignorance in and of itself is dangerous but compound ignorance is even worse because they don’t know and they don’t know that they don’t know. So this is why speaking without knowledge is such a dangerous issue because if you’re not correct, then not only are you not giving the right answer, you’re giving a wrong answer, so you’re spreading something that two things will need to be done to get through to this person. First you have to show to them that they don’t know what they’re talking about and second thing is that you have to teach them the right answer. So this is when it comes to knowledge and ignorance, this is just more of an issue related to Usul al-Fiqh, this is just to comment on what the author said about this issue.
Next, the author says:
“May Allah have mercy on you…”
It shows that there’s some sincerity in what the author is saying so he’s telling you that you should know this, may Allah have mercy on you. So it’s not that it’s something that this person just wants to tell you what they think, and there’s not a point behind it. The point of it is that “May you know this issue, so that Allah will have mercy upon you”. So there’s a goal behind it, it’s a sincerity from a Muslim to another, or from a Muslim to a non-Muslim, wanting to bring them to the correct beliefs.
Then he says:
“that Tawhid…”,
So here, he talks about Tawhid, he’s talking about a specific type of Tawhid. As many of you may know, Tawhid is divided in a number of categories, so there’s Tawhid ar-Rububiyyah, or the Tawhid of Lordship. This is the belief that Allah created everything, He has power to manipulate anything that is within His Will or change anything in His Will, to provide sustenance to anything He wants, anything is under His control. So this is Tawhid ar-Rububiyyah, there’s Tawhid al-Uluhiyyah, and this is the Tawhid as we come to see that the Messengers were sent with. So this is the Tawhid which is the belief that Allah is the Only One who deserves to be worshipped. So not only do we believe in His existence and power and His Might and His Wisdom and His Knowledge, we believe that He’s the Only One Who has the right to be worshipped, and we only worship Allah in any aspect that’s an act of worship. So, anything that is a right of Allah, then we only do it for Him and we don’t do it for anyone else or anything else. So this is Tawhid al-Uluhiyyah and sometimes it’s referred to as Tawhid al-Ilahiyyah. Lastly, Tawhid Asma was-Sifat, the Tawhid of Allah’s Names and His Attributes. Allah mentioned that He has Names, and he mentioned about Himself He has specific Attributes, and the Sahabah affirmed these Attributes from the Prophet (saws) for Allah. These are the three types of Tawhid, sometimes you’ll see them referred to as “Tawhid al-Kast wal-Talab wa Irada”, which is referring to what the slave does for Allah, and also the Tawhid of Knowledge and Affirmation.
So these are, in the end whether you take this division or this division, the point is that anything that belongs to Allah, we affirm it. If Allah mentions something about Him, we affirm it, if He negated something off of Himself, if He said He doesn’t have a son, He doesn’t have a wife, He doesn’t sleep, He doesn’t become drowsy and so on, anything that Allah negated off of Himself, we negate off of Him. Anything He deserves, we give Him, anything that only He deserves, we don’t give to anyone else so on. So this is just a general explanation of all these types of Tawhid.
Specifically here, the author is talking about the second which is Tawhid al-Ilahiyyah, which is what does Allah deserve and what is from the rights of Allah that we can’t give to anyone else. So this is where the dispute came between the Messengers who were sent and the people who they were sent to. As we will see in the Qur’an, no group is mentioned as completely disbelieving in the existence of Allah. So we know that the Prophets weren’t sent to tell people that Allah exists because everyone in the Qur’an that’s mentioned, knows that Allah exists. So why would Allah send someone to teach the people something they’ve already accepted, this wouldn’t be within His Wisdom. So as we will see, the Tawhid that is being discussed here is the Tawhid of Ilahiyyah.
Then he went on to say that:
“and this is the religion of the Messengers sent by Allah to His servants.”
It is, meaning Tawhid, is the Din or the religion of the Messengers. So the next to discuss is that he’s saying it’s the religion of all the Messengers, what does the word “Din” actually mean? So we can see that the word Din has a number of meanings that are mentioned in the Qur’an.
The first is the Mulk or the Sultan, which is the control or the authority. So Allah referred to the story of Yusuf (as) when He said,
“He could not have taken his brother within the religion of the king except that Allah willed” [12:76]
So we know that according to the rule of the king, what Yusuf did as a means to get his brother back to him, he wouldn’t have been able to do if he had followed the law or the authority of the King at that point. So here we know that the word “Din” in this sense refers to authority and control.
Also, it can be the “path”, when Allah said,
“Say, “O disbelievers…” [109:1-6]
All the way till the end till Allah says “For you is your religion, and for me is my religion.” So Allah referred to the Muslimin as having one way and the kuffar as having another way and He used the word “Din” for that.
Another meaning of “Din” is what laws are implemented, as Allah said,
“And fight them until there is no fitnah and (until) the religion, all of it, is for Allah.” [8:39]
So here what is meant is the rule or the actual governing in the land. So here, this is what is mean by “Din” in this verse because we know that the Prophet (saws) commanded his armies when fighting kuffar, to first call them to Islam, if they accepted Islam, then everything was done, if they didn’t accept Islam, then the next choice that they had was to submit to the law of Islam and to pay the jizyah, and if they didn’t then the Muslimin would fight them. So here we see that when Allah ordered Muslimin to fight the kuffar until there’s no more fitnah and the religion is all for Allah, but at the same time, we know that there’s a certain point in which the Muslimin by the command of the Prophet (saws) couldn’t fight the people anymore, even though they hadn’t become Muslim. So we obviously know from this verse that what is meant is the actual rule in the land.
Also, another meaning of “Din” is actions or a way a person acts. This is based upon the saying in Arabi that you say,
“As you act towards people, they will act towards you”.
So the word “Din” here just refers to the way a person acts towards another, and also the last meaning that “Din” has is the actual legislation or the law that is followed, not necessarily in the land, but can even be in the sense of a religious law, as Allah said,
“He has ordained for you of religion what He enjoined upon Nuh…” [42:13]
And then he mentioned other Prophets after that. So these are the meanings of the word “Din”, and also there’s other meanings as well such as the recompense when Allah said,
“Sovereign of the Day of Recompense” [1:4]
The point here is that when we say “Din” in this sense, the meaning is that it was the law in which all of the Prophets came with, as we will see that every Prophet was sent with teaching the people Tawhid, warning them from Shirk and calling them to give Allah His Rights and to not give these things to anyone else.
Then he said (the author):
“The first of them was Nuh (as)…”
And I’m not going to go into too much detail because we discussed this before in the lesson of “Al-Usul ath-thalatha”, but there’s a difference of opinion on the Messengers. Who was the first Messenger? So the majority hold the opinion that Nuh (as) was the first Messenger and the evidence that they use for this is the hadith [Narrated in Bukhari] in which the Prophet (saws) mentioned what will take place on the Day of Judgement and when the people will want the Judgement to begin due to the harshness and the severity of that Day, that they will go to Adam (as) first and ask him to make intercession with Allah to begin this Judgement so that we can be done with it so he will say, “Go to Nuh, because he’s the first Messenger that was sent to the people of the Earth.”
So this is the evidence which is used by the majority. Some of the scholars such as Ibn Hajr al-‘Asqalani and Hadifh bin Hakami, and others say that the first Messenger was actually Adam (as) and the evidence that they used for this is the verse when Allah said,
“Indeed, Allah chose Adam and Noah and the family of Abraham and the family of 'Imran over the worlds –“ [3:33]
So they say that, Nuh and Adam, what they were chosen with, or this choice Allah picked them with was that they were given the Risalah, and that they were Messengers, but Allahu A’lam. It’s quite clear in the hadith of the intercession that the first Messenger that was sent to the people of the Earth, was Nuh (as), and Adam (as) and any Prophets that were before him were Prophets and not Messengers.
So the issue then is what’s the difference between them, and again I’m not going to go into too much detail on this, because we’ve discussed it before but there’s a number of differences of opinion as to what is the difference between a Prophet and a Messenger. Some say there’s no difference, some say there is a difference and the difference is that a Messenger brings a new Shari’ah and a Prophet merely abrogates certain parts in the general Shari’ah.
So for example, they’ll say that Musa (as) was a Messenger and that he came with the Taurah and the laws that was in the Taurah, and the Prophets after him would either rule with that Shari’ah and they wouldn’t bring a new Shari’ah. They’ll use for example a verse when Allah mentioned about the Taurah, that the Prophets would judge with it. So they’ll say that this was actually what the Prophets were, they would judge with it.
Others say that if they came with a Book, then they were a Messenger and if they came without a Book, then they weren’t a Messenger.
Some will say if Allah spoke to them directly, then they were a Messenger, and if he spoke to them through Jibril then they would be a Prophet and so on.
Allahu A’lam, there’s nothing clear on what the difference is between a Prophet and a Messenger, all we know is that for sure there is a difference between them because Allah mentioned them together, obviously for a reason that they were different. He mentioned that there were Prophets and Messengers, so we know that Allah wouldn’t mention two groups of people in the same verse, if they were the same people because there would be no point in doing so.
So this is just a little bit of a discussion, the only thing to make a note on here is that there’s a widespread opinion that Prophets are those who receive revelation from Allah, but aren’t told to go amongst the people and convey it, while Messengers receive revelation and they have to convey it but if we look at the Qur’an and Sunnah that this is an incorrect opinion because there’s a number of evidences in the Qur’an and the Sunnah that indicate that the Prophets are actually sent and they’re ordered to convey.
So first of all, from a ‘aql or from a intellect point of view, Allah gives revelation for a reason, he doesn’t do it for no reason. So why would he give revelation to a person and they don’t actually have to convey it, what would be the point in this and what would be the benefit to humankind for them to receive this revelation and not have to tell anyone about it.
But obviously we go to the Qur’an and Sunnah first, so from the Sunnah, the clearest hadith is the hadith [Narrated by Bukhari] when the Prophet (saws) mentioned that he was given five things that none of the Prophets before him were given.
So he mentioned that the ghanimah was made permissible for him, so the spoils of war were made permissible for the Prophet (saws), and he mentioned that he was given the all-encompassing short word, meaning he would say a very small number of words and it would contain a lot of meaning and benefit and that the third was that the Prophet (saws) is the last of the Prophets, obviously every other Prophet before him wasn’t the last, and the fourth is that all of the earth was made as a masjid and as a means of purification for the Muslimin. So we know that anywhere in the earth we are, we can pray, and anywhere in the earth, we can use the land for taharah if we have no water. This is something which wasn’t present in the Ummah of the nations before us, and the issue for this hadith or this topic is when the Prophet (saws) said, “And the Prophet used to be sent specifically to his people, and I was sent to all of the people”. So we see here that he mentioned that the Prophets before were sent only to their people and I was sent to all of the people. So obviously we know that misconception people have that Prophets were those who received revelation but weren’t sent out to the people is false because the Prophet (saws) said, “And the Prophets used to be sent specifically to their people and I was sent to all of the people”. So the point to take away from that is that this is misconception and we know that the Prophets, whether they are a Messenger or just a Prophet, they’re all commanded to convey what they received from Allah.
Kashf ash-Shubuhat fit-Tawhid #1 [Transcribed] - By Shaykh Haytham Sayfaddeen
TO BE CONTINUED INSHA'ALLAH...
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- Kashf ash-Shubuhat fit-Tawhid, PART-2
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- Kashf ash-Shubuhat fit-Tawhid, PART-9
- Kashf ash-Shubuhat fit-Tawhid, PART-10
- Kashf ash-Shubuhat fit-Tawhid, PART-11
- Kashf ash-Shubuhat fit-Tawhid, PART-12
- Kashf ash-Shubuhat fit-Tawhid, PART-13
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- Kashf ash-Shubuhat fit-Tawhid, PART-15
- Kashf ash-Shubuhat fit-Tawhid, PART-16
- Kashf ash-Shubuhat fit-Tawhid, PART-17
- Kashf ash-Shubuhat fit-Tawhid, PART-18
- Kashf ash-Shubuhat fit-Tawhid, PART-19 (LAST)
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