Tuesday, April 30, 2019

Kashf ash-Shubuhat fit-Tawhid, PART-14


Last week, we finished speaking about the sixth misconception that the author talks about. So, who knows what it was?...So, the last thing that we talked about was that when people say that the things that they are doing aren’t shirk, and they give specific reasons for that, and they bring false arguments and they’ll say that, for example, “Du’a can’t be worship”, then they give some reason why, and they tie all of these things to the heart, and they say that something can only be worshipped if it’s in the heart and so on.

So, alhamdulilah, we discussed this and we clarified that these claims are false, so we’ll move onto the seventh misconception that the author mentions. So, the next one he says is,
“So, if this person says…” 

So, now he’s talking about someone who is calling to shirk or calling to something that they think is from Islam, or they think is permissible in Islam, but is actually something that’s shirk, so going to the graves or going certain places and calling upon their Shaykhs and calling upon the people who they call their ‘Awliya and their Sayyid and things like this. So, if someone makes these claims, one of the misconceptions that they’ll bring is that they’ll say that,
“Yes, the Prophet (saws) declared the people at the time to be disbelievers, but the reason for this wasn’t because they were calling upon the Salihin or calling upon ‘Awliya and so on. The reason for this was because they stated that the Mala’ika or the Angels are the daughters of Allah.” 

So, they’ll that when the Quraysh and the other kuffar at the time, when they would call upon the Anbiya, or call upon the Mala’ika, or call upon the Salihin or call upon their ‘aliha, which were all of those things, or they could’ve been things like their statues and so on and their idols. This wasn’t what prevented them from being Muslims, and this wasn’t what would necessitate them from entering Jahannam. The reason for them being declared as such and treated as such was because they were claiming that Allah has daughters, and that these daughters were the Mala’ika.
 
So, this is one of the claims that they make. So, the author says,
“The person might say this but then they’ll say, “We aren’t saying that ‘Abdul-Qadir is the son of Allah.” 

And, he’s referring to ‘Abdul-Qadir al-Jaylani, who was one of the Salihin and one of the Imams of the earlier generations of the Muslims, who for whatever reason the people after him began to take him as an ‘Ilah, would call upon him and go to his grave and would make Hajj to his grave and so on. So, he’s saying these people who do this, they’ll say that, “We’re not making this claim about this person, likewise any of their people who they worship or perform shirk with, we’re not saying this is the son of Allah, or that this is the daughter of Allah, so we don’t fall into what the Quraysh and the kuffar at the time fell into. We’re completely on a different path.” 

So, he says,
“The answer to this misconception is that we would say: “Claiming that Allah has a son is an act or statement of disbelief or a statement of kufr in and of itself, it’s not tied to anything else, it’s kufr or it’s shirk, or it’s kufr on its own, it doesn’t matter whether you believe it or not, or it doesn’t matter whether you worship someone other than Allah or anything like that.” 

If someone only worshipped Allah, and claimed that Allah had a son, this would be sufficient for them to leave Islam and to be declared a kafir. So, he says, that this is a matter of kufr in and of itself, it doesn’t matter whether they worship other than Allah, it’s still kufr in and of itself. 

And he says, Allah said,
Or that when Allah said in Suratul Ikhlas, “Say: He is the Allah, One” and “Allah is the Samad.”
And there’s different translations, and different tafsir of what “As-Samad” is.
 Then he says,
“The Ahad is the One Who has no-one like him, and As-Samad is the One Who is intended or the One Who is Sought out when there’s a need.”

So, this is the meaning that the author describes makes tafsir of the “Samad” as, and there’s other ones which we can get into a different time. But, just to add what the author says, this statement of “the One Who is intended”, or sought out in need. This is attributed to ‘Abdullah ibn ‘Abbas, and this was his tafsir of “As-Samad.”

Also, others say “Or the One Who the creation go to in their need.” And also there’s other Tafsir of it, “Or the One Who has no open space inside of Him”, and there’s other definitions which are given, but the point here is that when Allah said, “Say: He is One”. He’s telling us, that there’s no-one like him, so if you attribute to Allah, a son or a daughter, this is kufr even if you didn’t worship them, even if you only worshipped Allah your whole life, but you also said, “Allah had a son”, you’re not Muslim.

So, likewise the opposite, if someone worshipped other than Allah but he never said, He had a son, he’s also not Muslim. It doesn’t mean that only one takes you out of Islam, or prevents you from being Muslim, there’s no reason that both can’t be statements or beliefs or acts of kufr.

Then, the author continues, he says,
“So, whoever rejects this, he has disbelieved. Even if, he does not reject the Surah.” 

So, meaning, even if someone said, “Yes I accept that Allah said “Say: He is One”, and this is from the words of Allah that he spoke, but I also say that he has a son. This would also be sufficient for them to not be Muslim. 

And then he says,
And Allah said, “Allah did not ever have a son or take a son and He never had another god with Him.” [17:111] 

So, meaning, another god was worthy of being worshipped. 

Then the author continues, he says,
“So, He differentiated between the two types, and He made each one of them disbelief on their own. Allah said, “Or they made partners with Him from the Jinn, and He is the One Who Created them…” [6:100] 

So, meaning obviously this doesn’t make sense, how could there be partners with Allah, and He is the One Who made them. So, even if you look at the creation, there’s certain times where you would say, this person is better than this person, or this person is not even near the same level as this other person, and these are all creation. 

So, if that’s acceptable for the creation, then how about when Allah created the Jinn and you’re making them partners with Allah. So, they’re not even both creation for us to say that there’s some similarity. It’s Allah Who Created, and the Jinn who were created, so they’re not even at the same level. 

So, then he says,
“And they make false claims that He has sons and daughters without any knowledge.” 

So, meaning they do this without any knowledge. So, he says here again that Allah differentiated between the two things. The first thing he said was that they made partners with Him from the jinn, and He’s the One Who Created them, so this is one thing that Allah told us. And they made false claims or lies that Allah has daughters and sons. So, there’s two separate things here. Allah didn’t say they’re all one, they’re all the same thing, He differentiated between the two.
 So, then the author continues,
“The evidence for this is that those who disbelieved because they made du’a to Al-Laat, despite the fact that he was a righteous man…”

So, originally, Al-Laat or the person who the statue of Al-Laat was made, he originally was a righteous person.

So, then he says,
“…they didn’t claim that he was the son of Allah.” 

So, we know that the kuffar of Quraysh, the Prophet (saws) called them to Islam, he dealt with them as non-Muslims, he told them to leave their shirk and so on. One of things that they were doing was making du’a to Al-Laat. They never claimed that Al-Laat was the son of Allah. So, this claim that people will say, “well no as long as we don’t claim that it’s Allah’s son”, or “that it’s equal to Allah or similar to Allah, we can continue doing whatever we do”, that this is something that is a completely rejected claim. 

Then he says,
“And those who disbelieved by worshipping the jinn, they never claimed that the jinn were the sons and daughters of Allah…likewise the scholars of all the four madhahib state in the chapters of the murtad…” 

So, in the books of the fiqh when they talk about the rulings related to someone who leaves Islam, who’s a murtad or an apostate, all the four madhahib, and we look to other madhahib as well, they explain this, one of things that they mention in these chapters is that they say,
“If the Muslim claims that Allah has a son then he is a murtad. And they differentiate between the two things and this is from the most clear of matters.” 

So, here’s where the author ends this Shubuha’ or this misconception, and he brings Ayat from the Qur’an and he brings logical arguments to show that these aren’t the same thing and that someone doesn’t need to have more than one belief, or act or statement of kufr in order to disbelieve, and that there’s different types. So, someone can have one, and someone can have two and someone can have ten. We don’t say that one isn’t sufficient, or we don’t say that they’re all there or that none of them are there. 

From the ‘Aqidah of Ahlus-Sunnah wa’l-Jama’ah, is that we say that Iman is at different levels and there’s different parts. Salat is from Iman, Sawm is from Iman, giving Zakat is from Iman, having fear of Allah is from Iman, they’re all different things. Someone might pray five times a day and that’s it, and they don’t pray any other Salat. Someone might pray the five Salawat and pray the Sunnah salat with them, 12 or more or less. All of these are Iman in and of itself. We don’t say that it’s possible for someone or that it’s impossible for someone to be Muslim unless they do everything. 

Likewise, we say that it’s possible that kufr is at different levels too. Someone can hate Allah or someone can hate the Prophet (saws), or someone reject an Ayah from the Qur’an, and someone can reject the whole Qur’an, and someone can leave the Salat, or someone can swear at Allah, all of these are different things. We don’t say that they all need to be present for someone not to be Muslim. What if someone says that Allah has a son or ‘Isa is the son of Allah, this is kufr in and of itself. We don’t say that he has to worship ‘Isa too and likewise if someone worshipped a man and didn’t say he’s Allah’s son, or doesn’t say that he’s Allah’s so, we don’t say that he has to do both. 

So, this is the point of the author when he talks about these two things. So, then just to clarify this just a bit more, like we’ve been doing for most of the misconceptions. We’ve been going through them and then talking about what are the steps at we would follow if we’re going to debate or if we’re going to have an argument or try to clarify these matters to somebody. 

So, the first step that we would follow is that we would that, saying that the angels are the daughters of Allah s kufr on its own. Regardless if you make du’a to them or not, regardless of whether you perform a sacrifice for them or not. Regardless if you make a nadhr or oath by them or for them, regardless of whether you do any of these things. Just the claim or the statement even that Allah has daughters is kufr in and of itself.

And likewise, if we were to say the opposite about sons. If we say sons or daughters, in any case it’s disbelief on its own. And the evidence for that is what the author mentioned, so Allah said,
“Say, “He is Allah, [who is] One, Allah, the Eternal Refuge.” [112:1-2]

So, this is the first thing that we would say. That there’s no reason for us to link the two together and say they’re all the same or that there’s no difference. The second thing we would say that is that we know this is kufr, and we also know that du’a to other than Allah is kufr in and of itself as well, just like Quraysh were disbelievers because they would make du’a to other than Allah. Then also we would say, on top of this, this is matter of consensus, so there’s no dispute on this matter.

If we look at the books of fiqh, all of the scholars from the time of Sahabah, up until today clearly state that making du’a to other than Allah is kufr, making any worship to other than Allah is kufr, and likewise, making the claim that He has daughters or sons or partners or if someone said parents or brothers, or anything that even gives this idea that Allah has some sort of equal or something that’s similar to Him, all of these are kufr in and of themselves.

So, this is the seventh misconception that the author talked about. Next, is the eighth misconception, and the author says…and as well see that each of these misconceptions is weaker and weaker and it’s like a person drowning, they want to stick to whatever they’re on, but you keep clarifying to them that this is wrong and then they come with something that’s weaker and you clarify to them, that’s wrong and they come with something weaker. So, by now you would hope that if you were clarifying these matters to people, they would have already alhamdulilah came back to Islam, but if they don’t then the author walks us through it again. So, he says,
“If after this, if this person was to say that Allah said, “Indeed, the ‘Awliya or the allies of Allah have no fear or that they should never fear or never grieve.” [10:62]

 So, meaning that Allah has placed them at such a high level that they’ll never fear or they’ll never grieve. So, they’ll never have anything in the grave and on the day of judgement, or they shouldn’t have any fear because they were from the ‘Awliya of Allah, and they shouldn’t grieve because they’ll enter Jannah, and they’ll never enter Jahannam or if they do enter Jahannam, it’ll be for a short time relatively obviously and then they’ll leave Jahannam and enter Jannah, so isn’t this true, this is the argument that they’ll say.

So, we’ll say to this person,
“Yes, this is true, we completely accept that the ‘Awliya, they shouldn’t fear and they shouldn’t grieve. But this isn’t evidence that they should be worshipped, why would you then make du’a to them.”

Who’s the One Who’s making them not have fear? Who’s the One Who’s making them not grieve? It’s Allah because the way they dealt with Allah…

So, for us to then say, well because these people were good, and they followed Allah’s commands and He rewarded them for that, we’re going to go now and worship them. So, you’re not even following their example in what they did to get to that level. So, the author says,
“And we are not claiming anything, except that they shouldn’t be worshipped with Allah, and that we’re rejecting making them partners with Allah, otherwise it’s obligatory upon us to love them these people…”

So, if we know of ‘Awliya of Allah from the Sahabah, Tabi’in, Atba at-Tabi’in, the Shuhadah, the Mujahidin, the Muslims who are upon the correct path, if we know of these people, it’s obligatory upon us to love them, and it’s obligatory upon us to follow what they were upon. And if they have kara’mat, or if they have miracles that Allah performs through them, then it’s obligatory upon us to accept this. We know that this is a reality, that Allah will sometimes perform kara’mat through the ‘Awliya.

They’ll do something that doesn’t go with the nature of the world, it’s something out of the norm. If this is the case, we accept this, and we accept it because Allah has raised them to this level, that as a means of showing that they’re on the truth, He will perform these things through them.

 But then the author says,
“And no-one rejected the kara’mat of the ‘Awliya…”

So, no-one rejected the concept of a kara’ma which is a miracle on something other than or through someone other than the Prophet (saws).
“…except the people of innovation and misguidance…”

So, the people of bi’dah, through the Mu’tazilah and others. No-one ever rejected this, so Ahlus-Sunnah never rejected the concept that the ‘Awliya can have kara’mat performed through them. Then he says,
“And the religion of Allah is in the middle between two sides, and its guidance between two matters of misguidance, and it’s the truth between two matters of falsehood…”

So, meaning that, just like we accept the kara’mat of the ‘Awliya, so we’re in the middle. Who are we in the middle between? People who worship them because of the kara’mat, and people who reject the kara’mat, so we’re in between. We don’t reject it, but we don’t say that it makes the worthy of worship or anything like this. And likewise, when he says in between two misguidances and so on.

Then, he says,
“So, if you know this, this what the people or the Mushrikin of our time call al-‘Itiqaad…”

So, when they would perform these actions, they would call all of this shirk, this is al-‘Itiqaad.

So, he says,
“…this is the shirk that Allah sent the Qur’an down for…”

So, people are doing things now, claiming that it’s good, and it’s actually the thing that Allah sent the Qur’an and sent the Prophet (saws) with the Qur’an to actually eradicate. And now not only are people doing it, but they’re claiming that it’s something that’s good.

And then he said,
“And the Messenger of Allah (saws) fought the people due to this. If you know all of this, the know that the shirk of the earlier people, was less than the shirk of the people of our time.”

So, it wasn’t as extreme.

And then he says,
“This is for two reasons: The first is that the earlier people, they would only perform shirk in times of ease…but the mushirkin of our time, would perform it in ease and when there’s a tribulation.”

And then he mentions when Allah said,
“And when harm touches you upon the sea, those that you call upon besides Him vanish from you except Him (Allah Alone). But when He brings you safely to land, you turn away (from Him). And man is ever ungrateful.” [17:67]

So, Allah is saying is that at the time of the Prophet (saws) or before, they would perform shirk in times of ease. So they would go to wherever they would go, and they would worship Allah, but things got down to where they really needed help, when they were in trouble at area, when there was a storm, when the waves were crashing down on them and so on, they knew in their heart that Allah is the Only One Who really could save them.

So, they would make du’a to him, knowing He’s the Only One Who could do it. They would forget about all their other Shuraka’ or all their other partners that they would worship than Allah. But, then when Allah brought them safely back to land, they would go back into what they were doing before.

So, then he quotes the statement of Allah,
“Say (O Muhammad): “Tell me if Allah's Torment comes upon you, or the Hour comes upon you, would you then call upon anyone other than Allah? (Reply) if you are truthful!” Nay! To Him Alone you call, and, if He will, He would remove that (distress) for which you call upon Him, and you forget at that time whatever partners you joined with Him (in worship)!” [6:40-41]

So, Allah again here is reminding, when something really comes down that’s effecting you, or you’re really scared or so on, you’ll forget everything other than Allah, but when things go back to ease, you go back into kufr, and your shirk and the filth that you call upon, and call too.

Then, the author mentions the statement of Allah,              
“And when some hurt touches man, he cries to his Lord (Allah Alone), turning to Him in repentance, but when He bestows a favour upon him from Himself, he forgets that for which he cried for before, and he sets up rivals to Allah, in order to mislead others from His Path. Say: “Take pleasure in your disbelief for a while: surely, you are (one) of the dwellers of the Fire!”.” [39:8]

And the statement of Allah,
“And when a wave covers them like shades (i.e. like clouds or the mountains of seawater), they invoke Allah, making their invocations for Him only. But when He brings them safe to land, there are among them those that stop in the middle, between (Belief and disbelief). But none denies Our Signs except every perfidious ungrateful.” [31:32] 

Then he says,
“So whoever understands this point, which Allah clarified in His Book, and it is that Mushrikin or the polytheists that the Messenger of Allah (saws) fought, and  that they would call upon Allah, and that would make du’a to Allah, and they would make du’a to other than Allah in times of ease, as for times of hardship or harshness or times of need, they would not call upon anyone except Allah Alone with no partners, and they would forget about their masters, or what they call the Sayyid. Then if you understand this, then you would see the difference between the shirk of the people of our time, and the shirk of the people who were earlier. But where is someone who would understand the likes of this matter with a good understanding, and Allah is the One Who we complain too.”

So, the first thing he mentions is that the earlier kuffar would only worship other than Allah in times of ease, but not in times of need. Then he says, the second point, so now he’s talking about why is shirk worse now, and this is back in the time of the author which was over 200 years ago, and things are worse now even, so he says,
“The second reason for this is that the earlier people would only worship or call upon someone who is close to Allah, they would worship the Angels, worship the Prophets, some of them would worship or call upon the Salihin…” 

So, he’s saying the earlier ones would only do this with people or creation that were close to Allah. So, he gives those examples.
 
“…Or they would call upon things that are inanimate. For example, trees or rocks which in reality, they’re not disobedient to Allah and in essence, they also do have an act of worship…” 

Which we know that Allah mentioned in the Qur’an, that everything from the creation has some form of tasbih that it performs for Allah, so even a tree, even a rock, even the Earth, everything, we know that it worships Allah in its own way, but it’s also inanimate, it doesn’t perform anything bad, it just is. It’s just from the creation of Allah.

But then he says,
“And the people of our time, call upon Allah, they make du’a to other than Allah with Him, [so they make shirk with Him], from the worst of the most evil of people and these are the people who are called, for example, they fall into zina, they steal, they leave the Salat and so on.“ 

So, he’s saying, the shirk of the earlier people, at least it’s still shirk, and it still takes someone out of the fold of Islam, and it still would necessitate that they’re in Jahannam forever. At least of the very least, they were picking people, who in and of themselves, were good. Someone could say, “even though it’s not a misconception that’s acceptable, at least they were looking for someone who’s good and then they performed this.” 

But then you have people who worship other than Allah, but then you look at them, they don’t pray, they don’t fast, they don’t give zakat, they don’t make Hajj, they steal, they make zina, they sing, they smoke, so on and so on of every type of kufr and every type of act of disobedience, then they go and they pick those people too worship and claim that they’re Allah, or that they’re a Sharik or partner with Allah and so on.
Then the author, he says,
“The person who has these beliefs regarding someone who’s a Salih or a righteous person or something, an inanimate object that doesn’t disobey Allah, is at a much easier level, or a much lower level in their shirk, then someone who does the same acts for the worst of the people on the earth.” 

So, this is what the author said, and so we’ll go through this. We’re almost done this one, and then he says, so we can look at this and say that, there’s the levels or steps in which you would argue against this misconception.

So the first, like we talked about before, we would say that, “This claim that you’re making that the ‘Awliya are at a higher level, we don’t reject this.” 

 So, as we talked about before, with the Shafa’a of the Prophet (saws). One of the things that people try to do is that they’ll say, “If you don’t make du’a to the Prophet (saws), that mean you don’t accept his Shafa’a on the Day of Judgement.” And we said, before, this is a complete lie, of course we accept that the Prophet (saws) will have a Shafa’a on the Day of Judgement, and we accept that there’s more than one kind even, and we accept that the Shuhada’, and the Salihin, and the Siddiqin, and the Mala’ika and whoever the texts of the Qur’an and the Sunnah have come with, that they have a Shafa’a, and they have an intercession, we accept it.

 So, don’t try to back us into a corner saying that, “You either worship the Prophet (saws) or you reject everything from him.” It’s a complete lie, why does it have to be all or nothing, there’s different levels of actions different levels of beliefs.

 So, the first thing that we would say that is, “No, we accept all of these things, but we don’t claim that they can be worshipped.” So, this is what would say, so, that the first thing. Then, after that we would say, or we would clarify that, you can perform shirk at different levels, and people aren’t all at the same level.

 So, just because someone doesn’t do shirk all the time, doesn’t mean that they haven’t fallen into shirk. Or just like if someone said, “if you perform zina one time, it’s the same as performing zina three times a day.” No rational person would accept this, one’s doing it once, and ones doing it more than one time every day, how are they at the same level? If someone steals, someone who steals $1 from a person as opposed to someone who steals a million dollars from ten people, how are they the same? Of course they’re not the same, someone who killed one person, and someone who killed 50 people, of course they’re not the same.

 Does that mean because the person only killed one person that another guy killed 50 people, that the first guy’s okay? Of course not, this is the type of arguments that kids come up with when they don’t want to get in trouble. They’ll say, “someone else did worse than me.” Who cares if someone did worse than you, it’s still wrong, it still takes you out of Islam.

 So, this is what we would clarify to them, that even the mushrikin in the time of the Prophet (saws), at times they had Tawhid, at times they only worshipped Allah, but because of the other times they worshipped other than Allah, this was sufficient to remove them or to prevent them from Islam. So, this is something to think about when we say that kufr can be different levels, and different numbers, and likewise good deeds can be the same. 

So, we don’t take this all or nothing idea, and one thing to end with, is that if we see that nowadays, and it obviously started before, if you look at some of the people who go and they give pledges of allegiance to their Shaykhs and certain areas, and we had in this city an incident with that before. If you look at the people that they go to and that they claim that, this is a Wali of Allah, and you look at them, and you say that, this person isn’t even Muslim.

When we all saw that video of that guy, in the thing he’ll swear, then he’ll say, “Allah permitted it for me, and I just got this information now from this Angel beside me.” He’ll say one of those things, and each one of those things is kufr to say. First of all, you’re not seeing an Angel that no-one else is seeing.

Second, we know that Allah didn’t permit it for you. And people go to this person and they make Sujud for him, and they give him bay’ah, and they say that he’ll forgive your sins, and so on and so on, at least if they did this with the Prophet (saws), we would say it’s still kufr, you still can’t worship the Prophet (saws), but at least, the Prophet (saws) was Muslim, he was the leader of the Muslimin, and he was the leader or the Imam of Sayyid Bani Adam like in the hadith. He’s the best of creation, at least with him you can see people have love, they went too far into where it’s haram. But then you have, someone and this person, he’s claiming that they reached this level of Yaqin, that he’s not responsible to worship Allah anymore, and he can do this and he can do this, and they say that this is the best person.

So, we see that this is the idea that someone should keep in mind. How did the Prophet (saws) treat Quraysh, and how did he deal with them, and what did they go through? And what’s waiting for them in the grave and the Day of Judgement that we know from the Prophet (saws), if this is what’s coming for them, and how they were treated, what about people who do the things as Quraysh did, but worse. This is something to keep in mind, that just because someone claims something is from Islam, it doesn’t mean it’s from Islam. It can actually be something that takes you out of Islam.

So, this is what the author is going through with this misconception, and insha’Allah it’s quite clear, it doesn’t need too much of an explanation or commentary on. So insha’Allah we’ll stop there and next week we’ll get into the ninth misconception. Wallahul A’lam.

Kashf ash-Shubuhat fit-Tawhid #14 [Transcribed] - By Shaykh Haytham Sayfaddeen

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