Kashf ash-Shubuhat fit-Tawhid, PART-16

Last week, we read the ninth and final Shubuha’ that the Imam, that the author of this book mentioned and what this Shubuha’ was or essentially the summary of what the Shubuha’  was, or this misconception, was that, anyone who says La ilaha ila Allah, he can never...essentially he can never leave Islam, he can never be considered non-Muslim, as long as he says La ilaha ila Allah. Despite what he says, despite what he does, even despite what he believes in his heart, as long as someone says on their tongue, La ilaha ila Allah, that this is something that would prevent them from ever leaving Islam, or prevent them from ever being thought of as disbelievers or anything like this.

So, this was what the author mentioned, and we finished reading it, so now just going to add a bit of extra comments to it where some things are needed. So, firstly, this Shubuha’ or this misconception, the author himself called it, or he said that it’s the greatest misconception, or from all the Shubuhat, it’s the greatest of them.

The reason for this is it’s the most widespread misconception, it was in the time of the Salaf, or the later Salaf it began, and it continued up until the time of the author, and it even continues to our time today, and it’s the biggest misconception when it comes to Islam and kufr. It’s the biggest misconception when it comes to what’s called Musallam Iman, or the reality of Iman. It’s the biggest misconception on this topic, because people think or they read certain ahadith, such as when the Prophet (saws) said,
“Whoever’s last words in the dunya is La ilaha ila Allah, that he’ll enter Jannah.”

“Whoever says La ilaha ila Allah sincerely from his heart, that he’ll enter Jannah,” and so on.

So, they’ll assume that anyone who says this, they can then worship anyone besides Allah, or they can claim that someone is a Prophet besides the Prophet (saws), and they can reject things from the Qur’an and so on and so on, but because they say La ilaha ila Allah, that they still remain your brother in religion and they still remain a Muslim. And alhamdulilah, the author, he mentioned a number of evidences against this misconception.

Just to mention that this misconception was spread during his time as well, and it was one of the main ones that was spread. Some of the main opponents of this da’wah spread this misconception, and from the first people who spread this was someone named Sulayman ibn Suhaim an-Najdi. He was the first one or he wrote books and letters about this misconception and tried to state that anyone who considers that someone could leave Islam, even if they say La ilaha ila Allah, that they’re not from Ahlus-Sunnah and even worse.

And also, this was also spread by al-Qabbani and we talked about this person before, in his book, “Faslil Kitab” and Ibn Afalaqal al-Ihsa’I and that he claimed that people who follow this idea, meaning that someone could leave Islam, they’re considered all of the Ummah to be non-Muslims.

So, this is how far people take things, if you say someone could actually leave Islam if they swear at Allah, or if they worship other than Allah, instead of people looking at this and saying, “yes this makes sense because there’s evidence from the Qur’an and the Sunnah and so on”, they say that, “if you say this, you’re considering the whole Ummah to be not Muslim”, and they make these ridiculous, outrageous statements, because if you were to sit down with someone and discuss this topic based upon evidence of the Qur’an and the Sunnah, there’d be no way to refute it, there’d be no way to reject this idea. So, instead they make wild accusations as a means to get people away from those who are calling to the correct Tawhid.

So, just to talk about what the author mentioned, as we’ve been doing with each one of these misconceptions, we go through what the author said, and the steps that he mentioned as far as refuting or discussing this misconception. So, the first thing is if someone says, “Whoever says La ilaha ila Allah, can never be considered a non-Muslim.”

The first thing that we would say to him, is “what do you say about someone who accepts some of the Qur’an and rejects the other part?, so for example if he says, the first-half I accept it, the second-half, I don’t accept it, it’s not from Allah and Allah didn’t speak these words, the first-half is and the second-half isn’t.” Obviously, any Muslim would say that this person isn’t a Muslim, he’s a kafir. Even if he prays, even if he does such and such, how can someone reject half of the Qur’an and still say that he’s Muslim. So, this is something that any Muslim would agree to.

The next thing would be to say, what about someone who accepts Tawhid, so they say, “I believe La ilaha ila Allah but they reject the Salat, and reject the Zakat, and the fasting, and the Hajj and the Umrah and so on and so on. So, I accept the idea of Tawhid, but each of these things, I don’t accept them, that they’re from Islam.” Obviously, again, we would say that this person isn’t Muslim. How can you reject the four of the five pillars of Islam, but say because I accept the first one, I’m still Muslim. So, obviously this is something that would be agreed upon as well.

The next step is to say, “What if someone accepts Tawhid, and the Salat, but they reject the Zajat, the fasting and the Hajj.” Obviously, because, so far each one of these things are based on rejecting some and accepting some. So, they would say, “No, of course that person can’t be Muslim. How can you reject three of the five and still be Muslim, obviously.”

 And then, after that, you would take them to the next step and say…and you could walk them down each one to the point where you get to the Hajj. So, obviously if someone said, “Hajj isn’t from Islam, I don’t accept it, but I accept the other four pillars”, this person wouldn’t be Muslim either, because how can you reject one of the five, and it’s the one that Allah said,
“Allah has the duty of Hajj upon whoever is able to do so, and whoever disbelieves then indeed Allah is un-needing of all of the ‘Alamin [or all of the creation].” [3:97]

So, Allah called the ones who don’t accept Hajj, the ones who didn’t follow it as the author mentioned in the time of the Prophet (saws), he said that they’ve disbelieved, and we know, if we look at there’s a narration from one of the Tabi’in, Ikrimah, he said that this was at the time of the Prophet (saws), that the Jews, when Allah revealed the statement,
“Or whoever seeks a religion other than Islam won’t be accepted from him.” [3:85]

That the Jews said, “We’re the Muslims” meaning that we follow our Prophet and we’re claiming to be Muslims. But then they rejected the Hajj, they refused to perform the Hajj, because we know that the Hajj was never from…or the Jews at the time of the Prophet (saws), they never performed Hajj. We know Quraysh did because they considered themselves to be upon the Ibrahim (as), but they still considered this to be from their rights, meaning the rights and rituals from their religion. But the Jews didn’t, so then Allah revealed,
“Allah has the duty of Hajj upon whoever is able to do so, and whoever disbelieves then indeed Allah is un-needing of all of the ‘Alamin [or all of the creation].” [3:97]

So, Ikrimah, the Tabi’in, said that when they made this claim, Allah revealed this verse telling them that this claim that you’re Muslims, it’s not accepted because your refuse to perform Hajj. So, if this is the case for Hajj, then obviously we know that all five of these pillars need to be accepted. Then the author used for evidence for this idea or for this belief,
“Indeed, those who disbelieve in Allah and His Messengers, and they want to differentiate between Allah and His Messengers, and they say, “We believe in some of it, and we disbelieve in some of it,” and they want to take a path in between one of the two [meaning they’re not going to reject it all, and they’re not going to accept it all, they want to go somewhere in between] Indeed those are the true disbelievers.” [4:150-151]

So, Allah didn’t say because there’s some people who reject everything, accepting some and rejecting some is better. Allah said,
“Those are the true disbelievers.”

So, this is the evidence that the author was using this belief of Ahlus-Sunnah wa’l-Jama’ah. Then he said, or then if we look at his words, we can say that he said that after proving this point to these people, so walking them through and saying, “You don’t accept someone to be Muslim if they reject this or they reject this…” So, you walk them through the five pillars.

Then, after that we would say, “You [meaning these people], you say that if someone says La ilaha ila Allah, and he prays and he fasts but they don’t perform Tawhid [meaning that they perform shirk with Allah, they ask other than Allah, for things that’s only from Allah’s rights, and they perform acts of worship for other than Allah] so, even based upon the things that you’ve accepted [meaning that if you accept some and reject someone that you’re not Muslim] even by your own words, by your own rules that you’ve accepted, you’re not Muslims, because you’re rejecting the first of the five.”

So, we know that the first of the five of the pillars is saying La ilaha ila Allah Muhammadur Rasullulah, and in some of the narrations, it’s that you have Tawhid with Allah, so how could we say that, if you’ve accepted that if someone rejects the Zakat, but accepts all the other ones, that he woudn’t be Muslim, but somehow these people are saying we’re going to reject the first one, we’re not even going to follow the first one, that somehow this person could still be Muslim. Obviously, even by their own rules, they’re bearing witness or they’re testifying upon themselves.

The second step is what they call “Qiyas al-Awla” or it’s Qiyas or it’s an analogy that’s based upon a better example. So, what does this mean, we would say that, what would we say about someone who says that, after the Prophet (saws), there was another Prophet?

Obviously, this is a consensus, no-one would dispute that this type of person wouldn’t be Muslim, he would leave Islam. We know that this was the case with the Ahmadiyyah, who claim that there was a Prophet after the Prophet (saws) in Punjab and India and so on, and any groups like this, they claim that there’s a Prophet after the Prophet (saws), there’s no dispute of all the Muslims from their time up until now, that these people aren’t Muslim.

So, if this is the case with someone who claims that there’s a Prophet with the Prophet (saws), what would be the case with someone who’s claiming through their action, that there’s a God with Allah? If this level, doing an act of this level is kufr and would take someone out of Islam, how could it be that doing an act that’s this high and how evil it is, wouldn’t take someone out of Islam. Obviously, any normal human being would say, if one thing is bad, there’s something that goes further, that things worse, it would take at least the same ruling, if not worse.

So, this is the second step, because even they accept that, if someone reject the Resurrection or that Allah will resurrect all of the creation, or all the human beings and the jinn on the Day of Judgement, if someone rejected this and said there’s no afterlife, obviously this person wouldn’t be Muslim. So, what if someone isn’t even performing the most basic aspect of Tawhid that every Prophet was sent to teach their people. So, this is the second.

The third step is giving examples of when the ‘Ulama’ and when the scholars of the Ummah, considered people who did these actions to not to be Muslims. So, he gives a number of examples. The first one that he gave was, Banu’ Hanifah, who were the followers of Musaylamah al-Khadab, and we talked a little bit about him last week.
Musaylamah al-Khadab, was someone who, during the time of the Prophet (saws), he lied that he was a Prophet. And we know that in the time of the Prophet (saws), this taghut, and this false Prophet sent a letter to the Prophet (saws) saying, “From Musaylamah the Mesenger of Allah to Muhammad the Messenger of Allah”, so here we see, up until our time today, so 1400 years, where we get the name Musaylamah al-Khadab. The Prophet (saws) wrote back, and we know that Allah said about him,
“He doesn’t speak anything of his desire, indeed it is only a revelation that’s being revealed.” [53:3-4]

The Prophet (saws) wrote back and said, “From Muhammad the Messenger of Allah to Musaylamah the liar or the extreme liar”. Al-Khadab is different from Al-Khadib, so it’s an extreme liar. Someone who lies often, or makes great lies.

So, we see here that the Prophet (saws) wrote back, rejected this claim of his, and we know that the Sahabah as this is what the author’s talking about, they fought against Musaylamah, and they fought against all of his false followers, and they treated them as apostates, or disbelievers, or people who had left Islam, and they didn’t treat them as regular kuffar, because the murtaddin, if we look at, what they call “Hurub ar-riddah”, or “The wars of apostasy”, that were fought by Abu Bakr and the Sahabah with him at the time, we see that they dealt with them differently then they dealt with the Yahud, or the Jews, or the Christians or the Nasara at the time.

There was different rulings in how the Sahabah dealt with them. So, for example, when it comes to fighting someone who isn’t Muslim, but they, for example they’re a Jew or Christian, there’s specific rulings for them.

So, for example, when it comes to, if they’re going to give up, or if they’re captured, at this point, if it’s an apostate, it still becomes obligatory upon you to execute those prisoners, as opposed to if it is someone who’s originally a non-Muslim. Also, there’s a difference between a Muslim who’s fighting another Muslim, for example what they call “Bughat” or the trangressors, or rebels, so if a Muslim group is fighting against Muslimin, they have specific rulings.

For example, if a Muslim is rebelling against the Muslim authority, and he flees, he runs away, you’re not allowed to chase him. If he’s injured on the ground, you can’t finish him off and say “he’s fighting us, we’re going to finish him off as a lesson to him,” you can’t do that. You can’t touch their wealth, there’s many other rulings with regards to when you’re fighting Muslims who are fighting against you because you’re the authority, as opposed to apostates, people who are claiming Islam but aren’t actually Muslims.

So, if we look at how the Sahabah and this wasn’t just any of the Sahabah, we know that it was Abu Bakr, ‘Umar, ‘Uthman, ‘Ali, Abu Hurayrah, major Sahabah, because this was right after the death of the Prophet (saws), so the vast majority of the Sahabah and the scholars, were still around or at least still reachable with regards to their opinions. So, they dealt with them, despite the fact that they were claiming La ilaha ila Allah, and they even claimed that the Prophet (saws), was a Prophet. They just said, there’s also this other idiot, piece of garbage, that is claiming Prophethood with him, despite this, look how they treated him. So, this is the first evidence, or the first example that he gives.

The second is that he says, or he refers to, those who believe that ‘Ali ibn Abi Talib (ra) was Allah. So, this took place in the time of ‘Ali (ra). They came to him and they said, “You are Him”, meaning you are Allah, and this hadith is in Sahih al-Bukhari, that ‘Ali (ra) called for a large pit to be dug, and they lit large fires in them, and he threw them all in it. So, despite the fact that these people were saying La ilaha ila Allah, and they were claiming to be Muslims, and the person who they were raising at an high status was ‘Ali (ra).

We know that he’s from the family of the Prophet (saws), he’s the cousin of the Prophet (saws); his son in-law that he married Fathimah (ra‎) too. We know that he’s from the 10 that the Prophet(saws) gave specific news too that they’re in Jannah. And we know that his virtues are many, but despite this, look how he dealt with them. And they were saying it about him, it wasn’t like they were saying it about an enemy of his. He built a fire, and he threw them in it, and none of the Sahabah rejected this from him, as far as executing them, all they disputed with was, how he did it.

So in Sahih al-Bukhari, Abdullah ibn ‘Abbas (ra), he said or he came to ‘Ali and he said, “If it was me, I would have just executed them because I heard the Messenger of Allah (saws) say, “Do not punish with the punishment of Allah.” So, Ibn ‘Abbas (ra) didn’t say to ‘Ali, “What are you doing?”,  these people claim Islam, how can you touch them. He said, “If it was me, I wouldn’t have done it this way because the Prophet (saws) said this, I would have just executed them as the Prophet (saws) said, “Whoever changes his religion, then execute him.”

So, this famous hadith that everyone knows from Ibn ‘Abbas, there’s a story behind it and the reason he was mentioning it was to ‘Ali (ra), to explain to him that the punishment with fire, shouldn’t be done in the dunya. It’s only for Allah in the Akhirah. So, this is second example that he gives.

The third is he says, Bani ‘Ubaydd, these people would call themselves the Fatimiyyah or the Fatimmin, and they were a group that took over Egypt and Northern Africa, and the scholars of Islam were unanimous at the time in considering them to be out of Islam, to the point that Ibn Taymiyyah said that they were from the worst of the creation, and they were more in misguidance and more in evil than the Jews and the Christians.So, he gave this example to the point where the Maliki scholars at the time, and this is from al-Qadi ‘Iyyad, he has a book in which he collected many of the fatawa of the scholars of the Malikiyyah in Northern Africa. He was asked or he mentioned a story in which one of the Maliki Imams was asked, what do we say about a person who says on the mimbar, that he gets up on the Mimbar and he says, or he praises Allah and then he sends the salat and the salam upon the Prophe (saws) and then after that he said, “O Allah give victory or O Allah preserve or set something nice or something good about their hakm at the time”, so the leader of Banu Ubbayd or the leader of the Fathimiyyah.

So, he said, this Imam he said, “What would you say about someone who stood up on the mimbar and said good things about Allah, and sent the salat and the salam upon the Prophet (saws) then he said Abu Jahl is in Jannah. So on the mimbar, what would you say about a person like this? Everyone said, he would be a kafir, he wouldn’t be a Muslim. So, he said, this person is worse than Abu Jahl. So, not only did they consider, the people who were claiming Islam to be non-Muslim, they considered the person who made du’a for them to also be a non-Muslim.

This is how severe these ‘Ulama’ held this issue to be. And who were these people? Bani ‘Ubbayd. They were people who, they took many of the Hudud of Allah, or the prescribed penalties and they had done away with them, and they said we’re not going to implement them anymore, and they invented many laws that they began to implement and so on and so on. So, most of their outward disbelief was because they were decommissioning the Shari’ah, and not implementing the Shari’ah, and bringing laws other than it.

So, if this was something to the point where the Imams of the Maliki madhab at time said, even the one who makes du’a for them to stay healthy and so on, would leave Islam, what would we say about the person who’s not making du’a for them, but the person himself is doing it, and then on top of that, someone who’s not only leaving the Shari’ah of Allah, that he’s worshipping other than Allah. Obviously, each one is a worst step than the other, to the point where it’s impossible that someone could claim any ignorance on it, because it’s such an easy or such an obvious matter.

Another point is if we look at… everyone talks about when they mention the wisdom of Abu Bakr, they often mention a story in which he was disputing with ‘Umar ibn Khattab about the people who had rejected the Zakat at the time of Abu Bakr, and Abu Bakr considered them non-Muslims, and ‘Umar at first, how can you fight them and so on.

So, the whole story is that Abu Hurayrah, he said, “When the Prophet (saws) passed away and Abu Bakr succeeded him and he took the authority over the Prophet (saws), and those from the Arab who disbelieved, ‘Umar said, “How can you fight the people when the Messenger of Allah (saws) said, “I was commanded to fight the people until they say La ilaha ila Allah, and if they say La ilaha ila Allah, or whoever says La ilaha ila Allah then he’s protected from me, his wealth and his blood and his self, except in its right [so the right of the Shahadah], and his reckoning is with Allah.”

So, Abu Bakr said, “By Allah, I will fight everyone or anyone who disputes or who differentiates between the Salat and the Zakat... [so meaning they perform one and they reject or they don’t perform the other], because indeed the Zakat is the right of the wealth and by Allah if they were too refuse to pay on… [there’s different narrations, one that it’s a type of animal and one is that it’s the reigns or the thing you hold the animal with] … that which they used to give to the Messenger (saws), I would fight them for refusing it.”

So, ‘Umar said, “By Allah, it wasn’t except that I saw that Allah had opened Abu Bakr’s heart to the matter or to the fighting except that I knew it was the truth.”

So, the point here is if we look at how the Sahabah fought these people, they fought them the exact same way that they fought the ones who claimed that Musaylamah was a Prophet. And we’ll see that the ones who claimed that Tulayhah al-Asadi was a Prophet. So, they dealt with these people as non-Muslims, despite the fact that they said La ilaha ila Allah, they accepted the Salat, they prayed, many of them accepted that Zakat was wajib to begin with, they just didn’t want to pay it anymore. Some said, because it’s not from Islam. Some said because the Prophet (saws) was like a king, he’s not around anymore, we don’t owe it to him anymore, and the others just refused to pay it for no reason, they didn’t give a reason.

Abu Bakr, and ‘Umar, and ‘Uthman and ‘Ali and all the Sahabah, they didn’t go to them and say, “why aren’t you paying it? Is it because you don’t think it’s from Islam? Is it because you’re cheap?”, they didn’t check what’s the reason. They said this is part of Islam, Allah in many Ayat in the Qu’ran, made Zakat a part of Iman, and a part that’s required for Iman, so they fought them this way. Despite the fact that they claimed to be Muslimin.

And the last story, is a story that I’ll mention that it’s narrated that, the delegation of Bouzaka came from Azad and Ghatfan [so this is from some of the tribes that claimed there was a Prophet after the Prophet (saws), they came to him and said or they were asking for a Sulh, or a truce from Abu Bakr, because this is when Abu Bakr and the Sahabah were fighting them, and it was to the point that the Sahabah were clearly winning and these people were giving up.

So, the narrator says, “He gave them a choice between what he called, a bankrupting war or a humiliating peace.” So, these people are coming and giving up, and Tulayhah al-Asadi, it’s important to know, he was originally from the Sahabah, he was from the Sahabah of the Prophet (saws), after the death of the Prophet (saws), he claimed to be a Prophet as well. Alhamdulilah, later on he came back to Islam, he made tawbah from his claim that he was the Prophet, and he fought alongside the Muslimin, he fought in a war with Khalid ibn Walid, and he made ‘Umrah and so on and so on. So, alhamdulilah in the end, he returned to Islam.

But, if we look at this, so Abu Bakr gave them this choice. So, they said, this bankruptcy, we know what it is, because we’re in the middle of a war, it’s going terribly for them, they’re fighting against the Sahabah of the Messenger (saws), they know what it is, but they say, “what is this humiliating thing that you’re giving us a choice?”

So, Abu Bakr said, “We will take all of your weapons and your riding animals away from you, and we will keep what we took from you as spoils of you, and you will return to us what you took from us.”

And then he continued, “And you will pay the blood-money for all the Muslims that you killed, and your dead will be in the Fire, and you will left as a people who are left to just follow the tails of camels until Allah shows the Khalifah of His Messenger and His muhajirin, a matter that they can give you an excuse for.”

So, meaning that, you’ll just be left, all you can do is work in the desert, you can work as farmers and so on, and you’ll have no weapons or you’ll have no weapons, have no ‘Izzah or no nobility, you’re nothing anymore, you can be Muslimin…until Allah lets his Messenger's (saws) Khalifah see something that your tawbah was real, it wasn’t just that you still believe what you believe and you still do what you do, but you just didn’t want to lose the war. When it becomes known that you were sincere, then you can join the society again.

So, then after this, Abu Bakr took this opinion to the Sahabah. So, what was the reaction? ‘Umar stood and up and he said, “you’ve given your opinion and we’ll advise you with regards to it, as to what you mentioned… [so, he mentioned the first two things, he didn’t have any problem with it]… the first things that you mentioned was good except that you said, they will [meaning the kuffar, the people that are making tawbah] when you have to pay for our dead, and your dead are in the fire, our dead were fighting for La ilaha ila Allah, and they were fighting in a matter for Allah, so their ‘ajr is with Allah, it doesn’t take any blood-money.”

Then the narrator says, “So all of the Sahabah at the time agreed with what ‘Umar said.”

So, all of these matters, we see how the Sahabah dealt with them, in the war they dealt with them as people who had left Islam, despite the fact with whatever they claimed, even after they came to make tawbah, they didn’t say “you’re Muslim”, because of that kufr that was performed, they still dealt with them in such a harsh manner, until it became known that it was very sincere from them. But even the ones that were killed, what did they say? “Your dead, they’re in the Fire”, they didn’t say, “We don’t know, maybe they had an excuse, we can’t say anything”. They said, “Your dead, they’re in the Fire.” And there’s tens of thousands up to hundred thousand of the people, depending on the book of history you pick or read from, that it’s says that this was the number of these people.

So, we see that all of these examples, were people who claimed Islam, performed many of the fundamental acts of Islam, such as Salat and Zakat and so on. Some didn’t pay the Zakat, some claimed that there was a Prophet with the Prophet (saws), some claimed that ‘Ali was Allah, others rejected or they refused to implement the Shari’ah and so on, but despite all of this, we see that the Sahabah and the ‘Ulama’ after them dealt with them as non-Muslims despite their claim.

So, insha’Allah with this, we’ll finish the ninth Shubuha’ or misconception about Tawhid and it’s the second section of the book. So, next the author moves into another section, so we’ll leave that for next week. Wallahu A’lam.

Kashf ash-Shubuhat fit-Tawhid #16 [Transcribed] - By Shaykh Haytham Sayfaddeen

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