The Foundation of Islam & its Principle, PART-5.

Insha’Allah this time we’ll start on the second half of the Risalah. The first part of the Risalah was talking about, how we deal with the ‘Ibadah of Allah, and how we deal with the Muslimin, and how our Wilayah is based upon that, and it had more to do with the worship of Allah, and the second half of the Risalah has to do more with Shirk, staying away from Shirk, avoiding the people who commit Shirk, so it’s the second half of that. Insha’Allah we’ll start with this and most likely we’ll finish today, we won’t need two lessons for this one, depending on how long it goes insha’Allah.

So, for this, the first thing we’ll talk about is that it’s the negation so it consists of four requisites. Two of them have to do with Shirk itself and two of them have to do with the people of shirk.

So, the first one is: Abandoning Shirk in ‘Ibadah to Allah and warning from it or warning against it.

So, this has to do with shirk itself and the way we as Muslimin deal with shirk. So, the thing we have to avoid it. So, this is the first point. There’s many evidences in the Qur’an and Sunnah and we know that this is the basis of our Din, avoiding shirk and worshipping Allah. And we know that the first order in the Qur’an if we look at it chronologically if we were to go through the Qur’an, it’s to worship Allah when Allah said,

“Say: I am commanded only to worship Allah and to not commit Shirk with Him, to Him I call and to Him is my return.”’ [13:36]

So, we see that again if we look at the Qur’an chronologically, that the first command in the Qur’an is to worship Allah, and the first forbiddance is from shirk.

This is Allah ordering the Mu’minin, first the Prophet (saws) and then after him, the Mu’minin who follow him to say that: “We are commanded to worship Allah, and to not set up any partners with Him.”
And Allah also said,

“Say: I invoke only my Lord and I associate none as partners along with Him.” [72:20]

And in the hadith from ‘Abdullah ibn Masud he said: “I asked the Messenger of Allah (saws), which is the greatest sin? So, the Prophet (saws) replied: “That you set up a rival or a partner with Allah even though he created you.”

And this hadith is narrated by Bukhari & Muslim.

So here we see when the Prophet (saws) was asked about what is the greatest sin, he mentioned Shirk and in the rest of the hadith, ‘Abdullah ibn Masud asked: “Then what comes after that?”, the Prophet (saws) said: “That you kill your child out of fear that he will take some of your rizq”, then he said “and then what”, and he said: “that you make zina with the wife of your neighbour.”

So, here we see that the Prophet (saws) mentioned these three sins, and he mentioned them in order. So, it gives us an idea that, we would obviously say if someone their kid, and they killed them out of fear of being poor, that the rizq would be taken away, someone would find this to be the most disgusting or most low or pathetic thing that a person could do. But we see here that the Prophet (saws) actually put shirk above this and that it’s a greater sin.

This shows that there’s something wrong with people if they look at someone making Shirk with Allah, as if it’s not a big deal, when at the same time, they would look at someone killing someone else as being a big deal, and we even see this amongst the Ummah. That if they see someone who doesn't pray, who doesn’t give Zakat, never made Hajj, doesn’t fast and he might even swear at Allah, and they’ll think he’s not a very good person, but then if he was a murderer, they would see him to be a way worse person.

But in actuality, it should be the opposite. It doesn’t mean that killing someone isn’t a big deal, obviously it is and the Prophet (saws) mentioned in this hadīth as the second greatest sin, but this should show us that there’s something not right with us if we look at Shirk and we look at someone swearing at Allah, or worshipping other than Allah or fighting against the Din of Islam and we don’t find it as being a very big deal.

We should see it actually worse than the other thing, and everyone would be at a different level with this, depending on how much tarbiyah they do with their self, or how much they try to train themselves as hating Shirk and loving Tawhid. But when you see  someone openly makes Shirk in front of them, and they don’t find it as a big deal or “maybe he doesn’t know”, or “we’re all Muslimin”, and they’ll give more excuses to that and more leniency to that then if someone did something to them personally.

So, this is just something to think about, because obviously this hadith was given for a point and Ibn Mas’ud wanted to know the different levels. So, when we understand this, I think it would help set out priorities straight with regards to how we deal with people and what we think is worse than other actions or which actions we think are worse.

So, we see here that committing shirk is from the greatest sin and we know this with the Anbiya that came before the Prophet (saws) and into the Ummam which was before us, that this was the call they came with when Allah when what they say,
“Say: I have come to you as a plain warner, you worship none except Allah, indeed I fear for you the torment of a painful Day.” [11:25-26]

Allah also mentioned about Prophet Hud when He was talking about him, He said,
“And remember the brother of ‘Ad, when he warned his people in al-Ahkaf (dunes in the desert), and surely they have passed away warners before him and after him saying ‘Do not worship except Allah.’” [46:21]
Here, Allah is mentioning that Hud as well as the Messengers that came before and after him, were sent with the same message, which is “to worship Allah, and not worship anyone except for Him.”

And on this point, I just want to go a little bit sideways here, just to talk about a side-point here, when Allah said, “And remember the brother of 'Ad when we warned his people”. Very recently, and there’s many groups, and people from the callers of bid’ah, and callers against the Sunnah that use this verse and they use many verses like it to say that there’s some sort of tie with the Muslimin and with the Kuffar, and they say that this verse shows it.

So, they’ll say things like there’s three types of brotherhood:
1) Brotherhood in Din (the highest level)
2) Brotherhood based upon blood or relations
3) Brotherhood based upon being humans or humanity.
They’ll say phrases like this, and some of them will phrase it differently and things like this and they’ll say that we know that Hud wasn’t on the same Din as his people so we know that it doesn’t fall into the first, and they’ll say, he’s talking about his people so he’s not talking technically about his blood brothers so it leaves the third category, which is that we’re all in the same brotherhood, the same category in being humans so this shows we should all deal with each other in the same way or have this brotherhood.

This is very, very prominent now and even in this city, I’ve had discussions and lengthy, lengthy emails and arguments with Imams in this city with using this phrase, and it never went anywhere. But just about this, and I was trying to look into this and see is there some sort of basis for this, because if there is a basis then we want to accept it, if this is something that came into Islam, that there is these three categories then obviously, we’ll accept whatever the Din has come with from the Qur’an and Sunnah, and if it's not, at the same time we need to know this isn’t from our Din, and we need to tell people this isn’t from the Din and warn people about the harms that would come from adding these categories or having these ideas.

So, I wanted to understand is this an actual valid thing or not. So, I went through the Qur’an and I found 18 verses that can be used to talk about this, when Allah would mention about each group that was sent them, and their Prophet, he would say “brothers”. So, there’s 18 verses that could be used for this. So I went through the Tafasir that I could find, not all of them, but I went through a fair amount of books of Tafasir. I went through 21 books of Tafsir for these 18 verses, because if I can’t find it in 21 books about 18 verses, then obviously this being made up on the Din. I think it’s unlikely that it’s not in these books and they wouldn’t make mention of it, and I just happen to pick all of the books it’s not found in. Also, I wanted to know what does this actually mean, am I understanding it wrong, am I not understanding it wrong.

So, the books of Tafsir I went through, the first one was “Tafsir Mujahid.” He’s from the companions of Ibn ‘Abbas and he said he read the Qur’an to Ibn ‘Abbas twice, and he would stop him at every verse and ask him about it. And he died in the year 104 Hijri. So, I checked that and the next one I checked was “Jami al-Bayan” by Ibn Jarir, he died in 310, and I checked “Kitab Tafsir al-Qur’an” by Ibn al-Mundhir, and he died in 318. And “Tafsir al-Qur’an al Atheem” by Ibn Abi Hatim ar-Razi and “Ahkam-al-Qur’an” by Al-Jasas who was a Hanafi. And “Tafsir ar-Ragib al-Asfahani” who died in 502, and “Ma’alam al-Tanzil” by al-Baghawi who died in 516, and “Ahkam al-Qur’an” by Ibn al-Arabi al-Maliki who died in 543 and “Za’ad al-Masir fi ‘ilm at-Tafsir” by Ibn al-Jawzi who died in 592, and “Mafatih al-Ghayb” by Fakhr al-Razi who died in 606 and so on and so on.

So, I found books that were books of Tafsir with Isnad. So, it was a book of Tafsir compiled in the same way as of ahadith were. And I checked ones that focused on Fiqh, and I focused on ones that were focused on Tafsir of the Qu’ran with the Qur’an, and ones that were from the time of the Salaf, and ones that were from nowadays. And I didn’t find any mention of this, except for one of the ‘Ulama’ called Az-Zajaj, who was a scholar of language. He mentioned that for some of the verses it meant this and Imam al-Qurtubi and Fakhr al-Razi mentioned that. They didn’t say it’s the correct opinion, they just said “some people say this.”

So, out of all the books for the 18 verses, the only thing I found was this. And I checked, there was another hadith where it's attributed to the Prophet (saws) that he said, “All of the slaves of Allah are brothers”, or “All of the creation is brothers”. So, first of all this is a weak hadith and second of all, it’s not even really usable.

So, if you look, there’s this idea that people try to propagate nowadays and like I said, we even found it in this city, that these types of brotherhood. If someone just said this and left it at that, then that would be one issue and we would say it’s wrong because it’s not supported by the Qur’an or Sunnah. But, the bigger problem with that is that it has an agenda behind it, which is to say that there are different Muslimin and Muslimin are closer to Muslims than the kuffar, but there is this tie with kuffar, that we should love them because they’re our brothers in humanity or that we’re all humans and this type of thing.

So, this is the second problem because it opens up this door to say that, if you’re saying that we should act upon these verses that talk about Wala’ and Bara’, and these Ayat, and these ahadith that talk about Wala’ and Bara’, then you’re going against this brotherhood based upon humanity. So, like I said first of all, it’s not really supported by the Qur’an and the Sunnah.

And secondly, there’s an agenda behind it which is a way to have this lack of Al-Wala’ wal-Bara’ creep into people’s minds as being something that's wrong and something that goes against other verses from the Qur’an. So, I just wanted to make mention of this, and if that ever comes up with any of you, I can give you all the material that I compiled on the topic, just because people might bring this up and you might not know how to respond to it.

So, that’s what I wanted to say on that, but with regards to what does it mean, then what it means is that he was from their people, and we know that if there’s people from a tribe, that generally they are inter-related in some way. We even know nowadays, if you take any of the towns that you guys are from, pretty much everyone is related somehow. Not related like brother and sister, even first cousins, but I guarantee you find anyone, you’re not find that he’s less related than like a fourth cousin. And that’s nowadays when think about how many people are in your towns now, think back then when what would a town have, maybe 100 people, 200 people, everyone’s going to be more related. So, that’s what the vast, vast majority of the scholars of Tafsir would say, is that he’s their brothers in that he’s from their tribe. So, this is what they would say.

So, when you see that first of all, there’s no clear evidence to say that there’s this brotherhood in humanity, and second of all, the evidence that these people are using actually if you look to what the ‘Ulama’ said, they pretty much all said the opposite of it. So, this is an idea if people bring it up and say there’s this type, just to be aware of that, that it’s wrong in and of itself, and it’s even worse because it carries an agenda behind it. I just wanted to make that side-point just like I said because you find it everywhere, so it’s important to be aware of those types of things.

Also Allah said,
“So flee towards Allah, verily I am from Him a plain warner to you, and set up no object of worship with Allah, verily I am from Him a plain warner to you.” [51:50-51]

And Allah said,
“Say: Do you order me to worship other than Allah oh you fools?” [39:64]

Allah also said,
“And indeed it has been revealed to you, as it was revealed to those before you, if you commit Shirk, then indeed all of your deeds will be cancelled, and certainly you will be among the losers. No, so worship Allah Alone, and be amongst the grateful.” [39:65-66]

So, we see here that even the Prophet (saws), Allah mentioned that him, and any of the other Anbiya or the Rasul, if they had fallen into shirk, then their actions would’ve been void or their actions would’ve been cancelled out. So, if this was the case with the Anbiya and the Rasul, and we know that Allah protected them from shirk, but the point is that Allah is saying for the sake of argument, if they did fall into shirk, all their actions would’ve been void. So, what do we say about someone who has less good deeds, and someone who falls into shirk at that point.

So, if one of us were to fall into shirk, then we know we would be in a worst situation then them. So, this idea that people say that he says “La ilaha ila Allah”, so that’s enough, the shirk doesn't matter. Or he doesn’t pray, and he doesn’t fast and he doesn’t follow anything of Islam, but he says Islam is the correct religion.

We know that things can cancel out other things, so even if we say yes it’s good to believe that Islam is the right religion and it’s required, that isn’t sufficient because we know that there’s other things that can cancel out those good deeds. And same thing if people say, he has memorised lots of Qur’an, or he gives lots of Sadaqah or he helps people or he helps his family or he’s good to his family, but then he worships other than Allah, in the end how’s that going to help him? Sure, it’s good to do those things but they’re not going to be accepted and those actions will be cancelled out because of the other thing that shirk.

And the last point, just for this first aspect or the first category is that Allah said,
“Verily, whoever commits Shirk with Allah, then Allah has forbidden Paradise upon him and the Fire will be his abode, and the Zaalimin have no helpers.” [5:72]

So, this is the first requisite which is abandoning shirk, so it has to do with how we ourselves deal with shirk itself and not with the people of shirk.

Sharh Risālah Aslu Dīn Al-Islām wa Qā’idatuhu (The Foundation of Islam and its Principle) - By Shaykh Haytham Sayfaddeen

TO BE CONTINUED INSHA'ALLAH...

TO READ OTHER PARTS, CLICK:

• The Foundation of Islam & its Principle, PART-1
• The Foundation of Islam & its Principle, PART-2
• The Foundation of Islam & its Principle, PART-3
• The Foundation of Islam & its Principle, PART-4
• The Foundation of Islam & its Principle, PART-6 (LAST)