| Ahl as Sunnah vs the "Salafi" Movement - Their Condemnation of Nida' (Calling Out) |  |  |  |
| Radd al Salafiyya - Refutations |
| Written by Al-Shaykh Jamil Effendi al-Siqdi al-Zahawi |
Their Condemnation of Nida' (Calling Out)
As for the invocations of common Muslim people in Arabic like: "O `Abd al-Qadir Gilani look at me (Ya `Abd al-Qadir adrikni)!" and "O Ahmad al-Badawi give us support (Ya Badawi madad)!" they belong to the figurative language of the mind just as the application of someone who says to his food: "Satisfy me!" or to his water: "Quench my thirst!" or to his medicine: "Heal me!" The food does not satisfy, nor does the water quench the thirst, nor the medicine heal. But the One who is the real Satisfier of our hunger, the Quencher of our thirst and the Healer of our ills is God alone. The food, the water, the medicine are only the proximate or secondary causes which custom has established on the surface of things by our mind's regular association of them with certain concomitant events.
The majority of the Muslim community agree on the permissibility of imploring God for the sake of the Prophet, the Companions, and the pious. From many of the Companions, the ulama of the Pious Ancestors, and those in succeeding generations, the meeting together of a majority on what is forbidden and idolatrous is not allowable because of the Prophet's sound hadith which some consider mutawatirft1: "My community will not come together on an error"ft1 and because God said: "You are the best community of mankind which has been produced" (3:110). Then how could all of them or the majority of them come together on what is erroneous?
One of the evidences permitting the seeking of help is what Bukhari has related in a sound hadith from Ibn `Abbas that the Prophet mentioned in the story of Hajar, the mother of Isma`il: when thirst overtook her and her son, she began to run in search for water, then she heard a voice yet saw no one and she said: "If there be help (ghawth) with you, then help us (aghith)."ft1 If seeking aid of other than God was shirk then why did she seek aid? Why did the Prophet mention it to his Companions and not reject it? And why did the Companions after him transmit it and the narrators of hadith mention it?
Bukhari also relates in the Hadith of Intercessionft1 that people, while they are in the horrors in the Day of Resurrection, ask help of Adam, then of Noah, then of Abraham, then of Moses, then of Jesus, and all of them will give an excuse, and Jesus will say: "Go to Muhammad." Then they will go to Muhammad and then he will say: "I will do it." If seeking aid of a creature was forbidden then the Prophet would have not mentioned to the Companions. The ones who object to this give the answer that this is the Day of Resurrection when the Prophet has power. One responds with the refutation that in their worldly life they have no power except as a secondary cause: likewise after death, the living in their graves and beyond are allowed to be secondary causes only.
Al-Tabarani has related from `Utba Ibn Ghazwan from the Prophet that he said: "If one of you loses his way with respect to anything whatsoever or wishes help when he is in a land in which he has no friend let him say: O servants of God help me (ya `ibad Allah a`inuni)! for God has servants whom he does not see."ft1
It is not said that all that is meant by the "servants of God" in the hadith cited above are only angels, or Muslims among the jinn, or men of the realm of the invisible: for all of these are living.ft1 Hence, the hadith would not give evidence for asking aid from the dead, but this is not the case. We mention this because there is nothing explicit in the hadith whereby what is meant by "servants of God" are the categories we mentioned above and nothing else. Yet even if we were to concede this, the hadith would still be a proof against the Wahhabis from another standpoint, and that is the calling on someone invisible. The Wahhabis no more allow it than the calling on the dead.ft1
Furthermore, their contestation for some of the narrators of this hadith is pointless. It was narrated through a variety of paths of transmission, one of which supports the other. Thus, al-Hakim related it in his book of sound hadith as well as Abu `Uwana and al-Bazzar with a sound chain of transmission from the Prophet in this form: "If the mount of one of you runs loose in a desert land, let him call: O servants of God, restrain my beast! (ya `ibad Allah ahbisu)." Shaykh al-Islam Ibn Taymiyya has mentioned this hadith in his book al-Kalim al-Tayyib, also Ibn Qayyim in his own al-Kalim al-Tayyib, Nawawi in his Adhkar, al-Jazari in Al-Hisn al-Hasin, and other transmitters of hadith whose number is too large to count. The latter wording is from the narrative of Ibn Mas`ud whose chain of transmission is continuous back to the Prophet. The narration of Ibn Mas`ud whose chain is interrupted is: "Let him call: O servants of God, help me (a`inuni ya `ibad Allah)."ft1
There is also transmitted on the authority of `Abd Allah Ibn al-Imam Ahmad Ibn Hanbal that he said: "I heard my father say: "I had made Hajj five times and once I got lost on the way. I was walking and I began to say: O servants of God, show us the way! I continued to say this until I got on the right way."ft1
One of the Wahhabis' pretexts in declaring disbeliever anyone who asks for help or calls on an absent prophet or saint who has died is that the call of people who beseech help from an absent prophet or saint might be in numerous places at one and the same time, and the number of the callers exceedingly large, mounting to hundreds of thousands. Yet and still, they claim, the ones asking for help believe that the one who is called upon is present at that very moment -- not to mention their view that it is disbelief and shirk because of attributing to the person called upon for help the characteristics of God, since they are impossible for the ordinary mind to conceive when attributed to a human being. For it is obvious that one body cannot be existent in numerous places at one time.
The answer is that Muslims do not believe that the person called upon is present in person at the time he is called in a number of places. That counts as disbelief. Besides, omnipresence of this order is impossible. What the callers believe is that the baraka, that is, the blessing or grace of the one called, is present in those places in a subtle fashion by God's act of creation and motivated by His mercy for the person asking for help out of respect for the one whom he calls on. That is not impossible, for the mercy of God is wide and without limit.
Then, when the Wahhabis attribute to Muslims this belief (omnipresence in person) of which they are completely innocent, they apply to it the criterion of invalidity which the jurists apply in the conditions of marriage if, as they note, a man marries a woman "by witness of God and his Messenger": the marriage contract is invalid. The Wahhabis then claim: if the Prophet knows of the call of someone who is asking for help when he calls out to him from afar, then he would be the Knower of the invisible and the contract of marriage which the jurists say is invalid would be sound.
The answer is that Muslims just as they do not believe the Prophet or a saint asked for help is present when he is called; likewise they do not attribute knowledge of the invisible to anyone except God, the Exalted. As for the absence of the validity of a marriage contract by witness of God and His Messenger, it is because Islamic Law makes the eye-witness testimony a condition of marriage and acts like it to preserve the marriage rights; since disputes may arise between the partners to the marriage which may eventually come before judges. Then it will be impossible for one or the other of the disputing parties to establish his claim by the witness of God and His Messenger. For suppose that God -- who transcends what the obscurantists say -- is indeed a body who comes down to the lower heaven as the Wahhabis claim: then we would say it would be a common phenomenon for him to descend to the courtroom so that His testimony before it might be produced to decisively settle the dispute of the two contending parties!
You know that the Wahhabis declare one who calls on other than God a disbeliever; for example, one who says "O Messenger of God" (ya rasulallah) and so forth. Yet if we go to look we see that this purported disbelief of one who says "O Messenger of God!" for example, implies two suppositions: either he believes that the individual whom he calls is himself present at the time of his call, hears his call, accomplishes his need because of it and saves him from the difficulty for which he called him in the first place; or he believes that the one whom he calls hears by God's hearing, purely through God's own power, and that God and no one else accomplished his need in virtue of the baraka of the one on whom he calls; and, moreover, that it is God who delivers him from the difficulty which he is in, for the honor of that Prophet.
Either supposition shows some fault of thinking on the part of the Wahhabi who claims that the caller is a disbeliever. As for the first, anyone who believes that someone else other than God accomplishes his need and saves him from difficulty is a disbeliever whether he calls out or never calls out anyone and it is incorrect to make his disbelief depend on the circumstance of calling out. You know that no Muslim believes this doctrine. As for the second supposition, one whose heart is the seat of faithft1 and who believes that the one who accomplishes needs and saves from perils is God alone, not someone else: it is not allowed that such a person be called an unbeliever solely on the basis of calling out to someone absent while believing that God creates the hearing in him.
The Wahhabis have shown ignorance in saying, at this juncture of the argument, that Islamic Law judges on the basis of externals (al-hukm bi al-zahir), and that the external sense of calling upon someone other than God is that the caller believes in that other as having all-encompassing knowledge of the unseen and possessing an effective power to accomplish needs and complete disposal over the universe! Yet, they say, complete knowledge of the unseen and effective power to accomplish the needs of creatures are characteristics peculiar to the Creator: therefore, they conclude, belief that someone other than God is characterized in this way automatically constitutes ascribing a partner to God and disbelief.
The answer is that the external interpretation of the frame of mind of a person who supplicates someone other than God signifies only that the caller has called other than God. It does not signify that he believes that the one he calls has power to carry out one's needs nor any of the other attributes the Wahhabis mention.
Belief is an inward matter of which certain external phenomena might give indications. The act of calling is not one of them. Say to the Wahhabis who deem the external meaning of calling to be an indication of idolatry and disbelief: Why is it most of you don't consider what belongs to the Muslim whom you call a disbeliever from the side of his external behavior manifest in acts of prayer, fasting, zakat, and the other pillars of the Faith? Why do you not look at these as indicators of his faith and sound belief? What is more amazing, that same Muslim who engages in supplication, clearly articulates (by keeping the pillars) his disbelief in the own power of the one he calls to and in anything that goes with it. Yet despite this, you use this single external act of his as an indicator of that very belief which he has denied of himself. Would that I knew by what legal rule you can prove from the external significance of a man's call (nida') that his belief is deviant in the face of all the clear indications he gives you that his belief is sound.ft1
No comments:
Post a Comment