| Ahl as Sunnah vs the "Salafi" Movement - The Wahhabi Creed |  |  |  |
| Radd al Salafiyya - Refutations |
| Written by Al-Shaykh Jamil Effendi al-Siqdi al-Zahawi |
3: The Wahhabi Creed
Moreover, since God the Exalted had shut tight the door of prophecy after the Seal of the Prophets, our master Muhammad, on him be God's blessing and peace, there was no way to realize the goal of his desires except to claim that he was a renewer of the faith (mujaddid) and an independent thinker in the formulation of legal rulings (mujtahid). Such an attitude -- or rather the worst and most profound state of moral misguidance and religious disbelief --brought him to the point of declaring every group of Muslims disbelievers and idolaters. For he set out to apply the verses of Qur'an specifically revealed to single out the idolaters of the Arabs to generally include all Muslims who visit the grave of their Prophet, and seek his intercession with their Lord.
In doing this, he cast aside what ran counter to his own invalid claims and the vain desires commanding his ego to work mischief regarding the explicit statements of the Master of all messengers and Imams, the mujtahids of our religion (that is, who have the capacity to exercise independent reasoning in the process of legal discovery). Hence, when he saw a consensus of legal opinion in matters of faith which clashed with his own unwarranted innovations, he rejected it as a matter of principle, asserting: "I do not entertain any opinion of people coming after the Qur'an which contains all that pertains to Islam, the fresh and the dry (cf. 6: 59)." Thus, he failed to heed what the Qur'an itself declared, when it says: "He who follows the path of those other than the Muslims" (4:115) inasmuch as he accepted from Qur'an only what it reveals concerning the idolaters of the Arabs. These verses he interpreted in his own obscure fashion, having the gall to stand before God and facilitate the accomplishment of his own personal political ambitions by means of an unwarranted and unjustified exegesis of His holy text. His method here mostly consisted in applying these verses concerning the idolaters to Muslims and on this basis declaring that they had been disbeliever for the last six hundred years, that one may shed their blood with impunity and confiscate their property and reduce their land, the Abode of Peace, (Dar al-Islam) to a field of war against disbelief (Dar al-Harb).
Yet the Prophet, on him be God's blessings and peace, from what we see in the two canonical collections of sound hadith, Bukhari and Muslim, declared in the narration where the angel Jibril assumes human form to question him about the creed of Islam: "Islam is to testify that there is no god but God and Muhammad is the Messenger of God." Again, in the narration of `Umar he says: "Islam is built upon five articles of faith (the first being): "Testimony that there is no god but God, Muhammad is His servant and Messenger." Then, there is his declaration to the delegation of `Abd al-Qays also cited in Bukhari and Muslim: "I am commanding you to believe in God alone. Do you know what belief in God alone is? It is to testify: "There is no god but God and Muhammad is the Messenger of God."" Also cited is his exhortation: "I have been ordered to fight people until they say: "There is no god but God and that Muhammad is the Messenger of God." Finally, the Prophet says: "It is sufficient that folk say: "There is no god but God."
However, Ibn `Abd al-Wahhab and his followers go counter to all these statements of the Prophet, on him be peace. They make a disbeliever the one who says: "There is no god but God and Muhammad is the Messenger of God" because that person is not like them in respect to their claim that the one who testifies in the aforementioned fashion and yet asks God for something for the sake of a prophet or evokes the name of someone absent or dead or makes a vow to that person it is as if his belief diverges from his testimony. His only aim here is to market goods unsaleable where sound hadiths and correct exegeses of the Qur'an are exchanged. We will explain -- God willing -- the groundlessness of this claim and show its spuriousness to the reader.
It is amazing how Ibn `Abd al-Wahhab misrepresents use of the prophet's name in petitions to God or tawassul under the pretense of monotheism (tawhid) and divine transcendence (tanzih) claiming that use of a prophet's name in this manner constitutes association of a partner with God; yet at the same time there is his outright assertion to the effect that God's mounting His throne is like sitting on it and his affirmation that God has a hand, face and possesses spatial dimension! He says it is possible to point to Him in the sky and claims that He literally descends to the lower heavens so that he gives a body to God who is too exalted in the height of His sublimity beyond what obscurantists proclaim. What happens to Divine transcendence after making God a body so that the lowliest of inanimate creatures share properties in common with their Creator? To what is He, the Exalted, transcendent when He is characterized in so deprecating a fashion and His divinity couched in terms so redolent of ridicule and contempt?
One of Ibn `Abd al-Wahhab's more enormous stupidities is this: When he sees reason going against his claims, he casts aside all modesty and suspends reason giving it no role in his judgment. He endeavors thereby to make people like dumb beasts when it comes to matters of faith. He prohibits reason to enter into religious affairs despite the fact that there is no contradiction between reason and faith. On the contrary, whenever human minds reach their full measure of completeness and perfection, religion's merits and prerogatives with regard to reason become totally manifest. Is there in this age, an age of the mind's progress, anything more abominable than denying reason its proper scope, especially when the cardinal pivot of religion and the capacity to perform its duties is based on the ability to reason? For the obligation to carry out the duties of Islam falls away when mental capacity is absent. God has addressed his servants in many places in the Qur'an: "O you who possess understanding" (cf. 65:10) alerting them to the fact that knowledge of the realities of religion is only a function of those possessed of minds.
Now the time has come for me to give a summation of the vain and empty prattle of the renegade Wahhabi sect which it aspires to issue as a doctrine. Next, I shall discuss it in terms of the research that has been brought in its rebuttal and refute its argument. Their invalid creed consists of a number of articles:
(1) Affirming the face, hand, and spatial direction of the Creator and making Him a body that descends and ascends;
(2) Making principles derived from narration (naql) prior to those derived from reason (`aql);
(3) Denial and rejection of consensus as a principle (asl) of Shari`a legislation;
(4) Similar denial and rejection of analogy (qiyas);
(5) Not permitting copying and emulating the judgments of the Imams who have in Islam the status of those capable of exercising independent reasoning in matters of Shari`a;
(6) Declaring Muslims who contradict them disbelievers;
(7) Prohibition of using the name of the Messenger in petitions to God or the name of someone else among the friends of God and the pious;
(8) Making the visiting of the tombs of prophets and of pious people illicit;
(9) Declaring a Muslim a disbeliever who makes a vow to someone other than God or sacrifices at the grave or final resting place of awliya or the pious.
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