The ruling on describing another mosque as a mosque of harm and cursing its people

The questioner : Our Shaykh, may Allah preserve you, we say after praising Allah the Exalted and sending blessings and peace upon His Messenger, his family, and all his Companions. We received a question from our brothers in America, and specifically from our honorable brother, Dr. Muhammad al-Jibali, the president of the Quran and Sunnah Association. He says: Honorable Shaykh Muhammad Nasir al-Din al-Albani, may Allah preserve him, peace be upon you, and Allah’s mercy and blessings. After that, is it permissible for the imam of one of the mosques in America to describe another mosque, which was established after his mosque and in the same city, as a mosque of harm? Is it permissible for him to claim that prayer is forbidden in that second mosque, and to announce to the people that those who established the second mosque are hypocrites? Is it permissible for him to curse the people of the second mosque, asking Allah to curse them? It is known that the first mosque is full during the Friday prayer, to the extent that some of the worshippers pray on the sidewalk. We also hope, Honorable Shaykh, that you will offer advice to this imam and to those who support his actions, and we also ask that you offer advice to the people of the second mosque and guide them on how to deal with this imam who harms them. In fact, this imam, who is the imam of the first mosque, boycotts those who go to the other mosque and orders his followers to oppose them, and he declares his disavowal of anyone who does not respond to him. Is the description as a “mosque of harm” a religious, unseen description, or is it otherwise? May Allah reward you with good, and peace be upon you, and Allah’s mercy and blessings. This is the text of the letter. It is not clear.

The Shaykh : May I speak. Praise is to Allah; we praise Him, seek His help, and seek His forgiveness. We seek refuge in Allah from the evil of our souls and the badness of our deeds. Whoever Allah guides has no one to misguide, and whoever He misguides has no one to guide. As for what follows, the best of speech is the speech of Allah, and the best of guidance is the guidance of Muhammad (peace and blessings be upon him) and his family, and the worst of matters are their innovations, every innovation is a misguidance, every misguidance is in the Fire. In response to what came in the question I heard just now. It is known that we are far from the reality of this issue in those countries, which are distant from our lands in both substance and meaning. However, it is established among the scholars that a fatwa is based on the extent of the text. Since I pointed out just now our distance from that problem existing between the people of the two mosques mentioned just now, we have no choice but to answer based on what we heard read just now. So I say, and success is from Allah Blessed and Exalted is He. First, this imam. In my opinion.
He is not an imam in the broad scholarly sense, meaning he is not a scholar of the Book and the Sunnah, meaning he does not have jurisprudence of the Book and the Sunnah, jurisprudence of the Book and the Sunnah. I do not think he is a scholar of any of that at all, given the exaggeration mentioned in the question in accusing the people of the other mosque and his exaggeration in warning those who pray there and the others who pray with him, and he orders them to boycott the people of the first mosque. I do not think he has any of the jurisprudence mentioned just now. How so, when among the etiquettes established in the Sunnah, specifically regarding an imam who leads a group of the Ummah, I mean by that the hadith of Mu'adh ibn Jabal (may Allah be pleased with him), whose story with that Ansari you know, who followed Mu'adh one night in the 'Isha' prayer. When Mu'adh began reciting Surat al-Baqarah, the Ansari cut off the prayer behind him and prayed in a corner of the mosque alone. When Mu'adh (may Allah be pleased with him) finished the prayer, he was informed of the incident and began to speak ill of him. When it reached him, “And upon you be peace, and Allah’s mercy and blessings.” When the Ansari heard Mu'adh ibn Jabal speaking ill of him, he complained to the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him and his family). So he sent for him, saying: The Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him and his family) sent for Mu'adh ibn Jabal. And he said to him, and here is the point: Are you a hypocrite, O Mu'adh? Are you a hypocrite, O Mu'adh? Are you a hypocrite, O Mu'adh? It is sufficient for you to recite “By the sun and its morning brightness,” “The night when it covers,” and similar surahs. When one of you leads, let him shorten the prayer, for behind him is the sick person, the old man, and the one in need. The hadith ends. And the point of it is that the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) (peace and blessings be upon him) advised to be gentle with those who pray behind him. And many, very many hadiths came in this regard, ordering the Muslim to be gentle, to be kind, even with the non-Muslim. And the story of Aisha (may Allah be pleased with her) with that Jew who, when he entered upon the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) and greeted him with the corrupted expression, which implies that he offered the Islamic greeting, whereas he actually offered the greeting of the enemy of Islam, saying “As-sam 'alaykum,” mumbled it and obscured it between the salam and the sam. So the Messenger (peace be upon him) noticed it, as did his wife Aisha, who was behind the curtain.
As for the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him), he was gentle. And as Allah the Exalted said in the Noble Qur'an: , and therefore he did not go beyond returning that Jew's greeting by saying, "And upon you." As for Aisha, who was behind the curtain, she nearly split in two from her anger and jealousy toward her husband, when he said, "And upon you be the curse, the poison, and the wrath, brothers of the apes and the pigs." The man sat with the Messenger for as long as he sat, and when he left, he (peace be upon him) said: , meaning that the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him), as also came from Aisha when she was asked about his (peace be upon him) character, said, "His character was the Qur'an." So he was as Allah Mighty and Majestic described him in the well-known verse: . And from this character is standing by such as Allah the Exalted's saying: . When he said, "The poison," the answer was, "And upon you." As for the curse and the wrath, brothers of the apes and the pigs, this is an addition to the reciprocal response in kind. Therefore, he (peace be upon him) admonished her after drawing her attention to the fact that what she said had not been hidden from him, and that he had answered her within the limits of moderation. He said to her, "O Aisha." And here is the point regarding a branch of what came in the question: . The Prophet's (peace and blessings be upon him) discipline and guidance of the Mother of the Believers was with whom? With a man from the most stubborn, disbelieving, and fierce. So what about us, the Muslims, when hardly any of us hears of a mistake by some Muslim but begins to insult, curse, and invoke curses? And the Messenger (peace be upon him) rejected that from Aisha regarding the cursed ones by the explicit text of the Noble Qur'an, namely the Jews. So all the more so, it is obligatory for this imam, the imam of the first mosque, to be gentle with those who built the other mosque, and to reflect. And this is what appears to me from what came in the question regarding Allah the Exalted's saying mentioned in the Noble Qur'an: and lying in wait .
The masjid al-darar (mosque of harm) mentioned in the Qur'an does not become a second mosque of harm after that first mosque unless the meaning of harm described in this verse is realized, which is dividing the Muslim community and waging war against Allah, meaning the Shari'ah of Allah and what the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him) brought. Now, regarding this first mosque, it is reported that it becomes crowded with worshippers on Friday, and due to the narrowness of the mosque, some of them pray on the sidewalk. So, regarding this other mosque, we understand from a distance that it was built out of necessity, and we understand this necessity from the description mentioned earlier of the first mosque, which is that it becomes crowded with worshippers on Friday so that some of them pray on the sidewalk. Secondly, it came in the details of the question that there was no other mosque in that city except the first one. So, if there is another mosque in a city—Allah knows best what its area is? What its population is?—but I understand from the use of the word "city" and the disregard for the word "village," which at least in our era has a specific connotation, even though the Qur'anic term "village" is used in a broader and more general sense, there is absolutely no objection to building another mosque besides the first one, as long as there is only this mosque in this city. Perhaps the imam of the first mosque is influenced by some ideas and jurisprudential opinions recorded in some of the Islamic schools of jurisprudence, which state that it is not permissible to pray, specifically that the Friday prayer is not permissible except in the congregational mosque, meaning in the single mosque. We say that there is no doubt that the default in the Shari'ah is this, namely that there should be one congregational mosque in the town that accommodates all the worshippers in that village or city. This was the practice, because we know for certain that the Friday prayer in the time of the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) was not held except in his mosque (peace and blessings be upon him). Therefore, the people of the highlands of Madinah, meaning the small villages that were around Madinah at that time, would come to him. This confirms that the default is that there should be one congregational mosque in a single town. This was the observation of some scholars and some of the imams of the schools of jurisprudence mentioned earlier, when they said that the Friday prayer is not valid except in the single mosque, and they based a ruling on this: if the Friday prayer is performed in multiple places in the same town, the valid prayer is the one that preceded the other prayers by the takbir of entering the prayer.