What is the creed regarding one who calls for rapprochement between religions?
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Question:
He says: Your Eminence the Shaykh, what is the Muslim's creed regarding what occurs, or what contradicts the consensus of the Muslims, and calls for rapprochement between religions and civilizations and moderation from his point of view?
Answer:
There is a distinction here. The issue of reconciliation with disbelievers in worldly matters, in the interests of this world, reconciliation is permissible with disbelievers. The Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) made a treaty with them; he made a treaty with the Jews when he arrived in al-Madinah and concluded a covenant with them, and he made a treaty with the polytheists at al-Hudaybiyyah. He made a treaty with them, so it is permissible for Muslims to make a treaty with disbelievers if the benefit is for the Muslims and the Muslims are in need of peace with the disbelievers; there is nothing wrong with that.
The second case is reconciliation that means we compromise on our religion and please the disbelievers at the expense of our religion, so that they are pleased with us and give us money, as some people think. This is not permissible at the expense of the religion, never. Our religion is truth and their religion is falsehood; how do we equate truth and falsehood? This is not permissible. How can Islam and disbelief be equated? This is not permissible.
He says: Your Eminence the Shaykh, what is the Muslim's creed regarding what occurs, or what contradicts the consensus of the Muslims, and calls for rapprochement between religions and civilizations and moderation from his point of view?
Answer:
There is a distinction here. The issue of reconciliation with disbelievers in worldly matters, in the interests of this world, reconciliation is permissible with disbelievers. The Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) made a treaty with them; he made a treaty with the Jews when he arrived in al-Madinah and concluded a covenant with them, and he made a treaty with the polytheists at al-Hudaybiyyah. He made a treaty with them, so it is permissible for Muslims to make a treaty with disbelievers if the benefit is for the Muslims and the Muslims are in need of peace with the disbelievers; there is nothing wrong with that.
The second case is reconciliation that means we compromise on our religion and please the disbelievers at the expense of our religion, so that they are pleased with us and give us money, as some people think. This is not permissible at the expense of the religion, never. Our religion is truth and their religion is falsehood; how do we equate truth and falsehood? This is not permissible. How can Islam and disbelief be equated? This is not permissible.
Source
قناة «العلامة الدكتور صالح الفوزان»، ما العقيدة فيمن يدعو إلى التقارب بين الأديان؟ للشيخ الفوزان — youtube.com
The Arabic text is a machine transcription of the audio recording.