The Shaykh reviewing one of the letters sent to him and alerting him to the obligation of purification and upbringing.

The questioner : And the letter in which there is a response... a response to it.

The Shaykh : I was not aware of the letter until I could respond to it. On this trip, I came across a letter, and Allah will create in the future what you do not know. But when I read it, I did not find anything new in it. I return to remind you of what I told you earlier. I only mentioned the one who criticized the hadith . I told you: Do you know the author? I said: No. This is the state of most students today. Merely coming across a letter while they do not know him and do not attribute anything about the author—whether he is a son of today, a son of the month, a son of the year, a son of years, or a son of half a century working in this knowledge—they know nothing. They merely read for a person whose ideas are confused. Today there is an awakening, yes, but this awakening is accompanied by a lack of upbringing. By upbringing, I mean Islamic upbringing. I have an old word of mine from twenty years ago regarding the treatment of the Ummah (the Muslim community) that it is based on two pillars. The first I call purification, and the other upbringing. By purification, I mean what many young people have now noticed, and it is the cause of what is called the awakening. By purification, I mean the attempt to return to Islam purified from everything that has entered it. If we look at the beliefs in tawhid (the oneness of Allah), we will find many matters that have entered this field, which is the first foundation of the religion of Islam. We will find in it things that contradict the Book and the Sunnah. As for the shirk (associating partners with Allah) and idolatries that are still widespread in many Islamic countries, I think you have some knowledge of that. Among the necessities of this type of foreign element entering Islam is the neglect of the two testimonies: the testimony that there is no god but Allah, which requires and necessitates the sincerity of worship and supplication to Allah alone, with no partner. The majority of worshippers in most Islamic countries have neglected this. They call upon other than Allah, seek aid from other than Allah, and seek nearness to Allah through the servants of Allah. All of this is a foreign element in Islam. And associated with this neglect of the first testimony is the neglect of the other testimony: that Muhammad is the Messenger of Allah. Where is the belief of the Muslim? Where is the belief of the Muslim, sincerely from his heart, that Muhammad is the Messenger of Allah? It necessitates singling him out by following him alone, just as the first testimony necessitates the oneness of Allah in His worship, the other testimony necessitates singling out the Messenger in following him. But today, most Muslims do not follow the Messenger of Allah; rather, they have no knowledge of what the Messenger of Allah was upon. Instead, each one of them follows either a shaykh (scholar) in fiqh (Islamic jurisprudence) or a shaykh in the path of conduct, as they claim, meaning Sufism. All of this is a deviation from the correct belief. And it is necessary to purify this belief from what relates to this aspect of the testimony to Allah with His oneness and to His Prophet with His messengership. Also, among the purification is the purification of books of tafsir (Qur'anic exegesis) from what is in them of Isra'iliyyat (Jewish and Christian traditions). - Welcome, how are you? - ... Also, among the purification, as I said, is the purification of books of tafsir from what is in them of Isra'iliyyat narratives, let alone the denounced, weak, and fabricated hadiths. Books of tafsir are heavily loaded with such hadiths and Isra'iliyyat. Likewise, books of hadith and books of softening hearts and sermons contain hundreds, indeed thousands, of weak and fabricated hadiths. All of this falls under the heading or title of purification. The secret of this is that when Allah the Exalted revealed the Qur'an as a healing for what is in the breasts, and the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him) took charge of explaining it to the people by a clear command from the Lord of people, which is His saying: If the Qur'an, by the testimony of the Qur'an itself, is a healing for people, and his (peace and blessings be upon him) hadith is an explanation of this healing, then if something that is not from it enters this healing, whether in the Qur'an or the Sunnah, there is no doubt that the healing at that time will not yield its result as it was when the Qur'an was as it was revealed and the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him) was explaining it to the people directly. At that time, the Qur'an was a hundred percent healing for people. But afterwards, regarding what enters this healing of elements that contradict the healing and even bring disease, the healing that was formerly complete healing will not be complete healing afterwards. Therefore, it was necessary to purify what relates to this healing. As for what relates to the Qur'an, it is protected and established by mass transmission, as you know. But the problem people have fallen into is in interpreting the Qur'an in a deviant interpretation that turns it away from the explanation, away from the hadith of the Messenger (peace and blessings be upon him). As for what relates to the Sunnah, you have learned, and I mentioned earlier that what is not from it has entered it, contrary to the Qur'an. The Qur'an, as a text, is preserved, as the Exalted said: meaning the Qur'an But the hadith was not preserved to the same degree of preservation as the Qur'an. Rather, the hadith was preserved by the efforts of the imams of Islam and the preservers of the Prophetic hadith. But who knows what the scholars of hadith mentioned regarding distinguishing the authentic from the weak? Only a few people, a very rare few. Therefore, when I say that it is necessary today to carry out purification, this is a brief detail of what is intended by purification, so that the healing may be an effective healing as it was before. Because you know that if a skilled doctor prescribes a prescription for a patient containing a specific type of treatment, this type of treatment, if something that is not from it enters it, will not yield its fruit in healing. That is the example of the Qur'anic healing. If something enters it, whether in terms of its interpretation or what has entered its explanation, meaning the Sunnah of the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him), that is not from it, then its healing at that time will not be a complete, full healing. This upbringing, excuse me, this purification, people have turned to it in the present age. It is a group in the first stage, in the first thing a person finds when he wakes up from his sleep. You find a group in its first stage, its first phases. And therefore you find many people who did not care about knowledge before, who did not care about what Allah said or what the Messenger of Allah said, now have a good awareness. Before this, people were like us, all Muslims, all praying and fasting, but they were in heedlessness. They were stagnant, each one following a specific madhhab (school of jurisprudence). This one is Hanafi, this one is Maliki, this one is Shafi'i, this one is Hanbali. Add to that paths that are much more numerous than the four madhhabs. This one is Qadiri, this one is Naqshbandi, this one is Bada'i, this one is Tijani, and count as many paths as you wish. Now this awakening has begun with the necessity of returning to the Book and the Sunnah. But where is the upbringing? And who is the educator? If we say that there were and still are educators, they are on the previous methodology, which is upbringing on this Islam that is not purified.