The Shaykh’s review of one of the letters that responded to him and his pointing out of the obligation of “purification and education.”

The questioner : And the letter that contains 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 what you do not know in the future, but when I read it, I did not find anything new in it. And I return to remind you of what I told you just now: I only mentioned the one who criticized the hadith: I told you: Do you know the author? I said: No. This is the case with most students today; merely coming across a letter without knowing whether the author is a son of today, or a son of the month, or a son of the year, or a son of years, or a son of half a century working in this knowledge? They do not know anything; merely reading for a person confuses their thoughts.
Today there is an awakening, yes, but this awakening is accompanied by a lack of education, and by education I mean Islamic education. I have an old word of mine from about twenty years ago regarding the treatment of the Ummah (the Muslim community) that it is based on two pillars:
The first: I call it purification. The other: I call it education.
By purification, I mean what many young people have now become aware of, and it is the cause of what is called the awakening. I mean by purification 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 would find many matters that have entered this field, which is the first foundation of the religion of Islam, and we would find in it things that contradict the Book and the Sunnah. As for the shirk (associating partners with Allah) and idolatries that are still prevalent in many Islamic countries—I think you have some knowledge of that—one of 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 this neglect of the first testimony is accompanied by 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, which necessitates singling him out for following, without anyone else? Just as the first testimony necessitates the oneness of Allah in 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: the testimony of the oneness of Allah, and the testimony of the messengership of our Prophet.
Likewise, part of the purification is purifying the books of tafsir (Qur'anic exegesis) from what is in them—and peace, mercy, and blessings of Allah be upon you—from the Isra'iliyyat (narrations from the People of the Book).—Welcome, how are you? ... If you had completed...—
Also, part of the purification—as I said—is purifying the books of tafsir from the Isra'iliyyat narrations in them, let alone the denounced, weak, and fabricated hadiths. The books of tafsir are heavily loaded with such hadiths and Isra'iliyyat. Likewise, the books of hadith, and the books of spiritual refinement and sermons, contain hundreds, indeed thousands, of weak and fabricated hadiths. All of this falls under the chapter or title: . The secret in this is that when Allah—Mighty and Majestic—sent down 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—Exalted is He: If the Qur'an, by the testimony of the Qur'an itself, is only a healing for people, and his hadith (peace be upon him) 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 healing for people one hundred percent. But afterwards, to the extent that elements that contradict healing—rather, bring disease at that time—enter this healing, the healing will not be the complete healing it was before; it will not be a 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 (mutawatir) as you know. But the problem people have fallen into is interpreting the Qur'an in a deviant way, turning 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 just now—that what is not from it has entered it, contrary to the Qur'an. The Qur'an, as a text, is preserved as He—Mighty and Majestic—said: meaning: the Qur'an . But the hadith was not preserved to the same degree as the preservation of the Qur'an. Rather, the hadith was preserved by the efforts of the imams of Islam and the memorizers 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 the intended meaning of purification, so that the healing is 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, and this type of treatment is entered by something that is not from it, it will not yield its fruit in healing. That is the example of the Qur'anic healing. If something enters it, whether from the aspect of its interpretation or from the aspect of what entered its explanation, namely: the Sunnah of the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him), that is not from it; then it will not—at that time—be a complete and perfect healing.
This education—pardon me—this purification, people have turned to it in the present age. It is a group in the first stage of a person waking up from his sleep. You find a group in its beginning, in its first stages. And therefore you find many people who did not care—previously—about knowledge, did not care about what Allah said, what the Messenger of Allah said, now have a good awareness. Before this, people were like us, Muslims, all of them praying and fasting, they were in heedlessness, they were stagnant, each one of them 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 much more numerous than the four madhahib: 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 education? And who is the educator? If we say that there were and still are educators; they are on the previous methodology, which is education upon this Islam that is not purified.