A useful word and a brief piece of advice from the Shaykh regarding the pursuit of beneficial knowledge and the diligence in righteous deeds.

The questioner : As long as we start our talk, let us begin our talk with something that the professor chooses for us. He thinks that many people are ignorant of it, a piece of advice that benefits us in this world and the Hereafter. What do you advise me to do, O our professor?

The Shaykh : We advise, in a brief and concise word, that we seek beneficial knowledge accompanied by righteous deeds; because salvation is not achieved except through these two conditions: beneficial knowledge and righteous deeds.
Righteous deeds are self-evident to everyone, so they do not need explanation except perhaps from some aspects and angles. As for beneficial knowledge, this is the matter that is hidden from many people; because knowledge is what is derived from the Book of Allah and the Hadith of the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him), relying on what our righteous predecessors were upon; because they received the Shari'ah, the Book and the Sunnah, fresh and new, as it was spoken by him (peace and blessings be upon him), without addition or subtraction in terms of narration, and without misunderstanding of the text from the Qur'an and the Sunnah. For this reason, it is part of our call, which we constantly and eternally revolve around, that we call to acting upon the Book and the Sunnah upon the methodology of the righteous predecessors. Why do we say = -- Welcome ... -- = we say upon the methodology of the righteous predecessors? To repel what has befallen the Book and the Sunnah in terms of deviation in their understanding. And due to this deviation, many Islamic sects were found, as Islamic history testifies to this, and as the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him) foretold in the authentic hadith in which he said: . They said: Who are they, O Messenger of Allah? He said: . Therefore, the scholars agreed to name this sect, out of the seventy-three sects, the saved sect. So the saved sect, first of all, is only one, with no second to it. Then, it is one of the seventy-three sects: seventy-two sects in the Fire and one in Paradise. Today, we live amidst old and new sects and many parties. Some of the old sects have had their names disappear, but their effects remain. So the Mu'tazili logic and the Mu'tazili school are hardly mentioned in these days, but it has evolved and sometimes appears under the names of Islamic sects.

Another questioner: Peace be upon you.

The Shaykh : And upon you be peace.
Islamic sects and Islamic schools that are considered and recognized by the majority of Muslims, and sometimes under modern opinions, but they are connected by a close cause to those old Mu'tazili opinions. As for the first type I referred to earlier, which is under names recognized by Muslims, for example, the Asha'irah and the Maturidiyyah. The Islamic world today, if we exclude the sects known for their deviation from the Shari'ah, such as the Shi'ah, for example, and the Zaydiyyah and the Khawarij, and we limit our talk to those who are called or call themselves the people of the Sunnah and the community; then the people of the Sunnah and the community today are three schools in terms of creed, and four schools in terms of jurisprudence. As for the first three schools, they are the Maturidiyyah, the Asha'irah, and the people of the Hadith. These are three sects that relate only to creed among the people of the Sunnah and the community. As for the four schools, they are known to everyone in jurisprudence: the Hanafi, the Maliki, the Shafi'i, and the Hanbali.
If we return to the first three schools, the Maturidiyyah and the Asha'irah, we find in these two schools a great deal of what is from the schools, opinions, and ideas of the Mu'tazilah. And yet, they exist and are disseminated in the Ash'ari school and the Maturidi school. The most important thing related to what I am saying is that something from the Mu'tazilah exists in the two mentioned schools, the Maturidi and the Ash'ari. The most important thing that can be mentioned now is a principle of the principles and a rule of the rules; it is that an authentic hadith does not establish a creed. This is the opinion of the Mu'tazilah, but the Asha'irah and the Maturidiyyah adopt this opinion as a rule and principle. The second thing is that the Mu'tazilah are known to the people of the Sunnah truly that they interpret the verses of attributes and the hadiths of attributes. Interpretation is the brother of denial of the divine attributes, and the intended meaning of denial of the divine attributes is the denial of the thing, the denial of the reality. So when there is a verse or there is an authentic Prophetic hadith with a clear and explicit indication, they nullify this indication and bring a meaning that is not the first thing that comes to mind for that Qur'anic text or Prophetic hadith. This means that they did not follow the Book or the Sunnah, but we cannot say: they did not follow the Book and the Sunnah by denying them, but rather by turning away from them and departing from their explicit indication under the name of interpretation. And for that reason I said: interpretation is the brother of denial of the divine attributes.
We give an ordinary example. If an Arab man says: "The king has come," what comes to the mind of the listeners to his speech is that he means: "The king's servant has come." He said: "The king has come," so the listeners do not understand from his speech that he means: "The king's servant has come," nor do they understand from it that the king's minister has come. So if an Arab man spoke with this Arabic word, with this Arabic sentence, "The king has come," and one of the listeners said: he means the king's servant; this person has nullified the speech of this speaker. So what do you think if the speech that is nullified is the speech of the Lord (Blessed and Exalted is He)?!
So the Mu'tazilah come, and the Maturidiyyah and the Asha'irah follow them in that, and they interpret some of the Qur'anic verses and the Prophetic hadiths with such interpretation, which we rightly said is the brother of denial of the divine attributes. In the noble verse: , your Lord has come, without likening Allah to creation, just as we made earlier "the king has come"; no, the king did not come, who was it? The king's servant, the king's minister. There is a difference between the servant and the minister, of course. Nevertheless, if it is interpreted as the king's minister, it is null and invalid, and if it is interpreted as the king's servant, it is more null. Ah, so their saying in interpreting the saying of our Lord (Mighty and Majestic): , , meaning: the command of your Lord, or a creation from the creation of your Lord, or many other interpretations. As for the Lord, He does not come and go. And where did this problem come to them? Or where did this denial of the divine attributes come to them? From analogizing the Creator to the created, from analogizing the unseen to the seen. They say: it is not permissible to describe Allah with movement. We do not describe Allah with movement; because He was not described with that; neither did He describe Himself with that, nor did His Prophet describe Him with that. But He described Himself as having come; meaning: on the Day of Resurrection. So we say: He has come, and we do not say that He has come means He moved. They refuse to believe in the explicit Qur'an.
Likewise, for example, regarding this meaning, there is the well-known and famous hadith, which is, in our view, a mass-transmitted report (mutawatir) due to the multitude of its authentic chains: . The true people of the Sunnah, who are the people of the hadith, believe in the previously mentioned verse according to its apparent meaning: "Your Lord has come," "Your Lord has come," "Our Lord descends." As for the Mu'tazilah, and the Asha'irah who followed them in some of what they followed them upon: No, our Lord does not descend! Just as they said: He does not come; they also said: He does not descend! So what is the meaning of ? That is: His mercy. This is a figurative interpretation (ta'wil). This ta'wil is denial of the divine attributes (ta'til). This denial necessitates the rejection of established legal realities related to the divine attributes. When our Lord (Mighty and Majestic) describes Himself in His Book or on the tongue of His Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him), it is only to make His servants know Him (Blessed and Exalted is He); because He is absent from us, and we cannot see Him except on the Day of Resurrection, if Allah wills. So when we come to the verses of attributes and the hadiths of attributes and we assign to them meanings other than the clear, apparent meanings from the texts of the Qur'an or the hadith, that means we have denied these divine attributes. "Has your Lord not come!" "Our Lord does not descend." Glory to Allah! If there were a text stating that He does not come and does not descend, we would believe it, but the texts are to the contrary. So how do we describe our Lord with what He has not described Himself with, and purify Him from what He has described Himself with? This is ta'til, and this is what, as we said, some of the Sunni schools of thought, such as the Maturidiyyah and the Asha'irah, have fallen into. For this reason, we said: We call for following the Book and the methodology of the righteous Salaf, so that we do not fall into such deviations that the Mu'tazilah initiated, and then many of those who claim affiliation with the people of the Sunnah and the community followed them in.
The people of the Sunnah and the community today, in the custom of the present age, in al-Azhar al-Sharif and the Islamic universities, and so on, are: the people of the hadith, the Maturidiyyah, and the Asha'irah. Well; these are three schools of thought in creed. How can there be three schools of thought in creed regarding the unseen matters? They say: Their disagreement is a mercy. It could have been that this was said regarding rulings: their disagreement is a mercy in rulings; because there is ease in it. Just as some of the ignorant say that on the Day of Resurrection, the four imams will stand at the beginning of the Sirat, as if they are the ones who will account for the people. A man comes, for example, a Hanafi in school, who prayed a "messed up" prayer, but it is valid in another school. The second imam says to him: Come from here, your prayer is valid according to my school! And so on. This is the clear misguidance!
So I said: It can be said that disagreement in the branches contains ease, and they built upon this the superstition we mentioned regarding the Sirat. Nevertheless, disagreement is not a mercy even in the branches; so what about...
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...in some of the legal rulings, there may be two aspects; meaning, as the Shaykh al-Islam Ibn Taymiyyah (may Allah have mercy on him) expresses, he says...
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...for the greatness of His right, it is more worthy, stronger, and more obligatory, . I say that this man who wants to lead his family in prayer on cold days, we say: it is permissible for him to do so if it is not his custom to do so on days other than cold days, and he goes out to the mosque as we said at the beginning of the discussion. Is it clear to you now?
Please proceed.