A word by Shaykh 'Umar al-Ashqar in the presence of the Shaykh.

The Shaykh: Now we make room for our brother, Professor " 'Umar al-Ashqar," from our Salafi brothers who visited us from Kuwait, especially since this is an opportunity, so we hope he will speak in a way that benefits his brothers, if Allah wills - Blessed and Exalted is He - .
'Umar al-Ashqar: In the name of Allah, and prayers upon the Messenger of Allah, and upon his family and all his Companions ... .
I would not have wanted to speak if it were not for ... the Shaykh ... I did not want to speak, I only came to benefit, but I ask Allah - Glorified and Exalted is He - to guide me in what I say, and to benefit us all, and He is the best to be asked - Glorified and Exalted is He - .
I want to expand the issue that the noble Shaykh spoke about so that it becomes a more comprehensive and broader rule. What do we want from ourselves? And what do we want from others? Allah - Glorified and Exalted is He - clarified this issue clearly in His Book that He created the creation to worship Him. So Allah - Glorified and Exalted is He - when He created man, He wanted this man to be of a specific character, and in a specific manner in his belief, in his thought, in his behavior and work, in his speech, in everything. People want from people, people of different tastes and beliefs, ancient and modern, strive to ... people to make specific choices in a specific manner and on a specific path, and Allah - Glorified and Exalted is He - wants from us to ... ourselves and strive to shape others in the way Allah - Glorified and Exalted is He - willed. So the sound human being, and the human being that Allah - Glorified and Exalted is He - wants; any human being who is not raised in the manner that Allah - Mighty and Majestic - wills is without a doubt a distorted human being, and not a sound human being.
Allah - Glorified and Exalted is He - sent messengers whom He raised under His direct care, and He made them by His revelation, and these messengers and the followers of the messengers, since ... Allah - Glorified and Exalted is He - ... this distinguished group in everything. We want in these times, and we are touching the fundamentals and the branches, we want to be like those whom Allah - Glorified and Exalted is He - raised by His revelation and His religion. Ibrahim - peace be upon him - Allah - Glorified and Exalted is He - praises him that he said in Surat al-Baqarah: , with what? , in his family, in his children: , Ya'qub also followed the same line, and this call remained in his descendants, his call to people - also - : the worship of Allah. This is the issue. The issue is that this religion is taken, not that a person uses his intellect and thought in it to distort it, change it, and alter it as he pleases. The person has a desire, and influences fall upon him, a self-desire, and there are influences that come from the outside. If these influences are allowed to pass, and if his desire is allowed to work, they will change the belief, and they will change the behavior. And thus we want the purified Islam that works in the soul, and the pure belief that works in the soul. We do not want to leave the methods of people, their thoughts, and their desires to work in our souls, shaping us in a shape that Allah - Glorified and Exalted is He - does not want. In that case, we will not be the Muslims that Allah wants, and we will not enter into the peace as Allah - Glorified and Exalted is He - commanded us: . This will not be realized. We think we are Muslims, while we are still hovering around Islam. Indeed, Islam has an influence on us, and non-Islam has an influence on us. We think we are Muslims, but we have not ... Islam, and we have not ... in Islam.
... because those Muslims that Allah - Glorified and Exalted is He - wants us to understand Islam with its correct fundamentals. I say: understanding Islam is not that difficult. I distinguish between two things; the correct Islam that Allah - Mighty and Majestic - revealed, how easy it is for a person to understand it. But during one thousand and four hundred years, many varied and different things happened. Every person puts forward groups, gatherings, or individuals, or ideas are put forward in the arena ... this one understands Islam as standing in night prayer and fasting in the day and distance from life, and that one understands that Islam is the intellect; what the intellect accepts is Islam, and what it rejects is far from Islam, so he makes the intellect a god. And many understandings now that we have inherited, we, the children of Islam, have inherited them, and we inherited them in the books that make up the Islamic library. The Islamic library now is full of these varied and different poisons. And those who are described as Muslims represent the history of Muslims with its good and its evil. This long history, with its sound, pure understanding, and with its distorted, changed, altered understandings, all of it is present. People are moving, and books in the libraries ... this history. As for reaching the true Islam from among all of this, it is difficult to achieve. And from here comes misguidance. But when Allah - Glorified and Exalted is He - guides, Allah chooses a servant from His servants and guides him to the true Islam, to the sound understanding; how easy and how simple it is for Islam to enter the soul of a person, and become a pure Islam. And he will see between him and Islam ... between him and it a connection he feels its abundance and he feels its sweetness. But when he inherits a distorted Islam, a changed Islam, a belief far from the methodology that Allah revealed, far from the belief that the Companions carried from the Messenger of Allah - peace and blessings be upon him -, and then it was carried by those who followed their path with excellence from the righteous predecessors, when it is far, he finds in himself, he weaves in himself many things.
So the first path is that we understand, and if Allah makes easy for us one who has guided himself to this path and who ... this path, and Allah - Glorified and Exalted is He - decrees that he reaches the pure Islam; then it is not permissible for one who has seen the torch of the clear truth, it is not permissible for him to drown in the darknesses. And this is the calamity of those who disbelieved in the messengers; the messengers used to come to them with the truth, sound and pure, so they would be arrogant to follow these, to follow humans like them? No, we want to rely on ourselves and our intelligence and our acumen and our thought. That is the calamity. Allah - Glorified and Exalted is He - gives guidance to us, the Ummah of Islam, and to the messengers before us He gives it as a gift. People search for guidance in darknesses and tangled paths, so they do not reach the truth, and they wander. The matter ends and they have not yet reached ... .