How to Deal with the People of Innovation
Machine translationRead the Arabic original
The questioner : Your Eminence! We have Shi'ah at our workplace. Is it permissible for us to return their greetings, and to see them in the mosque? Also, they prostrate on papers. Is it permissible to expel them from the mosque?
The Shaykh : I say, deal with them as they deal with you. If they greet you, return their greeting. It is not good to expel them from the mosque. In fact, some of them may be from the common people who do not know anything, and their scholars have misled them. You can, through tact and calling to what is best, influence them. Using violence among people is not a valid course of action. Allah, Glorified and Exalted is He, loves gentleness in all matters.So, if you now clash with them and say: Do not prostrate on paper, do not prostrate on stone, and so on. If the matter ended with this and they stopped, the matter would be good. But they will increase, and the enmity and hatred between you will become more severe.
What I see is: The obligatory thing, first, is to advise them, especially the common people. Advising does not mean that you attack their school of thought and their defective, invalid religion. No.
Advising is that you clarify the truth to them and clarify the Sunnah to them. Then, after the Sunnah becomes clear to them, I assert with certainty that if they have true faith, they will return to it and abandon their falsehood. If this happens, it is the most complete and best outcome. If it does not happen, then you deal with them as they deal with you. As for expelling them from the mosque, that is not up to you; it is up to those above you, and they will deal with them as they see fit.
The Shaykh : I say, deal with them as they deal with you. If they greet you, return their greeting. It is not good to expel them from the mosque. In fact, some of them may be from the common people who do not know anything, and their scholars have misled them. You can, through tact and calling to what is best, influence them. Using violence among people is not a valid course of action. Allah, Glorified and Exalted is He, loves gentleness in all matters.So, if you now clash with them and say: Do not prostrate on paper, do not prostrate on stone, and so on. If the matter ended with this and they stopped, the matter would be good. But they will increase, and the enmity and hatred between you will become more severe.
What I see is: The obligatory thing, first, is to advise them, especially the common people. Advising does not mean that you attack their school of thought and their defective, invalid religion. No.
Advising is that you clarify the truth to them and clarify the Sunnah to them. Then, after the Sunnah becomes clear to them, I assert with certainty that if they have true faith, they will return to it and abandon their falsehood. If this happens, it is the most complete and best outcome. If it does not happen, then you deal with them as they deal with you. As for expelling them from the mosque, that is not up to you; it is up to those above you, and they will deal with them as they see fit.