What is the etiquette of scholarly disagreement among Muslim scholars? And what are the limits of permissible disagreement as distinct from other types?

The questioner : In the name of Allah, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful. What is the etiquette of scholarly disagreement among Muslim scholars, and what are the limits of permissible disagreement as distinct from other types? And is the disagreement among followers of the Salafi methodology equal to the disagreement with others? May Allah reward you with good.

The Shaykh : This is a matter we have often discussed because of the intense disagreement existing today, not between the old Islamic schools of jurisprudence, but between the modern groups and parties. This is because, although these groups and parties agree on reaching one goal, which is establishing the rule of Allah on earth, the reality is that the paths, ways, and methodologies to achieve this agreed-upon goal differ greatly among these parties or groups. I do not wish to delve deeply into this field; it is sufficient for me to mention that the path that achieves this desired goal is only one path, namely what the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him) brought of guidance and light. This guidance or this light that the Messenger (peace and blessings be upon him) brought, we should hold onto it in its entirety, as both goal and means. For the matter is as he (peace and blessings be upon him) said: He came to us (peace and blessings be upon him) pure and white; none deviates from it except one who is destroyed. The means do not differ from the goal, and the means do not differ from the goal in terms of their source. Just as we follow the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) in that desired goal, so we follow him (peace and blessings be upon him) in achieving it. He (peace and blessings be upon him), as the Lord of all creation said: If the matter is so, and it is so with us without doubt or doubt, then all Muslims know that the Prophet (may Allah send prayers and blessings upon him) began his call first with the call to tawhid (the oneness of Allah). He began by teaching all people to call them to worship Allah alone, having no partner with Him: Worshiping Allah alone is not possible for humans, by virtue of being human, to know its manner. Therefore, Allah (Mighty and Majestic) sent the messengers as bringers of good news and warners, and their last was our Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him). His call was the call of all those before him, who unanimously agreed to call the people who were in their delusion to worship Allah alone, having no partner with Him. And you know that the first messenger sent to the people of the earth was Noah (peace be upon him), as came in the authentic hadith that he was the first messenger. This noble messenger remained among his people calling them to worship Allah alone, as in the Noble Qur'an, for a thousand years except fifty years. Imagine with me this long period: a thousand years except fifty years. Noah (peace be upon him) remained calling his people to worship Allah alone, having no partner with Him. And so the prophets and messengers continued after him until the Seal of the Prophets (peace and blessings be upon him) came, and he followed the path of the predecessors, beginning by calling his people to tawhid, which is worshiping Allah as Allah legislated. The Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) continued in Mecca, as you know, for thirteen years calling them to pure tawhid. So those who believed believed, and those who disbelieved disbelieved, and these disbelievers tortured the believers, as you know. Then some of his companions emigrated to Abyssinia, and then the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) emigrated to Medina and began there to lay the foundation for establishing the Muslim state, until what you know of what Allah (Mighty and Majestic) guided His Prophet (peace be upon him) to, until the polytheists attacked him in his own home, and as a result of that came the great Battle of Badr. What I want to reach from this introduction is that any Muslim party or any Islamic group that deviates from this path that the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) followed in training the Muslims and preparing them to achieve that desired goal I mentioned earlier, their effort or their efforts will go to waste. Why? Because they deviated from the path of the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him). Therefore, we always repeat to our brothers in every place and in every gathering that there is no salvation for Muslims from the humiliation and degradation they are in today, until the Jews, upon whom humiliation and misery were struck by the explicit text of the Noble Qur'an, have dominated them, except that we return to what the Messenger (peace and blessings be upon him) began his first journey with. And you remember my previous word after Maghrib, the word of Imam Malik, when he said, and I will not repeat it all, but I remind you of what came at its end: "And the end of this Ummah will not be rectified except by what rectified its beginning. So whatever was not a religion at that time will not be a religion today." This is taken from the verse: to its end. And here is a very important point that must be pointed out, which is that this Islam upon which the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) established the Muslims has today changed greatly from what it was at the beginning. The concept of Islam has changed fundamentally. I do not say, as some claim, that the disagreement mentioned in the question is a disagreement in branches and not a disagreement in principles. This is a word said by some preachers or some doctors, and it is of the nature of ignoring the bitter reality. It is that the disagreement existing today among Muslims in general, and among the preachers themselves in particular, is not only in the branches but also in the principles. I mean principles as you know, the saying of the Lord (Glorified and Exalted is He) in the Noble Qur'an: The disagreement exists in this beautiful word, first in its interpretation, and second in the application of its implications. I do not want to delve into this much and very much, but I remind you of the headings. This word requires the tawhid of Allah (Mighty and Majestic) first in His Self, so He is One with no partner in His Self. Second, it requires His tawhid in His worship, so no one is worshiped with Him other than Him, and this is called tawhid al-uluhiyyah (oneness of worship). And third and last, the tawhid of Allah (Mighty and Majestic) in His names and attributes, so no human being, however high and exalted, is described with any of the attributes of Allah (Blessed and Exalted is He), and our Lord (Mighty and Majestic) is not likened in any of His attributes to any of the attributes of His creation. So whoever does not master the tawhid contained in the noble verse "La ilaha illa Allah" (There is no god but Allah), whoever does not understand tawhid with this comprehensive, inclusive meaning: One in His Self, One in His worship, One in His attributes, he is not a monotheist. Do you see if those Islamic parties and groups, at least, have made their followers and those under their banner or under their call understand this tawhid by which the Muslim does not escape on the Day of Resurrection from eternal abode in the Fire, as he (peace and blessings be upon him) said: And in other hadiths: And in another hadith: Do those preachers who disagree with each other do justice to this word? The answer is no, unfortunately. In fact, some of them explicitly say that engaging in such matters is what divides the ranks and wastes the word of Muslims. Glory be to Allah! The Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him), who is our model, is not only in speech, because all people say he is our leader, but there is a great difference between speech without its application in action and speech followed by action. Our Messenger is our leader; this is a word of truth. But is it possible for one who is led by this leader to follow him if he does not know what he was upon? This is impossible. Therefore, it is obligatory for these groups or parties to agree on a common word, which is that they understand the Messenger and study his biography from when he called them to worship Allah alone, having no partner with Him, to when he legislated for them some etiquettes related to matters that some people may find ugly to mention. The Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) was asked one day by some of his companions about what is permissible for a man to do with his menstruating wife, and he (peace and blessings be upon him) said: He (peace be upon him) was asked what is permissible for a man with his wife in the state of menstruation? He (peace and blessings be upon him) said: When this reached the Jews, they said, "We do not see this man except that he wants to oppose us in everything." The Jews, due to their stubbornness and strictness in their religion, used to separate from a woman when she menstruated and not mix with her, and they would throw her into a room alone. They did not have intercourse with her—I do not mean sex, but what is broader than that—they did not mix with her until she became pure. So some of the companions of the Messenger (peace and blessings be upon him) who used to mix with the Jews and acknowledged the Jews for some culture, because they were People of the Book, unlike the Arabs in the pre-Islamic age of ignorance who were people of idols and false gods, asked the Messenger (peace be upon him) about what is permissible for a husband with his menstruating wife, and he said: Meaning intercourse. So that Jew said, "We do not see this man except that he wants to oppose us in everything." Even in this issue, there is something stranger than that. One of the polytheists, when he heard that the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) ordered his companions with some etiquettes of the toilet, including that he encouraged them to purify themselves in istinja' (cleaning oneself after relieving oneself) and istibra' (ensuring cleanliness), and among that not facing the qiblah (direction of prayer) with urine or feces, that polytheist idolater said, "We do not see this man except that he wants to teach you even the etiquettes of defecation." I mean from this example and that example that the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) did not leave anything except that he clarified it for people, from creed to Islamic etiquettes. So those who want to return Muslims to their past glory must carry Islam in its entirety, from creed to etiquettes. Do those groups and parties adopt this Islam in its entirety, indivisible, at least in thought and knowledge? And then we say in application and action? No, it is not so. They do not carry Islam in thought, let alone apply it practically in a complete application. This is because you may hear some of them explicitly say, when they hear, for example, the people of the Sunnah calling to follow the Messenger in everything, for example: do not drink while standing, do not eat with the left hand, do not drink with the left hand, do not stand as the non-Arabs stand, and so on of these known etiquettes. What do they say? "Let us leave these; they are just husks." So they divided Islam into two parts: the kernel and the husks. And they mean by that now that we do not want to care about the husks, meaning the Islam that has husks, but we want the pure kernel of Islam. If only they meant by the pure Islam what was not of Islam, neither creed nor behavior nor etiquette. But they mean to divide Islam into two parts: what relates to the kernel, which is taken, and what relates to their expression of the husk, which is postponed. This is a very serious phenomenon from many Islamic groups, some of whom explicitly say this word I mentioned earlier, and some of whom act according to its implications. They may not explicitly say it, but practically they do not apply Islam. The consequence of this division is the loss of much of Islam, which is, even in their expression, from the kernel and not from the husks. How... This Islam, because of this unjust division, is that when a person wants to divide something into better and best, or better and better, this requires that he gather this group completely before him, and then proceed to the comparison and division, saying this is better, but this is better than it. Did they study Islam from its two pure sources, the Book and the Sunnah, and then distinguish the more important from the important, and distinguish the kernel from the husk? That is what they did not do, and they will not be able to do it as long as they rush the matter and want to establish the Muslim state before knowing what the Muslim state is based on. Islam cannot be established, even in personal application, let alone collective application, let alone popular application, let alone the application of the entire Ummah. Islam cannot be applied except after the correct understanding of it. So we conclude this topic, which accepts many sessions and lectures, with two words: purification is necessary, and then this purification must be coupled with training. By purification, I told you at the beginning of this word that the Islam upon which the Messenger trained his companions is today in a different form than the one upon which the Messenger (peace and blessings be upon him) trained his companions. What was not of it has entered it. I give you an example related first to creed, and it is widespread among Muslims, those who want to establish the Muslim state with us. Many of them say, and they are in a normal gathering, "Allah is present in all existence. Allah is present in every place." Do you see if this phrase came in the Qur'an? Did it come in a hadith of the Messenger (peace and blessings be upon him)? The answer is no. Well, where did this word come from? And is it correct or wrong? Rather, I say, is it guidance or misguidance? I say it is the very misguidance. This word, meaning their saying that Allah (Mighty and Majestic) is present in every place, is the very misguidance. Not only because it has no basis in the Book or the Sunnah, but because it contradicts the Book and the Sunnah. The verses are all converging that Allah (Mighty and Majestic) is above the Throne, having risen above it. When one of us prostrates, "Subhana Rabbi al-A'la" (Glory be to my Lord, the Most High), when people are reminded to show mercy to each other, they narrate his saying (peace and blessings be upon him): So Allah has the attribute of elevation: So the point is that this attribute contradicts the saying of the common people today that "Allah is present in every place." If the Muslim thought about this word, he would know its danger. It is in every place. We humans enter places that, if we could, we would not enter. We enter the toilets, for example. Is the Lord of the Worlds in this place?! He has the attribute of elevation, (Glorified and Exalted is He). So how do we make Islam a kernel and a husk, and the kernel is something we have not yet mastered or known, as evidenced by the spread of this misguidance among people, which contradicts the saying of (Blessed and Exalted is He) in dozens of verses and dozens of Prophetic hadiths? Therefore, I say that purification and training are necessary. The early Muslims did not know or say what the later generations say today, "Allah is in every place." Rather, they said as the Lord of the Worlds said, "In the sky." And perhaps you know the hadith of that girl, the shepherdess of sheep, whom the Messenger (peace be upon him) asked in a long hadith, which we do not need to mention now, but in it the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) said to that girl: So she said, "In the sky." He said to her: She said, "You are the Messenger of Allah." He said to her master: So the Messenger testified to the girl's faith because first she testified that Allah is in the sky, and this is its text in the Qur'an, and second she testified to Muhammad (peace be upon him) that he is the Messenger of Allah. How do we now reconcile the reality of Muslims today who say "Allah is in every place" with the testimony of the Messenger to the girl who said "Allah is in the sky" that she is a believer? So it is necessary now for Islamic preachers to purify this Islam that we have inherited over these long years, and to train themselves and their families on this purified Islam. Where are those scholars who purify Islam first from what has entered it, whether in creed, or in weak and fabricated hadiths, or in the jurisprudential rulings scattered in the books of fiqh with their different schools and inclinations, or in the behavior we are walking today and the transactions, much of which contains riba (usury or interest), deception, gharar (excessive uncertainty in a contract), and many violations? So these groups are different, and the path of tawhid among them is by returning to the Book and the Sunnah after conducting purification on this Islam in light of the Book and the Sunnah and what our righteous predecessors were upon. I feel that I have prolonged the answer to this question, and I think it can bear more prolongation, but I feel that there are other questions, so this is sufficient for us. And its summary is that these groups must agree on the unified methodology, which is the Book and the Sunnah after conducting purification on this Islam that we have inherited, and that we train ourselves upon it.