The Shaykh spoke about what Saudi Arabia should have done to reform matters among the Muslims, rather than seeking the aid of disbelievers and allowing them to enter the land of tawhid (the oneness of Allah), and he mentioned the evidence for the prohibition of seeking the aid of disbelievers.

The Shaykh : The hope was that the Saudi state would be the state that realizes this divine command But the hope was dashed and the expectation was crushed, because the Saudi state, with great regret, did not prepare itself nor take the measures that would enable it, at any time, to fight the rebellious faction. It was, by its own admission, incapable of repelling the aggression of the Iraqi government, headed by Saddam. It was incapable of realizing this verse, and therefore it sought the aid of the disbelievers, allowed them to settle in its lands, and enabled them to act in them as they pleased. It raised the cross in the land of tawhid (the oneness of Allah), and the cross was paired with the banner of "There is no god but Allah, Muhammad is the Messenger of Allah." I said, and the point here is among what I said, that this is a very serious violation by the state of tawhid to allow the Crusaders to enter its land without a single drop of blood being shed from these Crusaders. This is very serious and great for the state of tawhid. It is enough for us to understand that, first, it contradicted an explicit text from the saying of the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him): And in a narration by Muslim: And second, it contradicted the reality witnessed by every Muslim, with no difference between ruler and ruled, and no difference between scholar and student, in that the two states to which it sought aid other than Allah (Blessed and Exalted is He), namely America and Britain, know well, as do all Muslims, rulers and ruled, that they are the most hostile of the disbelieving states to Islam and Muslims. They are the two main states in aiding the Jews and enabling them in Palestine. Yet the Saudi state continues to say and describe these two states as friendly states. If America and Britain are friendly states to the land of tawhid, I do not know how the Saudi media could reconcile the two opposites, between tawhid and shirk (associating partners with Allah) and disbelief in Allah (Mighty and Majestic). The point is, I said in many of those recordings that reached the hands of many officials there, and no doubt that newspaper reached them, among which was my saying that this evil in which the Saudi state, the state of tawhid, fell is one of the evils of Saddam Hussein. And here is the point in answering that lie: I believe that both states are wrong, most wrong, with regard to Islam and Muslims, and that the first sin came from Saddam, and among its effects was the sin of the Saudi government in bringing in the disbelievers and allowing them to settle in those lands. So how do they imagine, and do not think, that Al-Albani, by his creed, could respond and attend a conference in Iraq while he says that among the evils of Iraq is the evil of the Saudis who brought the Crusader disbelievers to their land? It would have been enough for them to know this truth to deter them from publishing that lie. This is if they did not have other means by which to know that Al-Albani, after the Hajj of last year, and I hope Allah enables me to perform Hajj next year, has not left Amman for any other country. If they do not have concern, or if their concern is from the perspective of good opinion of them, and they do not have a means by which to know that Al-Albani has not left this country since the previous Hajj, it would have been enough for them to look at those tapes and recordings to know this truth which I stated just now: that the state of tawhid, which is the closest of the Arab Islamic states to us in creed, if it invited me, I would not respond to it, because it contradicted the Shari'ah of Allah in allowing the disbelievers to settle in lands that are the heartland of Islam. So how would I respond to the state of Iraq, which is the cause of all this fitnah (trial, discord or temptation)? In addition to that, let us remind all listeners that the land of Iraq is mentioned in some authentic hadiths as a place where fitnah and disturbances arise. And when I mention this, I do not mean that it should always be a place of disturbances and fitnah, and there may be knowledge in it, and it was, as they say, for many years a destination for knowledge and students of knowledge in the era of the Abbasids and part of the era of the Umayyads. But the fitnah now has shown its horns when Saddam began to seize Kuwait, and then the state of tawhid, with great regret, was unable, let alone the other Islamic states, to deter this injustice and remove it from the oppressed Kuwaitis except by seeking the aid of the disbelievers and polytheists. And the result of that was evils, and very serious and very great evils, among which is what we now witness of the tyranny of the American and British disbelievers over the Iraqi Muslims by all means of destruction, as has become known to the general public, whether they are Muslims or disbelievers. Now, the Saudis participate in striking the Muslims in Iraq with destructive bombs, cooperating with the American Jews and the Jews who seized Palestine with the help of the British and Americans. It has become an effect of bringing the disbelievers to the land of Saudi Arabia that the Saudis fight with them against the Muslims. And this means a calamity of the age that no Muslim can imagine. Knowing that we used to always and forever, before this fitnah settled in the land of tawhid, hear from it reminders of some Islamic rulings that we were not accustomed to hearing from the radio stations of other Islamic lands. We used to rejoice in them with great joy and believe that this was one of the effects of the call to tawhid that Muhammad ibn 'Abd al-Wahhab (may Allah have mercy on him) established in those lands. We used to hear that, and then we were surprised by the opposite of what we used to hear before, with the claim that dire necessity (darurah) permitted the Saudi state to seek the aid of the disbelievers to fight the Iraqis. We used to read, long ago, in a letter from the honorable Shaykh 'Abd al-'Aziz ibn Baz, whom we always remember with knowledge and virtue, and from his favor is what we read in his letter "Critique of Arab Nationalism in Light of Islam and Reality." May Allah bless him and prolong his life with good and beneficial knowledge and righteous action. He said: "And it is not permissible for the Muslims to be loyal to the disbelievers or to seek their aid against their enemies, for they are among the enemies and their treachery is not to be trusted." This is a great truth. "And Allah has forbidden their loyalty and prohibited taking them as intimates, and He judged that whoever is loyal to them is one of them, and He informed that all of them are among the wrongdoers, as preceded in the clear verses. And it is established in Sahih Muslim from 'A'ishah (may Allah be pleased with her) that she said: The Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him) set out toward Badr, and when he was at the well of al-Ubra, a man caught up with him, of whom boldness and strength had been mentioned. The companions of the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him) rejoiced when they saw him. When he caught up with him, he said to the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him): 'I have come to follow you and to be killed with you.' The Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him) said to him: He said: 'No.' He said: She said: 'Then he went on until when we were at the tree, the man caught up with him and said to him as he had said the first time. The Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) said to him as he had said the first time. He said: 'No.' He said: 'So, forever, I will not seek the aid of a polytheist.' She said: 'Then he returned and caught up with him in the open desert and said to him as he had said the first time: 'Do you believe in Allah and His Messenger?' He said: 'Yes.' So the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him) said to him: 'Go on.' The Shaykh (may Allah bless him) commented on this authentic hadith: 'So this noble hadith guides you to abandon seeking the aid of polytheists, and it indicates that it is not befitting for the Muslims to include in their army anyone other than themselves, neither from the Arabs nor from non-Arabs, for the disbeliever is an enemy who is not to be trusted. And let the enemies of Allah know that the Muslims are not in need of them if they hold fast to Allah and are sincere in their dealing with Him, for victory is in His hand (Glorified and Exalted is He), not in the hand of anyone else. And He has promised it to the believers, even if their number and equipment are few, as preceded in the verses and as happened to the people of Islam in the early period. And also indicating this is the saying of Allah the Exalted: So look, O believer, at the Book of your Lord and the Sunnah of your Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him): how they combat loyalty to the disbelievers and seeking their aid and taking them as intimates. And Allah (Glorified and Exalted is He) knows best the interests of His servants and is more merciful to them than they are to themselves. If there had been a predominant benefit in taking the disbelievers, whether Arabs or non-Arabs, as allies and seeking their aid, Allah would have permitted it and made it lawful for His servants. But when Allah knew of the great harm and the dire consequences therein, He prohibited it and condemned whoever does it, and He informed in other verses that obeying the disbelievers and their going out in the army of the Muslims harms them and does not increase them except in ruin, as He said: And He said: So these verses are sufficient as a warning against obeying the disbelievers and seeking their aid, and as a deterrent from them, and as a clarification of the dire consequences that result from it. May Allah protect the Muslims from that.' To the end of what the Shaykh mentioned, may Allah reward him with good. The words of the honorableThe Shaykh : Ibn Baz, may Allah reward him with good, for this advice. I had wished that the rulers of Saudi Arabia would act upon this Islamic advice that Shaykh 'Abd al-'Aziz ibn Baz (may Allah be pleased with him and with us) presented, and may Allah guide us to follow what he wrote in this matter and in other matters of the truth that came in the Book and the Sunnah. If we had looked deeply into the words of the Shaykh (may Allah bless him), we would have reached a very serious conclusion: either those who sought the help of the disbelievers are not Muslims, or those who were sought for help are Muslims. This is the summary of what can be taken from this sound statement. This much is sufficient for our brothers who want to know the truth in the land... between one evening and the next, due to the involvement of some Muslim rulers and their following of certain policies, the least of which can be said is that they contradict the Shari'ah. And I believe, and I say with complete frankness, that the outcome belongs to the righteous and the circle turns against the oppressors: if the Saudi government, before proceeding to seek the help of these disbelievers—if they did seek their help as they claim—had consulted the scholars, as Allah Mighty and Majestic commanded in more than one verse in the Noble Qur'an, including , and the address is to the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him), whose connection to Allah Mighty and Majestic through heavenly revelation makes it unnecessary for him to consult the people of the earth, but as some scholars and jurists say, Allah Mighty and Majestic said to His Prophet: so that his Ummah after him would take him as a model, consulting their like. As for the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him), there is no one in all of humanity comparable to him, yet our Lord Blessed and Exalted is He commanded him to consult his companions so that people and rulers after him would learn that it is all the more obligatory for them to consult the people of knowledge. And I am as certain as I am that if the Saudi government had performed this Qur'anic obligation and consulted the scholars before making the decision to seek the help of the American and British disbelievers, you would not have found any sincere scholar, and at their head Shaykh 'Abd al-'Aziz ibn Baz (may Allah bless him and his life), who would have agreed, after being consulted, to bring these disbelievers into the land of Islam. But they made it a fait accompli, contradicting their own fatwa, their previous fatwa which was published and broadcast on the radio, forbidding the Muslims from allying with the disbelievers. Where is the alliance with the one who contradicts the Shari'ah, which Allah Mighty and Majestic forbade in these verses we recited to you from the words of Shaykh Ibn Baz, may Allah reward him with good? Where is the forbidden alliance? And if they ally with them, they will be of them. If it were not for this alliance that permitted disbelief, Crusaderism, and the cross in the land of Islam, and then they cooperated with them in striking the lands of the Muslims, no student of knowledge should become involved, as I have received from some of them, and they conceal, intentionally or by mistake, I do not know, each according to his intention. They say and claim that Al-Albani, when he spoke as he did, only spoke based on the news that reached him. And I say, in response to this wrong suspicion, that I spoke before I saw the calamity that befell the land of Saudi Arabia after it spread its horn in many, many manifestations, which some of our sincere brothers, the doctors and others from the people of knowledge and virtue, are now treating in Saudi Arabia. Among them is that indecent female demonstration by the women who display their adornment, who claim to demand their suppressed rights, and who have stated that they want seeing scholars and do not want blind scholars. Thus they conceal in their speech and their demands. The point is that I warned and cautioned that this is a contradiction before we saw the effects of bringing the Americans into the Saudi lands. So we say: if what the Saudis did, and finally their fighting with the Jews against the Muslims in Iraq, is not the forbidden alliance in the Book of Allah Mighty and Majestic, then there is no forbidden alliance. And if this is not the seeking of help that the Messenger (peace be upon him) warned against in his saying: , then what assistance would be forbidden? This means nullifying the legal rulings. And I want now to draw the attention of the sincere students of knowledge and people of knowledge, in whatever time and place they are, that we must not forget that the nullification (ta'til) that the scholars of the Salaf and their followers, like us from the Khalaf, talk about regarding the nullification of the verses related to the attributes of Allah Mighty and Majestic and the authentic hadiths—there is another nullification that the nullifiers of the first nullification fall into, but many people of knowledge who are like us, who deny those who nullify the verses of attributes and hadiths of attributes by taking them out of their meaning and nullifying their explicit meanings, and for that reason they were called the Mu'tadilah—participate in this second nullification. So I want to remind you that there is a nullification of another type, which is the nullification of the meaning of the hadiths in the legal rulings, like what we are now facing. We have nullified, by this seeking of help from the disbelievers and their settling in the Muslim lands with all kinds of interpretations and nullifications of such verses, if there were not what the Saudis did of seeking the help of the American and British disbelievers, who are the fiercest enemies of Islam, then there is no forbidden alliance and there is no forbidden seeking of help. And this is the nullification of the Shari'ah of Allah and the hadiths of His Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him). And before I finish, I want to remind you of something else, which is that we know that the Saudi government, in its laws and in its general actions, its rulings are derived from the Hanbali school, the school of the Imam of the Sunnah, to whose stream we are honored to belong, and I do not say to its school, but to its methodology, and I do not say to its taqlid (blind following). This Imam's fiqh, and what was added to his fiqh many times over after him, and recorded in the books of the Hanbali school, including the book al-Mughni and al-Sharh al-Kabir—these books are the mainstay of the fatwas and rulings upon which the rulings of the Saudi state are based. So I do not know how the Saudi state dared to permit seeking the help of these disbelievers, and we know that they are the most dangerous states on the face of the earth today for Islam and Muslims, even though their school in al-Sharh al-Kabir and al-Mughni by Ibn Qudamah al-Maqdisi explicitly states that seeking the help of the disbelievers, if it is permissible, is only permissible with a condition, which is that the Muslims must have the upper hand over the disbelievers. That the Muslims must have the upper hand over the disbelievers, and this is a very, very necessary restriction. Because if the matter is as the Saudis did, that the one sought for help is stronger and more numerous in number and equipment, then no Muslim on the face of the earth would ever say this, not even the Hanbali school by which they rule, which placed this restriction and this condition: that the Muslims seeking help from the disbelievers must be stronger and more numerous than them. And now I have said in some previous tapes, and I remind those who stand between the Americans, and among them are certainly thousands upon thousands of Jews, and even if they are not Jews, they are with the Jews, so there is no difference between Americans and Jews. And here we are now hearing how they successively supply them with destructive missiles and the like. If these Jews, or say the Americans, these are different terms that lead to one bitter reality, which is that they do not want Islam except to be ruined, as came in the verses mentioned by Shaykh Ibn Baz, may Allah reward him with good. If these Jews or these Americans wanted to occupy Khaybar, would the Saudis be able to repel them and turn them back on their heels in defeat? No. Here the secret and the profound wisdom placed by the scholars of Hanbali fiqh, upon which they rely in their rulings, becomes apparent when they said with the condition that the Muslims must have the upper hand. Now the upper hand is with the disbelievers, and the greatest proof of that is that all the world radio stations spread that Saudi Arabia agreed with the American army commander that the command would be in the hand of the American army commander. So the Saudis are now ordered by the American command. If it is said to the Saudi pilots, "Strike Iraq," and they are watching, they have only to execute the order. Where is this painful reality from the saying of Allah Mighty and Majestic: ? So we ask Allah Blessed and Exalted is He to remove this distress and this grief that has befallen the Muslims, and that will never be, because the Sunnah of Allah will not change unless the Muslims, rulers and ruled, return to their religion—may Allah have mercy on you—and that is among the meanings of His saying Blessed and Exalted is He: . And may Allah send prayers and abundant peace upon Muhammad and upon his family and his companions.