What is your answer to those who say: What has the Shaykh contributed to the Muslims with this methodology to which he has been calling for fifty years?

Al-Halabi : Our Shaykh, there is also an issue raised by some in light of these painful circumstances that all Muslims truly feel. Some of our brothers, in whom we assume good and righteousness, but the surge of emotions sometimes causes one to forget some of the truth, say: What has the Salafi methodology, and the purification and education to which he has been calling for more than fifty years, done in light of these circumstances?The Shaykh : And what has it contributed to the Islamic reality and to the Islamic street, and so on and so forth...

The Shaykh : What Allah willed.
Al-Halabi : ...to the end of this speech. So we answered them, meaning, with an answer befitting the situation, but it would be better if we could hear our Shaykh’s words on this.

The Shaykh : By Allah, I am ashamed to speak on this subject.
Al-Halabi : Because this, our Shaykh, is a general matter, meaning.

The Shaykh : Unfortunately.
Al-Halabi : Allah is the Helper.

The Shaykh : No, you know in any case, and if it must be, let him speak, but I say, Glory be to Allah, that these people, meaning our brothers, are undoubtedly Muslims, but they are a people who do not know; they do not return to the principles and rules of the Shari'ah. I do not know whether these people are ignorant or are feigning ignorance? There are bitter, unfortunate truths known to all educated Muslims, the summary of which is that Islam today is not that Islam of that first, brightest day. And if an ignorant person argues against this bitter truth, we remind him: Did that Islam of the first day have multiple concepts, with the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him) among them, or did it have one concept? Undoubtedly, the answer will be that there is nothing but what the Messenger (peace be upon him) presented to his noble Companions. The same question returns: Is the matter so today? Is the matter as it was on that day, on this day? Or does Islam have many and numerous concepts? I think the answer will also match reality, which is that Islam has many and numerous concepts. It is enough that there are three schools in creed, which we summarize as the school of the people of Hadith, the people of the Sunnah, the school of the Maturidiyyah, and the school of the Asha'irah. This is in creed. And we have schools—do not say four, say forty and more—in the schools of jurisprudence, because for example, I cannot say that the people of the Sunnah and the community, in modern terminology, represented by the four schools, are the only Muslims, and that the other sects, even if they are misguided in our view, cannot be explicitly excluded from the circle of Islam. For example, the Yemeni Zaydiyyah; we do not say these are not Muslims, but they are not on the methodology of the Sunnah that was followed by the righteous Salaf. Similarly, for example, we move to the Ibadiyyah, who are now in the Sultanate of Oman and elsewhere; there is a very large section of them in Algeria. We do not exclude them from the circle of Islam either. And let it suffice regarding the Imamiyyah and the Shi'ah, and so on. So the schools of jurisprudence are more than the four known today. Then, if we move from the schools of jurisprudence to the behavioral or educational schools, and we summarize them with the word Sufiyyah, meaning the paths, then speak of them, and there is no harm, especially since they explicitly state, or at least some of them say, that the paths leading to Allah are as numerous as the breaths of the creatures. They are as numerous as the breaths of the creatures. This is Islam today. And we do not want to remind you that among the Muslims today there are those who say that the one who says: "
And Allah is nothing but a monk in a church. What did he say at the beginning?
Al-Halabi : And the dog and the pig.

The Shaykh :
And the dog and the pig are our god *** And Allah is nothing but a monk in a church. Among those who say this today is a Muslim. And we do not prolong the speech, but it is enough for me to say that today most of the Muslims are from the people of the Sunnah and the community. The people of the Sunnah and the community, and I mean what I say, meaning from the four schools today, who say, without asking, and if asked, they answer with what they say without asking: Allah is in every place, Allah is present in all existence. Those who ask this question are either ignorant or feigning ignorance, and as they say, the sweeter of the two is bitter. We are forced, with great regret, to say now, in answer to your question: What did Al-Albani do? And of course, they do not mean Al-Albani alone, but he and those who followed his path and walked in his footsteps to the end. What did they contribute to the Muslims? What, what, and so on. Our answer is first dialectical and second scientific. Dialectical in the sense that we confront them with the same: everyone who says so-and-so and so-and-so, we say to him: And what did so-and-so and so-and-so do?
Al-Halabi : Something else.

The Shaykh : Ah, others. What did they do for the man of the street, using the European expression? This is also a European expression, which we do not recommend at all, because the man of the street for us means the general thought, and this has no value in Islam. But for the Europeans, it matters to them, because the parliament, the parliament is based on what? On the general thought. Look at how people think
Al-Halabi : It is based on the streets

The Shaykh : Therefore, we do not say what they say except to remind and to deter, but we ask: What have they offered to the Muslims? One party has been around for nearly a century, and the second party for nearly half a century. What have they offered, in their expression which we find objectionable, to the man on the street? They have offered nothing but soap bubbles, empty bubbles. The proof is that one of them is lost and does not know where his object of worship is. And if he were asked the question the Messenger (peace and blessings be upon him) asked the slave girl, "Where is Allah?" his hair would stand on end. They would say, "This is a question! I seek refuge in Allah! This is not permissible!" And they are ignorant that the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him), whose testimony to the oneness of Allah by a Muslim is not valid unless coupled with his testimony to the Prophethood and Messengership of the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him), is the one who established this phrase for the Muslims, "Where is Allah?" So if you direct this question to them, they say, "My hair has stood on end from what you said! What is this question?" Because he is ignorant that the Messenger (peace and blessings be upon him) said this phrase. And if we were to deal with them according to their wording, we would deal with them according to the Hanafi school. The Hanafi school has a characteristic over the other schools, which is that it takes a broad step in declaring someone a disbeliever; as soon as a Muslim speaks a word of disbelief, that is it, it is disbelief. As for whether he knows it is a word of disbelief or not? They do not go into the details. Did he intend it or not? They do not go into the details. I said, if we were to deal with them according to the Hanafi school, but no. We are Hanifiyyun, not Hanafiyyun. Why? Because we would say to this speaker: You are objecting to the Messenger (peace and blessings be upon him), and you do not know, poor man. If you had objected to me regarding a phrase that came from me, which I was not following the Prophet in, the matter would be very easy, because I speak many phrases and often admit immediately, as you heard just now, that this is a wrong phrase. But you are objecting to the Messenger (peace and blessings be upon him), and this is due to your distance from Islam. Now, the masses of Muslims say, "Allah is present everywhere." What did Al-Albani and those like him do? They do not know what he did, because they are far from being eager to know the Islam that Allah revealed to the heart of Muhammad (peace and blessings be upon him). So he calls for understanding Islam as it was with our righteous predecessors, our righteous predecessors, and from this predecessor group is the first generation who was raised under the hands of the Messenger (peace and blessings be upon him), and in the expression of the present age—and I see no harm in it—they graduated from the school of the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him). They used to say that even the slave girl, the shepherdess, would say what the Lord of the Worlds says in the Qur'an: Or do you feel secure that He who is in the heavens will not cause the earth to swallow you? No, he said: So when the Messenger (peace and blessings be upon him) asked the slave girl, the shepherdess, "Where is Allah?" she said, "Allah is in the sky." Today, ask these people who say, "What did Al-Albani do?" and the rest of their words, you know them. He offered that in this half-century of time, he tried to present to the Muslims the correct creed that was with our righteous predecessors, and the story is long in this. We move on to a second type. All Muslims, despite their different parties, groupings, schools, and behaviors, and so on, all agree that the Sunnah of the Messenger (peace and blessings be upon him) is of two types: authentic and not authentic, authentic and weak. Then they differ in the method of distinguishing the authentic from the weak. All Muslims say that the way to distinguish the authentic hadith from the weak one is to return to the science known as the science of hadith or the science of hadith terminology, and to include with it the science of al-jarh wa al-ta'dil (the critique and vindication of narrators). All Muslims say this, and praise be to Allah. But perhaps these who hold a grudge against us because we do not raise our voices to stir the emotions of the masses, and then what we do quickly extinguishes, we say: We are with these Muslims in that distinguishing the authentic Sunnah from the weak is by returning to the science of hadith and its rules. So I say: These who ask this question are ignorant that among those they testify are Muslims, and some may be among the worshippers, those who do many voluntary acts, they say: No, the way to know the authentic and the weak from hadith is not this way, but the way is the way of kashf (unveiling). The way of kashf. I think none of you is ignorant of what the way of kashf is, for all of you know, and perhaps ignorance of some knowledge is knowledge. Kashf is that a person closes his eyes and turns off his light, and increases the darkness of the place he is in by adding darkness to darkness, by throwing his head between his knees, closing his eyes, turning off the material light, and then he observes and waits for what will descend upon him of the revelation, which they explicitly state with their tongues that there is no revelation after the Messenger of Allah, but they say with their tongues what is not in their hearts, because they call this revelation ilham (inspiration), and he waits for the inspiration to descend upon him: Is this hadith authentic or not? And therefore, they often say, "This hadith, even if it was not authenticated by the scholars of hadith, it was authenticated for us by kashf." These and their like are ignorant of this bitter reality: that it exists in groups and shaykhs who pray and fast, but they have gone out of the circle of Islam by adopting a how, airy path with no controls. You can ask the one who works with hadith: Why is this hadith authentic? The general answer that does not need detail, because, my brother, al-Bukhari and Muslim narrated it. The detailed answer: Did you study the science of terminology? The men of al-jarh wa al-ta'dil, and so on? Yes, by Allah. Ah, its chain is from such-and-such to such-and-such, all its men are trustworthy and upright, and there is no break in it and no mursal (a report missing the Companion link), and so on. And if it is said, "This hadith is weak." Yes, why is it weak? By Allah, Imam al-Bukhari, for example, weakened it. This is a general statement; its detail is in its chain: So-and-so, Ibn Lahi'ah, for example, and this is a noble and knowledgeable man, but he had poor memory. But if you ask the one who said to you that dangerous phrase, "This hadith, even if it is weak according to the scholars of hadith, it was authenticated for us by kashf," how do they convince you? He will say to you, "My brother, enter the path so that you become like our story, and then whoever has tasted will know." All of this exists in the Islamic world, and these who do not work with religious knowledge do not know this reality. Then they deny the importance of purifying Islam from bad creeds that contradict the original Shari'ah of Islam, and they do not care about purifying this Islam from weak and fabricated hadiths. So what did Al-Albani and those like him do? They are a people who do not know. Then, in Sufism, there are very serious deviations related to creed, related to worship, and related to behavior. Many of them fast for a lifetime, and the authentic hadith says: Many of these young people who say, "What did Al-Albani and those like him do?" worship, they gather in the mosques on Friday night to enliven it, and the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him) says: They are a people who are ignorant. What did Al-Albani do? They did not know what he did because they do not want to do it and to know it. So what does a person say when he is talking about what he does? This is usually a praiseworthy matter, but as Allah the Exalted said: And especially when an embarrassing question like this comes, our answer is that we try to return ourselves first, and then others second, to what the first predecessors were upon of the correct understanding of Islam, including its creeds, rulings, and behavior. And this is not possible except by establishing a system for knowing the authentic from the weak of hadiths, and we are proceeding on this, and we ask Allah (Mighty and Majestic) to accept from us this humble work As for the others, they have filled the ummah (the Muslim community) with shouting and clamor, and then expression of the military system: "Stay in your place," meaning there is no progress at all. "Stay in your place." Do not offer knowledge and do not offer behavior except shouting and clamor. And Allah is the Helper.
Al-Halabi : He said that in an article in an English and American newspaper a year and a half ago, they stated that you speak about America's plans to eliminate Iraq for fear that this power would turn into an Islamic power or something of the sort. So I say, it would be desirable if we asked him to translate this article and read it to our Shaykh.