A useful word and a brief piece of advice from the Shaykh on seeking beneficial knowledge and striving for righteous deeds.

The questioner : Let us begin our discussion with something our Shaykh chooses for us, something that many people are unaware of. It is a piece of advice that benefits us in this world and the Hereafter. What advice do you give us, our Shaykh?

The Shaykh : We advise, in a brief and concise word, that we seek beneficial knowledge accompanied by righteous deeds, for salvation is not achieved except through these two conditions: beneficial knowledge and righteous deeds.
Righteous deeds are self-evident to everyone, so they do not need explanation, perhaps except from certain aspects and angles. As for beneficial knowledge, its nature is hidden from many people, because knowledge is what is derived from the Book of Allah and the Hadith of the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him), relying on the methodology of our righteous predecessors, for they received the Shari'ah, the Book and the Sunnah, fresh and pure as it was spoken by him (peace and blessings be upon him), without addition or subtraction in terms of narration, and without misunderstanding the text of the Qur'an and the Sunnah. For this reason, our call, which we constantly and always emphasize, is that we call to acting upon the Book and the Sunnah according to the methodology of the righteous predecessors. Why do we say "according to the methodology of the righteous predecessors"? To counteract the deviation that has crept into the understanding of the Book and the Sunnah. And due to this deviation, the many Islamic sects that... the many sects came into existence, as Islamic history testifies, and as the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him) foretold in the authentic hadith in which he said:
Therefore, the scholars agreed to name this group, out of the seventy-three sects, the saved sect. The saved sect is, first, only one, with no second to it. Then, out of the seventy-three sects, seventy-two are in the Fire and one is in Paradise. Today, we live amidst old and new sects and many parties. Some of the old sects have had their names disappear, but their effects remain. The Mu'tazilah logic and the Mu'tazilah school of thought are hardly mentioned in these days, but it has evolved and sometimes appears under the names of Islamic sects...
Another questioner: Peace be upon you.

The Shaykh : And peace be upon you. There are Islamic schools of thought that are respected and recognized by the majority of Muslims. Sometimes these are hadith-based opinions, but they are closely connected to the old Mu'tazilah opinions. As for the first type I mentioned earlier, which is recognized by Muslims under specific names, for example, the Asha'irah and the Maturidiyyah. Today, in the Muslim world, if we exclude the sects known for deviating from the Shari'ah, such as the Shi'ah, the Zaydiyyah, and the Khawarij, and limit our discussion to those who are called or call themselves the people of the Sunnah and the community, then the people of the Sunnah and the community today consist of three schools regarding creed and four schools regarding jurisprudence. The first three schools are the Maturidiyyah, the Asha'irah, and the people of hadith. These are three sects concerning creed only among the people of the Sunnah and the community. As for the four schools, they are well known to everyone in jurisprudence: the Hanafi, the Maliki, the Shafi'i, and the Hanbali. If we return to the first three schools, the Maturidiyyah and the Asha'irah, we find in these two schools a great deal of what belongs to the schools, opinions, and ideas of the Mu'tazilah. Nevertheless, this is present and widespread in the Ash'ari school and the Maturidi school. The most important point regarding what I am saying is that something from the Mu'tazilah exists in the two mentioned schools, the Maturidi and the Ash'ari. The most important thing that can be mentioned now is a principle and a rule: that a valid hadith does not establish a creed. This is the opinion of the Mu'tazilah, but the Asha'irah and the Maturidiyyah adopt this opinion as a rule and principle. The second thing is that the Mu'tazilah are known to the people of the Sunnah, rightly so, as those who interpret the verses of attributes and the hadiths of attributes. Interpretation (ta'wil) is the brother of denial (ta'til). The intended meaning of denial is negating the reality. So when there is a verse or a valid Prophetic hadith with a clear, explicit indication, they negate this indication and come up with a meaning that does not immediately occur to the mind regarding that Qur'anic text or Prophetic hadith. This means they did not follow the Book or the Sunnah. But we cannot say they did not follow the Book and the Sunnah in order to deny them; rather, it is a turning away from them and departing from their explicit indication under the name of interpretation. And so I said that interpretation is the brother of denial. We give a common example: if an Arab man says, "The king has come," what comes to the mind of those he is addressing is that he means the king's servant has come. He said, "The king has come," so the listeners do not understand from his words that he means the king's servant has come, nor do they understand that the king's minister has come. If an Arab man spoke with this Arabic phrase, "The king has come," and one of the listeners said, "He means the king's servant," he has negated the speech of the speaker. What do you think if the negated speech is the speech of the Lord, Blessed and Exalted is He? The Mu'tazilah come, and the Maturidiyyah and the Asha'irah follow them in this, and they interpret some of the Qur'anic verses and Prophetic hadiths with this kind of interpretation which we rightly call the brother of denial. In the noble verse , "Your Lord has come without likening Him to creation," just as we mentioned earlier, "The king has come." It is not that the king came; it is the king's servant or the king's minister who came. There is a difference between the servant and the minister, of course. However, if it is interpreted as the king's minister, it is negated and invalid. And if it is interpreted as the king's servant, the understanding is even more negated. Ah, so their interpretation of the saying of our Lord, Mighty and Majestic, "Your Lord has come" means "the command of your Lord" or "a creation of your Lord" or... As for the Lord, He does not come and does not go. Where did this problem come from them, or where did this denial come from? From likening the Creator to the created, from likening the unseen to the seen. They say it is not permissible to describe Allah with movement. We do not describe Allah with movement because He did not describe Himself with it, nor did His Prophet describe Him with it. But He described Himself as having come on the Day of Resurrection. So we say He came, and we do not say He came meaning He moved. They refuse to believe in the explicit Qur'an. Similarly, regarding this meaning, there is the well-known and famous hadith, which is for us a mass-transmitted hadith due to the multitude of its valid chains: . The true people of the Sunnah, who are the people of hadith, believe in the previously mentioned verse in its apparent sense: "Your Lord has come." Your Lord has come. Our Lord descends. Our Lord descends. As for the Mu'tazilah, and the Asha'irah followed them, along with a group of those who followed them, no, our Lord does not descend. As they said, He does not come. They said, if He does not descend, then what does "Our Lord descends" mean? They say it means His mercy. This is interpretation, and this interpretation is denial. This denial necessitates the negation of legal realities related to the divine attributes. When our Lord, Mighty and Majestic, describes Himself in His Book or on the tongue of His Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him), it is only to make His servants know Him, Blessed and Exalted is He, because He is unseen from us and we cannot see Him except on the Day of Resurrection, if Allah wills. So when we come to the verses of attributes and the hadiths of attributes and give them meanings other than the apparent, clear meanings of the Qur'anic or hadith texts, it means we have denied these divine attributes. "Your Lord has come" — "Your Lord did not come." "Our Lord descends" — "Our Lord does not descend." Glory be to Allah. If there were a text saying He does not come and does not descend, we would believe it. But the texts are to the contrary. How can we describe our Lord with what He did not describe Himself with, and purify Him from what He described Himself with? This is denial. And this is how some of the Sunni schools, such as the Maturidiyyah and the Asha'irah, fell into this. We said that we call for following the Book and the methodology of the righteous predecessors so that we do not fall into such deviations that the Mu'tazilah initiated and many of those who claim to belong to the people of the Sunnah and the community followed them in. The people of the Sunnah and the community today, in the custom of the present age, and in al-Azhar and the Islamic universities, and so on, are the people of hadith, the Maturidiyyah, and the Asha'irah. Well, these are three schools in creed. How can there be three schools in creed in matters of the unseen? They say their difference is a mercy. It could have been that this was the case, and it has been said that this is in rulings. Their difference is a mercy in rulings because it involves ease, as some ignorant people say that on the Day of Resurrection, the four imams will stand at the beginning of the Sirat, as if they are the ones who will judge people. A man, for example, of the Hanafi school, prays a messed-up prayer, but it is valid in another school. The second imam says to him, "Come from here, your prayer is valid according to my school!" This is the clear misguidance. So I said it can be said that difference in branches brings ease, and they built upon this the superstition we mentioned regarding the Sirat. Nevertheless, the difference is not a mercy even in the branches. What about... In some legal rulings, there may be two aspects, as the Shaykh al-Islam Ibn Taymiyyah (may Allah have mercy on him) expresses, saying... "more preferred, stronger, and more obligatory." I say that this man who prays with his family as imam on cold days, we say it is permissible for him to do so if it is not his custom on non-cold days to do so, and he goes out to the mosque as we said at the beginning of the discussion, and it is now clear to you...