The Shaykh’s mention of the accusation leveled against him of declaring “Hasan al-Banna” and “Sayyid Qutb” disbelievers, misleading them, and refuting that accusation!!

The Shaykh : And among these many, many lies is that we mislead or declare “Hasan al-Banna” and “Sayyid Qutb” disbelievers. As for Hasan al-Banna, I do not have such a statement, even if it was understood incorrectly. As for Sayyid Qutb, recently I met with one of their leaders after the effect of that decision had passed. He visited me, came here, and waited for me for hours. Then, when he did not find me, he returned and went to my brother-in-law’s house, where he found me. We sat for an hour or more, and a discussion and debate took place. I reproached him for that previous stance, and lo and behold, for the first time, they revealed to me the reason that led them to issue that decision. He said: “You declared Sayyid Qutb a disbeliever!” I said: “Glory be to You, this is a great slander! O Shaykh so-and-so, O Doctor so-and-so, did you hear this statement from me?” He said: “No.”
Well then; where is your adherence to Islamic etiquette? Where are you from the saying of Allah (Mighty and Majestic): ? Where are you from the saying of the noble Messenger: ? Especially since, first, it is a great error on my part to declare a Muslim man a disbeliever, at the very least; how much more so when he is a caller to Allah? Second: as for you, you attach this accusation to me, and I was hesitant; I was previously ahead of you, then I came to your country and resided among you; did you not send someone to verify what reached you? I tell you: O so-and-so, we do not declare those who truly deserve to be declared disbelievers for leaving the circle of Islam due to corrupt beliefs as disbelievers until the proof is established; this is part of our creed. It is part of our creed that a Muslim may fall into disbelief, but we do not say: he is a disbeliever; because declaring a Muslim a disbeliever is a very serious matter, and out of the caution that our jurist scholars adopted, some of them reached the point of saying: if we had a hundred opinions on an issue, ninety-nine of these opinions declare the one who falls into this issue a disbeliever, and only one opinion does not declare him a disbeliever, we take this one opinion out of caution for our religion; because of the known severe warning in the authentic hadiths, such as his saying (peace and blessings be upon him): .
So we do not declare disbelievers those with whom we live and from whom we hear the unity of existence; how then would we declare a disbeliever a person whose tongue slipped or whose pen slipped? But we do not favor anyone in the religion of Allah; we say: this statement is disbelief, so there is no necessary connection in our creed, first, and then from the scientific perspective, second, between a person speaking a word of disbelief and ruling that he has disbelieved and apostatized from his religion. We have many examples from the life of the Messenger (peace and blessings be upon him) and his noble biography with his Companions. There is, for example, the hadith that Imam Ahmad narrated in his Musnad from the hadith of Abdullah ibn Abbas that the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) delivered a sermon to the Companions one day, so a man stood up to say to him: “What Allah wills and what you will, O Messenger of Allah.” He said to him (peace and blessings be upon him): . , I think that people like these who hear when we say this statement is disbelief assume that the Messenger (peace and blessings be upon him) declared that man a disbeliever, whereas in reality he did no more than warn him and say to him: ; he clarified the error to him and followed it with clarifying the correct statement, and that is the path of every Muslim caller who understands the reality of the call of the Messenger (peace and blessings be upon him).