Speaking about the deception of those called the righteous awliya (close friends of Allah).

The Shaykh : ... I said to him: As long as there is no difference... [Everyone laughs!]... By Allah, he did not accept the conclusion, and he cut off the conversation when he was struck by this shock and silenced. He said to the owner of the house... Muhammad Nasser is with us... He said: Get me a "mangal" (brazier) with embers. I said to him: What is it for? He said: We want to show you how we... the fire. I said to him: O Abu Ahmad, do not trouble yourself, bring the match.

Those present : [Everyone laughs!].

The Shaykh : He brought the match... He was placing a pile like our brother "Abd al-Fattah" here, without any comparison, of course... He was not far from me, so I took the match and lit it. I went to him and said to him: How do you know that the call is false or forbidden... Glory be to Allah, he was silenced for a moment; meaning, it was as if he was taken and he did not speak a single word, and I was approaching him, and indeed I burned it for him... It broke here and became two, two... and then I held it like this and rubbed it, and the fire flared up. I said to him: Go now to the shaykhs and tell them: We went to show them a karamah (a miracle granted to a righteous person)...
My father - may Allah have mercy on him - in our original land "Albania," there was a shaykh of a tariqa (Sufi order) there... A challenge occurred between me and him, not about this, but as for me... practically to some extent, a shaykh of a tariqa there was claiming... and so on, of course, that my father - may Allah have mercy on him - was always measuring... an old tariqa where he puts the sword, he said to him: It does not need a skewer or anything, I will strike you with this sword if nothing happens to you, this house... is not yours... for these matters are exercises and experiments that the Muslim and the disbeliever, the righteous and the wicked, can do, so nothing is built upon them... what is built upon is the precious and valuable thing, .
And this is part of Satan's misguidance of his enemy, man. He comes to delude him that taqwa (mindfulness of Allah) - my brother - is a difficult thing. What do you want with this matter? We will guide you to a closer path. Here, strike yourself with the skewer and nothing will happen to you, and this is proof that you are one of the awliya (close friends of Allah) of the righteous and... of the great shaykhs. He misguides them by this path; therefore, you find these people are mostly the farthest from righteousness and taqwa (mindfulness of Allah). They do not pray or fast. I say: mostly, so let no one object that we do not know people among them who do pray!
And the following story happened to me as an example of how Satan misguides his enemy, man. In a village between Damascus and Aleppo called "Deir Atiyah," I was - also - on the path of da'wah (calling others to Islam) there, staying up one night. The house was on the main road, ground floor. So instead of the door being knocked on, the window was knocked on. The owner of the house came out to look at the one knocking; we heard nothing from the owner of the house but a strange welcome for the one knocking: "Welcome and welcome, and welcome to Abu So-and-so." We wanted to see who this Abu So-and-so was. I was actually surprised by Abu So-and-so; because the man was a drunkard, an opium smoker, a hashish smoker, one who abandons prayer, breaking his fast in Ramadan next to the mosque... our shop there is still in Sham. He does not pray to Allah even in Ramadan, where the most sinful people pray. He does not pray; he has a cigarette he lights, and the smell of hashish, meaning, does not leave him. And his eyes were bulging like this. And this person understood that he is a wali (close friend of Allah) from the great awliya (close friends of Allah) in the eyes of the owner of the house. This is a calamity of the age. And he - also - was surprised by me. I was sitting with the sitters on the chair, and he sat in front of me. He started to bow and prostrate. You know what this sign is, that this... in Allah, he is possessed. When I knew this truth that the owner of the house believes in him and he is misleading them; meaning, he is carrying them to believe in him, I opened the lecture or the speech with the verse: , and I spoke what Allah made easy.
The point is: The owner of the house returns and says: By Allah - O Professor - this speech that you were speaking, we used to believe this before, until a man from our town came and stayed in al-Azhar for twenty years, ; he came to them after twenty years and made them believe in such a thing, that he is one of the great awliya (close friends of Allah) and the righteous. He told me details, meaning he was teaching them in a mosque in his gatherings with people. In summary, he told them the following story, and in it is the greatest lesson; he said to them, the al-Azhari shaykh, that there was in the past a learned and virtuous man who would go out to the market with the intention of reward, enjoining good and forbidding evil. One day, as was his habit, he stopped at a perfumer and saw him selling narcotic hashish, so he rebuked him; "Are you not ashamed? Do you not fear Allah? What is this? You are selling to people what harms them and does not benefit them?" He said: He had not finished his speech when the man was stripped of his mind, his thought, and his dignity, and he became like a possessed person. His students took him from his hand like a beast, acting like this. He did not know where he was going or coming from, he did not speak or think or anything.

The questioner : ... .

The Shaykh : Yes, the learned and virtuous shaykh was stripped, and of course, as something very serious, they would ask about... it would be an urgent matter. He said: So they directed them to a man from the awliya (close friends of Allah) and the righteous, "Dhu al-Janayhin" (The One with Two Wings); meaning, he knows the knowledge of the apparent and the knowledge of the hidden; the reality and the Shari'ah (Islamic sacred law).
And this reminds us also of a simple return to the presence of the questioner about Sufism. In Sufism, there is something called reality and something called Shari'ah (Islamic sacred law), and something called apparent knowledge, and something called hidden knowledge. Do you think Sufism has such a thing or not? Many people say that it does, of course, and this story is what indicates that.
They came to this man, Dhu al-Janayhin (The One with Two Wings)... knowledge of the apparent and knowledge of the hidden; reality and Shari'ah (Islamic sacred law). They told him the problem of the learned and virtuous man, and that merely when he enjoined good, he was struck by this stripping. He said to him: This man, the perfumer who sells hashish, is one of the great awliya (close friends of Allah) and the righteous; and therefore, because he objected to him, he was stripped. And therefore, now, the Sufis, from their inherited phrases: "Do not object, do not criticize, you will be expelled," and "The dead and the seeker are in the hands of the shaykh like the dead in the hands of the washer." If he turns him like this, he will not say to him: Brother! Why like this? If he turns him like this, absolutely not. And so the sincere seeker with his shaykh must be like the dead completely. This is the one who objected to the learned man selling hashish, this is from the awliya (close friends of Allah) and the righteous. Yes, if you want your shaykh to return to his state, his knowledge, and his virtue, go and apologize to the hashish-smoking wali (close friend of Allah). What Allah wills!! And please his heart. And indeed, they went to him with the shaykh. They sat and they were soft with him and apologized that the shaykh did not know your rank, and so on. And you know that he is a learned and virtuous man who enjoins good and forbids evil, until the heart of whom was pleased? The hashish-smoking wali (close friend of Allah). At that time, the wali (close friend of Allah) said: I have accepted the shaykh. Like the one who was what? Sleeping and waking up. And the so-called wali (close friend of Allah) returned to advise the shaykh and explain to him, like what al-Khidr explained to Musa (Moses), what Allah wills!! He says to him: You, O Shaykh, are seeing me selling hashish, but the reality is that I am selling against hashish, so the buyer does not take a sip from it without it making him stop smoking hashish. Who told them this story? The al-Azhari scholar; therefore, he gave them the result that you should wake up and object. Its secret is in the weakest of what? His creation, a cliché among people!!

The questioner : This is a rough scholar, meaning.

The Shaykh : His secret is in the weakest of his creation, and from these calamities, from the al-Azhari scholar, our host, the owner of the house, came to believe that there are such awliya (close friends of Allah). We see them like this on the surface, they do not pray or fast, but they pray in Mecca, they close their eyes and pray in a moment, and so on.

The questioner : From the people of the step, meaning!!

The Shaykh : This is all prevalent among the people, having been distorted by Shaytan from the straight path, and he has deluded them into thinking that the opposite of taqwa (mindfulness of Allah) is actually taqwa itself. For what is the meaning of taqwa? It is abstaining from what Allah has forbidden. Yet here we are, hearing that this one who is not praying is actually praying, and this one who is smoking hashish is not smoking hashish. Is he drinking khamr (intoxicants)? No, he is not drinking khamr. He is drinking khamrouziyyah. These are interpretations (ta'wil) that are most like the interpretations of the Batiniyyah Qaramitah, who are cited as an example of atheism (ilhad) regarding the religion of Allah and His signs.
The point is: these tricks seen from these people are of no consequence; whether they are due to experiments, as we believe, or as He (Mighty and Majestic) said: .
Other than that?

The questioner : ... ... ... .

The Shaykh : Of course, if there are no such things, they are very natural and hidden from people... the work of the jinn; because you told me: a manuscript...

The questioner : The pen.

The Shaykh : Where is the pen?

The questioner : It is written on a piece of paper.

The Shaykh : Where did you see this... writing?

The questioner : He told us, the man said: I see with my own eyes... the basket, he put it in the basket for us...

The Shaykh : I understood the paper in the basket, and the pen in the basket, and he saw the pen writing in the basket how? If I said, for example, in a glass container, for example, he sees it.

The questioner : I don't know... the important thing is he held it... and saw the pen write on the paper, exactly the details!

The Shaykh : Yes, it is possible that Shaytan comes, holds the pen, and writes, there is nothing strange about it...

The questioner : ... .