The Shaykh explains the importance of adding the qualifier "according to the methodology of the righteous predecessors" to our statement "returning to the Book and the Sunnah."

The Shaykh : And I, this question of yours reminds me of some topics I addressed frequently in Egypt, and I have done so here a few times as well. It is not sufficient for us to call people to the Book and the Sunnah only; rather, it is obligatory for us to add to this call the Book and the Sunnah according to the methodology of the righteous predecessors. Do you know why this qualifier is necessary? This qualifier here in the Levant, I may have mentioned it a few times, and very few times at that, but in Egypt I felt the importance of this qualifier very, very much, even among the supporters of the Sunnah. We used to lecture on this specific point for long hours. So, I am reminding you now of some of the hadiths we always and forever circle around. They asked, "Who are they, O Messenger of Allah?" He said, And in the other narration, the one attested to from the hadith of al-'Urbah, he said, The hadith of al-'Urbah says, Do you see, here is the point, why did the Messenger not limit himself in the first hadith to mentioning but rather added to that Do you see why the Messenger (peace and blessings be upon him) did not limit himself in the hadith of al-'Urbah to saying but rather added to that ? Do you see why our Lord (Mighty and Majestic) said in the Noble Qur'an Why did He say Why was the verse not in the following order: "And whoever opposes the Messenger after the guidance has become clear to him and follows other than the way of the believers, We will turn him over to what he has turned to, and We will cast him into Hell, and wretched is the destination" but rather it came with the Quranic text What is the secret in the verse? What is the secret in the two previous hadiths? That Allah (Mighty and Majestic) did not limit Himself to the warning against opposing the Messenger only, but added to that His saying And the Messenger himself did not limit himself to mentioning his Sunnah, but added to it his Companions, and the Rightly Guided Caliphs from among them in particular? The secret in this is that when we study the seventy-three sects of the Islamic sects, we do not find a single sect that says "We disavow the Sunnah" You have the last sect we know of that claims Islam, prays, fasts, and so on, "the Qadiyyah" They say, "We are upon the Book and the Sunnah" All the sects, even this one, do not disavow the Sunnah. So, each one of the misguided sects says, "We are upon the Book and the Sunnah" The decisive ruling comes: That is, it is obligatory for the Muslim to be protected from deviation and to be among the misguided sects, so that he does not become one of the misguided sects, that he holds fast to the concepts of the texts of the Book and the Sunnah as they were with the Companions. Otherwise, the fundamental misguidance of all these misguided sects did not come from their denial of the Sunnah, let alone the Qur'an, but rather from their denial of the meanings of the Qur'an and the meanings of the Sunnah. They came with new meanings that the righteous predecessors did not know.
For example, the Mu'tazilah are among the most famous of the misguided sects and those who oppose the people of the Sunnah. When they deny the creed of the righteous predecessors, which is explicitly stated in the Book and the Sunnah, for example, Do they deny this verse? I say, do they deny it or not? They do not deny it as a fixed word in the Noble Qur'an. They do not deny it, not a single letter of it, but they deny it when they deny its true meaning. They say, very simply, the meaning is That is, looking toward the pleasure of her Lord. They invalidated the text with a deleted addition. Our Lord is saying They say "to the pleasure," meaning to the Paradise of her Lord, as if our Lord (Mighty and Majestic), with all the verses and hadiths in which He gave glad tidings to His believing servants that they will enter Paradise, as if it was feared that they would enter Paradise and someone would understand that they do not look at the pleasure of Paradise, so our Lord came with this verse to say to them, That is, looking toward the pleasure of her Lord, to make it clear to them that you are seeing the pleasure of Paradise, it will not pass you by covered. This is ta'til (denial of the divine attributes) itself. So, so that these Muslims do not fall into any of these deviations in the future, it is necessary to add the addition we mentioned: the Book and the Sunnah according to the methodology of the righteous predecessors. Otherwise, if we leave this methodology, we will be misguided in a far deviation and become a sect.