The Salafi call: Part of its methodology is honoring the imams and scholars and revering them, and that the words of scholars are a means to knowing the truth, not an end in themselves.

The Shaykh : When we honor the imams and magnify them, it is because we know that they are guides and callers to what we are calling to, namely the Book and the Sunnah, and because we view them as intermediaries between us and our Prophet Muhammad (peace and blessings be upon him). We do not believe that there is any path for seeking knowledge other than the path known to everyone, which is that the ignorant person receives knowledge from the scholar. We do not have a path claimed by some of those who affiliate themselves with certain Sufi orders, who assert that a person, even if he is illiterate and cannot read or write, can receive knowledge through a means other than the established method of receiving knowledge, which they call inspiration.
Inspiration, in the view of many Sufis, is almost like revelation. It is regrettable that we must mention this bitter fact: that the Imam al-Ghazali mentions something of this path of inspiration at the beginning of his book *Ihya' 'Ulum al-Din*. He states that "a person, through his struggle against his self, his monitoring of his Lord, and his supplication to Him in his seclusion, can receive from inspiration knowledge of what he did not know." He and others mention a specific method: sitting in a dark room, placing one's head on one's knees, closing one's eyes, and sitting thus in three darknesses: the darkness of the room, the darkness of closed eyes, and the darkness of the drink itself and the direction one faces, which is contrary to the reception of knowledge. One waits for something of the revelation they call inspiration to descend upon him. This is the origin of the phrase repeated by many Sufis, both early and late, which is their saying: "My heart told me about my Lord." None of them says, as the hadith scholars say, "So-and-so narrated to me from so-and-so," nor does any of them say, as the jurists say, "So-and-so said in his book from so-and-so." Rather, immediately they say: "My heart told me about my Lord." This is also a subject for a long discussion, which I do not wish to delve into, because I am in the process of clarifying the point of difference between us Salafis, who share with the majority of Muslims in preferring and respecting the imams.
We differ on this point. We consider the imams as means and intermediaries to convey to us the knowledge from Allah and His Messenger. We do not follow them for their own sake, nor do we make following them an end in itself, because the only end is to know what the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him) was upon, which his Lord supported in His Book or which he (peace and blessings be upon him) clarified in his Sunnah. These noble scholars are intermediaries whom we take to convey to us the call of the Book and the Sunnah. As for the masses who share with us in appreciating and respecting these scholars, they have inverted this reality. They have made following the scholars—if it is correct to use this term for them—following them, meaning they have made their imitation of these imams the end. The proof is the saying: "Things are made clear by their opposites." The proof is that each of them is satisfied with one imam and holds fast to all his statements, while not holding fast to anything from the statements of the other imams, which are far more numerous. Because the statements of three imams are undoubtedly more numerous than the statements of one imam. Therefore, every imitator of one of these imams is a loser in more than what he gained from his imitation, in the portion where the imam he imitates hit the truth.
As for us, we have known the status of the imams in their knowledge on one hand, and we have known that they are means and intermediaries, not intended in themselves for following, as they clearly stated in those statements we referred to from the introduction of our book *Sifat al-Salah*. They say to their followers and companions, for example: "Take from where we took." "Take from where we took" is an affirmation of what we say, that they are not intended for following, but the one intended for following is Allah, then His Messenger, and he (peace and blessings be upon him) is the only one who must be followed, without the rest of people. He is the only prophet whom Allah (Mighty and Majestic) made following him a proof, or the proof, of the love of Allah (Mighty and Majestic), as in the famous verse: .