Continuation of the Shaykh’s response to statements found in one of the books of the contemporaries, which are erroneous concepts regarding the Salafi call.

The Shaykh : We said, he says: "And there is no disagreement between us that the majority of Muslims, those to whom the description of seeking knowledge or scholarly investigation does not apply, are not obligated with the same responsibility as those distinguished ones". He had mentioned in the previous lesson a description of the Salafi call, stating that they call for following the Book and the Sunnah, that they study the four schools of jurisprudence and discuss their evidence, and he described this call as a call to the truth. But now we want to clarify that this work, which scholarly investigation requires, is not something the general public can do, and this is a correct statement. However, what he built upon it is incorrect, as you will hear.
Therefore, he says: "And there is no disagreement between us that the majority of Muslims, those to whom the description of seeking knowledge or scholarly investigation does not apply, are not obligated with the same responsibility as those distinguished ones. Here is the point regarding the danger of his words. He said: 'So their call to abandon the schools of jurisprudence is nothing but luring them into doubt about the religion itself, and this is sufficient to misguide them and push the whole of them into the abyss of loss. On this basis, we interpret the position of al-Bouti and al-Hamid (may Allah have mercy on him) regarding non-sectarianism, considering it in this perspective a danger that threatens the Islamic Shari'ah'".
This book, unfortunately, agrees with the Salafis at the beginning of the discourse along the entire line, but at the end of the discourse, it departs from them along the entire line. The reason for this goes back to one thing: that the Salafi call, by its nature, is the correct concept of Islam. And since Islam, in its reality, is a comprehensive religion for all of humanity in every time and place, the Salafi call, by its nature, is not restricted to a specific group of Muslims to the exclusion of others. Rather, it calls all people, just as Islam calls. Because the Salafi call is Islam in the correct concept, it calls all Muslims to hold fast to their Islam. It does not restrict the Islamic call to a group to the exclusion of another. It does not distinguish, in terms of calling to follow the Book and the Sunnah, between the educated and the uneducated, between the learned and the unlearned. It calls all categories and all individuals to be sincere to Allah (Mighty and Majestic) in their worship and to their Prophet in following him.
All Muslims must participate in this. So now we hear a new tone, and this writer is also one of the problems surrounding the Salafi call: he belongs to the Salafi call, and yet now he writes in a way that creates division.
The reason for this division goes back to the fact that there are people who preceded the Salafi call by belonging to another party or group that does not adopt the Salafi call as their school and methodology. They preceded the Salafi call by belonging to a party and being cultured with its culture. Most of these parties, as we spoke about in some detail in our commentary on the previous word in the last lesson, are based on aggregation, clustering, and increasing the masses, not on cultural education and understanding the religion. When the Salafi call comes to an individual among these people, he is impressed by its purity, clarity, and strength... so he adopts it in general. But what he had previously adopted, which was the adoption of another call based on clustering and partisanship, does not allow this clustering and partisanship, in terms of reality, to make room for the Salafi call to enter the core of his heart and to control all his senses and all his actions. So you find that he is, on one hand, a Salafi, and on the other hand, not a Salafi; rather, he is against the Salafi call. This is an example we were talking about before we read it written down, as is the case now. We were reading it in the actions of some of these people. We find one of them living while claiming the Salafi call, but no one benefits from his call, or, yes, no one benefits from his adoption of the Salafi call from those around him, except for something that is barely noticeable. Why? Because he does not call to the Salafi call; he carried it for himself and his person only. As for the thing he calls to, he is eager and diligent in calling to it, and that is this clustering and partisanship based on general Islamic concepts that do not clarify Islam to its adopter in its correct form as it came in the Book and the Sunnah. This clustering and partisanship does not make room for the spread of the Salafi call among all strata of the Ummah and its individuals, because this contradicts clustering and partisanship, as we explained this in the last lesson. Because when we say this is the truth with no difference, let me be away from the obstacles on the path, one will separate from the other, and the brother from his brother, and this contradicts clustering.
Therefore—and peace be upon you—therefore, there are people who are half Salafi and half partisan. The first half is in terms of his person and his self, and the other half is in terms of the society in which he lives. So in his society, he is not a Salafi. Therefore, he wants to leave the general people, as you heard, and the general people are Muslims, the overwhelming majority of Muslims by nature. He wants to leave them holding fast to their schools of jurisprudence and not call them to follow the Book and the Sunnah, because in his claim, this is a call for them to a labyrinth, to misguidance, and to gradual exit from the religion, may Allah protect us from that.
Here we want to clarify the difference between the Salafi call in its reality and the Salafi call within the limits of what some of its members from the Islamic parties bear. We agree with everyone on one reality, and we differ in the detailed method of calling to it to achieve it. We all agree that it is obligatory for Muslims to resume Islamic life. This is a common word between us and them. We all say it is obligatory that we resume Islamic life. But I am now asking, within the limits of what we were reading in their societies and what we are reading now embodied in these lines before us, who represents the Islamic society? Are they only a few counted individuals in every region and every country, or are they these Muslims, between the scholar and the student and the illiterate who cannot read or write? There is no doubt that this last answer is the one that represents the Islamic society. So if we truly want to cooperate on resuming Islamic life, does this require that we divide people into two groups: a group we educate with the correct culture, which is nothing but the Salafi call by the admission of this writer, and the other group, which is the majority, we leave as they are? And the meaning of this is that we leave them, first, in ignorance, because as long as we call the first group, which is the elite and distinguished group of Muslims, to follow the truth, i.e., the Book and the Sunnah, and we do not call the public, the meaning of that is that we leave these people in their ignorance and their error, and even in their misguidance. And not only that, but we leave them in their differences and their severe disputes, one of the effects of which is that many of them are hesitant to have a Muslim pray behind his Muslim brother on the pretext that his school of jurisprudence is different from my school. And to this day, you find the matter apparent in the refusal of many followers, or rather imitators, of the schools of jurisprudence, of those who call to follow the Book and the Sunnah, to pray behind them. This is a phenomenon we see in many and very many occasions. When it is said to these people, "Are the Salafis disbelievers?" they say, "No, they are innovators." Well, is praying behind innovators permissible in the school of jurisprudence or not? It is permissible, and they argue with a hadith that we weaken in terms of narration but correct in terms of understanding, which is ... the hadith. Then they contradict it and do not act upon it, and all the schools of jurisprudence are based on it. The point is that this writer here wants us to leave the masses of Muslims in their ignorance, their error, and their division. Is this the Islam that says ? Is this the Islam that calls all sects to cooperate, to support one another, and not to divide, that divides between a few Muslims—these are called only—and the public of Muslims are left as they are? This is not what a Muslim who understood something of the call of the Book and the Sunnah with correct understanding would say.