Is it permissible to declare the misguided sects, such as the Khawarij and the Rafidah, disbelievers after the proof has been established against them?

The questioner : Now, let us move on to the second question, if you please.

The questioner : May Allah reward you with good.

The questioner : And you, our Shaykh, this question seems like it could be included in the first question. The question asks: Is it permissible to declare the misguided sects, such as the Khawarij, the Mu'tazilah, the Rafidah, and others, disbelievers after the proof has been established against them?

The Shaykh : If the question is qualified by what comes at the end, "after the proof has been established against them," the answer is yes. However, it must be said here: is everyone who claims to have established the proof against an innovator or a deviant qualified to establish that proof against that deviant? Because, unfortunately, we see today that many of our Salafi youth, if they have learned some issues and disagree with one of the Shaykhs or scholars—and they may indeed be scholars in what is called the auxiliary sciences, meaning grammar, morphology, rhetoric, and so on, and the principles of hadith and the principles of jurisprudence, but they have not applied that—then one of our brothers who is a beginner in knowledge, who has learned one or two or three issues, disagrees with that scholar and says, "I have established the proof against him." I do not think we can say with such ease that the proof has been established against him. Therefore, I say in this question: if the proof has truly been established against him, the answer has already been given in this, in full. But who establishes the proof? It is the people of knowledge, those who know the Book and the Sunnah, and what the righteous Salaf were upon in terms of sound methodology. As I said, this is a question whose answer was advanced in the details of the answer to the first question.