Is a person excused for ignorance regarding the names and attributes?
Machine translationRead the Arabic original
The questioner : Is a person excused for ignorance regarding the names and attributes?
The Shaykh : Is a person excused for what?
The questioner : For ignorance regarding the names and attributes.
The Shaykh : The answer, may Allah bless you, is that the matter varies depending on the person's location. As they say in Damascus, we strike it with a great difference. I mean, a significant difference. The European Muslim who embraced Islam because he saw the light of Islam and believed, or the Bedouin who embraced Islam in some of the battles and asked the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him), "If I fight and am martyred, will I enter Paradise?" He said, "Yes." So he charged at the disbelievers and fought until he was killed. Do you think he knew the details of Islam? No. Let us return to the previous example. This European who embraced Islam, where does he derive the detailed information regarding the divine attributes, whether from the Book or from the Sunnah? He is excused. This is the highest level. Let us go down a bit to the middle: the Muslim who lives in an environment of the later generations, Maturidi or Ash'ari. If he asks any of the scholars who are said to be among the people of knowledge, they will issue a ruling for him based on what they learned of figurative interpretation and denial of the divine attributes. So he is undoubtedly excused. As for the one who lives in a land that has Salafi scholars and scholars of the later generations, he must strive to understand. As for the one who is in a purely Salafi land, it is said that he is not excused for his ignorance. Is that clear? The basis for this is the saying of Allah the Exalted:[Al-Isra 17:15]
The Shaykh : Is a person excused for what?
The questioner : For ignorance regarding the names and attributes.
The Shaykh : The answer, may Allah bless you, is that the matter varies depending on the person's location. As they say in Damascus, we strike it with a great difference. I mean, a significant difference. The European Muslim who embraced Islam because he saw the light of Islam and believed, or the Bedouin who embraced Islam in some of the battles and asked the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him), "If I fight and am martyred, will I enter Paradise?" He said, "Yes." So he charged at the disbelievers and fought until he was killed. Do you think he knew the details of Islam? No. Let us return to the previous example. This European who embraced Islam, where does he derive the detailed information regarding the divine attributes, whether from the Book or from the Sunnah? He is excused. This is the highest level. Let us go down a bit to the middle: the Muslim who lives in an environment of the later generations, Maturidi or Ash'ari. If he asks any of the scholars who are said to be among the people of knowledge, they will issue a ruling for him based on what they learned of figurative interpretation and denial of the divine attributes. So he is undoubtedly excused. As for the one who lives in a land that has Salafi scholars and scholars of the later generations, he must strive to understand. As for the one who is in a purely Salafi land, it is said that he is not excused for his ignorance. Is that clear? The basis for this is the saying of Allah the Exalted:
And never would We punish until We sent a messenger.
وما كنا معذبين حتى نبعث رسولا
Source
www.al-albany.com
The Arabic text is copied verbatim from the original source, without any edits.