Advice for those who have fallen into disagreement among themselves, and who are from the people of the Sunnah and the community.

The questioner : What do you advise, O Shaykh? What do you advise us regarding this matter? I mean, some of the brothers abroad consider such books to be unverified. They publish books and start looking only at the title, and they try to condemn some of their brothers based on the title alone, without verification. So what is the advice in terms of da'wah, in terms of support, and so on? May Allah reward you.

The Shaykh : I think we can take the previous answer as the answer to this question later. For now, without a doubt, we are living through a very serious problem, as there has recently appeared a disagreement among some groups who claim affiliation to the Book and the Sunnah. We advise students of knowledge, and especially the general Muslim public, not to raise their heads to such disagreements on one hand, and on the other hand, not to take the side of one group against the other. This is because it is never easy, first, to distinguish the correct from the incorrect, or the truth from the falsehood. Second, and this is very important, not everyone is able to judge with equity and justice and to stand with the saying of Allah the Exalted: . Therefore, achieving justice between the disputing parties, especially if a person's inclination is with one of the two parties, is very, very difficult. And we know from the authentic Sunnah that when the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) sent Ali to Yemen as a judge between the people, Ali said, "O Messenger of Allah, are you sending me to a people while I do not know how to judge?" So he (peace and blessings be upon him) struck his chest and said to him: . Achieving this text in such disagreements that I have hinted at and explained a side of, achieving justice, or rather achieving the truth before justice, is something that only the most select of the scholars of knowledge can manage. Because these are the ones who can, first, stand upon the statement of these people and the statement of those people, then compare the statement of these with those, and extract from that the correct of the two statements. Sometimes there may not be a difference between the two schools of thought or the two statements except as the scholars say in some disagreements that it is a verbal difference. This is something that only a few individuals from the select can do. Then, among these select, the one who is not able to judge with justice is the one who knows the truth of the two parties: is there a difference between them or not? If there is a difference between them, the truth may be with the side whose affection is not with him, and he will deviate from justice. Therefore, Allah the Exalted said: . Therefore, we advise students of knowledge, let alone those below them, not to enter into this ordeal, and not to stand with anything but the truth that they know before this problem occurs or these disagreements appear.