How should the debate between Muslims and disbelievers be conducted regarding certain matters of the Shari'ah?

The questioner : May Allah make our affairs and yours easy.

The Shaykh : May Allah preserve you.

The questioner : We want to ask a question, O Shaykh.

The Shaykh: Go ahead.

The questioner : A question like this: someone asked me, and we ask Allah for forgiveness and well-being for us and for them, if Allah wills. There is a disbeliever who died five hundred years ago, O Shaykh...

The Shaykh : With you, and what is strange.

The questioner : And another disbeliever who died today.

The Shaykh : May Allah guide him, this one.The questioner .

The questioner : Yes, so how is this one punished, the one from five hundred years ago, and this one who died today? If Allah, Glorious is His Majesty, says that He is not just?

The Shaykh : Are you a Muslim?

The questioner : Praise be to Allah.

The Shaykh : And what is it?

The questioner : A disbeliever.

The Shaykh : Well, what is it to you and him?

The questioner : He means, he says.

The Shaykh : What is it to you and him? What do you want with him?

The questioner : By Allah, I want nothing from him.

The Shaykh : Well, it is not permissible for you to debate this disbeliever, because the one who debates disbelievers, first, must have knowledge of the Book and the Sunnah, and second, must have intellect, understanding, and knowledge of how to debate disbelievers. So this person does not start with answering his problem; he starts with: does he believe in Allah as the Creator of this universe or not? Then he proceeds step by step until he reaches this disbelief. At that point, we can answer it. But if we skip all these stages and come to try to convince him of this misguidance, while he is originally a disbeliever and a disbeliever in Allah, Mighty and Majestic, and you want to convince him that the Allah who has no existence in his mind is just and not oppressive, this is impossible. Therefore, I advise you not to occupy yourself with him.

The questioner : By Allah, I did not occupy myself, O Shaykh. He is one of the people who now... we ask Allah for forgiveness and well-being. He says to you such and such, and he raises doubts around this point. So I said to him, meaning, O Shaykh, may Allah bless you, the first of the books that believe in the unseen, that was my answer to him.

The Shaykh : This answer does not benefit him, because he is not a believer in the book, nor a believer in the Lord of the book. What is the benefit with him?

The questioner : By Allah, there is no benefit.

The Shaykh : This happened once in my time, and I was in Damascus. One man came and asked me how Muhammad was taken up to the highest heavens, while we know scientifically that whoever exceeds the air layer dies? I said to him, first, are you a believer in Allah? He said, yes, I am a believer in Allah. Well, are you a believer in the Messenger of Allah? He said, I am a believer in the Messenger of Allah. He kept saying this, and then we said to him, do you believe in something called miracles? He said, no. I said to him, do you believe in medicine? He said, yes. I said to him, medicine says that some humans have two hearts, a heart on the right and a heart on the left. What is your knowledge of medicine? Do you know medicine? He said, no. I said to him, if the doctors wrote and published this news in magazines that you do not know, do you believe in it or not? He said, yes, I believe in it. I said, even though these are disbelieving doctors and pigs, and they might be mistaken and malicious, and so on. So if our Lord, in whom you believe, informed us through the tongue of the most truthful of people, who is the Messenger of Allah, that Allah revealed to him Do you doubt this news? Then I showed him the magazine al-Hilal, which was published by a disbeliever in Egypt named Georgi Zaydan. I found in the magazine a picture of a rooster in Japan, placed on a wall four meters high, and the rooster was about two spans in size, its tail reaching the ground from above the wall. I said to him, do you believe in this? He said, as long as the picture is like this. I said to him, this is a violation of the custom. So Allah, Mighty and Majestic, who created the rooster in the form we know, is to alert us from our heedlessness that this is not nature, as the materialists and naturalists say, but rather it is by the decree and power of Allah, Mighty and Majestic. Every so often, He shows us some of the miracles of the custom to revive our feeling, which has become dull in our hearts due to the influence of custom. So our Lord reminds us with such things that are beyond the custom. Just as Allah, Mighty and Majestic, violates the custom in animals, He violates the custom in humans, who are honored by Allah, Mighty and Majestic, by the explicit text of the Qur'an, and especially by honoring the most honored among them, who are the prophets and messengers, and more specifically by honoring the best of them and their master, who is our Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him). My intention with this story is for you to know how the sequence and debate with disbelievers like these should be. Perhaps you understood?

The questioner : By Allah, I understood. May Allah reward us with good, if Allah wills. I understood, I understood.

The Shaykh : There is something with someone else.

The questioner : No, by Allah, we want nothing but your safety.

The Shaykh: Peace be upon you.

The Shaykh : And upon you be peace, and the mercy of Allah and His blessings.