What is your opinion of those who describe the Salafi group as being concerned only with the scholarly aspect, and as having a deficiency in worship and ignorance of the understanding of reality?

The questioner : Praise be to Allah, Lord of the worlds, and may peace and blessings be upon our Prophet, the trustworthy one, and upon his family and all his Companions. As for what follows: The questioner says to our honorable Shaykh:The Shaykh : Nasser: There are those who have written words about certain categories, meaning groups, stating that some groups are partisan to a part of the religion, and he considered that to be from the legacy of the destroyed nations. Then he mentioned the Tabligh group without explicitly naming it, and said that they are concerned with what he called "devotional Islam," accompanied by deviation in concept and behavior, and that they are concerned with what is under the ground. Then he mentioned a second category, naming it and describing its people as being concerned with political Islam, forming political parties, entering parliaments, and the like. Then he concluded that critique with the Salafis, saying: "And there is a third category that is concerned with scholarly Islam; their concern is correcting hadiths, weakening them, and warning people from narrating weak and fabricated hadiths, accompanied by harshness and weakness in worship, and heedlessness of the reality of the Ummah and what is plotted against it!" The question, Shaykh: Is the Salafi call and the Salafis' Islam this scholarly Islam that this writer described? And is it correct to say that they are partisan to a part of the religion, and that this is from the legacy of the destroyed nations? Also, that they live in heedlessness of the reality of the Ummah and what is plotted against it, and that they have weakness in worship? We ask you to shed light on this. May Allah reward you with good.

The Shaykh : Praise be to Allah; we praise Him, seek His help, and seek His forgiveness. And we seek refuge in Allah from the evils of our souls and the badness of our deeds. Whom Allah guides, there is no one who can misguide him, and whom He misguides, there is no one who can guide him. And I bear witness that there is no god but Allah alone, with no partner, and I bear witness that Muhammad is His slave and His Messenger. As for what follows:
I am not aware of a specific person who says such a word or directs such an accusation to the Salafi group. If such a person exists, there is no doubt that he is one of two people: either he is ignorant of the reality of the Salafi call and the group to which they belong in all lands of Islam, where they always declare the obligation of returning to the Book and the Sunnah upon the methodology of the righteous Salaf. All of them, despite their differences in location, country, and person, claim one true call in which they do not differ at all, unlike other groups whose ideas and beliefs may differ while they belong to one party or one group. If such a person exists, he is, as I said earlier, one of two people: either ignorant of what the followers of the Book and the Sunnah upon the methodology of the righteous Salaf always declare, or he is ignoring this reality. He always and forever declares and sings about the obligation of knowing the understanding of reality. The reality of the Salafi group is that they call to following the Book and the Sunnah with everything in it of beliefs and rulings, whether these rulings are acts of worship, transactions, behavior, or the like. Therefore, it is extreme ignorance and very, very serious stubbornness to attribute to these callers to following the Book and the Sunnah upon the methodology of the righteous Salaf a contradiction of what they declare. As for his accusing them of harshness, which means little worship, this is in reality an accusation that any person who does not fear Allah the Exalted and Majestic, and who has no concern for the Hereafter or the worldly life, would not be unable to utter. Therefore, I have nothing to say regarding this word I quoted earlier—may Allah have mercy on you—except to say: "Glory be to You, this is a great slander." I would have liked to know if such an accusation is printed in a book or a thesis, or if it is recorded on a tape, so that we can return to it and study it, so that first, we are aware of it as its author uttered it, and second, so that we are precise in criticizing it. And when I say what I said earlier regarding the Salafi group, I mean that as a claim. As for the fact that there may be individuals among them to whom such a description applies, this cannot be denied for any group. Such restriction to some aspects of the comprehensive, general call cannot be kept free of any individual from any group. We know, for example, that the call brought by the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him) was pure and clean from the sky, and he raised his Companions upon it. Yet among these Companions were individuals who did not act upon some aspects of this call. This does not mean that they did not adopt the call in its comprehensiveness and perfection, but rather it is the nature of a person to err. If an individual or individuals err and contradict the call in one of its aspects, that is not something that justifies a Muslim who fears Allah the Exalted and Majestic to turn the reality of the call declared by its proponents upside down because of the existence of individuals who contradict it in some details. If the one to whom this speech is attributed attributes harshness and deficiency in worship and the like to the deviation of individuals from the general principle, I think that any call, let it be the one he calls to, must have individuals, and many individuals, who contradict what he calls to in the general, comprehensive call, as is evident from his words. Do we then say, if he declares that his call is general and comprehensive for all aspects of Islam brought by the Book and the Sunnah, that it is not so because he himself or someone else may have fallen short in some of what he calls people to? This would not be justice, but rather this is the very injustice. And we say here with the words of our Lord, Blessed and Exalted is He: This is what I have as an answer to this question.

The questioner : May Allah reward you with good.

The Shaykh : And to you.