What is the Salafi call?

The questioner : Praise be to Allah, and may peace and blessings be upon the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him). First, it is a pleasure for the Association of the People of the Sunnah and the Community in Australia to meet with the honorableThe Shaykh : Nasir al-Din al-Albani (may Allah preserve him), and we have some questions.

The Shaykh: Go ahead.

The questioner : First, honorableThe Shaykh : How do we understand the Salafi call as callers?

The Shaykh : Yes, how do we understand the Salafi call as callers? Explain the question to me so that I can answer it.

The questioner : I meant as callers, because as you know, callers today are numerous, especially those who claim to be Salafi, and problems may arise among them regarding the understanding of certain issues, so a general understanding of the Salafi call is necessary as an introduction to the call.

The Shaykh : The answer to this question was a long lecture recently in Jarash, a town north of Amman, at the brother's place. I think there is a detailed tape on this, and there are probably multiple tapes as well. So I will summarize the answer based on that and say: It is obligatory for Salafi callers to constantly and always focus on defining to everyone, whether they are callers or those being called, the reality of the Salafi Islamic call, which is distinguished in its reality from all other calls that claim affiliation with Islam in general.
All Islamic calls, old and new, adopt the Book and the Sunnah, except for some deviant groups in the present age and individuals in past ages who declared that their call is based on the Book only, without the Sunnah! This is, without a doubt, a matter that does not require us to lengthen the discussion, because it is a consensus that one who limits the understanding of Islam to the Qur'an is not a Muslim, because the Qur'an itself commands Muslims to obey Allah and His Messenger, and to judge by Allah and His Messenger. So we do not need to delve into this point, especially since those who today claim affiliation with this methodology that contradicts the Book and the Sunnah, who are called the Quranists, their misguidance is clear.
But all other groups that meet us in being within the circle of Islam and adopting the Book and the Sunnah with us, it is obligatory for Salafi callers in particular to clarify to them that the Salafi call is distinguished from all other calls by understanding the Book and the Sunnah as our righteous predecessors, the Companions, the Successors, and those who followed them, did, as stated in the mass-transmitted hadith from the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him and his family) who said: . So we add to the Book and the Sunnah the methodology of the righteous predecessors, and this addition is not a newly invented matter as many people may imagine; rather, it is what is explicitly stated in the Book and the Sunnah. As for the Book, such as the saying of Allah the Exalted: . And as for the Sunnah, there are two famous hadiths:
One of them is the hadith of the Saved Sect, which is well known; there is no need to quote it in its full wording, but we will quote from it what is the point of reference; which is his saying (peace and blessings be upon him and his family) when asked about the Saved Sect, he answered (peace and blessings be upon him and his family) by saying: . The other hadith is the hadith of the Rightly Guided Caliphs, which is his saying (peace and blessings be upon him) in the hadith of al-'Arba' ibn Sari'ah: to the end of it. In this hadith is the clarification of the path of the believers mentioned in the previous verse: . So callers must focus on this addition, which distinguishes the call of truth and displays the Saved Sect above the other sects, which is that they are upon what the righteous predecessors were upon.
But this requires something I did not mention recently, which is mentioned in many recordings, that applying this rule to the methodology of the righteous predecessors requires Salafi callers to be concerned with knowing the Salafi athar (reports) as they are concerned with knowing the Prophetic hadiths, because knowing these athar is what enables them to apply this methodology practically and correctly. And these athar, like the hadiths, contain authentic and weak ones; likewise, the athar contain authentic and weak ones. Therefore, one must be attentive to what I will say.
Many books of scholars, such as al-Fath, al-Fath al-Bari by al-Hafiz Ibn Hajar al-'Asqalani and those who came after him, when they argue with some athar, they do not scrutinize their chains of narration! Here lies a very clear error, because if we want to say that such a Companion or such a female Companion used to say so or do so, and we consider that an explanation of a verse in the Book of Allah or a hadith in the Sunnah of the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him and his family), that means we must be certain of the authenticity of that athar or those athar. (And peace be upon you and the mercy of Allah and His blessings). The Salafi Muslim caller should first be knowledgeable about it, and secondly about his call and his explanation of what he is upon.
Then, the Salafi call is distinguished not merely by the call, but practically by seeking to understand Islam correctly from all its aspects, not from some aspects that some groups focus on while neglecting others, and they call the former matters priorities. This division of Islam or knowledge of Islam may lead them to divide it into two parts: the core and the husk. They focus, in their claim—and in reality they do not even focus on this part they called the core—on it without focusing on the other part. I draw attention to a scientific fact: if a Muslim is aware of it, it becomes clear that there is absolutely no room for a researcher in the Book and the Sunnah to divide Islam into core and husk. And if this were possible, only one who encompassed Islam with knowledge could do it, which is almost impossible, because Allah Mighty and Majestic says: .
Therefore, it is obligatory for the Muslim caller to convey Islam as a whole within the limits of his knowledge, and not to claim the aforementioned division of core and husk, because all of Islam is good and blessing. And if this division were accepted, we would say: it is necessary to preserve the core by the husk, as is the case in our daily life where we eat many fruits and seeds, and for them to be pleasant to us, they must be preserved with their husks. This is by way of illustration and approximation, but in reality, we do not accept this naming to say that Islam is core and husk.
But we say: there is what must be known first, and then acted upon secondly; and there are other things that must be known as knowledge for a group of people who are the people of knowledge, and this is what is called by scholars a collective obligation (fard kifayah). Then, practically as well, what is required to be done is for a group without it being required for every individual of the Muslims.
The Shaykh: And what came in the Sunnah, and with this I conclude the answer to this question, is that what is not obligatory may serve as a support for one who may have fallen short in an obligation. I mean by this the well-known hadith from the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) that he said: , and it came in another hadith: . So the voluntary acts that are not obligatory, a Muslim should not be lax in them on the claim that they are not obligatory, because this claim is only accepted if we hypothetically agreed that when a Muslim performs what is obligatory upon him, he does so in the most perfect manner, and not in the deficient manner to which the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) referred in the hadith known among scholars as the hadith of the one who prays poorly. In it, the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) was sitting with his Companions in the mosque when a man entered and prayed, then he came to the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) and said: "Peace be upon you, O Messenger of Allah." He said to him (may Allah's prayer and peace be upon him): , and so, briefly, three times he repeated the prayer, and each time the Messenger (peace be upon him) said to him: . Finally, and the man had realized that he did not know how to pray properly, he said: "By Allah, O Messenger of Allah, I do not know how to do anything else, so teach me." He said to him (may Allah's prayer and peace be upon him): to the end of the hadith. So do you think that the majority of those who pray today are certain and at peace in their own hearts that they are praying a complete prayer, such that they will not be in need [of compensation] on the Day when deeds are weighed with the balance of justice, that they will not find any deficiency in their prayers?
The Shaykh: As we observe in the mosques and elsewhere, most people pray and do not pray! And so it appears to you very strongly the necessity of paying attention to the sunan, because they serve as a reserve for material human life; here, for the spiritual, faith-based life, where these sunan become the cause for completing the deficiency that may occur in the obligatory prayer. And this deficiency is of two kinds:
The Shaykh: A deficiency in quantity, and a deficiency in quality. That is, a man may miss one of the prayers without a valid legal excuse, so he not only commits a sin, but he also loses a great reward. This is the first deficiency, the deficiency in quantity. The other deficiency, in quality, is what the hadith of the one who prays poorly pointed out to you. He prays, but he falls short of its pillars, let alone its proper form. So this hadith comes, and it is his saying (peace be upon him), in what he related from his Lord (Blessed and Exalted is He), that He says to His angels: , meaning whether it is a deficiency in quantity or a deficiency in quality.
The Shaykh: So Islam must be understood and known in all its aspects without distinction, as we said earlier in our expression, between what is obligatory and what is voluntary, and in their expression, between the core and the outer layer. Then, after that, people must rise to what they are able of the first part, which is from the individual obligations. I say this because many people today who join us in calling to the Book and the Sunnah, then part from us by not paying attention to the Salafi effects and the Salafi methodology. Many of these people... they pay attention to the call when the Muslim state is established; and this establishment is an obligatory matter, without doubt, in which no two differ. But what is the way to establish the Muslim state and achieve ruling by Islam, Book and Sunnah? Is it by ignorance of Islam, or is it by understanding it completely and then calling to act upon it, as the Messenger (peace and blessings be upon him) began? He began by teaching people tawhid, the correct creed. Then, as you know—and this does not require lengthening—the legal rulings followed one after another, from the obligation of prayer to the obligation of fasting. The last thing made obligatory, as you know, was Hajj to the House of Allah the Exalted. Then the other rulings from the prohibitions, the forbidden things, the legal hudud, and the like.
The Shaykh: So the call must be comprehensive, and the application is according to ability, and the preparation for establishing the Muslim state is by acting upon what we learned from our true religion. This is what is easy for me to answer regarding this question.