What is your opinion of the statement of one who says: “Whoever says, ‘I am a Salafi,’ must be called to repent, or else he is to be executed by hudud?”

The questioner : O Shaykh, there is one of the students of knowledge in the land of Najd who says that whoever says, “I am a Salafi,” or whoever says, “I am an Ikhwan,” or to the end of the list of groups, and he listed them, that he must be called to repent, and if he does not repent, he is to be executed by hudud.

The Shaykh : I do not think he says this.

The questioner : No, by Allah, he said it, O Shaykh, and there is proof of it on a tape.

The Shaykh : No, I do not think a scholar says this.

The questioner : Yes.

The Shaykh : I do not think a scholar says this, but someone who is not a scholar might say this, and even more than this.

The questioner : What is your advice to him, O Shaykh?

The Shaykh : My advice to him is to understand what it means to be a Salafi. And I say to him now: Do you disavow the Salaf? He will say, “No.” If he is a scholar, that is the case. But if he is one of those who are ignorant and know nothing, he will tell you, “It is just the Qur’an and the Sunnah.” But how do you understand the Qur’an? And how do you understand the Sunnah? Do you interpret the Qur’an by the Qur’an first, and then by the Sunnah? What do we call this sequence? It is an error. It is not permissible for us to say, “We interpret the Qur’an by the Qur’an, and then by the Sunnah,” or “by the Qur’an and the Sunnah together,” because we cannot do without the Sunnah in understanding the Qur’an, absolutely not.