What is your opinion of the Sufis?

The questioner : And he follows up with another question: What is your opinion of the Sufis? This is a big question!

The Shaykh : The first question... Just as disease affects the body and ravages it, so does partisanship affect the Ummah. This is very clear in the Noble Qur'an These Shi'a are the misguided sects. It is not that all the Shi'a are the misguided sects; they were all mentioned in the hadith of the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him).

The questioner: Yes.

The Shaykh : And during the lesson, I limited myself to the end of the hadith, so listen now to the hadith from its beginning This hadith explains the verse , and the connection in this answer between the first question and the last question about the Sufis is that the strongest thing that divided the Muslims is what is called Sufism, where they made the path to reaching Allah through countless ways. This is as reality indicates: the Naqshbandiyyah, the Khalwatiyyah, the Qadiriyyah, the Badawiyyah, and so on—names for which Allah has sent down no authority. The last of them is the Tijaniyyah, which was one of the strongest causes for the introduction of France into Algeria and its colonization. And now we are reaping the bad effects from those whom the colonialists raised, who are Muslims in name only. The point is that these Sufis openly declare what is disbelief itself and call it tawhid (the oneness of Allah), so it is the most extreme deviation from the Book and the Sunnah. As for the Shi'a and the other parties, there are some among them and some among them, until they said that the paths leading to Allah are as numerous as the breaths of the creatures. Is there any disbelief greater than this? No. So the Messenger (peace and blessings be upon him), with this hadith, explains His saying, the Exalted: How many Shi'a? It is not only the Rafidah Shi'a. All these groups, old and new, that do not follow the methodology of the Salaf al-Salih (the earliest generations), whose necessity we explained to you just now, all of these are from the misguided sects. But this does not mean that they are disbelievers and that they will remain in the Fire forever. It is sufficient for them that they are not from the saved sect. So Sufism is the most misguided of the Islamic sects, and then all the old and new parties that do not follow the path of the Book and the Sunnah and the methodology of the Salaf al-Salih are, at the very least, not from the saved sect.