The continuation of the story, mentioning the second journey the Shaykh made with the aim of reconciling the two groups.

The Shaykh : The witness, for the first time, paid attention to the group and to preventing their division. For the first time, he took a plane from Damascus to Aleppo, because I had an old car that I used and had with me.

The questioner : The blue one, isn't it?

The Shaykh : How?

The questioner : The blue car?

The Shaykh : No, no, absolutely not. That one was an old, ancient Fiat. Anyway, I traveled with Ali Khoshan and a third person on the plane. We landed in Aleppo, just before the Friday prayer. But my companions were not speaking, and they were not eating lunch. We asked, "What are we coming for?" We are coming to see a relative. I thought it wise to say to them, "My brothers, it is not permissible for us to eat outside and then go to a relative. His custom, as I told you earlier, is that he is a generous man. He will immediately prepare a meal. We need to tell him, 'By Allah, we have already eaten,' as if we raised a flag before him. We..."

The questioner : We do not change and we do not alter.

The Shaykh : Absolutely not. We entered and spoke with him at length until after the evening prayer. Imagine, among the things I said to him, I said, "My relative, our call is based on not following blindly. We distinguish ourselves from the other brothers by fighting their rigidity in following their sheikhs. We cite for them the saying of Allah the Exalted: So it is not permissible for us, as you know, for a Muslim to leave the opinion he is convinced of and follow a person who is more knowledgeable than him just because he is more knowledgeable. So, by imposing your opinion on your companion Muhammad Nasser, that he should adopt your opinion while he is not convinced of it, this is the opposite of a great principle of the Salafi call. No one is listening. I said to him, "What is your opinion of one who says in the unity of existence? Excuse me, not the unity of existence, but the 'occurrences with no beginning' that Ibn Taymiyyah (may Allah have mercy on him) used to say? Do you believe in this?" He said: "No." I said: "Do you think it is correct?" He said: "No." I said: "Do you think it is disbelief?" He said: "Yes." I said: "So, if you were in the time of Ibn Taymiyyah, would you not cooperate with him?" Here he fell silent.

The questioner : Of course.

The Shaykh : I said to him, "You and Muhammad Nasser agree on everything, but does he have an opinion that you are currently opposing? He is convinced of it. What prevents you from cooperating with him in everything you used to cooperate on in the past, for about thirty years? That is not a small amount. You stay in your opinion, and let him stay in his. If one of you can convince the other, that is good and excellent. Otherwise, we return to Allah (Mighty and Majestic), He is the one who will hold people accountable. There is absolutely no benefit. Despite the fact that we gave him room, we did not say to him, 'You are misguided, you are wrong, you are such and such.' Stay in your opinion and leave your companion in his opinion. We did not benefit from anything. The next morning, some of our brothers gathered. We said to him, "The man's story is such and such, and he is insistent on his opinion and that he has no willingness to cooperate at all in the path of the call with Muhammad Nasser Kermani. Did you know that the Ba'athists had abolished the groups and associations, and so on? Consequently, the Salafi bloc was abolished from the end, whose president was Muhammad Nasser al-Rifai. Some circumstances appeared where they turned a blind eye, so he would start forming blocs, of course not openly, but secretly. It seemed to Nasser that he should form circles, similar to the way of the Muslim Brotherhood in the barracks, and choose a responsible president for each circle. He formed several circles and put a president over each one. Muhammad Nasser left him aside, the one who is more knowledgeable than all of them and than him as well."

The questioner: Indeed, by Allah.

The Shaykh : He left him aside. And when we spoke with him that night about the matter, he said that he has no willingness to cooperate with a person who believes in this creed. We said to him, "Glory be to Allah."

The questioner : He is a professor who exaggerates the matter greatly. I listened to him once speak terrifying words on this subject.

The Shaykh : Listen, when he sat in some gatherings, he attributed to Muhammad Nasser things he does not say.

The questioner: Allahu Akbar.

The Shaykh : This is a man, the head of the Salafi group there, who fabricates against one with whom he lived for thirty years, and he knows for certain that the difference between him and him—we can say it is ideological—because Nasser Kermani says, "They died chaste, pure, and modest," and so on. But we do not have a text that obliges us to believe that it is impossible for one of them to fall into a sin. Despite this agreement in the result, he comes and does these dramatizations and fabricates these lies against him.

The questioner : ... .

The questioner : I told you before you said that he says terrible things.

The Shaykh : Among the things Muhammad Nasser used to argue with him about, regarding his knowledge, and I heard him say to him, "My relative, how can you say that the creed is such and such, and in the story of the slander against Aisha, that the Messenger left her for a period and she was afflicted with fever due to the calamity that befell her? So he did not enter upon her, and he is the Messenger of Allah, and besides him, the support of the heavens. But the news, after it descended from the heavens, he knows that this woman might fall into this thing, and more than that. But despite all this, he did not enter upon her. And when he passed by some of his wives, he would say to them, 'How are you?' Allah is the Greatest. Muhammad, the Messenger of Allah, whose support is the support of the heavens, and Jibril descends upon him, by Allah, he says, 'How are you?' Once he entered upon her and said: We said to Nasser, and he said to him, "You, my relative, do you say this to Lady Aisha now? That if you have committed a sin, do you know what he used to say? The poor man, he was afflicted with what he was afflicted with, the disease that the people of innovation who used to play with the sacred texts in the past were afflicted with. He used to say that this incident, the incident of Aisha, and the saying of the Messenger to her, was before the descent of the verse of purification. And the matter is the opposite of that. Exegetically, the verse is later than the incident of the slander."

The questioner : It is earlier.

The Shaykh : The verse is earlier, yes, and the incident is later. Nevertheless, he insisted on that position. Days passed and days came, and he came to Damascus. Mahmoud Sanburi called me and said that Nasser al-Rifai came to Damascus and wants to visit you. I told him, "Absolutely not, until he repents to Allah from what he does to his brother in the call, Muhammad Nasser al-Din. And to this day, he has not entered my house. And if he meets me in some occasions, when we perform Hajj or 'Umrah, he would come to the tent where I am sleeping and start shaking hands with everyone and come to me. I will not hide from you that I extended my hand reluctantly, because it is not the perfection of politics to draw the attention of those present, but he feels that I am not at all pleased with him. Days passed and days came. Before I settled in this country, I used to visit sometimes, if you remember."

The questioner : Of course.

The Shaykh : They come to us, and these are pictures of the deputy there. The witness, we came to your Shaykh, the Imam, and we objected to him. The house was said to us, "By Allah, he is present at so-and-so's, meaning he is invited to lunch."

The questioner : This is his Shaykh. Look at the strange, wonderful contradiction and reversal.

The Shaykh : ... .

The questioner : O Stabilizer of hearts, stabilize our hearts upon Your religion.

The Shaykh : Anyway, we found out the house to which he was invited. I and my brother-in-law went, may Allah do us good, to hear the story from the beginning, because there is a lesson in it, and how convincing people is impossible.

The questioner : That is it. This blindness, my professor, if a person is afflicted with it, it becomes eternal.

The questioner : Ya Latif (O Magnificent).