What is the ruling on those who deny the punishment of the grave?

The questioner : O Shaykh, what is the ruling on those who deny the punishment of the grave?

The Shaykh : What is the ruling on what?

The questioner : Those who deny the punishment of the grave?

The Shaykh : Their ruling is one of two things. If they deny it while knowing that the punishment of the grave is established in the Book and the Sunnah, and they deny it despite this knowledge, then they are disbelievers. If they do not know, then they are ignorant. And if they are ignorant, they must apply the saying of Allah (Mighty and Majestic): "So ask the people of knowledge if you do not know." Be patient, you are still not finished with what I am saying, wait. If they are ignorant, they must apply the saying of Allah If they do not ask, then they are open sinners. Do you understand this sequence?

The questioner : You bring them evidence from the Book and the Sunnah, and they respond to it by saying it is They say this is specific to the family of Pharaoh.

The Shaykh : Be patient, let your companion finish his speech and keep your place, even if the time has passed. Listen, listen. Do these people believe in something called the Sunnah, or do they not believe in it?

The questioner : They believe in it.

The Shaykh : They believe in it. Why did they stop at the verse and why did they not move to the Sunnah? In the Sunnah, there are many, many hadiths. First, from the jurisprudential aspect, it is obligatory for one of them, when he finishes the final tashahhud, to seek refuge with Allah from four things, based on his saying (peace and blessings be upon him) If they believe in the Sunnah, then the Sunnah commands every person who prays to seek refuge with Allah from these four things at the end of every prayer before the taslim, and among them is seeking refuge from the punishment of the Hellfire. Do they do this? No, they do not. Do you know why? Because they carry a philosophy that has led them astray, just as that philosophy which our companion Ayman mentioned earlier. You might mention another philosophy of theirs, which is that they say that a single-narrator hadith does not establish a creed. You mention it for them, or not? I am afraid, I am afraid, and so I am mentioning it before you do. This is part of their misguidance, and it is an old misguidance of theirs. I have said to them, and there were great and very numerous debates between me and them. I said to them: You are the most contradictory in your creed. You used to say in the first edition of your Shaykh, Taqi al-Din al-Nabhani's book, "The Path of Faith": "It is not permissible to take from a single-narrator hadith in creed." This is how the Tahrir Party has been for years, believing in this word that their leader said in this book, "The Path of Faith": "It is not permissible to take from a single-narrator hadith in creed." Then they changed and altered it, and they printed the second edition and said: "It is not obligatory to take from a single-narrator hadith in creed." Do you know this distinction? Say it clearly. Do you know it or not?

The questioner : No.

The Shaykh : Is the difference clear? What is the difference between "it is not permissible" and "it is not obligatory"?

The questioner : There is a contradiction between the first edition and the second edition.

The Shaykh : What is the nature of the contradiction?

The questioner : That it is taken from single-narrator hadiths...

The Shaykh : Good. So before, they used to say "it is not permissible," and now they say "it is not obligatory," which means it is permissible. This is the second contradiction. The third contradiction, and because of it I separated from them, and I do not know if they have a new fourth one! It is that it is obligatory to believe in a single-narrator hadith. They returned to the saying of obligation, but not with faith (iman), rather with belief (tasdiq). So they distinguished between faith and belief. The distinction is verbal, but the meaning is one. How? The verse says This is something of what I said to them. On what did they settle? The last thing I separated from them on is that it is obligatory to believe, but it is not obligatory to have faith in it. I said to them: What led you to this change and alteration is your ignorance of the Shari'ah. Because I used to silence them with this hadith. I said to them: You used to say "it is not permissible," then you shifted to "it is not obligatory." How do you do this when you used to say "it is not permissible" at the time you were confronted with another saying where you say "it is obligatory to take from a single-narrator hadith in rulings"? So what do you do if a hadith like this hadith comes to you, containing a ruling and a creed? The ruling is among the list of This is a ruling. If you take it, do you take it or do you not believe in it? How is this? You say "I seek refuge with Allah from the punishment of the grave" and you do not believe in it? Allah is the Greatest. Learn politics, the group introduced it into religion. And so they turned and spun and said "it is obligatory to believe." They got out of the previous saying of obligation, so they said "it is obligatory to believe." So we say "I seek refuge with You from the punishment of the Hellfire" as believers, not as having faith. Look, so this, my brother, is the ignorance of these people who deny the punishment of the grave. This punishment of the grave is established in this hadith and in mass-transmitted hadiths. They say that a creed is not established except by evidence that is definitive in its transmission and definitive in its meaning. And hadiths are not definitive in their transmission. So this is a single-narrator hadith, and how easy it is for them to say in refuting a hadith in creed: "It is a single-narrator hadith." And so does al-Ghazali, who stirred up fitnah among the Muslims in this era: "It is a single-narrator hadith." And he denied dozens of authentic hadiths. Their predecessors in this are the Tahrir Party. They denied the punishment of the grave on the pretext that it is a single-narrator hadith. This is a hadith about the punishment of the grave: They purified themselves from urine. A hadith of two. A hadith where he (peace and blessings be upon him) passed by two graves and said: to the end of the hadith. These are three hadiths. And a hadith where he (peace and blessings be upon him) passed by two graves on his mount, and the sun shone on them, and he said: They said to him: "They died in the pre-Islamic age of ignorance." He said: Many mass-transmitted hadiths. But because they were ignorant of the science of hadith, they consider every hadith a single-narrator hadith. And among their misguidance is that they do not take by his saying (peace and blessings be upon him) knowing that this is related to rulings and not to creed. And he (peace and blessings be upon him) said, as in "Sahih al-Bukhari": They did not take by this hadith, and therefore they do not condition that the Caliph of the Muslims be a Qurayshi. Why? It is a single-narrator hadith. They slipped from the philosophy that "one does not take from a single-narrator hadith in creed" and extended it to rulings when these rulings do not match their desires. Even though the Commander of the Faithful in his time, Ahmad ibn Hajar al-Asqalani, the author of the book "Fath al-Bari, Commentary on Sahih al-Bukhari," said that the hadith is mass-transmitted. But they are a people who do not know, and the most annoying thing is that they speak with ignorance without knowledge. And Allah is the Helper.