Is countering vulgar acting with quiet acting considered countering religious innovation with religious innovation?
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The student: May Allah reward you, O Shaykh. You gave us a rule, which is that if we find a bid'ah (religious innovation), we do not counter it with a bid'ah, but we counter it with the Sunnah. If we find what is now called acting...
The Shaykh : Fine, there is no objection.
The student: So if we now find what is called vulgar acting, and some people have called for purposeful acting, is this countering a bid'ah with a bid'ah?
The Shaykh : The issue of acting is not a bid'ah in itself. Acting is a means of approximating meanings in their actual form. Acting has been mentioned in an authentic hadith in the story of the angel who came to the leper, the bald man, and the blind man in the form he was in, and said: "He is a poor man and a traveler." He was not a poor man, nor a traveler, nor a leper, nor bald, nor blind, but this was for the sake of approximation. The exaggeration in acting, to the point where we do not call people to Allah except through it, that is the error. So we say: The call to Allah the Exalted has means. Anything that depicts reality and warns against it, without including lying, or imitating animals or the like, or a man imitating a woman and vice versa, there is no objection to it. So we do not deny acting absolutely, nor do we encourage it, and we deny that it should be the means of calling to Allah, because if you accustom people to not calling them to Allah except through this means, they will forget the more important thing, which is the exhortation of the Qur'an and the Sunnah. Yes.
The Shaykh : Fine, there is no objection.
The student: So if we now find what is called vulgar acting, and some people have called for purposeful acting, is this countering a bid'ah with a bid'ah?
The Shaykh : The issue of acting is not a bid'ah in itself. Acting is a means of approximating meanings in their actual form. Acting has been mentioned in an authentic hadith in the story of the angel who came to the leper, the bald man, and the blind man in the form he was in, and said: "He is a poor man and a traveler." He was not a poor man, nor a traveler, nor a leper, nor bald, nor blind, but this was for the sake of approximation. The exaggeration in acting, to the point where we do not call people to Allah except through it, that is the error. So we say: The call to Allah the Exalted has means. Anything that depicts reality and warns against it, without including lying, or imitating animals or the like, or a man imitating a woman and vice versa, there is no objection to it. So we do not deny acting absolutely, nor do we encourage it, and we deny that it should be the means of calling to Allah, because if you accustom people to not calling them to Allah except through this means, they will forget the more important thing, which is the exhortation of the Qur'an and the Sunnah. Yes.