What is the advice you offer to the Salafis in Sham, where confusion is evident in their actions and movements?

The questioner : The question is: What is the advice you offer to the Salafi brothers in Sham? Because, I mean, confusion is evident in their actions, their movements, and some of their directions. There is no one, I mean, to guide them. So this is the advice being offered.

The Shaykh : Praise be to Allah; we praise Him, seek His help, and seek His forgiveness. We seek refuge in Allah from the evil of our own souls and from the evil of our deeds. Whomsoever Allah guides, none can misguide, and whomsoever He misguides, none can guide. I bear witness that there is no deity but Allah alone, with no partner, and I bear witness that Muhammad is His slave and His Messenger. As for what follows, the best of speech is the speech of Allah, and the best of guidance is the guidance of Muhammad (peace and blessings be upon him) ... and every newly invented matter is a religious innovation, every religious innovation is misguidance, and every misguidance is in the Fire. Then, there is no doubt that the happiness of the Muslim in this worldly life and then in the Hereafter is achieved only through beneficial knowledge and righteous action. There is no doubt among the people of knowledge that righteous action is not valid unless it conforms to what came in the Book and the Sunnah, and their understanding is according to the methodology of our righteous predecessors. This is because if knowledge is not derived from this source I mentioned, it will be harmful to its possessor and not beneficial. Likewise, if the Muslim’s knowledge is sound in light of the sound methodology we mentioned, it will not benefit him unless it is accompanied by correct faith and righteous action. Otherwise, knowledge without action is like action without knowledge; neither benefits its possessor except when they are combined. Therefore, Allah the Exalted said: When we recall the previous statement that action is not righteous unless it issues from beneficial knowledge, we understand that this verse is a miracle among the divine scientific miracles, where it links loss for all people. This is a fact in which no one disputes or argues. In my knowledge and awareness of the conditions of Muslims in the present age, their calamity ... of course, I mean the majority of them, for there is still good and blessing in a few of them. I say that many Muslims today lack two things: beneficial knowledge and righteous action. And yet, or ... with that, the clear loss from the previously mentioned surah . So the masses of Muslims today are in loss, because the few of them, as I mentioned earlier, who combine beneficial knowledge and righteous action. I mentioned earlier the definition of beneficial knowledge, which is that which is derived from the Book and the Sunnah and the methodology of the righteous predecessors. As for righteous action, there is no doubt ... first, that it is taken from that source. But there is another matter: righteous action is not accepted, even if it conforms to the Book and the Sunnah, unless its possessor has been sincere to Allah (Mighty and Majestic) in it. So if a man prays, fasts, gives zakah, performs Hajj, and so on with other righteous deeds, but he does not seek thereby the Face of Allah, but rather wants something of the debris of this world, wealth or status or ... If we know this fact, we know that the affliction of the Islamic world today is that few among them combine beneficial knowledge and righteous action. My advice, therefore, is to the youth, not in Syria or Jordan, but in the entire Islamic world, because the Islamic world today is surging in ... for the general Muslims, and we do not mean the elite or the few of them, because the earth is not devoid, as he (peace and blessings be upon him) said: . There is, without doubt, an encouraging phenomenon in the Islamic world that was not apparent before, at least thirty years ago. This phenomenon is that a great many Muslims, their general public as well as their elite, have returned after a deep slumber to the necessity of returning to the understanding of Islam from the Book and the Sunnah. This appearance, in general, is a return to the Book and the Sunnah. But the completion of this blessing is that there is a group from this Muslim public who returned to the necessity of returning to the Book and the Sunnah, who also realized that it is necessary for the one returning to the Book and the Sunnah to do so according to the methodology of the righteous predecessors. Because Muslims today, after this awakening and this return that I am referring to, have not yet agreed on the necessity of understanding the Book and the Sunnah according to the methodology of the righteous predecessors. Yes, they returned to the necessity of returning to the Book and the Sunnah, but many of them have not yet realized the necessity that the understanding of these two companion texts be as it was with our righteous predecessors.