Al-’Abbaad asked About People who are Hasty in Declaring Others to be Innovators and the Youth who Busy Themselves with Such Things

Al-’Abbaad asked About People who are Hasty in Declaring Others to be Innovators and the Youth who Busy Themselves with Such Things

December 13, 2013 § Leave a Comment

 

 

 

 

 

 

3 Votes

Questioner: What is Your Excellency’s opinion about a person who is hasty in declaring someone to be an innovator or sinner by saying, “The most vile person on earth,” or, “The most harmful of the world,” about a man who is known to have a sound methodology and calls to it and also has blessed efforts in calling to Allaah, and then based upon that he makes it a requirement that whoever does not call him an innovator is boycotted and ostracised, and he turns differences between people into differences in themanhaj and then that results in division amongst the youth and sows enmity between them?

Al-’Abbaad: Statements such as these are clear mistakes, obvious mistakes, it is obligatory to have moderation and to be just[ly balanced] in all affairs and to be careful of the harm of the tongue and what is caused thereby whose ending is not something praiseworthy, and the Prophet صلى الله عليه وسلم said, “Whoever guarantees me [the chastity of] what is between his jaws and his legs, I guarantee him Paradise,” what is being referred to is the tongue and one’s private parts, likewise his saying صلى الله عليه وسلم in his counsel to Mu’aadh, “And are the people thrown on their faces [or he said, ‘on their nostrils’] into the fire for any reason other than the fruits of their tongues?” So it is obligatory for a person to guard his tongue and not to let it loose by talking about things which will harm him.

On top of that, the fact that a person makes a mistake and then, as is said in the question [he is subsequently referred to as being], ‘… more vile then such and such … more dangerous than such and such … more severe than such and such,’ this is also an increase in a person’s harming himself by bringing such exaggerations, by making statements which may not be correct and which are not sound and not in conformation with the reality [of the situation].

Furthermore, the anarchy, the evil suspicion brothers have of each other, the boycotting and so on that occurs because of those statements, all of these are things which are from the handiwork of the Devil, and are things which are from the plots he has for man to make him fall into destructive matters and those things which will result in him being harmed.

So a person must call himself to account and guard his tongue, the damage caused by it is something very dangerous and colossal, and it is from a person’s good fortune that he guards it from speaking about anything that comes back to harm him.

And that which some of the brothers from Ahlus-Sunnah do where they concern themselves with discrediting others and speaking about others and expending their efforts in that and leaving off the enemy, [leaving off] those who spread corruption in the land and do not rectify—these are things the Devil plots for a person to turn him away from that which he should [in reality] be doing, turning him away [from the good he should be doing] to that which he should [in fact] be protecting himself from.

From the Shaikh’s explanation of Sunan Abu Dawud.