Part of Concepts of Ahl as-Sunnah — Collected Episodes (series completed)
· Lesson 75 of 77
Summary of Sunni concepts | Introduction
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Transcript
Machine translation — may contain errors
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A summary of the concepts held by the Ahl al-Sunnah.
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Introduction.
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Praise be to Allah, Lord of the worlds, who has guided us to Islam.
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And to following the Sunnah of the master of all creation.
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And we would not have been guided had Allah not guided us.
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May the peace, blessings, and benedictions of Allah be upon His servant and Messenger, Muhammad.
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The master of the first and the last.
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And upon his pure household.
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And his noble and blessed Companions.
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And may He include us with them through His grace and generosity.
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Indeed, He is All-Hearing, All-Responding.
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To proceed:
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How great a blessing is the guidance to faith.
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How bountiful a gift it is.
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And how blissful a pure and wholesome life it provides in this world and the Hereafter.
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Allah, the Almighty, said, in the context of His favor upon this Ummah.
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By sending His Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him.
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Allah has indeed conferred a great favor upon the believers.
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“Allah verily hath shown grace to the believers by sending unto them a messenger of their own who reciteth unto them His revelations, and causeth them to grow, and teacheth them the Scripture and wisdom; although before (he came to them) they were in flagrant error.” (3:164)
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He recites His verses to them and purifies them.
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And He teaches them the Book and wisdom.
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Even though they were, before that, in manifest error.
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And He, the Exalted, favored us.
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By perfecting the religion for us.
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For He said:
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“Forbidden unto you (for food) are carrion and blood and swineflesh, and that which hath been dedicated unto any other than Allah, and the strangled, and the dead through beating, and the dead through falling from a height, and that which hath been killed by (the goring of) horns, and the devoured of wild beasts, saving that which ye make lawful (by the death-stroke), and that which hath been immolated unto idols. And (forbidden is it) that ye swear by the divining arrows. This is an abomination. This day are those who disbelieve in despair of (ever harming) your religion; so fear them not, fear Me! This day have I perfected your religion for you and completed My favour unto you, and have chosen for you as religion al-Islam. Whoso is forced by hunger, not by will, to sin: (for him) lo! Allah is Forgiving, Merciful.” (5:3)
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He affirmed the excellence of this religion and its laws that guide to the straight path.
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Which are contained in His Noble Book, for He said:
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“Lo! this Qur'an guideth unto that which is straightest, and giveth tidings unto the believers who do good works that theirs will be a great reward.” (17:9)
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Allah has not bestowed upon a servant, after the blessing of Islam,
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Anything like the blessing of a correct and pure understanding of this religion.
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Its creed, its laws, and its ethics.
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Accompanied by a sincere intention, purely for the sake of Allah, the Almighty.
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Imam Ibn al-Qayyim, may Allah have mercy on him, says:
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Soundness of understanding and excellence of intention.
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Are among the greatest blessings Allah has bestowed upon His servant.
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In fact, no servant has been given a gift after Islam better or more magnificent than these two.
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Islam is established and stands upon them.
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Through them, the servant is secured from the path of those who have earned [Allah's] wrath,
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Whose intentions were corrupted, and the path of those who are astray,
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Whose understandings were corrupted.
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And he becomes one of those who have been favored,
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Whose understandings and intentions were sound.
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They are the people of the straight path.
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Whom we are commanded to ask Allah to guide us to their path in every prayer.
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Soundness of understanding is a light that Allah casts into the heart of the servant.
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By which he distinguishes between the correct and the corrupt.
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The truth and the falsehood.
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Guidance and misguidance.
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Error and rectitude.
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It is supported by excellence of intention.
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Seeking the truth.
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And fearing the Lord in private and in public.
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Its source is severed by following desires.
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Preferring this world.
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Seeking the praise of people.
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And abandoning piety.
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When the believer sees what the disbelieving societies—deprived of this blessing—are experiencing,
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And the confusion, contradiction, instability, and misery they are in,
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His praise for Allah, the Exalted, increases.
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As does his joy and gratitude for what He has blessed him with.
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For despite the luxury and knowledge of the outward aspects of worldly life these societies have reached,
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They descend and fall into the depths in their understandings and scales.
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Their standards and their ethics.
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This is because they are cut off from their connection with Allah, the Almighty.
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The Creator of the heavens and the earth.
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Who knows His creation.
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The Subtle, the All-Aware.
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And cut off from His upright methodology.
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And His guidance, the Exalted.
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And His light, through which the darkness is illuminated.
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And by which the affairs of this world and the Hereafter are set right.
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Among the proverbs of the Arabs:
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"The opposite reveals the beauty of its opposite."
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"And by their opposites, things are distinguished."
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Indeed, the enemies of Islam, from ancient times,
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Saw the favor Allah bestowed upon the believers through the Messenger of Islam, the best of creation.
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And the illuminating Book revealed to him.
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Which guides to the straight path.
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And they compared it to the instability and misery they are in.
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So, instead of entering the religion of Islam,
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To enjoy what the Muslims enjoy,
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They acted arrogantly toward the truth.
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And envied the Muslims for this magnificent blessing of which they were deprived.
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They exerted their efforts to divert them from the concepts of this religion.
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And launched their military, ideological, and immoral wars against it.
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In their greed to turn them away from their religion.
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The Exalted said:
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“Many of the people of the Scripture long to make you disbelievers after your belief, through envy on their own account, after the truth hath become manifest unto them. Forgive and be indulgent (toward them) until Allah give command. Lo! Allah is Able to do all things.” (2:109)
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“Many of the people of the Scripture long to make you disbelievers after your belief, through envy on their own account, after the truth hath become manifest unto them. Forgive and be indulgent (toward them) until Allah give command. Lo! Allah is Able to do all things.” (2:109)
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They inherited this hatred and approach, generation after generation,
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Until our current era.
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And when they despaired of taking the Muslims out of their religion,
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They turned to raising doubts about the established and definitive matters of this religion.
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They aimed to distort them by manipulating Islamic terminology and concepts.
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And diverting them from their correct meanings.
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And calling them by other than their names.
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So they brought forth deviant Western concepts produced by their disbelieving creeds.
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Thus, they became distorted concepts, following their distorted, man-made, ignorant source.
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A questioner might ask about the reasons for these great differences between the pure, lofty, and just concepts of Islam,
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And the concepts of disbelief and its people, characterized by injustice and degradation.
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And the pollution and instability in scales and judgments.
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We believe that one who contemplates the divine methodology, its characteristics, and its features,
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And the human, ignorant methodology and its qualities,
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Will find no difficulty in answering this question.
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Nevertheless, the answer can be summarized in the following points:
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First: The concepts of Islam are divine in origin and Qur'anic in their foundation.
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Therefore, they are inevitably just, complete, comprehensive, and balanced.
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Pure and free from all qualities of deficiency.
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Because they are from Allah, the Almighty, the All-Knowing, the All-Aware.
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“Should He not know what He created? And He is the Subtile, the Aware.” (67:14)
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Free from every deficiency.
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Safe from injustice, desire, and ignorance.
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He knows what is best for His servants in their worldly life and their return.
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He knows what has been and what will be.
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And what has not been, if it were to be, how it would be.
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Conversely,
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The concepts of ignorance originate from this weak human, limited in time and place.
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Possessed of desire, ignorance, injustice, and transgression.
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Cut off from his Lord and His worship.
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So it is inevitable that his concepts and perceptions are characterized by his own traits.
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Where there is ignorance, deficiency, and injustice.
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And contradiction, instability, and lack of balance.
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Second:
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Any concept presented to people
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Is governed by the creed of the one who presents it regarding the God of the universe.
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And regarding the universe itself.
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And regarding life, man, and the purpose of his creation.
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And his fate after death.
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Every concept is the requirement of this creed or perception.
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And a reflection of it, whether good or evil.
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Equally so.
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And because the word of Allah, to which falsehood cannot come from before it or behind it,
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Is what provides us, the Muslims,
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With understanding and perception regarding our God, the Lord of this universe and its Creator.
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And regarding the universe, man, the purpose of his creation, and his fate.
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It is the true understanding.
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Which gives certain answers to all of the above.
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Unlike the disbelievers who were not blessed with the creed of Islam.
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Their perceptions and concepts result only from the refuse of their minds and the scraps of their thoughts.
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They wander in a sea of darkness and ignorance.
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So they went astray, became miserable, led others astray, and caused them misery.
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Third:
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Based on the above,
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The third and important difference between divine concepts and human, ignorant concepts
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Is the difference between monotheism (Tawhid) and polytheism (Shirk).
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The concepts of one who worships Allah alone are not equal to
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One who disavows polytheism and its people.
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And the concepts of the disbeliever who is cut off from his Lord, the Almighty, and His law.
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The Exalted said:
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"Are the blind and the seeing equal?"
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“Nor is darkness (tantamount to) light;” (35:20)
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And every vessel leaks what is in it.
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Fourth:
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Likewise, a person who believes in the Hereafter and prepares for it does not meet
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With another who lives for this world alone.
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And does not look at what is beyond it.
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This one and that one do not meet in the estimation of a single matter of this life.
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Nor a single value of its many values.
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Nor do they agree on a single judgment regarding an event, a situation, or an affair.
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For each of them has a scale.
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And each of them has a perspective.
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And each of them has a light by which he views things, events, values, and conditions.
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This one sees only the outward aspect of worldly life.
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And that one perceives what is beyond the outward, of connections and laws.
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And comprehensive principles for the outward and the inward.
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The unseen and the witnessed.
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The world and the Hereafter.
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Death and life.
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This is the distant, wide, and comprehensive horizon.
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To which Islam moves humanity.
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And raises it to the place befitting man, the vicegerent on earth.
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Fifth:
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While the concepts of Muslims differ and diverge from the concepts of the disbelievers, as previously mentioned,
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Based on each group's understanding of the reality of Lordship and Divinity.
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And the universe, life, and man.
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There also exists a difference in the concepts of the people of the saved sect among the Muslims
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From the concepts of the deviant sects.
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Such as the Khawarij, the Rawafid, the Jahmiyyah, and the Mu'tazilah.
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This is due to the difference in the sources of evidence for the saved sect,
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Who are the Ahl al-Sunnah wal-Jama'ah,
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From those held by these deviant sects.
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Along with the differences in concepts that exist between them as well.
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Likewise, differences occurred in their concepts due to the differences in their creeds.
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Differences may also occur in some concepts between those within the circle of Ahl al-Sunnah,
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Due to the difference in understanding the reality and the conditions they live in.
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This causes a difference in applying rulings to situations.
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While agreeing on the fundamental concepts among everyone.
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Imam Ibn al-Qayyim, may Allah have mercy on him, says,
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While explaining the two pillars of correct understanding:
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"Neither the mufti nor the judge can issue a fatwa or judge with the truth
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Except with two types of understanding:
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One of them is understanding the reality and having fiqh regarding it.
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And deducing the knowledge of the truth of what has occurred.
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Through indications, signs, and markers.
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Until he encompasses it with knowledge.
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And the second type is understanding the obligation in that reality.
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Which is understanding the ruling of Allah that He has judged in His Book,
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Or upon the tongue of His Messenger, peace be upon him, regarding this reality.
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Then he applies one to the other."
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Therefore, for correct understanding to be complete, it is necessary
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To understand the contemporary reality.
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And to make clear the path of the criminals.
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Otherwise, a flaw in understanding will occur.
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Due to not realizing the context and knowing the conditions.
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Another dangerous obstacle remains,
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which stands between the servant and the application of correct understanding:
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namely, base desires and prioritizing the worldly life over the Hereafter.
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For one’s understanding may be religiously sound and correct,
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and in accordance with the concepts of the Sunnah,
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along with an understanding of current realities,
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yet due to desire or fear,
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the servant intentionally abandons this correct understanding,
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and prefers over it erroneous concepts,
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or deviant applications.
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We ask Allah for safety and steadfastness upon the truth.
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From the foregoing, the causes of
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the distortion and divergence of concepts can be summarized as follows:
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First: Disbelief or associating partners with Allah, the Almighty and Majestic.
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This causes total distortions
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in concepts, standards, rulings, and stances,
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because the one who holds them is severed from Allah, the Almighty and Majestic,
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and from His Lordship, His divinity,
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and His names and attributes,
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and is severed from the Last Day and true faith in it.
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Included with these
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are the people of heretical innovations that constitute disbelief and expel one from the fold of Islam.
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Second: Heretical innovation that does not constitute disbelief.
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This causes partial distortions
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that are reflected in some concepts regarding belief,
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or worship, or conduct,
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even if their proponents are among the people of the Qibla,
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and possess both truth and falsehood.
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Third: Ignorance of reality and the path of the criminals.
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Even if those characterized by this are among the people of the Sunnah,
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this ignorance of theirs is reflected in some errors
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and distortions in certain concepts,
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due to a flaw in the application of rulings.
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Fourth: The love of the world.
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This causes the abandonment of correct understanding,
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or its intentional and willful distortion in application,
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after having known and established it.
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Because of all the above,
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the utmost importance of correcting concepts becomes clear to us,
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as does the warning against the danger of tampering with them,
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and of turning away from the divine sources of correct understanding
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toward the concepts of the people of disbelief, hypocrisy, innovation, and base desires,
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instead of that,
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and receiving them with ignorance or caprice.
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Therefore, it is among the most obligatory duties of the scholars and callers,
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who have realized this danger,
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to hasten to save the Ummah, by the permission of Allah the Exalted,
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from the darkness of deviant concepts
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to the light of the divine, Qur'anic concepts,
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to establish these pure concepts for the people,
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to expose the shame and deviation of ignorant concepts,
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and to refute the doubts used by the misguided
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to confuse the people.
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For this reason, some of your brothers among the students of knowledge,
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who are concerned by this matter and troubled by it, have arisen,
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and they have exerted their efforts in producing a summary
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of pure Islamic concepts,
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according to the methodology of the Sunnah,
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and as indicated by the texts of the Book and the Sunnah,
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while addressing the opposing, deviant, and erroneous concepts,
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refuting them, and responding to them to demonstrate their corruption.
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Among the references for this were
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the books concerned with correcting concepts,
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and clarifying the legal principles that govern them,
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such as the books of Shaykh al-Islam Ibn Taymiyyah,
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and his student Ibn al-Qayyim,
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and the Tafsir of al-Sa'di, may Allah have mercy on them all.
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And some contemporary books that are concerned with this matter,
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whose methodology and the soundness of their authors' creed are trusted.
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However, since brevity and paraphrasing
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were the prevailing approach in this work,
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we did not cite these references
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except in a few places,
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as we attempted to summarize each concept
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so that it would be in three or four lines,
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or not exceeding half a page in most cases,
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except for a few concepts
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whose clarification might force us into detail,
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which might bring the concept to a full page or more.
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The number of concepts in this summary has reached
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one thousand two hundred and fifty concepts,
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distributed over thirteen chapters.
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We have assigned a general, sequential number to the concepts
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from the first to the last,
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and another number specific to each chapter or comprehensive heading.
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The chapters of this summary are as follows:
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Concepts in Creed
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Concepts in Worship
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Concepts in Knowledge and Fiqh
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Concepts in the Actions of the Heart and its Diseases
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Concepts in Asceticism, Piety, and the Path to Allah
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Concepts in Ethics and Etiquette
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Concepts in Upbringing and the Family
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Concepts in Da'wah
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Concepts in Jihad
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Concepts in Divine Laws
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Concepts in Tribulations
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Concepts in Politics
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Concepts in Islamic Culture
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Finally, we do not claim that we have encompassed all concepts,
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but we have exerted what was in our power,
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and we focused on what we see as necessary concepts,
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or those that are absent or misunderstood.
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Perhaps Allah will bring someone to complete the deficiency and bridge the gap.
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We ask Him, the Almighty and Majestic, for sincerity in speech and action.
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And praise be to Allah, Lord of the worlds.
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A Summary of the Concepts of the People of the Sunnah