nuh ha mim keller - masud questions 6 ibn baaz and al-albani

8/14/2019 Nuh Ha Mim Keller - Masud Questions 6 Ibn Baaz and Al-Albani

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The Re-Formers of Islam The Mas'ud Questions

Nuh Ha Mim Keller - Question 6

The Ijazas of Ibn Baaz and al-Albani

The Salafis allege that both Ibn Baz and al-Albani have ijazas (authorizations ofmastery of a book, etc. in Islamic knowledge from the scholar it was studied with)from great sheikhs. They say that al-Albani has an ijaza from some sheikhs inSyria, do you have any information on this?

AnswerOur teacher in hadith, Sheikh Shuayb al-Arnaut, tells my wife and me thatSheikh Nasir al-Albani learned his hadith knowledge from books andmanuscripts in the Dhahiriyya Library in Damascus, as well as his long yearsworking on books of hadith. He did not get any significant share of his knowledgefrom living hadith scholars, according to Sheikh Shuayb, for the very goodreason that there wasnt anyone in Damascus at the time who knew much abouthadith, and he didnt travel anywhere else to learn. I have heard Salafis say thathe has an ijaza from one person in Syria, but it could only be (according to SheikhShuayb) from someone with far less knowledge than himself

I believe Sheikh Shuayb about this, because his family, like Sheikh Nasirs, wereof the Albanians who emmigrated to Damascus at the collapse of the OttomanEmpire, and they all know each other rather intimately. The impression one getsis that Sheikh Nasirs father, Sheikh Nuh al-Albani, was so strict a Hanafi that heproduced something of an over-reaction in Sheikh Nasir not only against Abu

Hanifa and his madhhab, but against traditional Islamic sheikhs as well.According to Sheikh Shuayb, Sheikh Nasir studied tajwid or Quranic recitationand perhaps the Hanafi fiqh primer Maraqi al-falah [The ascents to success] withhis father Sheikh Nuh al-Albani, and possibly other lessons in Hanafi fiqh fromSheikh Muhammad Said al-Burhani, who taught in Tawba Mosque, in thequarter of the Turks on the side of Mount Qasiyun, near Sheikh Nasirs fathersshop. Sheikh Nasir subsequently found that his time could be more profitablyspent with books and manuscripts at the Dhahiriyya Library and in readingworks to students, and he did not attend anyone elses lessons

As for his ijaza or warrant of learning, Sheikh Shuayb tells us that it came when

a hadith scholar from Aleppo, Sheikh Raghib al-Tabbakh, was visiting theDhahiriyya Library in Damascus, and Sheikh Nasir was pointed out to him as apromising student of hadith. They met and spoke, the sheikh authorized him "inall the chains of transmission that I have been authorized to relate"that is tosay, a general ijaza, though Sheikh Nasir did not attend the lessons of the sheikhor read books of hadith with him. Sheikh Raghib al-Tabbakh had chains ofsheikhs reaching back to the main hadith works, such as Sahih al-Bukhari, theSunan of Abu Dawud, and hence had a contiguous chain back to the Prophet


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(Allah bless him and give him peace) for these books. But this was anauthorization (ijaza) of tabarruk, or for the blessing of it, not a warrant oflearningfor Sheikh Nasir did not go to Aleppo to learn from him, and he didnot come to Damascus to teach him

This type of authorization (ijaza), that of tabarruk, is a practice of sometraditional scholars: to give an authorization in order to encourage a studentwhom they have met and like, whom they find knowledgeable, or hope willbecome a scholar. The reason I know of such ijazas is because I have one, fromthe Meccan hadith scholar Sheikh Muhammad Alawi al-Maliki, which authorizesme to relate "all the chains of transmission that I [Muhammad Alawi al-Maliki]have been authorized to relate by my sheikhs," including chains of transmissionreaching back to the hadith Imams Malik, al-Bukhari, Muslim, Abu Dawud, al-Tirmidhi, al-Nasai, Ibn Majah (Mecca: Muhammad Alawi al-Maliki, 1412/1992).Though my name is on the authorization, and it is signed by the sheikh, it doesnot make me a hadith scholar like he is, because aside from some of his publiclessons, my hadith knowledge is not from him but from Sheikh Shuayb, whom Ihave actually studied with. Rather, Sheikh al-Maliki knows my sheikhs inDamascus, that I am the translator of Umdat al-salik [Reliance of the traveller]in Shafii fiqh, that we have known each other for some time, and he approves ofmy way. The scholarly value of such ijazas is merely to establish that we have met.

As for Ibn Baz, I do not know who he studied with, though from his broadcasts onthe radio, I would be most surprised if he had ever studied with someoneuncommitted to what he and his colleagues simply call the dawa or propagation,that is, of the revisions of Islam advocated by Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab.

As it is unlawful to say anything disliked about a Muslim except for an interest

countenanced by Sacred Law, the following discussion will not exceed (a)whether these revisions constitute a sectarian emphasis differing from traditionalIslam; and (b) if sectarian, how this influences issues that Sheikh Nasir and IbnBaz might otherwise be believed about

I mention this to you, because, as you may know, some people take offense at theword Wahhabiand with good reason, if we mean to suggest that they do notlove Islam, or are not trying to practice it to the best of their understanding andability. I feel this is true of virtually all separatist groups, from the beginning ofIslam. Provided they do not negate something necessarily known to be of thereligion (necessarily known meaning that which any Muslim would know about if

asked), all these groups may be said to have tried to understand and apply theQuran and the sunna, even though their understanding has brought them to amistaken conclusion. This is why Sharia manuals say things like:

They [those who rise in insurrection against the caliph] are subject to Islamiclaws (because they have not committed an act that puts them outside of Islamthat they should be considered non-Muslims. Nor are they considered morallycorrupt (fasiq), for rebels is not a perjorative term, but rather they merely have a


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mistaken understanding), and the decisions of their Islamic judge are consideredlegally effective (provided he does not declare the lives of upright Muslims to bejustly forfeitable) if they are such as would be effective if made by our own judge(Reliance of the Traveller, 594).

The fact that such people may consider other Muslims not of their sect to be non-Muslimsthe hallmark of heterodox (batil) sects of all times and placesdoesnot change the above rulings, and the caliph or his representative may use onlyenough force to end the strife. We find in the Hashiya radd al-muhtar ala al-Durral-mukhtar sharh Tanwir al-absar [(Ibn Abidins) Commentary: the guide of theperplexed, upon (Haskafis) The choice pearls, an exegesis of (Tumurtashis)Illumination of eyes], whose every word is considered a decisive evidence (nass)in the Hanafi school:

(al-Haskafi:) Those who revolt against obedience to the imam [meaning thecaliph or his representative] are of three types:

(1) highwaymen, and their ruling is known [n: i.e. the death penalty, if they donot give themselves up before they are caught];

(2) rebels (bughat) against the caliphate, whose ruling will be discussed below[n: i.e. they are fought with as much force as needed to make them desist, as inthe Reliance above];

(3) and kharijites, meaning men with military force who revolt against theimam because of a mistaken scriptural interpretation (tawil), believing that he isupon a falsehood of unbelief (kufr) or disobedience to Allah (masiya) thatnecessitates their fighting him, according to their mistaken scriptural

interpretation, and who consider it lawful to take our lives, our property, and takeour women as slaves, and who consider the Companions of our Prophet (Allahbless him and give him peace) to be disbelievers. Their ruling is the same as thatof rebels (bughat) against the caliphate [n: (2) above] by unanimous consensus offiqh scholars.

(Ibn Abidin:) His words and who consider the Companions of our Prophet (Allahbless him and give him peace) to be disbelievers are not a condition for someoneto be a kharijite, but rather are a mere clarification of what those who revoltedagainst Ali (Allah Most High be well pleased with him) in fact did. Otherwise, itis enough to be convinced of the unbelief of those they fight against, as happened

in our own times with the followers of [Muhammad ibn] Abd al-Wahhab, whocame out of the Najd in revolt, and took over the sanctuaries of Mecca andMedina. They followed the Hanbali madhhab, but believed that they were theMuslims, and that those who believed differently than they did were polytheists(mushrikin). On this basis, they held it lawful to kill Sunni Muslims (Ahl al-Sunna) and their religious scholars, until Allah Most High dispelled their forces,and the armies of the Muslims attacked their strongholds and subdued them in1233 A.H. [1818] (Hashiya radd al-muhtar, 4.262).


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The Shafii mufti of Mecca, Ahmad ibn Zayni Dahlan (d. 1304/1886), a historianas well as a scholar, recorded the story of the Wahhabis takeover of the holyplaces in a number of books, one of which, his two-volume history al-Futuhat al-Islamiyya [The Islamic conquests], gives the following description of what

became perhaps their most famous, and certainly their most lethal ijtihad;namely, that the sunna of tawassul or supplicating Allah through anintermediary was shirk:

Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab claimed that his aim in this school of thought heinnovated was to make sincere the belief in Allahs unity (tawhid), and to abjureworshipping false gods (shirk), and that Muslims had been worshipping falsegods for six hundred years, and that he had revived their religion for them. Heinterpreted Quranic verses revealed about worshippers of false gods (mushrikin)as referring to those who worship Allah alone, such as the word of Allah MostHigh,

"And who is further astray than he who supplicates apart from Allah someonewho will not answer him until Resurrection Day, while they are oblivious to theirsupplication" (Quran 46:5),

and His word,

"Do not supplicate besides Allah what will not benefit or harm you" (Quran10:106).

There are many such verses in the Quran , so Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhabsaid that whoever seeks the help of the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him

peace) or others, of the prophets, the friends of Allah (awliya), or the righteous;or calls on him or asks him to intercedewas like such worshippers of false gods,and was referred to by the generality of such verses. He believed the same thingabout visiting the tomb of the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) andall others of the prophets, friends of Allah, or the righteous. He said about theword of Allah Most High, who quotes the idolators about worshipping their idols:

"We only worship them that they may bring us the nearer to Allah" (Quran39:3)

that people who pray to Allah by means of an intermediary (tawassul) are like

these worshippers of false gods who said, "We only worship them that they maybring us the nearer to Allah." He said that the worshippers of false gods didntbelieve their idols created anything, but rather that the Creator was Allah MostHigh, as shown by Allahs word

"And if you ask them who created them, they will say, Allah" (Quran 43:87),

and,


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"And if you ask them who created the heavens and earth, they will say, Allah"(Quran 31:25),

such that Allah did not judge them to have committed unbelief and worshipping

false gods except for their saying, "that they may bring us all the nearer to Allah,"and in consequence, these people [Muslims who make tawassul] are like them.

And this is simply wrong, for Muslim believers do not take the prophets (uponwhom be peace) or the friends of Allah as gods or make them co-partners(shuraka) with Allah, but rather, they believe that they are created slaves of Allahand do not deserve any worship

As for the worshippers of false gods whom these Quranic verses were revealedabout, they believed that their idols were gods, and reverenced them with thereverence of godhood, even if they acknowledged that they did not createanythingwhile believers do not hold that the prophets or awliya deserveworship or godhood, and do not reverence them with the reverence due solely tothe Divine. Instead, they believe that they are the servants of Allah, and Hisbeloved ones, whom He has elected and chosen, and through His blessings tothem (baraka), He shows mercy towards His slaves. Their intention in seekingblessings through them is the mercy of Allah Most High, and much attests to thevalidity of this in the Quran and sunna.

The creed of the Muslims is that the CreatorHe Who Afflicts, He Who Benefits,He who deserves worshipis Allah alone. They do not believe that anyone elsehas any effect whatsoever; and they believe that the prophets and awliya do notcreate anything, do not possess any ability to benefit or harm, but merely that

through Allahs grace to them (baraka), He shows mercy towards createdservants.

It was the belief of the worshippers of false gods that their idols deserved worshipand godhood that made them guilty of associating co-partners with Allah (shirk),not merely their saying, "We only worship them that they may bring us the nearerto Allah." For it was only when it was proved to them that their idols did notdeserve to be worshippedas they believed they didthat they said by way ofexcuse, "We only worship them that they may bring us nearer to Allah."

So how should Ibn Abd al-Wahhab and his followers consider believers who

acknowledge the unity of tawhid to be comparable to those worshippers of falsegods who believed in the godhood of their idols? For all the above-mentionedverses and those like them specifically refer to non-Muslims and worshippers offalse gods, while not a single believer enters into them.

Bukhari relates from Abdullah ibn Umar (Allah be well pleased with father andson) who related from the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) that in[foretelling the] description of the Kharijites, he said that they would "proceed to


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Quranic verses revealed about non-Muslims, and interpret them as if theyreferred to believers."

And in another hadith, also from Ibn Umar, the Prophet (Allah bless him andgive him peace) said, "The thing I fear most for my Umma is a man who

interprets the Quran taking it out of its context"; both of these hadiths beingapplicable to this sect

If believers praying to Allah through an intermediary (tawassul) and the likewere worshipping false gods, it wouldnt have been done first by the Prophethimself (Allah bless him and give him peace), his Companions, and the MuslimUmma, from first to last (Dahlan, al-Futuhat al-Islamiyya [Cairo: al-Maktaba al-Tijariyya al-Kubra, 1354/1935], 2.25859).

This passage shows us why the Wahhabis were considered like Kharijites, menwho, as al-Haskafi notes above, revolted against the imam "because of a mistakenscriptural interpretation (tawil)," believing that he was "upon a falsehood ofunbelief (kufr) or disobedience to Allah (masiya) that necessitates their fightinghim."

The main difficulty with their theory that tawassul amounted to worshippingfalse gods was the fact that it was taught to the Umma by the Prophet (Allah blesshim and give him peace)something you have asked about and will be discussedin question (9) belowwhich was perhaps why no one in the previous elevencenturies of Islamic scholarship before Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab had evernoticed that it was unbelief

In this respect, it is fortunate that Ibn Abd al-Wahhab didnt get his hands on his

own Imam, Ahmad ibn Hanbal, who enjoined his most outstanding student, AbuBakr Ahmad ibn Muhammad al-Marrudhi (d. 275/888) to make tawassulthrough the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace). Al-Marrudhi relatesthe tawassul of the hadith of the Companion (Sahabi) Uthman ibn Hunayfcontaining the words, "O Allah, verily, I turn to You through Your prophetMuhammad, the Prophet of Mercy (Allah bless him and give him peace); OMuhammad, verily I turn through you to my Lord, that He may fulfill my need[emphasis the translators]"which al-Marrudhi relates from Ahmad ibn Hanbalin the "Chapter on Supplications" of his Kitab al-mansak [Book of Hajj andUmra]. This is mentioned by Ibn Taymiya (Qaida jalila fi al-tawassul wa al-wasila [N.d. Reprint. Beirut: al-Maktaba al-Ilmiyya, n.d.], 98), whom I tend to

believe on it, since it is something whose sunna character he tries to disprove hisImam about, though without conceiving it to be idolatry (shirk) or unbelief(kufr), as the Wahhabis did more than four centuries later.

Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab is gone today, together with the fatwas he gavethat resulted in the attacks on Mecca, Taif, and Medina beginning in 1205/1790by "reformers" who believed that the lives, women, and money of ordinary SunniMuslims who did not feel that tawassul was shirk could be lawfully taken by those


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who did. There are no more Wahhabis in this sense. As King Fahd (who, on thewhole, has had a positive, moderating influence) said a few years ago in a speech,"We are not Wahhabis, we are Hanbalis."

Yet if the "revolt" (in al-Haskafis words) is gone, the "mistaken scriptural

interpretation" remains; and its intellectual influence is still strong on all aspectsof the religious establishment in Saudi Arabia. Many of the questions you haveasked deal specifically with ideas aggressively packaged and exported to otherMuslim countries under the aegis of Ibn Baz, and given currency by the supportof Sheikh Nasir and his followers

These are revisions to traditional Islam, and if many ordinary Muslims haveforgotten this, it is due to the extent to which they have succeeded, abetted byheavy subsidizing and the present lack of traditional scholars (ulama) to teachMuslims the truth. Yet one cannot but feel they mark a transient phase, for Allahhas promised to protect the din, and if the rebuttals of classical scholars wereheard, these innovations would melt away. In the meantime, "reforms" have beenslated for all three pillars of the din, Islam (Sharia), Iman (Aqida), and Ihsan(Tariqa), and can perhaps be best summarized under these headings:

(1) Islam (Sharia): To their credit, the movement we are speaking of has revivedinterest in hadith among Islamic scholars across the board. But the emphasis onhadith and its ancillary disciplines to the exclusion of other Islamic sciencesequally essential to understanding the revelation, such as fiqh methodology, orthe conditioning of hadith by general principles expressed in the Quran , hascreated the false dichotomy in many Muslims minds of either fiqh or hadith. Andthis is an intellectual bida of the most ominous sort for Islam, which has neveraccepted ijtihad from non-mujtahids, or anything short of the fiqh (literally

"understanding subtle points") of hadith.

One sad outcome of dichotomizing fiqh and hadith is the revival of Dhahirithought we have talked about above, with its "fallacy of misplaced literalism" ininterpreting primary scriptural texts. Such literalism necessarily forces itselfupon someone trained in hadith alone (like Sheikh Nasir) if he tries to deduceSharia rulings without mastery of the interpretive tools needed to meet thechallenges that face the mujtahid, for example, in joining between a number ofhadiths on a particular question that seem to conflict, or the many otherintellectual problems involved in doing ijtihad. This strident Dhahirismespecially among Sheikh Nasirs followershas made some contemporary

Muslims seriously believe that it is a matter of either following "the Quran andsunna," or one of the schools of the mujtahid Imams

Now, the big lie has only gained credibility today because so few Muslimsunderstand what ijtihad is or how it is done. I believe this can be cured byfamiliarizing Muslims with concrete examples of how mujtahid Imams deriveparticular Sharia rulings from the Quran and hadith, examples which first,demonstrate the breadth of their hadith knowledge (Muhammad ibn Ubayd


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Allah ibn al-Munadi (d. 272/886) relates that Ahmad ibn Hanbal said that havingmemorized three hundred thousand hadiths was not enough to be a mujtahid),and second, demonstrate their mastery of the deductive principles that enableone to join between all the primary texts. Until this is done, the advocates of thismovement will probably continue to follow the ijtihad of non-mujtahids (the

sheikhs who inspire their confidence), under the catch phrase "Quran andsunna" just as if the real mujtahids were unfamiliar with the obligation offollowing these. The followers perhaps cannot be blamed, since "for someone whohas never travelled, his mother is the only cook." But I do blame the sheikhs who,whatever their motivations, write and speak as if they were the only cooks

(2) Iman (Aqida): The uncritical acceptance and subsidizing of Ibn Taymiyasand Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyyas opinions in aqida has had a number of results

One is that Ibn Taymiyas denial of all figurative expression (majaz) in the Quran, what we have called above "misplaced literalism," has caused theanthropomorphism it brings to most minds to spread to the horizons, under theslogan of a "return to the aqida of early Muslims," which, as explained above, itmost certainly is not

In this connection, I was recently speaking with Mawlana Abdullah Kakakhail, ascholar of Islamic belief (usul al-din) from Islamabad, who told me that hegraduated from the Islamic University in Medina in 1966, and shortly afterwards,on the verge of returning home, had been summoned to the office of the vice-rector of the university, who expressed his disappointment that the student hadnot benefited more from his studies in Islamic faith (aqida). The vice-rector saidhe knew Abdullah was returning to Pakistan with the same tenets of faith he hadhad when he came. They got to talking about the mutashabihat or unapparent in

meaning Quranic verses and hadiths, and the discussion turned to Allahs hand(Quran 48:10). "You say," the young man told the vice-rector, "That the hand isknown, but the how of it is unknown. What does the unknownness of this howmean?" The vice-rector said, "It means we do not know whether the hand is blackor white, or whether it is long or short." The vice-rectors name was Ibn Baz, andthis was what was being offered at the time as the dawa or invitationapparently to the faith (aqida) that inspired the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.

Secondly, the yawning gulf between this kind of anthropomorphism and theentire previous Quran tafsir literature has necessitated the explanation thatsomeone (namely, the Ashari school) has crept in upon the Umma and altered

the "aqida of the early Muslims" that is alleged to have been there before (butnow cannot be found). This has in turn divided the field of aqida into two camps,pro- and anti-Ashari, whereas for the previous thousand years, Sunni Muslimsagreed upon the orthodoxy of the Ashari and Maturidi schools. Why wassomething fixed that was not broken?

Indeed, when a wealthy trader from Jedda brought to life the long-dead aqida ofIbn Taymiya at the beginning of this century by financing the printing in Egypt of


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Ibn Taymiyas Minhaj al-sunna al-nabawiyya and other works, the Mufti of EgyptMuhammad Bakhit al-Mutii, faced with new questions about the validity ofanthropomorphism, wrote: "It was a fitna (strife) that was sleeping; may Allahcurse him who awakened it."

But perhaps the most ill-starred aqida legacy of the historical Wahhabimovement is something now practiced from the Najd to the Indian Subcontinent,to the East and the West; namely, the ease with which Muslims call each other"unbelievers." Whether it is over a fiqh question like tawassul, or an aqidaquestion like the above, this is precisely the sectarianism which Allah forbids inthe Quran with the words,

"And do not be like those who separated into factions and differed betweenthemselves" (Quran 3:105),

Sectarianism of this sort is something that did not exist in traditional Sunni Islamfor the previous thousand years, but rather represents a break with that tradition.Whether we justify it in the name of an Islamic reform, or a return to earlyIslam, sectarianism is and remains the kind of bida of misguidance of which theProphet (Allah bless him and give him peace) said in the hadith of Muslim,

"Whoever innovates something in this matter of ours that is not from it shallhave it rejected" (Muslim 3.1343).

(3) Ihsan (Tariqa): The third of the re-forms, and among the most aggressivelypursued today is an attempt to finish tasawwuf or Sufism as one of the Islamicsciences, though there is no doubt that it has been considered as such by virtuallyall classical scholars since the religious sciences were first recorded. Our times

have seen the printing and reprinting of works like Abd al-Rahman ibn al-JawzisTalbis Iblis [The Devils deception] passages of which criticize "the Sufis"(meaning groups of them in his time) without mentioning that a great many ofthe biographies of his five-volume Sifa al-safwa [Description of the elect] are thevery Sufis quoted in extenso in Qushayris classic work on Sufism al-Risala al-Qushayriyya.

Though Sufism exists for the good reason that the sunna we have beencommanded to follow is not just the words and outward actions of the Prophet(Allah bless him and give him peace), but also his states, such as reliance on Allah(tawakkul), sincerity (ikhlas), forbearance (hilm), patience (sabr), humility

(tawadu), perpetual remembrance of Allah, and so on. Many, many hadiths andQuranic verses indicate the obligatory character of attaining these and hundredsof other states of the heart, such as the hadith related by Muslim that the Prophet(Allah bless him and give him peace) said,

"No one will enter paradise who has a particle of arrogance in his heart"(Muslim, 1.93).


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or the sahih hadith in the Sunan of Abu Dawud about the obligatoriness of havingpresence of heart in the prayer (salat), that Ammar ibn Yasir heard the Prophet(Allah bless him and give him peace) say,

"Verily, a man leaves, and none of his prayer has been recorded for him except

a tenth of it, a ninth of it, an eighth of it, a seventh of it, a sixth of it, a fifth of it, afourth of it, a third of it, or a half of it" (Sunan Abi Dawud [N.d. Reprint. Istanbul:al-Maktaba al-Islamiyya, n.d.] 1.211).

Half a minutes reflection should show each of us where we stand on theseaspects of our din, and why in classical times, helping Muslims to attain thesestates was not left to amateurs, but rather delegated to Ulama' of the heart, thescholars of Islamic Sufism

As in other Islamic sciences, mistakes historically did occur in Sufism, most ofthem stemming from not recognizing the Sharia and tenets of faith (aqida) ofAhl al-Sunna as being above every human being. But these mistakes were notdifferent in principle from, for example, the Israiliyyat (baseless tales of BaniIsrail) that crept into Quranic exegesis (tafsir) literature, or the mawduat(hadith forgeries) that crept into the body of prophetic hadith. These were nottaken as proof that tafsir was bad, or hadith was deviance, but rather, in eachdiscipline, the errors were identified and warned against by the Imams of thefield, because the Umma needed the rest. And such corrections are precisely whatwe find in books like Qushayris Risala, Ghazalis Ihya and other works of Sufism.

In contrast, the re-formers of our times have hit upon the expedient of creatingdoubts of there being any genuine Islamic science to attain spiritual sincerity in asystematic and knowledge-based way. But perhaps today they are beginning to

realize that if one ends all spiritual aspiration, one will only produce numbers ofaggressive Muslims with no other means of feeling more religious than byarguing to prove their fellow Muslims are less soan unenviable conditiondescribed in the hadith of the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace),

"No people went astray after guidance, except that they were afflicted witharguing."

To summarize, the movement to re-form our din attacks the scholarly authoritythat has traditionally been the support of its three pillars: in Islam, by turningMuslims hearts against the madhhabs that are our Sharia; in Iman, by

presenting Ibn Taymiyas anthropomorphism as the way of the early Muslims;and in Ihsan, by trying to close the door of traditional Islamic spirituality onceand for all.

Sheikh Nasir and Ibn Baz are among the main luminaries of the movement, andthe latters whole career shows an emphasis on these reforms, from thepublications printed under his auspices and distributed across the globe, to thefunding of Wahhabi U. graduates to return from Medina to their homelands to


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disseminate the teachings of sect, tirelessly retelling of how few Muslims scholarsover the last fourteen hundred years have truly understood Islam as it wasunderstood by the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) and themselves.

So perhaps the best answer to your question about the ijazas of these two men is

to ask in turn: What relevance to such re-formers should the traditional ijazasystem have, when its function was to preserve intact the understanding of Islamby traditional scholars down through the centuries, an understanding they wishto change?

nuh ha mim keller - masud questions 6 ibn baaz and al-albani

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