Obedience to the rulers and scholars in making the lawful to be unlawful and the unlawful to be lawful
Shaikh Sulaymaan Aal ash-Shaikh
Tayseer al-Azeer al-Hameed (p.553-554)
“And as for his (i.e. Ibn ‘Abdul-Wahhaab’s) saying (as quoted in Fath ul-Majeed p.342 by Shaikh Abdur-Rahmaan bin Hasan Aal ash-Shaikh, under the chapter of obedience to the rulers and scholars in making the lawful to be unlawful and the unlawful to be lawful), “And worshipping the rabbis (ahbaar, scholars, learned ones), this is knowledge (ilm) and understanding (fiqh)”.
Meaning, this is what they call today, ilm and fiqh, that which has been authored upon the madhhabs of the Imaams and what is similar to that. So they obey them (i.e. their scholars) in everything that they (the ahbaar) follow him (i.e. one of their scholars), regardless of whether it agrees with the judgement of Allaah or not. Rather, they are not even concerned with what this opposes from the Book and the Sunnah, rather they reject the words of Allaah, and the words of His Messenger, with the sayings of those whom they blindly follow. And they make it clear (yusarrihoon) that it is not lawful to act by a Book and nor a Sunnah, and that is is not permissible to acquire knowledge from them both, and that the ilm, fiqh, and hudaa (guidance) is actually what they find in their books. Rather, greater than all of this and more calamitous than this is the accusation made by many of them that the words of Allaah and the words of His Messenger do not amount to knowledge and nor certainty in the topic of knowing the Names of Allaah, His Attributes, and His Tawheed, and they call it “the apparent meanings of the words”, and then they call what the Philosophers, the Mushriks have devised, “intellectual certainties”, and then they put this before whatever has come from Allaah in the topic of the Names, Attributes and Tawheed. Then they accuse anyone who leaves obedience to the priests and rabbis (i.e. their heads and chiefs) and goes to the obedience of the Lord of the Worlds, obedience to His Messenger, and to judging by what Allaah has revealed in the issues of dispute, [they accuse them] with bid’ah (innovation) or kufr (or disbelief).”
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