On 24 Safar 1397 AH, corresponding to 15 January 1977, the World Conference on Guiding Religious Outreach and Preparing Preachers was held in the blessed city of Madinah. His Eminence Shaykh Abd al-Aziz ibn Abd Allah ibn Baz, may God have mercy on him, opened the conference and was then elected its president. The eminent scholar Shaykh Abd al-Muhsin al-Abbad, may God preserve him, was elected vice-president. Scholars and preachers from about seventy countries participated. The university journal devoted its thirty-sixth issue to the conference, publishing the opening addresses, the conference’s recommendations, and some lectures. Among these was a lecture by Shaykh Abu al-Hasan Ali al-Hasani al-Nadwi, may God have mercy on him, who was one of the participants. How could he not have been, when he was a member of the founding council of the Islamic University in Madinah?
Abu al-Hasan recognized the importance of that gathering of scholars, students of knowledge, and preachers from across the world. Most of them must have been influenced by contemporary intellectual currents. It was therefore necessary to identify the malady and its remedy and calmly and intelligently refute the foundations of the new movements. He chose for his lecture the title “Some Characteristics of Religious Outreach in This Age” and divided it into two themes: the characteristics of outreach and the characteristics of preachers.
The First Theme: The Characteristics of Religious Outreach
He said, may God have mercy on him:
“Islamic outreach must combine stirring faith within its audience and Muslim society and awakening religious feeling with completing, developing, and cultivating awareness. Anyone who follows the condition of the Muslim world today and the realities of Muslim countries, their governments and peoples knows that these peoples’ and masses’ attachment to Islam and love for it constitute a thick barrier and an impregnable dam against many leaders who have submitted to Western civilization, its values, concepts, philosophies, and systems. They believe in them as religious people believe in religions and divinely revealed laws, and have lost confidence in Islam’s fitness to accompany the modern age, its developments and events, and to serve as an eternal, universal message. These peoples’ and societies’ Islam, their understanding only of the language of faith and the Qur’an, and their responding only to what comes through them, touches their hearts, and addresses their consciences, prevent many such leaders from wholly discarding Islam and declaring war upon it.
“Some of these leaders have resorted at critical moments to arousing this faith and religious enthusiasm and using them to win a battle or defeat an enemy. They saw that there was no refuge from God except in Him and in the faith of these sound, believing peoples. They raised cries of ‘God is greatest’, jihad, martyrdom in God’s cause, and fighting the invading unbelieving enemy, as Algeria did in its war against the French and Pakistan in the war of 1965. They experienced the benefit of this faith and the strength of this emotion. The faith of these peoples, their attachment to Islam, and their enthusiasm for it have therefore become the strong, high wall on which the continued belonging of these lands, and many Muslim leaders and governments, to the fold of Islam depends.
“If this wall collapses, God forbid, or is scaled by advocates of unbelief and irreligion or the current of intellectual and cultural apostasy, Islam in these lands faces the gravest danger. Nothing will prevent those leaders who fight Islam and harbor enmity and hatred toward it from casting off restraint, abandoning decorum and pretense, and stripping these lands and peoples, so deeply rooted in Islam, of everything connected with it. The only thing whose adverse consequences they fear and take into account is these peoples’ rising against such leadership out of faith and Islamic zeal, depriving them of their seats of power and positions of leadership. Once that barrier disappears, nothing stands in their way. Those who call to Islam and work in Islamic outreach must therefore preserve this remaining remnant of faith in the hearts of peoples and masses and keep its ember from being extinguished.”
Al-Turkmani, may God pardon him, says: this is a sound foundational principle that godly scholars and Salafi preachers have long emphasized. They have explained that the condition of Muslim societies, particularly those afflicted with misguided rulers who misguide others, can be reformed only by concentrating on reforming individuals and societies through calling them to the true religion, honoring it, taking pride in it, and educating oneself, one’s family, and the young in it. This is what the eminent scholar al-Albani, may God have mercy on him, calls education. The nation must be educated in strong religious commitment. This is the greatest means of resisting its enemies at home and abroad.
He said, may God have mercy on him:
“It is not right to confine oneself to stirring faith and awakening religious emotion in the hearts of peoples and masses. This must be joined to developing and cultivating sound awareness, understanding realities and issues, distinguishing friend from enemy, and not being deceived by slogans and appearances. We have seen peoples whose awareness is weak or absent fall under the domination of a hypocritical leader, a cunning chief, or a tyrannical enemy, despite their attachment to Islam and love for it. The people applaud him enthusiastically and follow in his train. He drives them with a stick as a shepherd drives flocks of sheep that neither understand nor control their own affairs. Their attachment to Islam and love for it do not prevent them from becoming easy prey or a readily swallowed morsel for irreligious leadership or conspiracies against Islam.”
Al-Turkmani says: this is the second duty: beneficial knowledge, correct creed, and understanding religion, or what the eminent scholar al-Albani, may God have mercy on him, calls purification. Through it the Muslim becomes capable of distinguishing truth from falsehood, monotheism from polytheism, and the Sunnah from innovation. Neglecting this duty is one aspect of Islamic movements’ deviation. Everywhere you find them lacking understanding: at one time they ally with socialists, communists, or secularists; at another they place their trust in the Rafidah, the enemies of the faith; and now they lead calls for freedom and change. The later generations of this nation can be set right only by what set its earliest generations right: combining beneficial knowledge, sincere faith, and righteous deeds. Al-Nadwi, may God have mercy on him, therefore highlighted how the righteous predecessors were distinguished by possessing both forms of good:
“What distinguished the first, exemplary Muslim society, the companions, may God be pleased with them, through the precise and comprehensive prophetic education, was the combination of firm religion admitting no criticism and strong faith untouched by weakness with mature, complete awareness. They neither deceived nor were deceived. They would not accept anything contrary to Islam and reason, anything that harmed them, brought injury upon them, or placed them in danger or destruction. They attained sound judgment and perfected discernment and maturity. They were not taken unawares or caught in a trap set by a cunning enemy. They made mistakes but did not persist in them; their errors and entanglements were not repeated. An authentic hadith states: ‘The believer is not bitten from the same hole twice.’ Peoples without awareness, by contrast, are bitten again and again.
“This was because the Messenger of God, may God bless him and his family and grant him peace, subjected them to an education and teachings that protected them from falling into snares and kept them from accepting what did not accord with Islam’s teachings and manners, sound natural dispositions, and upright minds. It was an exemplary, ideal society in everything…”
He then gave some examples from the Prophet’s life.
After establishing these two principles of education and purification, al-Nadwi, may God have mercy on him, began drawing attention to the need to preserve religious purposes and revealed truths and to the danger of altering and distorting them. He said:
“A third sacred duty of those working in Islamic outreach is protecting religious truths and Islamic concepts from distortion and from being subjected to modern Western ideas or political and economic terms that emerged in particular circumstances and different environments, with their own backgrounds, causes, and histories, and that remain continually subject to development and change. We must defend these religious truths and Islamic terms as zealously as we defend sacred things, honor, and dignity, indeed more zealously, because they are Islam’s impregnable fortresses, protected domain, and distinguishing signs. Subjecting them to modern ideas and explaining them through foreign terminology harms rather than benefits them, weakens rather than strengthens them, exposes them to danger rather than protecting them, and brings them down to a low, inferior level rather than elevating their standing, as many people imagine…”
He then gave examples drawn from contemporary movements that have taken a political direction in interpreting religion and its truths:
“If we call pilgrimage ‘a worldwide Islamic conference’, we have not done justice to pilgrimage or to the person we address, whom we wish to make understand pilgrimage’s reality, spirit, and prescribed purpose. We have been faithful to neither. The spirit of pilgrimage and the secret of its prescription are different from the purposes for which conferences are held morning and evening. Were pilgrimage a worldwide Islamic conference, it would have a different character and organization and a different atmosphere. Its invitation would be confined to educated, aware classes, opinion leaders, and Muslim leaders. The same applies to the reality of worship and the realities of prayer, zakat, and fasting. It is impermissible to tamper with these terms, wrong them, subject them to new philosophies, and explain them by something unreliable and unstable…”
Al-Turkmani says: by this, al-Nadwi refers to contemporary Islamists’ distortion of religion’s realities and purposes, foremost among them al-Mawdudi and Sayyid Qutb. He warned that this is a dangerous approach resembling only the methods of the esoteric sects:
“The esoteric sects used this ‘propaganda strategy’ in the fifth Islamic century and afterward. They interpreted religious terms however they, their desires, and their interests wished, displaying ingenuity and producing extraordinary marvels in doing so. Through this they achieved their aim of undermining confidence in these universally transmitted words, which are the walls, fortresses, and distinguishing signs of Islamic law, and spreading disorder in Muslim society and among Muslim masses. If these words lose the understanding that successive Muslim generations inherited and that was universally transmitted among Muslims, and become open to every advocate of a new sect, anomalous opinion, or novel statement, Islam’s fortress is opened to every attacker and hypocrite. Confidence in the Qur’an, hadith, and Arabic language disappears, and anyone may say and advocate whatever he pleases. No tribulation equals this tribulation, and no danger matches this danger…”
He then elaborated in valuable and precious words, concluding with an eloquent warning against activists’ methods of making religion’s reality and goals the development of the earth and the establishment of the state, and claiming that the purely devotional acts for which we were created are means and instruments for that. He said, may God have mercy on him:
“I also warn you, brothers, against the insistence observed in some writers that these religious pillars and Islamic obligations, such as prayer, zakat, fasting, and pilgrimage, are means rather than ends, prescribed only to establish Islamic government and organize and strengthen Muslim society. I warn you against everything that diminishes the spirit of worship, the relationship between the servant and his Lord, and obedience to the command, and against sometimes elaborating on their moral, social, political, and economic benefits so extensively that the listener or reader imagines them to be educational, military, or organizational methods whose value consists in the strength and order they bring society or in bodily health and medical benefits. The first harm of this way of thinking or interpreting is that it deprives these acts of worship of their value and strength: obeying God’s command, seeking His pleasure thereby, faith, seeking His reward, and nearness to God Most High. This is an immense loss that no benefit can compensate for, and a void that nothing in this world can fill.”
He then perceptively and intelligently identified another harm, a belief that many Islamists today hold and state explicitly. Some even consider it permissible to contradict explicit religious texts whenever humanity’s interests are served. He said, may God have mercy on him:
“The second harm is that if some legislator or wise educator discovers other methods that may be more effective in realizing these social, organizational, or medical purposes, many who believe in these benefits will dispense with the prescribed pillars and acts of worship and adhere to the new methods or experiments. Religion thereby remains perpetually exposed to danger and becomes a plaything for those who tamper with and distort it.
“This does not conflict with probing the depths of these pillars, rulings, and religious truths or uncovering their secrets and social benefits. Muslim scholars, early and recent, have written extensively about the objectives of Islamic law and the secrets of acts of worship, obligations, and legal rulings. They have authored independent books and valuable studies, such as al-Ghazali, al-Khattabi, Izz al-Din ibn Abd al-Salam, Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyyah, and Ahmad ibn Abd al-Rahim al-Dihlawi. But they did all this without distorting the reality of these acts of worship and rulings or the primary end for which they were prescribed: obeying the divine command, drawing near to Him thereby, faith, and seeking His reward in them. They did so without subjecting them to the non-Arab or foreign philosophies of their age or succumbing to their spell and glitter.”
Abd al-Haqq al-Turkmani says: once the reader understands these premises that constitute activists’ thought and their new religion, he understands why they do not concern themselves with realizing the oneness of God, mighty and majestic is He, rejecting polytheism, and fighting its forms, means, and causes. None of this is consequential to them. What benefit does a material, utilitarian project gain from painstakingly realizing monotheism and servitude to the One and Only God or expending effort in combating polytheism and idolatry? Occupation with these two matters may even impede the higher goals of renaissance, development, and construction! Hence Abu al-Hasan al-Nadwi, may God have mercy on him, said:
“I warn you again, young people, against everything that diminishes the enormity of doctrinal idolatry and manifest polytheism: worshipping other than God, prostrating to another, offering vows and sacrifices, and attributing to another a share in God’s attributes of power, knowledge, governance, causing death, giving life, bringing happiness, and bringing misery.”
I say: reflect on these words and compare them with some people’s accusation that he was “a grave worshipper”!
He said:
“I warn you against concentrating exclusively on the enormity of submission to governments, human systems, and human legislation, and transferring the right of legislation to humankind, holding that this alone constitutes worship of false deities and polytheism; that the original idolatry and worship of other than God have lost their importance; that they mattered only in ancient, primitive times; and that even an ignorant, uneducated person no longer turns to them. Quite apart from the fact that this idolatry and manifest polytheism still enjoy prevalence, spread, power, and influence, as every person experiences in every time and place, combating them is the primary purpose for which the prophets were sent, heavenly books were revealed, and Paradise and Hell were established. Every prophet’s call began at this point, and their efforts concentrated on fighting this pagan ignorance. The Qur’an is so full of this that reinterpretation is impossible. Read, for example, Surat al-A‘raf, Surat Hud, and Surat al-Shu‘ara’, and the accounts of each prophet and his call.”
He then highlighted the danger of the activists’ approach and its harmful effect of turning people away from the call of the prophets and messengers, peace and blessings be upon them:
“Everything said about the importance of combating manifest polytheism and worship of other than God, whether persons, spirits, tombs, or shrines, while attending only to combating systems, legislation, and governments, frustrates the prophets’ efforts and turns this religion from its ancient, heavenly method to a new political method. This is inevitably a distortion. I say this without diminishing the importance of emphasizing that legislation belongs to God alone, that judgment and command belong to Him alone, and that whoever calls for absolute, blind obedience to himself is a rival to the Lord and a false deity. People must be called to divine legislation and to establishing Islamic government founded on the method of the Book and the Sunnah and the method of the rightly guided caliphate, sparing no effort in that regard. But this must not be at the expense of calling to monotheism and pure religion and combating idolatry and polytheism. These remain foremost, are more widespread, and pose a greater danger in this world and the Hereafter. God Most High has said: ‘God does not forgive associating partners with Him, but forgives what is less than that for whomever He wills. Whoever associates partners with God has fabricated a tremendous sin.’ He has said: ‘So avoid the defilement of idols and avoid false speech, inclining solely to God, associating no partners with Him. Whoever associates partners with God is as though he has fallen from the sky and birds snatch him away, or the wind carries him down to a distant place.’”
The Second Theme: The Characteristics of Those Who Call to God Most High
Al-Nadwi offered precious words about the preachers’ need for detachment from worldly life, striving for the Hereafter, sincerity with God, and rising above people’s worldly possessions without competing for them. He then said:
“Among the most prominent characteristics of the outreach undertaken by prophets and their successors is that it rests on faith in the Hereafter, warning against its punishment, and encouraging desire for its blessings and reward. The grounds for action are faith, seeking reward, the Hereafter, and recompense, rather than inducements of worldly benefits, prestige, office, money, and dominion. Such inducements are a weak, collapsing foundation inconsistent with the nature of the prophets’ calls. Bargaining over them is easy, and their enemies, opponents, and political leaders may possess their equal or more. Someone nourished on such ambitions cannot be weaned from them and cannot be relied upon. Rather, the prophets build their call upon God’s pleasure and reward, what He has prepared for His believing servants and promised them through His prophets: bliss that neither vanishes nor changes.
“The heavenly scriptures, apart from the scriptures of the Old Testament, the Torah, are full of discussion of the Hereafter, concern for it, and building upon it. Islam has made belief in it a fundamental doctrine and a condition for the validity of faith and salvation. The Qur’an explicitly states: ‘That abode of the Hereafter We grant to those who seek neither elevation on earth nor corruption. The good outcome belongs to the God-fearing.’
“Here I borrow from myself what I said in a lecture delivered at this dear university in 1382 AH, entitled ‘Prophethood and the Prophets in the Light of the Qur’an’. I conclude this discussion with it, hoping that the characteristics I have discussed will be the hallmark of the outreach undertaken by preachers graduating from this university or carrying its burdens throughout the Muslim world. While discussing the difference between the method of prophetic calls and that of reform movements, I said: the prophets did not call to faith in the Hereafter or extol it merely as an ethical necessity or a requirement of reform without which a virtuous society and a sound civilization, let alone a Muslim society, cannot exist. Although that deserves appreciation and admiration, it differs clearly from the prophets’ method and conduct and the method of their successors.
“The difference is that the first, the prophets’ method, is faith and inward experience, feeling, emotion, and belief that take possession of a person’s sentiments, thought, and conduct. The second is acknowledgment, appreciation, and a prescribed rule. The former speak of the Hereafter with eagerness and delight and call to it with enthusiasm and strength. Others speak of it only to the extent demanded by ethical necessity and social need, motivated by reform and moral organization. How far apart are inward experience and emotion, on the one hand, and submission to logic and social interests, on the other!”
Abd al-Haqq al-Turkmani, may God pardon him, says: this is an outline of that valuable lecture, to which a respected scholar directed me. It drew attention to the foundations emphasized by godly scholars: combining beneficial knowledge and righteous action, concentrating on reforming Muslim society and thereby confronting rulers’ deviations, explaining the danger of polytheism and the obligation to fight it, and establishing that this is the foundation of the prophets’ call. It was distinctive in highlighting the roots of dangerous deviation in contemporary movements. The shaykh delivered it at the Islamic University in Madinah in the presence of His Eminence Shaykh Abd al-Aziz ibn Baz, the eminent scholar Abd al-Muhsin al-Abbad, and other scholars of the Salafi call. It exemplifies the treasures in al-Nadwi’s mine, and I shall extract more of them for you. People of the Sunnah, be gentle with people of the Sunnah. From God come success and grace.
Written for you by Abd al-Haqq al-Turkmani
Britain: 10/9/1432 AH