In defence of Sh Muḥammad b. ʿAbd al-Wahhāb: Sh ʿAbdullāh al-ʿUjayrī
Muḥammad Ḥijāb announced some time ago that he was going to incorporate Sh ʿAbdullāh al-ʿUjayrī into the Sapience Institute, yet it’s clear neither @mohammed_hijab nor @SapienceOrg listened to the Shaykh’s positions on Sh Muḥammad b. ʿAbd al-Wahhāb and his daʾwah.
• Sh ʿAbdullāh al-ʿUjayrī said in his book An Investigation into the Concept of the Khawārij Between History and Reality:
❝As for exploiting the term [“Khawārij”] for sectarian distortion, it is no less dangerous than what preceded; it can also create confusion in reality regarding the meanings of this term and what concepts ought to fall under it.
Among the well-known cases that occurred in this regard is describing the daʿwah of Shaykh Muḥammad b. ʿAbd al-Wahhāb as a Khārijī daʿwah, as Zaynī Daḥlān did, to the point that he applied the ḥadīths concerning the Khawārij to the Shaykh and his followers, in his two books al-Durar al-Saniyyah and al-Futūḥāt al-Islāmiyyah. One can also detect echoes of this accusation in the legal writings of some later scholars of the madhhabs. Take, for example, the heading Ibn ʿĀbidīn placed in his book Radd al-Muḥtār: “A Section Concerning the Followers of ʿAbd al-Wahhāb, the Khawārij of Our Time.”
Al-Shawkānī, may Allāh Most High have mercy on him, said in defense of the Shaykh’s daʾwah amid the spread of this accusation, and the language of defense reveals the extent of its circulation and spread: “Some people claim that he believes the belief of the Khawārij. I do not think that is authentic, for the ruler of Najd and all of his followers act according to what they learned from Muḥammad b. ʿAbd al-Wahhāb. He was a Ḥanbalī, then he sought ḥadīth in the honored city of Madīnah, then returned to Najd and began acting according to the independent legal reasonings of a group of the later Ḥanbalīs, such as Ibn Taymiyyah, Ibn al-Qayyim, and their likes, and those two are among the harshest of people against those who hold beliefs concerning the dead. I saw a book from the ruler of Najd, who is now the ruler of those regions, in which he answered some of the people of knowledge who had written to him and asked him to clarify what he believed. I saw his answer containing a good creed in agreement with the Book and the prophetic way. Allāh knows best the reality of the matter.”
"وأما دراستي للتاريخ فأقرّ بأن قراءتي لبعض المصادر الأولية في تاريخ الدعوة النجدية قادتني إلى نتائج تخالف القراءة السائدة عند كثيرٍ من السلفيين المعاصرين"
والله صادق مع انه كلام حق يُراد به باطل! https://t.co/EyNV7PBqcf