[tipokot]

From Shaykh Nuh Keller's 2007 Suhba in UK: http://al-miftah.blogspot.com/2007/0...keller-uk.html

A question was asked: “What should be the approach of someone in the tariq towards working with other Muslims with different beliefs e.g. modernists or salafis”

The Shaykh responded that we should help them with ourselves. He proceeded to say that The modernists are doing a disservice to Islam, because their fatwas are against the interest of the Muslims (and the Shaykh referred back to the example of the hijab fatwa mentioned above).

The Shaykh warned against the divisions modernists create amongst Muslims and warned against the geographical segmentation of the Muslims and said (about the Modernists) “They divide up the Muslims, They validate things that are slack in Islamic practice, they divide up the Ummah, with fatwas like we’re a different society here we’re a muslim minority here”

The Shaykh said “We say to the modernists nothing needs to be modernised” and referred to them (the modernists) as pernicious. The Shaykh further stated that Salafism seems to be fleeing and in the state of reversal, that they had “spent their coin”. He stressed that we pray behind everybody in the masjid, but that we should be firm in case anyone tries to give us a dars about this or that.

The Shaykh went on to explain that the Qur’an commands us “ask those who know well, (Ahl ul dhikri)”, and that “A modernist is someone with an inferiority complex, so he’s not of the Ahl ul dhikri, not someone who knows well about the things of his deen.”

The Shaykh finished off by warning against what he called the insidious poison of the modernists appealing to the vanities of the educated Muslims, and said:

“We don’t have a superiority complex, we don’t have a supercilious way of looking at others, but tell plainly in word and deed to the Modernists whose poison more insidious and worse and more likely to have a detrimental impact than salafis”
He continued:

“Modernists they do manage to steal a lot of the hearts of educated Muslims who think that being an educated muslim consist in repeating their phrases and so forth and having zero taqwa”

He described the way of zero taqwa displayed by the modernists as “The way of giving someone who is a diabetic more candy - Rukhsa city oh boy” and , “it’s the way of making the person more sick so they cant get any better so they don’t feel anything so their hearts become further and further from Allah swt”

His concluding remark was that those who say “I’m just making it easier” only made it easier for the Shaitan to take people.

The above was one of the last statements of the Shaykh in the UK 2007 Suhba.

May Allah swt preserve Shaykh Nuh and reward him for his warnings against being apologetic Muslims or cowards, against in his words “the batil of Minority Fiqh/Fiqh al Aqaliat” and against the insidious poison of the modernists who are pushing for a geographical segmentation of Islam and who in the shaykhs words “are more likely to have a detrimental effect than the salafis”.

Such a strongly worded warning from a scholar and a man who has devoted the better part of his life as a muslim and scholastic career to refuting the batil of the salafis is not to be taken lightly, and may Allah swt protect us from the above mentioned perils.