Questioner: What do you advise us with Shaikh, what do you advise concerning this issue, i.e., [that] some of the brothers abroad regard books like these … they do not examine them closely, books will come out and they’ll start looking at the title only, and [then] they’ll try to judge some of their brothers from the title alone, without close examination. So what is your advice in terms of [explaining the correct] da’wah and in terms of help and so on, may Allaah bless you.
Al-Albaani: I think that along with the answer for the previous question, it is possible for us to get an answer for this one.
Questioner: Yes.
Al-Albaani: Now, without doubt, we are living through a very big problem. Where, in recent times, disunity between the groups that affiliate themselves to the Book and the Sunnah has surfaced. So, from one angle, we advise the students of knowledge and especially the general masses of Muslims not to raise their heads towards such differences as these and from the other that they not be with one group against another.
Because firstly, it is not easy, ever, to distinguish what is correct from an error or the truth from falsehood. And secondly, and this is very important, not every person can judge with justice and fairness and stand by His Saying, the Most High, “… and do not let the hatred of a people prevent you from being just. Be just–that is nearer to righteousness.”[Maa’idah 5:8]
Carrying out justice between two disputants, especially when a person’s desire is with one of the two, is very, very difficult. And from the authentic Sunnah we know that when the Prophet صلى الله عليه وآله وسلم sent Ali as a judge to Yemen he said, ‘O Messenger of Allaah! You’re sending me to a people and I do not know how to judge?’ So he عليه السلام struck his chest and said to him, ‘Do not judge between two people until you have heard from both of them.’
Actualising this text in such differences which you referred to [in your question] and a part of which I have [already] explained, achieving justice, in fact, actualising the truth before justice–none except the most elite of the elite from the people of knowledge are capable of it.
Because they are the ones who have the capability to familiarise themselves with what these [disputants] say and what those others say and then compare the statement of this [group of people] with that, and then extract the correct [answer] from the two statements.
And sometimes there may be no [actual] difference between the two parties or statements except for, as the scholars say concerning some matters of dispute, that it is a, ‘Difference in wording.’
No one can do this except for a few individuals from the elite.
And [yet] there are people from the elite who cannot judge with justice–he knows where the truth is concerning the two parties, [he knows] whether there is a difference between them or not, [but still even] if there is a difference between them, the truth may be with the side which he does not feel affection for–and so he swerves away from justice, and for this reason He, the Most High, said, “… and do not let the hatred of a people prevent you from being just. Be just–that is nearer to righteousness.”
For this reason, we advise the students of knowledge, let alone those less than them, not to delve into [such matters] in this way, and that they not take a stance except for the truth that they know before this problem occurs or before these differences appear.
Questioner: May Allaah bless you.
Al-Albaani: And you.
Al-Hudaa wan-Noor, 674.
