بِسْم الله الرحمن الرحيم
Two principles fall under the statement Knowledge is Worship
1) The necessity of intention
2) Having love for Allah and His Messenger ﷺ
This principle is considered the basis of the book, and everything in Islam ultimately falls under this umbrella.
So, O you seekers (of knowledge)! Here you are sitting cross legged for the lesson and your souls are attached to the most precious of things (seeking knowledge), so I advise myself and yourselves to fear Allah, the Most High, openly and in secret; for indeed it is the tool, and the landing place of all virtue, the level of praiseworthiness, the source of power, and the ascension of the highly aspirated, and the most secure binding for the heart from the Fitn (tribulations), so do not become negligent of it.
Taqwa is the key to understanding the Qur'an, it's the key to prayer, it's the key to fasting, it's the key to everything. And the driving force to Taqwa is love of Allah. And love of Allah is practiced upon by the love of the Prophet ﷺ - Because love of Allah can only be actualized when one follows the Prophet ﷺ. We can't follow those whom we don't love. They're all linked to one another and inseparable in the end.
And Taqwa is only sincere and real if it's practiced both in public and secret. If an individual prays in the Masjid, fasts, etc. but in the privacy of his home he brutalizes his wife, neglects his children, then he doesn't have Taqwa. He's only putting on a show. And this is رياء.
Faith has to be lived. It's not merely a philosophy or a set of principles we discuss; it's a way of life.
Allah said in [8:29]:
Allah gives insight to those who fear Him, so their opinions agree with what is correct. This is a promise to those who fear Allah, that they'll be given clarity of understanding - to distinguish between truth and falsehood, harm and benefit, obedience and disobedience. Sometimes this distinction is made by way of knowledge; Allah enlightens those who fear Him and facilitates their acquisition for it more than those who don't fear Him. Other times it's what Allah puts into the persons heart of insight.
The Prophet ﷺ said,
"من يرد الله به خيرا يفقه في الدين"
"For whoever Allah wishes good, He gives him deep understanding of the religion" [Bukhari]
One of the names of the Qur'an is الفرقان. And the teachings of Islam represent الفرقان - a criterion by which we determine what is right, what we should live by, and what is wrong.
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2) Be adherent to the path of the Pious Predecessors
Be Salafi upon the path of the Salaf as-Saalih, from the companions and those who followed after them, who pursued their tracks in all aspects of the religion, from Tawheed, to acts of worship, and so forth. Be distinguished as strictly adhering to the tracks of the Messenger ﷺ, and implementing the Sunan upon yourself, and leaving argumentative or doubtful speech, and not become engrossed in علم الكلام (rhetorical speech), and all that attests sins, and diverts from the Shari'ah.
The fact that the Prophet ﷺ approved of their way is sufficient evidence that we should follow them.
Once the Prophet ﷺ drew a straight line on the ground, and many other lines on either side of it, angling off. He said, "This is my path" and referred to the other lines as being paths of misguidance; at the head of each being a devil calling and inviting people towards it.
The companions asked the Prophet ﷺ how they could know his path, and he ﷺ said, "This is the path I'm on and the path of my companions"
And some have said, "The amazing thing is not those who are misguided and how they were misguided; what's amazing is those who are guided and how they were guided" because of the numerous paths of misguidance.
When people hear statements like this, they feel like it's somehow in contradiction to the norm. They think we belong to either one of the four Madh'habs: Hanafi, Shafi'i, Maliki, Hanbali, and whoever doesn't follow any one of them follows the Madh'hab of Shaytan. But the reality is that Abu Hanifa wasn't a Hanafi, Imam Malik wasn't a Maliki, Imam Shafi'i wasn't a Shafi'i, and Ahmed Ibn Hanbal wasn't a Hanbali. So, what path did they follow? The path of their predecessors, who were the Tabi'een and the companions of the Prophet ﷺ.
Imam Ash-Shafi'i studied under Imam Malik for more than twenty years, but no one called him a Maliki. And you don't find students of Abdullah Ibn Umar called "Umarees" or Ibn Masoud as 'Masoudee". So how did attributing yourself to Madh'habs come about? This arose during the time of ignorance, when knowledge had evaporated to a large degree and scholarship had changed. After the fall of Baghdad, Islamic learning centers were devastated and destroyed. Scholars were killed. It was out of this period that this rigid mentality developed, so rigid that even the Hanafi school ruled it was impermissible to marry a Shafi'i.
So both Ibn Uthaymeen and Bakr Abu Zayd stress the same point - the need to go back to the early generation. They were an example free of factionalization, unlike nowadays. And the one who follows their way is referred to as a 'Salafi' but this doesn't represent another group or Madh'hab. It's merely the concept of following the early generation.
Further elaborating on the statement of Bakr Abu Zayd; the student of knowledge must abandon argumentation and debate in order to promote himself, and arguing merely for the sake of argumentation - because this represents the door which closes the truth. It causes a person to speak unnecessarily to defend himself, and even when the truth is available, he'll either deny it or reinterpret in a bad way in order to support himself.
So if you see in your fellow student of knowledge argumentation and pride, whereby the truth is crystal clear but he doesn't follow it, then flee from him. Say "this is all I have" and leave. Because if you look at the history, one of the major factors which led to factionalization was excessive argumentation.
And leave delving into scholastic philosophy. "علم الكلام" only wastes time because it's delving into things which are abundantly obvious, and don't require definitions.
Look at the words of Ibn Taymiya in his refutations of legations and the misguidance they're in will become clear to you. علم الكلام is what opened the door for scholars to figurative interpretations of the divine attributes of Allah.
E.g. They say that if Allah settled on the Throne, He must have limitations because the throne is limited, and must exist in a direction. And if it is in a direction it must be a material body and so on and so forth. So they ended up with a statement concerning Allah that He is everywhere and nowhere at the same time, and to say He is up is to put him in a place, and places are created, therefore we say He's everywhere, but not in a specific place, which really means He is nowhere. You think they're guiding you to the straight path, but they're actually just confusing you and leading you astray. They've complicated everything.
In a Hadith in Muslim, the Prophet ﷺ asked a slave girl where Allah is, and she replied "Above the Heavens". The story ends.
So Bakr Abu Zayd pointed to these issues and the evil it brings as well as the barriers it places which prevent people from understanding the Shari'ah. If you go back to the early generations, you'll find that they weren't into such kinds of arguments. They did ask questions. They did discuss. But they didn't go beyond the Qur'an and Sunnah. If the evidence was provided from the Qur'an and Sunnah, it was accepted. They avoided debates which would split them, seperate them, and turn them against each other, as happened with the later generations.
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