Answer to an Enemy of Islam

Obviously, these slanders against the scholars of kalâm and
fiqh, which Rashîd Ridâ writes through the preacher, will not
convince anyone. Libraries are full of books of refutation written
by the scholars of Ahl as-Sunna. Those written in Persian are not
fewer than the Arabic ones. If Rashîd Ridâ knew Persian and had
read the book Tuhfa-i Ithnâ ’ashariyya by Hadrat ’Abd al-’Azîz
ad-Dahlawî, he could not help being astonished at how the great
scholar rebuts and puts to rout the lâ-madhhabî. Thouse who read
Hadrat Al-Imâm ar-Rabbânî Ahmad al-Fârûqî as-Sirhindî’s
Radd-i Rawâfid, which explains the cause of the Uzbek Sultan
’Abdullah Shah’s war against them and his conquering them, and
any man of knowledge who sees the book Hujaj-i Qat’iyya, [1]
which narrates as-Suwaidî’s debate with Nâdir Shah’s men and his
overpowering them, will fully understand that the scholars of Ahl
as-Sunna did overcome them. At the end of the eightieth letter, the
translation of the book Maktûbât gives the names and the books
of thirty-two of those scholars who wrote that the lâ-madhhabî are
heretical and that they strive to demolish Islam from within. Also,
the idea that the scholars of fiqh have been struggling with one
another is one of the slanders which the religion reformers have
been repeating constantly. This has been already answered in the
sixth article.
24– The religion reformer says:
“The scholars’ refuting and struggling against one
another originated mostly from falling for the desires of the
nafs. The one and only cause of the birth of the knowledge
of kalâm was the Mu’tazila. They [scholars of kalâm] dived
into some matters which the pious Salaf had not. They put
forward some objections to them. And the others stood
against their arrows of objection. With the disappearing of
the real scholars of knowledge, of ideas and deduction, the
posterity began to repeat word for word that they had said.
In the process of time these, too, came to no use. These
imitators kept silent against those matters, bid’as and
superstitions, which appeared after such scholars as al-
Imâm al-Ash’arî and his followers, and accused those who
asked questions about them of blasphemy. Yet, when these
bid’as and heresies were put forward in a religious guise
and colour and had a number of partisans and supporters,
[1] Please see our book Document of The Right Word, available from
Hakîkat Kitâbevi.
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