Sahaba - The Blessed

sun or stars, is termed shirk. A person who holds that belief is called
mushrik. With that belief, he has attributed a sherîk=partner to
Allâhu ta’âlâ. To pray or entreat or venerate, with that belief,
something or someone or his idol or picture, means to worship an
idol = idolatry, and the object worshipped as such is an idol. Places
or mausoleums containing such objects are called pagan temples. It
is not idolatry, however, to respect a person or his picture or statue
or grave because he is believed to have been a beloved slave of
Allâhu ta’âlâ or a hero who served humanity and his country. One
does not become a mushrik by doing so. After Îsâ (Jesus) ‘alaihissalâm’
was raised to heaven, people who believed that he was a
prophet held his pictures and statues in reverence in order to attain
his intercession for them on the Rising Day. This reverence of theirs
did not mean to worship him or to idolize him. After the
christianization of the Roman polytheists, however, the Platonic
philosophy, Trinity, spread and caught on, whereby some people’s
belief was blighted by the heresy that he (Îsâ ‘alaihis-salâm’)
possessed attributes of ulûhiyyat (deity, godhood). This, in its turn,
gave rise to an ever-increasing number of people professing their
belief in his procreation from God or his membership of a tripartite
godhead. The heresy thus born proliferated into a new breed of
polytheism that was finally adopted as an official religion in the
Nicean Council. Votaries of this polytheism were called Christians.
They are worshipping his pictures and icons and two perpendicular
lines called the cross. All their churches are temples of idolatry. If a
Muslim goes to a church or to a fountain held sacred by Christians
and asks the priests therein to pronounce a blessing over him or to
pray for him so that he will recover from a certain illness, he
becomes a mushrik. A mushrik (polytheist) is worse than the worst
of disbelievers. An (edible) animal that he kills (by jugulation) must
not be eaten. A Muslim must not marry his daughter. All Christians
and Jews are kâfirs (disbelievers) on account of their denial of
Muhammad ‘alaihis-salâm’. Of these disbelievers, the ones who did
not lapse into shirk (polytheism) are called Ahl-i-kitâb (People of
the Book). Animals they kill (by jugulation) can be eaten (by
Muslims). Muslims can marry their daughters by way of (the Islamic
marriage contract called) nikâh. The Qur’ân al-kerîm states that
Jews and polytheists are hostile to Muslims. They are trying to
demolish Islam from within by means of lies, tricks and treacherous
plans. This treachery was started by Jews during the time of
’Uthmân ‘radiy-Allâhu ’anh’, the third Khalîfa. Then Christians
began to attack. They invented the heretical groups called Shiites
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