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The Life, Teachings and Influence of Muhammad ibn Abdul-Wahhaab
be taken. In a letter he wrote to try to solve a dispute among the
people of al-Sudair, ibn Abdul-Wahhaab stated,
The scholars mention that if the action of forbidding an evil causes
division, it is not allowed to forbid that evil. Remember Allah and
act upon what I am mentioning to you and understand it properly.
If you do not do so, then your action of forbidding an evil will cause
more harm for the religion. And a Muslim never works except to
make better his religion and his worldly life. 1
Before taking any step against an evil, he would verify the
existence of that evil. Once he advised his followers of two principles:
“First, do not be hasty. Do not speak except after verification for lying
is abundant. Second, the Prophet (peace and blessings of Allah be
upon him) used to know the individual hypocrites but he would accept
their outward deeds and leave their inward aspects to Allah.” 2
At the beginning of his mission, when the people were most
ignorant concerning the polytheistic acts that they had fallen into,
Muhammad ibn Abdul-Wahhaab would try to use kind words and
indirect inferences to let the people understand their ignorance. Abdul-
Rahmaan ibn Hasan, the grandson of ibn Abdul-Wahhaab, stated, “At
the beginning of his call, when our Shaikh would hear someone
supplicating to Zaid ibn al-Khattaab, he would say, ‘Allah is better
than Zaid,’ getting them used to denying shirk with soft words—
taking into consideration what was most beneficial and keeping them
from fleeing from him.” 3 Ibn Abdul-Wahhaab himself said that the
people of Basra who had fallen into polytheistic practices would come
to him with their arguments and he would simply say to them,
“Worship is not proper unless directed to Allah alone,” and all of them
would be confounded. 4 Since ibn Abdul-Wahhaab knew that the
people were very ignorant with respect to the faith and that what he
was propagating was very strange to them, he knew he had to take an
approach that was consistent with their level of understanding at that
time. Ibn Abdul-Wahhaab made this point very clear when he stated in
a letter, “If it were not that the people until this time still do not know
the religion of the Messenger and if it were not that they still object to
1 Muhammad ibn Abdul-Wahhaab, Muallifaat, vol. 7, pp. 296-297.
2 Muhammad ibn Abdul-Wahhaab, Muallifaat, vol. 7, p. 285.
3 Quoted in Abdul-Muhsin ibn Baaz, vol. 1, p. 125.
4 Ibn Ghannaam, vol. 1, p. 28.
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