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The Life, Teachings and Influence of Muhammad ibn Abdul-Wahhaab
which is a grave sin but does not take one out of the fold of Islam.
Similarly, they differentiated between the greater act of ascribing
partners to Allah (shirk) and the lesser shirk.
However, the state of affairs in the Muslim lands—among the
scholars and the commoners—had reached such a level that they did
not recognize the fact that a person may claim to be a Muslim and
recite the testimony of faith but his own beliefs, statements or actions
belie that claim and take him out of the fold of Islam. Furthermore, the
real definition of tauheed had been lost on the people after years of
wrangling by scholastic theologians and the mystical teachings of the
Sufis. The people had truly become blind to the very essence of Islam
itself. They thought that tauheed al-ruboobiyyah was all that there was
to tauheed; therefore, they did not see any harm in directing acts of
worship to other than Allah as long as one admitted that Allah is the
only creator and sustainer. They failed to realize that, as demonstrated
in Chapter 3, even the polytheists of Makkah at the time of the
Prophet (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him) accepted that
much. The Muslims had forgotten that the meaning of ilaah (“God”)
is the worshipped one. They had forgotten that the meaning of the
testimony of faith is that there is none worthy of worship—meaning
none should be worshipped via any act of worship—except Allah. As
noted earlier, Ibn Abdul-Wahhaab described this view in one of his
letters where he said that even those who claimed to have knowledge
would say, “Whoever says, ‘There is no deity except Allah,’ is not to
be declared a disbeliever, even if he rejects the resurrection or rejects
all of the Shareeah.” 1
A reading of the criticisms of ibn Abdul-Wahhaab, in the
words of the critics themselves, makes it evident that it is the critics
who either did not understand the real teachings of the faith or they
were intentionally distorting the real teachings. Unfortunately, there is
no third possibility.
1 Muhammad ibn Abdul-Wahhaab, Muallifaat, vol. 7, p. 41. Ibn Abdul-Wahhaab
goes on to say these scholars know that if anyone denies just a portion of the
Quran or denies an act that is agreed upon by the scholars, he has committed
kufr. He says that if such is their view of one who denies an agreed upon
practice, what should be their ruling concerning one who rejects belief in the
Hereafter?