The Seven Deadly Sins of Salafism

By mmmclmru

snk___the_seven_deadly_sins_by_papprica-d750k0d

By Suede Nikita

Chiselled into a gold tablet paid for by the Saudi Ministry of ‘Education’ (or at least they should be):

1. Use Ahad hadith (single chain narrations) to persuade people that this is what the Prophet said (most of ISIS’ ‘fatwas’ from raping Yazidis to killing people are extracted from ahad hadith)

2. Use these ahad hadith in the way you want with no regard for how classical authorities understood them

3. Mistranslate these hadiths (and everything else) at will – Allah will reward you, it’s for a good cause

4. Use modern ‘scholars’, specifically Albani to reject any hadith when it doesn’t suit you

5. Pretend things are Muttawatir (mass transmitted like the Quran) and Ijma (agreed upon) when they are not – if challenged give evidence without translating or mistranslate. If cornered, use Salafi sources (Ibn Taymiyya etc) to ‘prove’

6. Decry anyone who disagrees as a modernist, heretic or better still a Mu’tazzilaite or Shi’ite – but never under any circumstances admit your Wahhabi affiliation. Say you are just representing ‘Islam’

7. Never allow an open debate with non-Wahhabi/Salafi scholars in English where our authorities can be discredited. Accuse them of being ‘sectarian’ if that helps you escape. Don’t worry about Arab countries: we can just be sectarian and kill our opponents

I recently engaged in a lengthy debunking of Wahhabi polemicists masquerading as ‘dawah‘ experts, who were trying to dissuade Muslims from reading a very helpful book on hadith by Atabek Shukurov and Sulaiman Ahmed (by posting a fake review under a fake name on ‘Amazon’. Unfortunately, they posted the same review under their real names on their own websites. Like, don’t apply to the CIA just yet guys. Sheesh). What was ironic was that the very book that they did not want Muslims to read was one which the most useful in terms of answering the doubts of both Muslims and non-Muslims, which Wahhabi ‘dawah‘ activists (correctly labelled ‘dawahgandists’ by Islamophobes) feign to clear up (but usually end up making worse). Other such books, i.e. those which can actually help but Salafi dawagandists do not want you to access are Jeffrey Lang’s remarkable ‘Losing My Religion‘, Gai Eaton’s seminal ‘Islam and the Destiny of Man/Remembering God‘, anything by Khaled Abou El Fadl (who they hate with a truly homicidal rage) and of course their perennial bugbear, Muhammad Asad’s Quran translation. These are just modern examples of the classical Islamic scholarship Salafis of all stripes wish to detach you from, since at heart, Wahhabo-Salafism is a modernist movement. But since it is also puritanical, it has to disguise this. They are employing, to this end, exactly the same tactics as the Quillaim Foundation in the UK – essentially pretending to speak for Islam while rejecting everything that constitutes the Islamic tradition – including the Quran – which Quilliam ‘abrogates’ for Liberalism and Salafis abrogate and ignore at will according to their chosen list of inconvenient ayats.

In fact ‘dawah‘ for these individuals and groups (IERA for example) is just a way of introducing Wahhabism and giving prestige to the same with ‘white’ converts and generally subverting Islam with heretical and modernist arguments – under the guise of doing Muslims a favour by ‘spreading ‘ their religion (and never having to actually prove this is working). It is, in today’s parlance, a form of ‘grooming’.

It is critical for young British Muslims to understand the standard Wahhabi tactics displayed by ‘dawah‘ exponents and indeed other Salafist front-men such as Hizb Ut Tahrir. I understand of course that most people on campus (their intended victims) don’t have time to learn Arabic and Islamic scholarship – they just want to get on with their lives – and that’s fine. But this makes it all the more important to be forewarned and forearmed against Salafi deceptions – since it is these exact same steps they use to radicalise youth and get them to join jihadi movements like ISIS. ‘Hadith’ here is interchangeable for ‘Islamic fatwas’, ‘the Islamic position’, ‘ijma‘ (consensus), ‘what the Salaf said’ and even the Quran.

1. Use Ahad hadith (single chain narrations) to persuade people that this is what the Prophet said (most of ISIS’ ‘fatwas’ from raping Yazidis to killing people are extracted from ahad hadith)

2. Use these ahad hadith in the way you want with no regard for how classical authorities understood them

3. Mistranslate these hadiths (and everything else) at will – Allah will reward you, it’s for a good cause

4. Use modern ‘scholars’, specifically Albani to reject any hadith when it doesn’t suit you

5. Pretend things are Muttawatir (mass transmitted like the Quran) and Ijma (agreed upon) when they are not – if challenged give evidence without translating or mistranslate. If cornered, use Salafi sources (Ibn Taymiyya etc) to ‘prove’

6. Decry anyone who disagrees as a modernist, heretic or better still a Mu’tazzilaite or Shi’ite – but never under any circumstances admit your Wahhabi affiliation. Say you are just representing ‘Islam’

7. Never allow an open debate with non-Wahhabi/Salafi scholars in English where our authorities can be discredited. Accuse them of being ‘sectarian’ if that helps you escape. Don’t worry about Arab countries: we can just be sectarian and kill our opponents

Remember, it is these very same ‘dawah’ people who are usually doing the radicalisation too:

https://youtu.be/7F0oqqm5ZgY?t=485

(This vile specimen says to the wanabee jihadist ‘whether you make jihad peaceably or you defend you brothers and sisters’ – clearly indicating military jihad in contrast to the ‘other kind’…and then shames himself by lying about it in his defence video which I have included below. He also claims he will be taking legal action, but of course he hasn’t. This is a favourite ploy of such people to persuade the adoring public of their innocence – but then they ‘forget’ to actually take the legal action and win thousands or hundreds of thousands of pounds in compensations):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ITW8WlSupiA

Don’t let yourself or your family become victims – notice how the very same individual who is so keen for others to go and do jihad – the non-peaceful kind – in Syria is the same one who nonetheless feels that he would be more use in the UK, no doubt comfortably practising ‘misyar‘, or temporary marriage, at Islamic talks as such individuals are wont to do. Like all jihadist recruiters, he feels he is too important to actually fight and die.

As such, I though it would be helpful for Muslims to have a collected ‘box set’ of Wahhabi lies on behalf of Islam (stereotypically in seven general techniques or ‘sins’) and the take-downs thereof. The materials here require some study but once you get through them I am confident that you will never be fooled again.

I will be using the issue of the ‘age of A’isha’ which was attempted to be set at nine by famous UK dawah activists, the issue of killing apostates from Islam, the killing of homosexuals (seeing a pattern here – yep, sex and violence, Wahhabis favourite forms of ‘religion’ as per ISIS) and lastly my autopsy of fake book reviews by famous Wahhabi ‘dawah‘ activists.

You will also notice that UK based Hanafi scholar Atabek Shukurov is the main target of their ire. He’s a low profile guy who is clearly lacking petro-dollars. On the upside, this allows him to present classical Islam without angling for handouts from the very people who seek to subvert it. At the heart of their resentment though is naked jealousy at the success of non-Wahhabis in answering the real life doubts of the public. Watch the videos and answers and ask which you would rather your Muslim and non-Muslim friends, let alone academics, see.

The Age of Aisha At Marriage:

In the first video, Shukurov makes his comments, which are rather mild:

This prompts a widely circulated rambling 30 page Arabic response, translated into English and gleefully distributed around the UK by well known dawah activists, and in an unofficial capacity by IERA speakers (who presumably thought that insisting on sex with nine year olds is great ‘dawah‘ or publicity for Islam). Notice how according to Shukurov, the entire publication was nothing but poorly told lies, in line with the ‘Seven Deadly Sins’ of Salafism outlined above. It has been taken down after this comprehensive debunking but it was similar to this one:https://app.box.com/shared/49yalsz47x. Notice how easily people can be fooled by the Arabic terminology – until you see the response by this scholar and realise that it was complete tosh:

Killing Apostates:

A huge array of claims made for this, including by crypto-Salafis such as Jonathan AC Brown, shown to be vacuous nonsense:

Killing of Homosexuals:

Wahhabis don’t seem to understand that the death penalty is not the only way of showing disapproval in Islam or sharia – hence they seem to think that anyone you are not willing to kill – be they apostates or practitioners of public sex (adultery or homosexuality) you thereby consider all their actions to be Islamic and you are in fact a modernist! When Shukurov showed that the largest and most authoritative school of Islamic jurisprudence (and creed), the Hanafis, allows no death penalty and no fixed punishment for homosexuality (as per the Quran), Salafists of all persuasions lost their already negligible minds and bombarded him with accusations of heresy and modernism (even though what he said is to be found verbatim in every Hanafi book, ever). 

Alarmingly, most of these denials were from the Deo-Brelwi community from the Indian subcontinent who claim to be Hanafis – but when they don’t like the Hanafi fatwa they suddenly became Wahhabi (the Malikis are plagued with the same malice). The second part is a devastating expose of the ‘arguments’ against the previous talk – showing that it is utterly ignominious and follows again the ‘Seven Deadly Sins’ of Salafism.

Distortion of Hadith and Classical Sources By Wahhabis – A Detailed Autopsy:

I made these detailed and lengthy – though the distortions presented Wahhabi propagandists Wakar Akbar Cheeba and Bassam Zawadi, both of whom are active in Islamic ‘dawah‘ work (God help us), were so brazen and extreme that I had originally written something twice as long. In any case, these articles are more than enough to make Wahhabis cry themselves to sleep and hopefully save your kids from ending up like the many UK youth who have joinined ISIS and other such groups due to distortions by Arabic speaking Wahhabis claiming to speak for ‘Islam’. It is far better if these people are exposed as what they are – part of the Wahhabi cult and the youth allowed to make a dichotomous choice between this and normative Islam. Even if they then choose to join Wahhabi sponsored campaigns of rape and violence from Nigeria to Syria and beyond, at least the good name of Islam won’t be sullied and the public made aware of the modernist and heretical nature of the Wahhabi movement. Sadly, it will be down to the Muslim laity to achieve this: most Islamic scholars and the western establishment, from Al Azhar to Kuala Lumpur to Washington and London are too busy angling for handouts from the purveyors of ‘petro-Islam’ to do it themselves.

PART 1:https://asharisassemble.com/2015/10/05/muslims-proudly-display-academic-standards/

PART2:https://asharisassemble.com/2015/10/13/how-to-prevent-salafist-mind-rape-muslims-display-academic-standards-again/

31 thoughts on “The Seven Deadly Sins of Salafism”

  3. Assalamu Alaikum Suede Nikita,

    Just wanted to give you credit on your meticulous and well-researched work against the lies and deceptions of the Salafiyya. I’m Hanafi and I’ve been lurking on this website for probably a year and a half and I must admit that I learned more about the Fiqh then I previously knew thanks to the writers and admins on this site (can’t think of their names at the moment. One might be mmclru or something like that Lol). Anyways, I hope you continue to write more articles in the future as they are very informative and useful for the Muslim Ummah. Barakallahu Feek to the Asharis Assemble team and writers.

  4. The video “https://youtu.be/7F0oqqm5ZgY?t=485” linked just after “Remember, it is these very same ‘dawah’ people who are usually doing the radicalisation too:” seems to have been just removed by its owner

    • Like I said it is often ‘treating others as you get treated yourself’. This blog has some phenomenally accurate and relevant pieces but then this ‘i don’t like you snack throwing’ is tiresome. Try going after Zionists or the homosexual agendaists or degenerate liberals?

      • Do you believe that Brown is a “crypto-salafi”? Why is that?

        Also, you called Nouman Ali Khan a crypto salafi too. Why would that be?

        What is a crypto salafi exactly? What are some common indicators of “salafism” in a person as you define it?

  8. Somebody asked if it is fair to label Jonathan Brown a talker of “vacuous nonsense”, and whether it is fair to call him a “crypto-Salafi”.

    The “nonsense” aspect has a whole article dedicated to it on this blog : https://asharisassemble.com/2015/08/21/isis-and-the-theology-of-rape-and-the-rubbish-responses-by-muslims/

    Regarding the “vacuous” aspect, I think that comparing Brown’s and Shukurov’s videos on the same theme (death for apostasy in Islam) makes that adjective apt. Shukurov provides ten times more historical/academic information than Brown. Brown mentions a few narrations, the connection with hiraba … and that’s it. Brown says nothing about the connection with the value of human blood in the Qur’an, with Judaic law, with the distinction between male and female apostates etc.

    Regarding the “crypto-Salafi” aspect, let me quote from http://carnegieendowment.org/files/salafis_sufis.pdf, p.14 : Brown writes about “Salafis’ austere and uncompromising understanding of Islamic law …” and “Political suppression of Salafis would most likely prove unwise …” Need I quote more ?

    It has also been asked if it is correct to label Nouman Ali Khan a “crypto-Salafi”. May I direct readers to the article at
    http://pieceofmind.publicrealm.net/2012/06/30/hadith-rejectors-exposing-a-hypocrites-movement/.

    In that article, Nouman Ali Khan writes :

    “To accept the Qur’an and reject the Hadith on the basis of reliability defies reason. We have received both the Qur’an and the Hadith through the same channels. ”

    and

    “Anything that came after the death of the Messenger is innovation.”

    • Wahhabi is used for the Saudis and ‘Salafi’ is usually used for HT and Ikhwaanis etc. The two strands of what is known as ‘Salafism’ came together in the 1970’s and 80’s. It is also the understanding of most Western commentators. You can read an good account of this is El Fadl’s ‘Reasoning With God’, which is an excellent book in general.

      • ISIS and Hizb al-Tahrir are not Salafis/’Wahhabis’. They are Qutbi/Khawarij. “Wahhabis” are the Salafis from Saudi Arabia, but they don’t call themselves “Wahhabi”. As you said, this is a name that Western kafir commentators and Sufis gave this name to them.

  11. If Salafis were really following the way of the Salaf, would they feel insulted when being called Salafis ? Would they hotly deny being Salafi ? What could be more praiseworthy that imitating the example of the glorious Salaf ?

    Proverbs 28.1 The wicked man fleeth, when no man pursueth

  12. What’s more baffling is that until the late 1800s (when “Salafism” became popularised in Egypt), no Sunni scholar every brought up Ibn Taymiyya and utilised his methodology, teachings or whatever in their works. He was effectively forgotten after his death in 1328. Only his students e.g. Ibn Qayyim, Ibn Kathir could promote his teachings but even they struggled to retain relevance as the 1300s drew to a close.

    Why do modern scholars like Hamza Yusuf, Bin Bayyah etc. have to defend him or at least put him in a positive light on everything he did? Scholars like Hisham Kabbani and Ha Mim Nuh Keller set the record straight when they form a critical evaluation of Taymiyya. He was a follower of the Sufi Qadiri Pathway yet his Aqeedah works are just contradicting in every sense and we should be wary of it.

  13. What’s more baffling is that until the late 1800s (when “Salafism” became popularised in Egypt), no Sunni scholar every brought up Ibn Taymiyya and utilised his methodology, teachings or whatever in their works. He was effectively forgotten after his death in 1328. Only his students e.g. Ibn Qayyim, Ibn Kathir could promote his teachings but even they struggled to retain relevance as the 1300s drew to a close. It was actually great Sufis like Imam Ibn ‘Ata Al Sikandari of Egypt who directly clashed with Ibn Taymiyya in an open debate. Look it up, I’m serious!

    Why do modern scholars like Hamza Yusuf, Bin Bayyah etc. have to defend him or at least put him in a positive light on everything he did? Seems like there is that atmosphere of fear and a policy of appeasement.
    Scholars like Hisham Kabbani and Ha Mim Nuh Keller set the record straight when they form a critical evaluation of Taymiyya. He was a follower of the Sufi Qadiri Pathway yet his Aqeedah works are just contradicting in every sense and we should be wary of it.

    • I think Hamza Yusuf is not a very reliable guy at all.
      Nor anyone using Ibn Taymiyya. Ibn Taymiyya is very extreme in both his heresy and jurisprudential errors.

      • I respectfully disagree that Hamza Yusuf isn’t a reliable scholar. He’s done many good things over the last decade or so. He seems more ‘obsessed’ with the stagnant educational and moral depravity of Muslims. I just don’t like him defending Ibn Taymiyya just to appease the masses who blindly follow love him without critically analysing his works.

        Funny how Ibn Taymiyya is blindly called Shaykh-Ul-Islam (spent most of his career in imprisonment) yet no one ever refers to any Shaykh-Ul-Islam of the Ottoman Empire (131 in total). Maybe that’s because Muslims:
        A) Do not care
        B) Didn’t realise who the Ottomans were more than a Turkish empire
        C) Falsely led to believe that the Ottomans were not Muslims = Takfir

        Shaykh Ebussuud Efendi is probably the most famous Shaykh of the Ottomans. He reorganised and updated the entire Hanafi Legal Code in the Empire in collaboration with Suleiman the Magnificent (1520-1566) who hence became known to the Turks as Suleiman the Lawgiver. This lasted for more than 300 years until the modern Tanzimat reforms (1839-1876). A wonderful achievement for its time nonetheless.

      • What are you doing here? You got inspired by Said Nursi and therefore you make yourself illusion about the Ottomans and Turks. But you are totally ignorant on the reality of the Ottoman Empire at the first place and secondly about the way the Islam of the Shaykhulislams. You even mentioned Ebusuud who made Takfir of many important Sufis of the past, killed many Sufis of his time, gave fatwas to kill Alawis, Shiites, Yazidis and much more. The same things were said by other Shaykhulislams too.
        Please inform yourself more about stuff that you present and stop this ignorant Turkophilia. It really bothers me as a Turk and someone who knows history and the religious teachings.

      • Since many of people who comments on this website seems to actively look for defects in what other people say, let me highlight your ignorance compared to mine

        Very true that I’m inspired by Said Nursi and his teachings. No doubt about it. He is a guiding light in our times. And whether people like it or not, the Ottomans have played a defining role in Islamic History, regardless of their actions (good & bad). The Umayyads and Abassids are the same in this respect.

        Now in regards to the Shaykh-Ul-Islam’s, I mentioned Ebusuud Effendi as the “most famous Shaykh of the Ottomans”. Famous. that’s it. I didn’t defend his actions or controversial fatwas in regards to other people or sects. Whatever he did in those matters will be justly dealt with by Allah on the Last Day. Though I’m not advocating what he said in regards to Fatwas, it is important to note that Sunnis were being killed in their thousands in neighbouring Persia by the Safavids, who were also stirring up Shia uprisings in Anatolia. No doubt the Ottomans were simply trying to avenge as patrons of Sunni Islam and maintain control of their territories.
        Shaykh Ebusuud’s contribution to reorganising Hanafi Legal Code is a major achievement which I also mentioned considering it lasted 300 years. That’s precisely why he’s the most famous of Ottoman Shaykhs. I said this specifically in comparison to IBN TAYMIYYA – who’s legacy way more controversial (Uh Hello, his fatwas of fighting Non Muslims are still being used today by Salafis) Are Muslims also using Shaykh Ebusuud’s fatwas to target Shias, Alawi’s and Yazidis? Answer: No.

        Bottom line: Ottoman Shaykh-Ul-Islam’s have contributed much more than Ibn Taymiyya did. Now, every Muslim is an human and liable to commit error. I understand that no Shaykh-Ul-Islam was perfect but the onus is on you to recognise what I was arguing in the first place.

        Peace be upon you.

  16. Pingback: Muslims Proudly Display Academic Standards YET AGAIN! Sometimes They Come Back… | Asharis: Assemble

Leave a comment