39 - By making puns upon the words in the twelfth dialogue, the religion reformer tries to deceive Muslims:

 "When al-Imam ash-Shafi'i said to a person who asked him a question, 'Rasulullah said so,' the person said, 'And you, too, admit this decision, don't you?' Al-Imam ash-Shafi'i said, 'If I do not venerate the statement that comes from Rasulullah down to me, which part of the earth will accept me?' Therefore, imams prohibited taqlid and showed the door to ijtihad. An ijtihad disagreeing with a hadith will be put aside. Al-Imam ash-Shafi'i always said, 'If you find any sahih hadith, let me know so that I can practice it!' It is not permissible to attribute a statement disagreeing with a hadith to al-Imam ash-Shafi'i. 'Izz ad-din ibn 'Abd as-Salam, well-known as Sultan al-'ulama', said, 'So astonishing it is for a faqih to persist in following his own madhhab instead of another madhhab the imam of which obviously hit the right point [in his ijtihad], though he has realized that his madhhab is weak. He supposes that reality, hittingness, is in his own imam only. Such people have been blindfolded with the taqlid so much that they are in this state now. There is no similarity between these and the Salaf.' "

 And he says through the preacher's mouth:

 "This great scholar's words are reasonable. But most fuqaha' were fixed on their madhhabs. These fellows preferred being a Hanafi or Shafi'i to being a Muhammadi."
 
 

The religion reformer himself affirms his own word. Certainly, so should be the freemasonic tactics! How have the freemasons spread all over the world? Haven't they achieved it because of this mendacious, deceitful policy of theirs? But they cannot deceive Muslims who have read the books of 'ilm al-hal. The scholars of Ahl as-Sunnat wrote necessary answers to their tricky writings and despised them all. One of these valuable books is Hadrat Yusuf an-Nabhani's Hujjat-Allahi 'ala 'l-'alamin. [See the translation from this book in Belief and Islam, p. 49-55.] But it is feared that those who do not know these answers or who have not read them may get deceived and fall down into the abyss. That is why we took to writing. In order to prevent young men of religious profession from being carried away by this destructive gale and led into calamity, we had to answer these lies. For doing this, we deemed it suitable to translate passages also from the books Shawahid al-haqq and Siham as-sa'iba li Ashabi 'd-da'awi 'l-kadhiba in our various books.

 As Hadrat al-Imam ash-Shafi'i said, every Muslim certainly obeys every sahih hadith. There is not a Muslim unaware of this. It is surprising that the religion reformer writes this as a support for his allegations; in fact, he uses it as a mask, and it has nothing to do with taqlid or ijtihad. It is a statement which any Muslim would say.

 Another slander of the religion reformer which he repeats frequently is: "An ijtihad disagreeing with a hadith should be put aside." When ijtihads were employed by the aimmat al-madhhahib, there were some hadiths that were not known to them. When such hadiths appeared, the mujtahids who were their disciples put aside their masters' ijtihads that disagreed with these hadiths. For, all the four 'aimmat al-madhahib had commanded them to do so. As quoted above, the religion reformer also writes some such commands of al-Imam ash-Shafi'i. No new hadith could be found now, so there is not the question of any hadith disagreeing with ijtihads. All the hadiths have been reported. Basic books of Islam do not contain any hadith disagreeing with the hadiths which are sahih. There have been those hadiths left now from which mujtahids did not deduce rules because they were mansukh or because there were not sufficient witnesses for their soundness. There might certainly be disagreement between ijtihads and them, but all of such ijtihads were deduced from hadiths that are sahih.

 Hadrat Sana'ullah-i PaniPuti wrote in 1197: "Allahu ta'ala declares, 'Obey the Ulu 'l-amr.' For this reason, it is wajib to obey the commands which are compatible with Islam, of 'alims, walis, sultans and governments. To obey them in those cases not compatible with Islam means to make them partners with Allahu ta'ala. Al-Bukhari, Muslim, Abu Dawud and an-Nasa'i told that Hadrat 'Ali (radi-Allahu 'anh) said, 'Nobody should be obeyed in anything which is a sin. One should obey in cases compatible with Islam.' A hadith ash-Sharif declares, 'The creature should not be obeyed in something which is disobedience to the Creator.' It is not permissible to oppose or revolt against those orders and laws of the government which are disobedience to the Creator. It is a grave sin to cause disunion (fitna). A Muslim disobeys neither the Creator nor the government. He does not commit sin or crime. It is always very easy to achieve this. If, for instance, a Hanafi learns a sahih hadith which has not been abrogated, and if he finds out that the ijtihad of al-Imam al-azam Abu Hanifa disagrees with this hadith, and if one of the four madhhabs has an ijtihad compatible with this hadith, it will be wajib for him to follow this hadith. If he did not follow the hadith, he would have made the imam al-madhhab a partner with Allahu ta'ala. Al-Imam al-azam Abu Hanifa said, 'I venerate every hadith of Rasulullah ('alaihi 's-salam) highly. I regard the words of as-Sahabat al-kiram, too. The words of the Tabiin are like our words.' Al-Baihaki quotes these comments of al-Imam al-azam in his book Al-madkhal. Al-Imam al-azam is reported in Rawdat al-'ulama' as having said, 'If there is a hadith or a saying of a Sahabi, give up my word.' 

"As we were explaining above that it was necessary to give up the imam al-madhhab's ijtihad and to follow a hadith, we said, 'If one of the four madhhabs has an ijtihad compatible with this hadith,' for, one will have deviated from the ijma' al-Umma if there is no ijtihad compatible with that sahih hadith. After the third or fourth Islamic century, only four of the madhhabs of Ahl as-Sunnat wal-Jamaat have survived, others being forgotten. Islamic scholars have reported unanimously that a word which disagrees with one of these four madhhabs is not sahih. A hadith ash-Sharif declares, 'A word which is said through ijma' by my Umma cannot be heresy,!' Allahu ta'ala declares in the 114th ayat of the Surat an-Nisa', 'We will drag the person who deviates from the believers' path along the direction to which he has deviated, and then We will throw him into Hell.' It should be known very well that it is impossible that the four aimmat al-madhhahib and the great scholars among their disciples might have not heard of one of the hadiths which are sahih. If none of those scholars based his ijtihad on such a hadith, then it had been abrogated by another hadith or it was a kind of hadith that had to be explained away. None of the great men of tasawwuf deviated from the four madhhabs. To deviate from the four madhhabs means to deviate from Islam. When visiting the graves of awliya' and martyrs, it is not permissible to prostrate towards their graves, to go around their graves, to light candles on them, to perform salat there or to gather around the graves every year like celebrating a kind of feast, which are sinful actions ignorant people do. These have been prohibited in many hadiths." [Sana'ullah-i Paniputi, Tafsir al-Mazhari, in the tafsir of the 64th aayat of the Surat al Imran.] Every Muslim has to follow one of the four madhhabs. [It is written in the books Bahr ar-ra'iq, Hindiyya and Al-basa'ir that it is wajib for every non-mujtahid to follow one of the four madhhabs, that he does not belong to Ahl as-Sunna if he does not follow one of them, and that he is a heretic or a disbeliever if he does not belong to the Ahl as-Sunna. The related passages from these books have been reprinted in Istanbul.] If a hadith disagreeing with an ijtihad of an imam al-madhhab is encountered, it should be known that it was seen by him or by the mujtahids who were his disciples and that it was found to be mansukh or its soundness was not certain because it lacked documentation. It should be thought that the ijtihad was deduced from another sahih hadith. Then, there exists no sahih hadith today which is not written in the books of Ahl as-Sunnat. It should not be forgotten that for erroneous ijtihads and those who follow them, too, there will also be given thawab. During the present time there is no ijtihad disagreeing with any sahih hadith, in any of the four madhhabs. Ibn 'Abidin, at the beginning of the chapter on wudu', wrote, "It is not necessary to seek the documentary evidences for the narrations coming from mujtahids." Muslims are not commanded to seek or learn the documentary evidences of the mujtahid. They are commanded only to follow him. The ayat above shows this fact clearly. For this reason, it is not permissible to disapprove of any ijtihad. To disapprove of any ijtihad means to disapprove the ayat or the hadith from which it was deduced. Everybody should believe that his own madhhab is correct. A scholar who understands that his own madhhab is weak and another madhhab is more hitting should transfer to the other madhhab. As a matter of fact there has been no scholar who did not do so; no faqih has been seen to be "fixed" on his own madhhab. [See the preface to Al-Mizan al-kubra for the name of many of those scholars who changed their madhhabs.] 

As a doctor's taking such titles as neurologist or internist does not mean for him to give up being a doctor, so being a Shafi'i or a Hanafi does not mean to give up being a Muhammadi, for both the Shafi'is and the Hanafis are Muhammadis. To be Muhammadi, it is necessary to be Shafi'i, or Hanafi, or Maliki, or Hanbali. In fact, among members of the heretical seventy-two groups, the ones whose iman have not been corrupted are Muhammadis. He who is not Muhammadi is a disbeliever. With the quoted statement of his, the religion reformer says "disbelievers" about millions of Muslims. It would be insufficient however much could be written to tell about the baseness of the person who said those words. It must be understood that he who says so against Muslims is either vulgarly ignorant or a zindiq hostile to Islam.