The Albaani Site

Some of the Contention Faced by the Shaikh

“The first of these was when a group of Shaikhs, among them one whom it was thought would have been a help to the Salafi da’wah, set up a petition claiming therein that I was spreading a Wahhaabi da’wah to cause trouble amongst the Muslims.  So they started collecting signatures for the petition from the people and then submitted it to the Mufti of Syria.  He, in turn, passed it on to the chief of police who summoned me in and questioned me about the affair, until in the end it came to nothing.

One day a friend of mine who I used to study with asked me about a certain hadith concerning the reward of fasting, so I explained to him that [this particular] hadith was weak.  This friend had heard the hadith from the Imaam giving the Jumu’ah sermon quoting it as a proof on the pulpit and he could not help but go back to this Shaikh who had given the sermon to mention what he had come to know about the weakness of the hadith and the reference where that could be checked.  So as a result, the next Jumu’ah sermon of this Imaam was an attack on the way of the Salaf and he started to accuse those who followed it as being Wahhaabis, characterising this way as misguidance, warning the people from approaching them and calling on them to protect their children from its callers.  The people listening to this [second] sermon were not all equal in accepting or rejecting what he said, and as a result there was a lot of disorder and confusion.

Hayaatul-Allaamah al-Albaani, rahimahullaah, bi qalamihi, pp. 13-14.