The Albaani Site

Questioner, reading out a written question: How correct is the statement that the present-day Islamic groups apart from the Salafi Jamaa’ah–[the questioner wrote], ‘the mother of the groups,’ and between brackets he put, ‘Salafiyyah’–are more harmful to Islaam than the Jews and the Christians, groups like the Muslim Brotherhood, basing this analogy upon this statement of Ibn Taymiyyah’s [Trans. Note. which must have been mentioned in an earlier sitting] regarding the Raafidah?

Al-Albaani: No, I don’t believe except that this is a new form of extremism and a new form of partisanship and hatred and hostility.

In all of the Islamic Jamaa’ahs there is good and bad.

Passing judgement regarding the Jamaa’ahs, my brothers, is like passing judgement on individuals, passing judgement regarding the Jamaa’ahs is like passing judgement on individuals. There is no Muslim individual who has gathered all the qualities of perfection, only some and not others, maybe his good will be more than his bad, his bad more than his good–and even in the case where his bad is more than his good, it is not fitting that we deny the good which has come from him.

So the Muslim Brotherhood, and Hizb at-Tahrir and the Tablighi Jamaa’ah have good in them but they are also distant from Islaam, either out of ignorance or because they have ignored it.

For this reason, this statement contains extreme gravity, it is not allowed to make such generalised statements, in fact, it is not permissible to declare them to be misguided. We said in some of our sittings … [I said that] I do not hold that we should say that every Shee’ee is a kaafir, but any Shee’ee who says that our Quraan is only a quarter of the missing one, [the one they call] the Mushaf of Faatimah, or he makes statements of disbelief such as that and believes in them and takes them as religion before Allaah, then such a person is the one we call a kaafir. As for saying that all of the Shee’ah are disbelievers, then this is an expression of extremism in the religion.

So it is more becoming, more fitting, that this statement [I just made above] is applied to [those less than the Shee’ah like] the Muslim Brotherhood or other Jamaa’ahs which are all gathered together by Islaam.

But some of them are closer to Islaam than others, some are further than others, so, in all of these Jamaa’ahs there is good and [also] smoke, as occurs in an authentic hadith.

So we in reality look at the Salafi da’wah as the one call which unites the Muslims, because it is the call of truth which the Pious Predecessors were upon, as for the other groups then they have this and that and such and such.

Thus it is not allowed to make such statements general, for they contain oppression and an opposition to His Saying, the Blessed and Most High, “… and do not let the hatred of a people prevent you from being just. Be just, that is nearer to righteousness …” [Al-Maa’idah 5:8]

Al-Hudaa wan-Noor, 752.