Subḥan Allāh – May Allāh save the Muslims, have we not reached a time when those who claim to call to Allāh from sea to sea wish to destroy the religion by sitting with, mixing with, calling to, cooperating with – the people of innovation. So much so, that those who maintain themselves upon al-Manhaj al-Salafī have been rendered ‘undoubtedly harsh/extreme’ in the kangaroo court of public opinion and majority! So today, we have people claiming salafīyyah whilst taking the position of Imām in an openly ikhwānī masjid, taking to the mimbar in masājid that fight the daʿwah of the salaf all in the name of ‘the greater good’, they claim they have ‘weighed the affair’ the ‘harm and the benefit’ that the people are ‘close to the sunnah…can’t pass up this opportunity’. Well, Sufyān al-Thawrī who died just 167H didn’t quite see it in this way. May Allāh save us from being a trial and a calamity for the Muslims, amīn! The great Imām of Ahl al-Sunnah, Sufyān al-Thawrī [d.167H] said: “Whoever sits with a person of innovation (bidʿah) cannot escape one of three [3] things:

1. He is a trial and tribulation for others,
2. Something may fall into his heart that remains with him and causes him to enter the Hellfire or he will say,
3. ‘By Allāh, I do not care about what they say and I have full confidence in myself.’ Whoever feels that they are not in need of Allāh to safeguard his religion even for the blinking of an eye, then He will take it from him.”

[Refer to al-Bida’ wa al-Nahyu ‘anha [p. 104] of Ibn Waddah with the checking of Badr al-Badr] Ma shāʾ Allāh, a profound statement over 1000 years old – if some of the ‘callers’ today would only understand it and implement it, they would not harm themselves or the innocent Muslims who follow them into the masājid, and sittings with the people of misguidance and confusion.