The following poem is the translation of a part of the
Persian Dîwân by Mawlânâ Diyâ’ ad-dîn Khâlid al-Baghdadî (qaddas-Allâhu ta’âlâ
sirrah al-’azîz).
OH WHAT A PITY!
I’ve idled my life away, oh what a pity!
Never thought of the Morrow, oh what a pity!
I’ve set the building in the air so foolishly,
My faith on weak foundation, oh what a pity!
I’ve gone too far saying His Mercy is endless,
Forgotten His Name “Qahhâr,” oh what a pity!
I’ve dived into sins and never done any good,
Why gone astray the right path, oh what a pity!
I’ve struggled to win the world and worldly virtue,
And missed the endless blessings, oh what a pity!
The road is rough and dark, the Devil leads the way,
Sins are heavy, I weep all day, oh what a pity!
Without a single virtue to appear in my deed-book,
How will this Khâlid be saved, oh what a pity!
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Allâhu ta’âlâ, pitying all the people in the world,
creates and sends useful things to them. In the next world, favouring whomever
He wishes of those guilty Muslims who are to go to Hell, He will forgive them
and put them into Paradise. He alone is the One who creates
every living creature, keeps all beings in existence every moment and who
protects all against fear and horror. Trusting ourselves to the honourable name
of Allâhu ta’âlâ, we begin to write this book.
Infinite thanks be to Allâhu ta’âlâ! Peace and
blessings be on His most beloved Prophet, Muhammad (’alaihi
’s-salâm)! Auspicious prayers be for the pure Ahl al-Bait and for each of the
just, faithful Companions, as-Sahâbat al-kirâm (radî-Allâhu ta’âlâ ’anhum
ajma’în), of that exalted Prophet!
Allâhu ta’âlâ is Rabb al-’âlamîn. He created every
kind of the living things and also the non-living orderly, well-calculated and
beneficial. With His attributes Khâliq, Bârî, Musawwir, Badî’ and Hakîm, He
created all beings in perfect order and very beautiful. He set relations
between them so that they would be orderly and beautiful. He made them reasons,
means, and causes for one another so that they would be existent and go on
existing. We give names, such as natural events, physical or chemical laws,
astronomical formulae and physiological processes to these relations and their
being causes of one another. Science is the research into the design,
calculations, interactions and relations between the beings created by Allâhu
ta’âlâ, and thereafter making use of them.
Allâhu ta’âlâ willed every being to be orderly and well-calculated
and created as He willed. He made substances, power and energy causes and means
for His creating. Allâhu ta’âlâ willed the life of human beings to be in order
and benefical, too, and He made the willpower of mankind the reason and means
for
this. When man wants to do something, Allâhu ta’âlâ
creates it if He wills. Men have to wish good, right and useful things so that
their individual, private and social life may be in harmony. Allâhu ta’âlâ
endowed wisdom (’aql) on them so that their wishes would be good. Wisdom is
a power which distinguishes good from evil. As human beings need many things
and have to get what they need, the force called “nafs” in man, while striving to acquire them, misleads wisdom. It makes
anything desired look beautiful to wisdom, even if it is harmful.
Allâhu ta’âlâ, pitying His servants, sent the
knowledge called “dîn” (religion) by means of an angel to selected men called “prophets”
(’alaihimu ’s-salawâtu wa ’t-taslîmât). Prophets taught it to human
beings. The Dîn, Islam, preached by the Prophet Muhammad (’alaihi
’s-salâm) distinguishes between good and evil, beneficial and harmful, which
anyone may come across anywhere and orders us to do what is beneficial.
Still the nafs deceives men and does not want to obey
Islamic knowledge. It even tends to change and distort it and the essentials of
faith which are to be believed. Allâhu ta’âlâ’s Prophet, Muhammad
(’alaihi ’s-salâm), foretold that mankind, following their nafs, would attempt
to change Islam. He said, “My
umma will divide into seventy-three groups; only one of them will go to
Paradise.” The seventy-two groups
which, as it had been declared, would go to Hell because of their heretical
beliefs, did come into being. These seventy-two groups are not disbelievers for
their erroneous understanding of the ambiguous, obscure meanings of the Qur’ân al-karîm and the Hadîth ash-sharîf. But they
will go to Hell because they changed Islam. They are called ahl al-bid’a or dalâla, that is,
dissenters. The dissenters, because they are Muslims, will later be taken out
from Hell and will go to Paradise. Besides them, there are those who are
nominally Muslims, but change Islam according to their corrupt knowledge and
short sight, thus going out of Islam. They will remain in Hell eternally. They
are zindîqs and reformers.
Today, the lâ-madhhabî people, by spending millions
and millions of dollars, have been striving to disseminate their heretical
beliefs in every country. It is seen with regret that most of the ignorant of
Islam, with a desire for much money, or being deceived, have gone into this
distorted heretical path, departing from the right path shown by the ’ulamâ’
(scholars) of Ahl as-Sunna. They have been struggling to cast aspersions upon
the books by the scholars of Ahl as-Sunna. It therefore became an
obligation to explain the evil beliefs unconformable
to Ahl as-Sunna as held by the Wahhâbîs, a group of the lâ-madhhabî, in a
separate book with documents and to explain the oppression and persecution
directed towards Muslims by these cruel, ignorant people. Hence, it became
necessary for Muslims to see this terrifying danger and to protect themselves
from being taken in by false, deceitful words and writings.
A man named Muhammad ibn’Abd-ul-Wahhâb wrote a booklet
entitled Kitâb at-tawhîd. Although his grandson Sulaimân ibn ’Abdullâh had
started expounding this booklet, he died when Ibrâhîm Pasha went to Dar’iyya
and punished them in
We came by a small Wahhâbite book entitled Jewâb-i Nu’mân in Turkish while preparing this book. It was
reprinted for the second time in Damascus in
The book Advice for the Muslim
consists of two parts. In the first part, statements from the books Fat’h al-majîd and Jewâb-i Nu’mân are quoted
and answers from the books of Islamic scholars (rahimahum-Allâhu ta’âlâ) are
given in thirty-five articles.
The second part deals with how the Wahhâbîs came
forth, how they spread out, how those ignorant and brutal people who
infiltrated into the Wahhâbîs to obtain wealth and power
massacred Muslims and destroyed their possessions, how
they brutally attacked Muslim countries, how they were punished by the Ottoman
State, and how they established a new state after the First World War.
May Allâhu ta’âlâ protect Muslims from catching the
pestilence of Wahhâbism and Shî’ism! May He redeem the unlucky people who have
slipped into these paths from this perdition! Âmin.
In the text, the interpreted âyats of the Qur’ân al-karîm are given as ma’âl sharîf (meaning concluded by the
mufassirs), which may or may not be the same as what Allâhu ta’âlâ meant in the
âyat. A glossary of Arabic and other non-English terms foreign to the English
reader is appended.
Mîlâdî Hijrî
Shamsî Hijrî
Qamarî
2000 1378 1420
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