some of that, out of obedience to the Law’s demand that we verify and investigate; but now the truth has become plain to every clear-sighted observer.
What further proves that he still clings to his Kawtharite stance—preferring al-Kawtharī’s opinions to those of his own imam, Abū Ḥanīfah, and the latter’s two companions (may Allah have mercy on them) in many issues—is the following. Al-Kawtharī penned a treatise entitled “Mahaq al-Taqawwul fī Mas’alat al-Tawassul,” in which he declared tawassul permissible, adopting the posture of an unrestricted mujtahid. He cited ḥadith reports: some sound but irrelevant, others weak that he tried to bolster by reinforcing one weak narrator with another—purely in pursuit of his whim. In doing so he even contradicted his own open admission of the weakness of the same ḥadith elsewhere, as I showed at the beginning of my book Silsilat al-Aḥādīth al-Ḍaʿīfah.
Following his desire and pandering to the masses, he never once mentioned the verdicts of his three imams, for those very verdicts would have demolished his treatise from its foundations (1). Abū Ghuddah, for his part, imitates him in this question, defying the position of his own three imams. He did so in a sermon he delivered in his mosque in Aleppo—this was before he obtained his post in Saudi Arabia—and I have in my possession an audio recording of that sermon. In it he states openly a number of ideas and doctrines that run counter to the creed of the righteous predecessors and their worthy followers, such as Shaykh al-Islām Ibn Taymiyyah, Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb, and others. For example, he maintains that polytheism is confined to lordship alone; therefore, according to him, it is permissible to seek tawassul through the Prophet or a saint so long as one does not actually call upon them or petition them. And even if someone should mistakenly call upon them, he claims, the petitioner does not believe that the one invoked can bind or loosen, give or withhold, abase or exalt, or manage the decrees of Allah! Consequently, seeking help from the dead instead of Allah Most High does not constitute polytheism in his view, for the person seeking aid does not believe that