the dead possesses any power to harm or benefit—he insists it is nothing more than a slip of the tongue! Yet Shaykh Abū Ghuddah is not ashamed to declare in his own words (p. 36) that he adheres to the creed of the Salaf—may Allah be pleased with them—and that he affirms the division of tawḥīd into tawḥīd al-ulūhiyyah (oneness of worship) and tawḥīd al-rubūbiyyah (oneness of lordship). He completely overlooked the third category, tawḥīd al-ṣifāt (oneness with respect to the divine attributes), and perhaps he left it out deliberately, for the later theologians—of whom he is one—do not acknowledge this aspect of monotheism. Had they done so, they would not have denied so many of Allah’s attributes under the banner of figurative interpretation, such as their rejection of His exaltation above His creation.
A sermon by Abū Ghuddah assailing the Salafis
On this occasion I must present portions of a sermon delivered by Shaykh Abū Ghuddah, transcribed from an audio cassette kept in my possession. Should anyone doubt its authenticity, I can let him hear it in the Shaykh’s own voice and fervent tone, so that the reader may gauge the depth of his hostility toward the people of pure monotheism and the advocates of the Sunnah—his rancor, his hatred, and his readiness to level every conceivable accusation at them in the manner of his teacher al-Kawtharī, indeed even worse. In this respect he stands alone.
His charge that Salafis declare the imams ignorant and belittle the scholars and the enterprise of ijtihād
After a brief preamble on the merit of the mujtahid imams and their adherence to the Sunnah, he said:
“ We say this to expose what is happening among certain people: declaring the imams ignorant, belittling the standing of the scholars, deriding some of their opinions—imagining themselves to be in the right. Once they have but caught a whiff of knowledge, they think they are certain of what they know and entitled to fault the scholars, brand the imams ignorant, diminish the worth of ijtihād, and make it seem trivial in the eyes of the people—even the most ordinary folk