Shaykh al-Islām Taqī al-Dīn Ibn Taymiyyah—may Allah be pleased with him—was asked: (*)
“What do the eminent scholars, the leaders of the religion—may Allah enable them to obey Him—say concerning someone who states, ‘Relief is not to be sought from the Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and grant him peace’? Is it forbidden for him to say this, and is it disbelief or not? If he supports his statement with verses from the Book of Allah and hadiths of His Messenger, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, does his evidence avail him or not? When proof is established from the Book and the Sunnah, what is incumbent upon someone who opposes it? Give us your ruling, and may you be rewarded.”
He replied:
Praise be to Allah.
It has been established through the widely transmitted—indeed, mass-transmitted—Sunnah and the agreement of the Muslim community that our Prophet, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, is the intercessor whose intercession is accepted; that his intercession on behalf of creation will be accepted on the Day of Resurrection; that people will seek his intercession, asking him to intercede for them with their Lord (*); and that he will intercede for them.
Furthermore, the people of the Sunnah and the community agree that his intercession for those guilty of major sins will be accepted, and that none of those who affirm Allah’s oneness will remain in the Fire forever.
As for the Khawārij and the Mu‘tazilah, they denied his intercession for those guilty of major sins, but did not deny his intercession for the believers. These are misguided innovators; whether they are to be declared unbelievers is a matter of disagreement and requires qualification.
(*) Shaykh Nāsir ibn Hamad al-Fahd stated (pp. 16–17):
This is the fatwa to which al-Bakrī al-Shāfi‘ī objected and against which he wrote a refutation. The shaykh, may Allah have mercy on him, responded with al-Istighātha (Seeking Relief), known as al-Radd ‘alā al-Bakrī (Refutation of al-Bakrī). This fatwa appears in Talkhīs Kitāb al-Istighātha (Abridgment of the Book on Seeking Relief), pp. 211–216. Three points should be noted:
First: The version here in al-Fatāwā contains scribal misreadings and minor differences in approximately twenty places. These do not affect the meaning, and most result from changes made by copyists.
Second: In al-Istighātha, the shaykh, may Allah have mercy on him, omitted nearly a page of this fatwa. He stated there, p. 215 (1/420): “They said: ‘The difference between someone seeking relief and someone making an invocation is that the former calls for relief, whereas the latter calls upon the one invoked’—an account of this has already been given in full, so this is not the place to examine it exhaustively—and it includes: ‘Seeking relief from the Messenger, in the sense of asking him for what befits his station, is not disputed by any Muslim…’”
His words, “An account of this has already been given in full, so this is not the place to examine it exhaustively,” indicate two things:
One: He omitted part of the fatwa, namely the passage in al-Fatāwā from 1/111, line eleven, to 1/112, line seven.
The other: This fatwa had already been mentioned earlier in al-Istighātha. The printed abridgment, however, contains no mention of it before this point. Perhaps it was among the passages abridged by Ibn Kathīr, may Allah have mercy on him. Allah knows best.
Third: The shaykh did not include in al-Istighātha the last five lines of this fatwa as it appears here (1/113). Perhaps these, too, belonged to the previously mentioned material abridged by Ibn Kathīr. Allah Most High knows best.