and then he said: “If this is how tawassul through his physical relics is regarded, then how much greater is tawassul through his standing with Allah, and how much greater still is tawassul through his being a mercy to the worlds?”

Yet he quickly retreated from all of this, claiming that tabarruk and tawassul are identical in meaning, denying that he was drawing an a fortiori analogy, and insisting that the matter is nothing more than inference by analogy. According to him, the two words, tawassul and tabarruk, both signify a single concept: seeking benefit and blessing by means of the one through whom tawassul is made. Thus, whether one seeks tawassul by his ﷺ rank with Allah or by his relics, residues, or garments, all of these are particular instances subsumed under the broader category of unrestricted tawassul whose ruling is established by sound hadiths; every such individual form, he says, falls beneath the general text by what the uṣūl scholars call tanqīḥ al-manāṭ.

In reality, the apparent sense of the doctor’s earlier statement was far less objectionable than this latest claim, for tawassul is clearly distinct from tabarruk. Whoever conflates the two commits a serious blunder and displays egregious ignorance of the sharʿī facts—an error unbefitting any self-respecting student of knowledge.

Tabarruk is when someone who possesses one of the Prophet’s relics seeks, by virtue of that relic, to obtain some good uniquely related to him ﷺ. Tawassul, by contrast, is to accompany one’s supplication to Allah with one of the means He has legislated for His servants—for example, to say, “O Allah, I ask You by my love for Your Prophet ﷺ to forgive me,” and the like. This distinction becomes evident in two respects: