Bismillahi Al-Rahmani Al-Rahim
A reader response to the Sighting The Moon Is Globally Binding message
At 06:14 PM 9/26/2002 -0400, you wrote:
May Allah reward you.
Again, your adab abd `adl shine through. My Allah
reward you and bless you. I met Shaykh Ibn `Uthaymin (rahimahu llaah) and
translated for him on two occassions when he visited Boston a few months
before he passed away. He impressed me as highly competent faqih, the
polemic of his detratctor notwithstanding. I have always found his
works beneficial.
Keep up the good work.
Wa s-salaam,
[name removed]
In spite of being charged to assume the best of others and to avoid
fault-finding--especially with scholars--it's very easy for us to get
caught up with someone else's faults. This is especially so when we don't
know them or they aren't on our list of officially approved scholars.
While there may be times where it is warranted for criticize or warn
people about a scholar, there are limits to how it should be done. Those
limits are not only to protect the one being criticized, but to protect the
critic as well. When you look at the hadiths regarding tale-bearing,
back-biting, and enmity towards one of Allah's friends, you really have to
think twice before showing disrespect towards scholars. May Allah protect
us fom this, and may He forgive us our transgressions towards our brothers
and sisters, and toward the heirs of the prophets (peace be upon them).
wa al-salamu `alaykum
--musa