Sunni Feedback on The Issues of Infallibility and Ahulbayt [Electronic resources] نسخه متنی

Evidence for Tawassul by a Sunni Writer
From: mas@cadence.

com (Masud Khan) Date: 3 Jul 1994 22:55:34 GMT
There has been a lot of discussion about intercession
recently, and a few ill-informed people have issued fatawa's
condeming the practice as shirk.

If, as some
individuals say, tawassul is shirk then from from the evidence available it
seems that The Prophet (pbuh) taught a man to commit shirk
and so did the Rightly Guided Khalifa 'Uthman ibn Affan! (May Allah be
our refuge from such thoughts).

wa'asalaam
Mas'ud
Tawassul - Supplicating Allah through and Intermediary.
=
Definition: Supplicating Allah by means of an intermediary,
whether it be a living person, dead person, or a name or attribute of
Allah Most High.

Yusuf Rifa'i: I here want to convey the position, attested to
by compelling legal evidence, of the orthodox majority of Sunni Muslim on
the subject of supplicating Allah through an intermidiary (tawassul), and so
I say (and Allah alone gives success) that since there is no
disagreement among scholars that supplicating Allah through an intermediary is
in principle legally valid, the discussion of it's details merely concerns
derived rulings that involve interschool differences, unrelated to
questions of belief or unbelief, monotheism or associating partners with
Allah (shirk);

the sphere of the question being limited to permissibility or impermissibility, and its ruling being that it is either
lawful or unlawful.

There is no difference among groups of
Muslims in their consensus on the permissibilty of three types of supplicating Allah
through an intermediary (tawassul):
1 tawassul through a living righteous person to Allah Most
High, as in the Hadith of the blind man with the Prophet (Allah bless him and
grant him peace) as we shall explain;
2 the tawassul of a living person to Allah Most High through
his own good deeds, as in the hadith of the three people trapped in a cave
by a great stone, a hadith related by Imam Bukhari in his Sahih [Ref:
vol 3 no 418];
3 and the tawassul of a person to Allah Most High through His
entity (dhat), names, attributes, and so forth.

Since the legality of these types is agreed upon there is no
reason to set forth the evidence for them.

The only area of
disagreement is supplicating Allah (tawassul) through a righteous dead person.

The
majority of the orthodox Sunni community hold that it is lawful, and have
supporting hadith evidence, of which we will content ourselves with the hadith
of the Blind Man, since it is the central pivot upon which the discussion
turns.

The Hadith of the Blind Man Tirmidhi relates, through his chain of narrators from 'Uthman
ibn Hunayf, that a blind man came to the Prophet (Allah bless him
and grant him peace) and said, I've been afflicted in my eyesight, so please
pray to Allah for me.

The Prophet (Allah bless him and grant him
peace) said: Go make ablution (wudu), perform two rak'as of prayer, and then say:
'O Allah, I ask You and turn to You through my Prophet
Muhammad, the Prophet of Mercy; O Muhammad [Ya Muhammad], I seek your
intercession with my Lord for the return of my eyesight [and in another
version: for my need , that it may be fulfilled.

O Allah, grant him
intercession for me].

'
The Prophet (Allah bless him and grant him peace) added,
And if there is some need, do the same.

Scholars of Sacred Law infer from this hadith the recommended
character of the need, in which someone in need of something from Allah
Most High performs such a prayer and then turns to Allah with this
supplications together with other suitable supplications, traditional or
otherwise, according to the need and how the person feels.

The
express content of the hadith proves the legal validity of tawassul through a living
person (as the Prophet (Allah bless him and grant him peace) was a alive
at the time).
It implicitly proves the validity of tawassul through a
deceased one as well, since tawassul through a living or dead person is not
through a physical body or through a life or death, but rather through
the positive meaning (mana tayyib) attached to the person in both life
and death.

The body is but the vehicle that carries that significance, which
requires that the person be respected whether alive or dead; for the words
O (Ya) Muhammad are an address to someone physically absent -
in which state the living and the dead are alike - an address to the meaning,
dear to Allah, that is connected with his spirit, a meaning that is the
ground of tawassul, be it through a living or a dead person.

==
The Hadith of the Man in Need ==
Moreover, Tabarani, in his al-Mujam al-saghir, reports a
hadith from 'Uthman ibn Hanayf that a man repeatedly visited 'Uthman ibn
'Affan (Allah be well pleased with him) concerning something he needed, but
'Uthman paid no attention to him or his need.

The man met Ibn
Hunayf and complained to him about the matter - this being after the death of the
Prophet (Allah bless him and grant him peace) and after the caliphates of
Abu Bakr and 'Umar - so 'Uthman ibn Hunayf, who was one of the Companions
who collected hadiths and were learned in the religion of Allah said:
Go to the place of ablution and perform ablution (wudu), then come to the
mosque, perform two rak'as of prayer therein, and say,
'O Allah, I ask You and turn to You through our
Prophet Muhammad, the Prophet of Mercy; O Muhammad [Ya Muhammad], I turn through
you to my Lord, that He may fulfill my need,'
and mention your need.

Then come so that I
can go with you [to the caliph 'Uthman].

So the man left and did as he had been told, then went to the
door of 'Uthman ibn 'Affan (Allah be pleased with him), and the
doorman came, took him by the hand, brought him to 'Uthman ibn 'Affan and seated
him next to him on a cushion.

'Uthman asked, What do you
need? and the man mentioned what he wanted, and 'Uthman accomplished it for him and then
said, I hadn't remembered your need until just now, adding,
Whenever you need something, just mention it.

Then the man departed,
met 'Uthman ibn Hunayf, and said to him, May Allah reward you! He didn't see to
my need or pay any attention to me until you spoke with him.

'Uthman
ibn Hunayf replied, By Allah, I didn't speak to him, but I have seen a blind man
come to the Messenger of Allah (Allah bless him and grant him peace) and
complain to him of the loss of his eyesight.

The Prophet (Allah
bless him and grant him peace) said, 'Can you not bear it?' and the man replied, 'O
messenger of Allah, I do not have anyone to lead me around, and it is
great hardship for me.

' The Prophet (Allah bless him and grant him peace)
told him, 'Go to the place of ablution and perform ablution (wudu), then pray two
rak'as of prayer and make these supplications.

' Ibn Hunafy
went on, By Allah, we didn't part company or speak long before the man returned to
us as if nothing had ever been wrong with him.

This is an explicit, unequivocal text from a prophetic
Companion proving the legal validity of tawassul through the dead.

The
account has been classed as rigorously authenticated (SAHIH) by Bayhaqi,
Mundhiri, and Haytami.

(Muhammad Hamid - a leading Hanafi scholar of this century:)
As for calling upon (nida') the righteous [when they are physically absent,
as in the words O (Ya) Muhammad in the above hadiths],
tawassul to Allah Most High through them is permissable, the supplication (du'a) being to
Allah Most Glorious, and there is much evidence for its permissibility.

Those
who call on them intending tawassul cannot be blamed.

As for
someone who believes that those called upon can cause effects, benefit, or harm,
which they create or cause to exist as Allah does, such a person is an
idolator who has left Islam - Allah be our refuge! This then,and a certain
person has written an article that tawassul to Allah Most High through
the righteous is unlawful, while the overwhelming majority of scholars hold
it permissable, and the evidence that the writer uses to
corroborate his view point is devoid of anything that demonstrates what he is
trying to prove.
In declaring tawassul permissable, we are not hovering on the
brink of idolatory (shirk) or coming anywhere near it, for the
conviction that Allah Most High alone has influence over anything, outwardly, is a
conviction that flows through us like our very lifeblood.

If
tawassul were idolatory (shirk), or if there were any suspicion of idolatory in it,
the Prophet (Allah Most High bless him and give him peace) would not have
taught it to the blind man when the latter asked him to supplicate
Allah for him, though in fact he did teach him to make tawassul to Allah
through him.

And the notion that tawassul was permissible only during the
lifetime of the person through whom it is done but not after his death is
unsupported by any viable foundation from Sacred Law (Rudud 'ala abatil wa
rasa'il al- Shaykh Muhammad al-Hamid).

Mostly taken from Reliance of the Traveller (Umdat
as-Salik) by Ahmad ibn Naqib al-Misri [b.

702/1302 d.
769/1368]
translated by Noah Ha Mim Keller.