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When I heard about two weeks ago that there were people who believed that to go to a grave and

say: O prophet of Allah invoke for me, is a bida'a close to shirk but if a person intends the same meaning but instead uses the expression: O prophet intercede with Allah, then he is guilty of shirk, I thought that it must have been another result of salafi fiqh. I was then shocked to hear that this was also the position of Harris Hammam on this forum who seems to have more knowledge and culture than the average salafi talib al-ilm. I didn't know how to show the nonsense of such a .position which I thought was self-evident but today I remembered something very interesting Few months ago, I had read the explanation of ayat al-kursi by the great zahiri alim, Abu Hayyan Al-Andalussi. He gave a very strong explanation of the meaning of the word permission in the :part of the verse which could be translated as

(who is he that can intercede with Him but by His permission)


:Abu Hayyan explained that the word permission means Either an order from Allah, if Allah tells a person to intercede like in the case of the hadith on(1 intercession Either knowledge and enabling if a person intercedes without an order(2 Everyone knows that to request a living person to invoke Allah on one's behalf is a form of seeking intercession. Harris Hammam basically says that to request a dead to invoke Allah on one's behalf is a bid'a leading to shirk as long as one doesn't admit the linguistic reallity of his .action which would be shirk We also know that people asking the intercession of the prophet are asking the second meaning which according to Harris Hammam is not shirk so we can not consider the word intercede as .shirk by itself as it is a word which carry some meanings which are not all related to shirk Harris Hammam then justified in part his argument by saying that a statement of shirk can not be .demoted to bida' because of intention or interpretation ?Is he serious? Has he ever read the chapter of apostasy in hanafi and shafei fiqh books While the principle on which he has justified his argument is partially true, it has to do with statements which only carry one meaning which is a kufri meaning. It is for this reason that you will see some ulama of the four madhahib when they mention that an alim gave the ruling of kufr on a person saying a certain word that he was mistaken because saying that word in such and .such occasion is not kufr because it can have a non-kufri meaning Harris Hammam basically said that the meaning intended by the hanafi scholars mentionned by Salah Al-Din is not kufr but the expression they use is. We have shown that the expression these scholars used are linguistically the same as the meaning they intend which is asking to ask on one's behalf. Harris Hammam says that the meaning they intend is not shirk so either he agrees .with us that this expression is not shirk or either he adopts the opinion of his colleague AZ

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