Six
A'udhu billahi min ash-shaytanir-rajim.
Bismillahir-rahmanir-rahim.
Now we come to the final stage of the commentary we have been making on excerpts from the book of Qadi 'Iyad, the Tartib al Mudarik , and we come to a very significant stage, because we have now left behind the first salafi phenomenon of the arrival of Islam by the Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and give him peace, on his Sahaba, and then we have gone to its passing on through the Sahaba to the Tabi'in and to Tabi'in of Tabi'in in this salafi community in which we found the utmost excellence, so that we could follow them and clearly guide our way by them as the basis and foundation of Islam and we have heard the ayat in which Allah, subhanahu wa ta'ala says:
"This day we have completed your deen for you and named it Islam."
Nothing is to be added, nothing has to be put on to this, nothing is acceptable after this prophetic phenomenon of nabawiyya which is two-fold, Kitab wa Sunna. The Book of Allah, Glory be to Him and may He be exalted!, which is mubin, and in all matters of shari'a gives clear ayats. And in no matter concerning shari'a is there ambiguity or is it of a matter that requires analogy or hidden interpretation or vision and special insight. These ayats that require some illumination of the heart, some quickening of the ruhani energy, are clearly defined as being separate in nature from those defining the Shari'a of Islam. The Shari'a of Islam involves all matters concerning the bodies of the human species - every aspect of the social nexus that has in it injunctions as to how to behave. So it is without ambiguity. And these do not interfold, they do not cross, they do not merge into a barzakh of uncertainty. They are two seas and there is a barzakh between them, separating them, not joining them. This is the first thing to understand that we must confirm about the Book of Allah, Glory be to Him and may He be exalted!
Then the second part of nabawiyya is sunna, and we have said that the sunna of the Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and give him peace, is complete and is demonstrated and is made effective and happens, in the event of the salafi phenomenon of Madinah al-Munawwara. And that the lights of Madina al-Munawwara are not its houses, not its streets, but those Sahaba who were in it. And that he died with 10,000 of his people around him in that city and this is the great mass of Sahaba who transmit to the great mass of the Tabi'in, in Madinah al-Munawwara. It is this Madinan transmission and this Madinan 'amal, and this Madinan behaviour which takes its superiority over all estimates and all measurements that you can make. And this is recorded in its time and immediately afterwards and in the clear record of Imam Malik, in the al-Muwatta , giving us the indelible, ineradicable record, unquestioned by any single authority in Islam, of that Salafi experience, while within that first nexus of the Tabi'in of Tabi'in. This must be understood, and this riwaya of Imam Malik's makes him our Imam for the whole of Islam, and with no shadow on his reputation, on his excellence, on his knowledge, on his 'ibada, and on his impeccable character and his superb judgements.
"At-Tustari said: Abu 'Abdallah az-Zubayr ibn Ahmed az-Zubayri said while we were discussing and studying the different madhhabs among ourselves, 'With the madhhab of Malik we can dispense with the madhhab of all those others taken together but the madhhab of not a single one of them is enough for us to dispense with the madhhab of Malik, we cannot do without it.'"
Then Humayd ibn al-Aswad said:
"Malik said after the death of 'Umar ibn al-Khattab, the Imam of the people among us in Madinah became Zayd ibn Thabit. The Imam after Zayd ibn Thabit was 'Abdullah ibn 'Umar.' 'Ali ibn al-Madini said, 'twenty-one men from among those who followed the ra'y of Zayd ibn Thabit and lived by it, took their knowledge directly from him - Qasiba, Kharija ibn Zayd, 'Ubaydullah ibn 'Abdullah ibn 'Utba ibn Mas'ud, al-Qasim ibn Muhammad, Abu Bakr ibn 'Abd al-Rahman, Salim ibn 'Umar ibn al-Khattab, Sa'id ibn Musayyab, Aban ibn 'Uthman and Sulayman ibn Yasar. All the knowledge of these great men became the exclusive legacy of three, Ibn Shihab az-Zuhri, Bukayr ibn 'Abdullah ibn al-Ashajj and Abu Zinad ibn Abi Dhakwan. The knowledge of these last three became the exclusive legacy of Malik ibn Anas.'"
And then we concluded with Abu 'Ali ibn Abi Hilal who said:
"An-Nasa'i was asked about Mu'awiya and he said, 'Islam is a single, pure abode and the Sahaba are the door to that abode. Whoever speaks evil about any one of them has broken into that abode.''' Abu 'Ali ibn Abi Hilal continued, "and it is my expressed opinion that Malik is the handle by which that door is open. Whoever lays hands on the handle has only to desire to open the door and enter. May Allah be pleased with all the Companions without exception."
I said at the beginning that in the development of Islam we found many groups and developments through the natural growth of the Islamic world and in different geographical places, and impacting on different cultures or different aspects of different jahiliyyas, and naturally, because of a tremendous respect through this Salafi experience for any form of knowledge, an openness to any knowledges that these jahili people had acquired. And with all of these things came many disputes and many argumentations and so we find all these things like the Mu'tazila and the Khawarij, and then you find the debate about hadith.
Then into the modern age you find this phenomenon which we examined at the beginning if you will recall, which is the phenomenon of the modernists coming from al-Afghani and bringing ideas in through 'Abduh and Rashid Rida which turned over the whole business, and I have presented you the case for their having led the muslim people astray and the result being the defeat of the muslims right across the board. And saying that, then the attempt at a salafi recovery without going to the Salafi phenomenon in itself, was wrong, because it was rightly affirming hadith, but wrongly bereft of usul, and wrongly bereft of 'amal on which the whole thing is based, because it is basically a Janna-oriented religion.
The point, if I dare say such a thing, of Islam, is to be pleasing to Allah, and therefore to desire the Garden and to do what will take you to the Garden, and nothing else - nothing replaces that. Nothing replaces that. No concept, no idea, no adherence, no alliance, no vision, no batini illumination replaces the 'amal on which you will be judged and which will decide your place. Again and again in Qur'an in the wonderful Makkan suras when it says, "What is the steep ascent?" and it lists thing after thing after thing, every one of them is 'amal, and not one of them has a batini dimension at all, it is all behaviour. Now in all these diversions and separations and conflicts that have divided the Muslims, some most invigoratingly, and some with great bitterness, and some with bloodshed - but the matter is important and we must respect that - there remains for us the difficult issue, especially for those people whose hearts are alive and who have glimpses and yearnings and aspirations for their hearts to be illuminated and to experience lights and to have some batini capacity. And there is no escaping that it seemed that a polarization took place between scholarship and batini knowledge.
Now since it is quite clear that we have no escape from having an alive heart and from having inward impulse and inward states from our recitation of Qur'an, from our 'ibada, from du'a, from our calling upon Allah, from our rembering Allah, dhikran kathiran, it is perfectly clear, and from the Qur'an and hadith, that these matters are of great import. But we cannot escape that none of this has any worth if the Shari'a of Islam is abandoned, and this is not a matter of your correct personal, moral behaviour alone. It is not a matter of your being clean in a dirty world while you cannot clean it. Islam by its nature demands of us, this deen, that Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala so sublimely declared complete, was demonstrably one which involved the transformation of the society. And the element of the transformation of the society was the establishment of the hudud, and living within the hudud, and fulfilling the command of Allah, subhanahu wa ta'ala, in all matters whether it was inheritance, marriage, war or commerce. But the truth of the matter is you find one group clinging to ahwal wa maqamat and another group clinging to legal matters. And the truth of the matter is you find some of these people having a correct, personal, moral, acceptable behaviour while abandoning the social obligation. But equally you find among these other people a correct legal application while not insisting on the governance of the Muslims by the Muslims. Both parties have among them those who are incomplete. So they have not a protected batin, and they have not an enforced shari'a. So these can reject those and say they are right, and those reject these and say they are right.
When we look into this matter that I am now taking you to, and what we have already examined, we do not find this split! Now in what I am about to describe to you, I have taken three examples, and these three men were men who governed, who were in this dynamic relationship, that I have described, with the amir. In other words we have a dynamic relationship between amirate and the fulfilment of the task of mufti and qadi, in other words the establishment and the insistence, by complete knowledge based on taqlid arriving at ijtihad, the capacity for ijtihad, on forcing governance to adhere to what Allah has commanded as we have described, and continuing in that until it became unbearable, even to the point of torture, and sometimes to the point of death.
But each to the point of his own limits in what he could bear, because each one would be dealing with a different conflict. And at the point that these people could not sustain and impose the hudud as they understood it, their next move was to make hijra, and having made hijra, then to establish the deen as they understood it, where they were, gather the people and return in jihad - or go elsewhere in jihad. And this, cyclically, is the history of those people that I have described here, and that I will not call the madhhab of Malik in the scholastic sense. It is not Maliki in the sense of pertaining to Malik, it is that Malik recorded the 'amal of Madinah. I am saying there is one madhhab which is the madhhab of Islam and Malik was on it!
And now we come to these people who come after these exalted Tabi'in and Tabi'in of Tabi'in. We come now to this river flooding out to all parts of the umma, and you will find they all pattern in the same way. And you will find that these jihads repeat themselves in North Africa and in West Africa. We even find a hundred years ago in brazil, a group of West African slaves following this Salafi way that Malik taught, gathering themselves together, overthrowing their masters, and making an Islamic republic in the middle of Bahia and ruling for the same period as the Murabitun did in spain when they cleaned out the people who had gone off the path of Islam before them. Exactly the same cycle, exactly the same time span that you find in primal Madinah, that you find every time one of these jihads takes place, whether it is 'Uthman dan Fodio, or the Sanussi or the people of Bahia - every time, exactly the same phenomenon with the same pattern.
Now, we come to these men, and we will examine their lives then we will draw our conclusions. And I am saying that the conclusion that it will take us to, will finish for us the split, on the one hand, between any genuine batini sciences and correct desire for knowledge of these matters and, on the other, genuine Islamic governance and hudud in the social and personal matters that concern our 'ulama.
The first of the three people is called 'Abd al-Malik ibn Habib. Qadi Abu Warid ibn al-Faradi says in his book about the men of Andalusia:
"He was 'Abd al Malik ibn Habib ibn Sulayman ibn Harun ibn Jalhama ibn 'Abbas ibn Mirdas al-Sulami, and he was known by the kunya, Abu Marwan, but I have transmitted from the hand-written manuscript of al-Hakam al-Mustansir Billah that he was 'Abd al-Malik ibn Habib ibn Rabi'a ibn Sulayman. His father was known as Habib al-Attar, the maker of scent and perfume."
Ibn al-Faradi says,
"He was a descendant of one of the mawali, one of the former slaves of this tribe."
So right at the beginning, our Imams, are from the lowest element in society, and again and again you will find in this Islamic flow of great, great human beings that many of them were slaves, sons of slaves, sons of sons of slaves. So there is no aristocracy! There is no aristocracy! People rise according to their limits and according to their spiritual capacities.
"He transmitted in Andalusia, and during the year 208, according to some 207, he set out for the east in quest of knowledge. He received knowledge by direct transmission.""Ibn Harith said that when he returned and settled in our city, word of his superior status in knowledge and in transmission soon spread far and wide. Consequently the Amir, 'Abd ar-Rahman ibn al-Hakam, moved him to Cordoba and he raised him to the rank of the mufti and he remained in that office for some time along with Yahya ibn Yahya, head of the Muftis of Cordoba, engaged continually in the giving of counsel and in debate."
So here, the Andalusians were being governed by the son of a slave.
"'Abd al-Malik," he says, "was the 'alim of Andalusia. 'Abd al-Malik was a storehouse of knowledge. He had many books. He was a grammarian skilled in poetry. He had knowledge of the science of genealogy and he was an historian. Kings came to see him, the children of kings and the people of courtesy."
So the kings were coming to the slave to be told what to do.
It was said, 'I have seen 'Abd al-Malik leaving the Jami'a Mosque being followed by almost 300 students, consisting of students of hadith of the portions allotted to inheritance, of fiqh, and of pure arabic speech.'""It was said to Abu Hazim, 'What does your wealth consist of?' He said, 'I have two kinds of wealth; satisfaction with whatever is in my hand, and utter despair from ever having what is in the hands of others. But I saw that I have two wealths also - wealth in the outward and public aspect of my appearance, and poverty in the private sphere of my life.'"
"Ibn al-Faradi also made mention of him in the books compiled on the various generations of poets. He presented him as one of the leading figures among them, and said, 'He combined with his imamate in fiqh the most profound knowledge of literature. He was a master craftsman in his own writing across a variety of fields of knowledge. He was a faqih. He was a mufti. He was a grammarian. He was a philologist. He was a genealogist. He was an historian. A supreme master in the field of poetry - a most excellent, free-spirited and eloquent poet. He was a compiler of words.'"
One of the Shaykhs has recorded that when 'Abd al-Malik came to Egypt on his journey in search of knowledge, he came on a party of people, who, after the custom of the Egyptians, had set out in advance from their city to meet the approaching traveller and show him kindness and hospitality. It was also their custom that whenever a man of some status and good appearance came they would try to discover what kind of man he was, and they would use firasa, which is a science that is part of nabawiyya which the Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and give him peace, gave to some of his Sahaba, which was that he would teach them how to see by the outward appearance of the face what sort of man it was.
"They had been very successful at doing this, and then 'Abd al-Malik came, who was a very fine looking man, and some of the people said, 'It is a faqih.' The others said, 'No, no, no. It is a poet.' The others said, 'No, no. This is a great speaker.' Finally by the time he arrived they were all having an argument about him. They said, 'What are you?' He said, 'You are all right! Every one of you is right. Everything you have said about me, it is all true. I do all of these things very well, and you have proved how expert you are in your science by your identification of me.'"
Next we look at Abu 'Amr al-Harith ibn Miskin Muhammad ibn Yusuf, the former slave of Muhammad ibn Ziyad ibn 'Abd al-Aziz ibn Marwan.
He received his knowledge by sama', by direct transmission from Ibn Qasim, Ash-hab, and Ibn Wahb, who were among the greatest of Malik's students. He gathered into a single work all the knowledge he had received by transmission from them and he arranged it chapter by chapter. He was one of the greatest of their students. He also sat with al-Layth ibn Sa'd, Malik and Mufaddal bin Fadala, before their deaths.
"Ahmad ibn Hanbal was asked his opinion about this man, when he was given the position of Qadi, and he said, praising him very highly, 'Nothing but good has ever reached my ears about him.' And he went on to say, 'They used to look lightly on taking from the other people that were with him, but they had to take from him.' Abu Hatim said, 'Ibn Miskin was a man who always spoke the truth.'"
Notice these moral and spiritual qualities which we are designating in these men.
"Abu 'Umar al-Kindi said in a book The Generations of the Qadis of Egypt, in that large chapter dedicated to those who were descendants of slaves, and these are our Imams, 'Al-Harith ibn Miskin became the mufti of Egypt on behalf of the 'Abbasid king al-Mutawakkil who had given him an official letter empowering this qadi while the king was in Alexandria. But when Ibn Miskin received and read the official letter of appointment he refused to accept the position. His companions forced him to accept it, and they agreed to the stipulation that when the time came, (as it would come) they would come to help him. Thus Ibn Miskin made his way to al-Fustat, the capital of Egypt, and sat down in the Jami'a Mosque to give judgement. Both his legs were crippled and he was carried to the mosque on an open litter carried by two men. He would sometimes ride on a donkey once someone had lifted him up and draped his legs on either side of it.'"
This is the man who was governing a nation.
"Abu Muhammad 'Abdullah said in his book, 'Ibn Miskin transmitted the following from Ibn Wahb from Malik regarding what a man would do who is given a directive by a powerful person to take on a particular job which he hates to do, but which he fears, should he refuse it, that he will be whipped, lose his life and have his house demolished. Malik said, 'If it is a matter of his house being demolished, his back being flogged with a whip or his being put in prison, it is better for him that he refuse the directive and take the consequences with patience. If it is a matter of his blood being spilled, I do not know what the ultimate limit that you can expect from a man in this case is.'"
See the perfection of his judgement!
"Perhaps there can be some allowance for him to obey the directive and take the job."
How fine, how perfect the mizan of Imam Malik.
"Yunus said, "Al-Harith ibn Miskin used to transmit this report, but then he accepted appointment under the 'Abbasids as qadi. 'By Allah', he said to himself, 'do you think I am still worthy to give fatwa according to what Malik has taught?'""Muhammad ibn 'Abd al-Warith said, 'We were with al-Harith one day, when 'Ali ibn al-Qasim as Kufi al-Madani came to him and said, "During my sleep I saw the people gather together within the Haram at Makka and I said, 'Why have you all gathered here?' They said, "'Umar ibn al-Khattab came and commanded al-Harith ibn Miskin to sit in judgement over the people.' I saw him in my dream take al-Harith and nail his seat to the wall giving him authority, and then depart. I followed after him. When he sensed that I was behind him, 'Umar ibn al-Khattab in the dream turned and said, 'What do you want?' And he said, 'I want to look at you.' He said, 'Go back to al-Harith and give him my salaams. Say to him, 'Become a qadi. Hand down the judgement between your people and do it because of this sign that I have given you. I will give you a proof, that when you were imprisoned in Iraq you stood up in the dark one night, and stumbled and fell to the floor, and injured your finger so that it began to bleed. You called to Allah with a du'a that you made that night and the next morning you got out of prison.' Al-Harith, when he heard this, said, 'You have spoken the truth. For this was a thing that was witnessed by no one except Allah, subhanahu wa ta'ala!'"
The du'a which is very beautiful says:
"O You who are with me always in every adversity, O You who come to my aid in every trouble, oh You who make me feel at peace when I am left alone in desolation, give Your blessings on Muhammad, may Allah bless him and give him peace, and his family and make for me an opening and a way to escape from the trouble I am in."
Muhammad ibn al-Warith continued his record of Ibn Miskin. He said:
"Ibn Miskin was given an order, 'Wear the black robe!' He refused to do it. Thus the governor of Egypt spoke to al-Mutawakkil on the matter. Al-Mutawakkil said, 'Send an official letter saying that if he continues to refuse to wear the black robe, then have his upper legs pulled out of their sockets.' The governor of Egypt sent out messengers to apprehend Ibn Miskin. Everyone betrayed him. Nobody came to his aid, the close ones or the far ones."
But look what he was refusing - to let his knowledge make him an elite over the people, to make a church out of Islam that would separate him from the people by a distinctive robe.
"Al-Tahawi transmitted from Muhammad ibn Sayyid: I came upon Ibn Miskin at the time that the messengers of the governor were trying to intimidate him. He was by this time very distressed and knew that he was determined to do something dictated by the truth and this had offended the whim and passion of the sultan. And so I said, 'O Shaykh! Whatever you do, do not let this scene that is happening to you make you lose your courage. Remember that Ibrahim, 'alayhi salam, was betrayed by all the people of the earth, yet no harm came to him because Allah was with him. Ibn Miskin embraced me and said, 'By Allah! You've given me new life, my brother, by what you have just said. May Allah give you life in return and a most joyous and happy one.'""So they brought him before the Governor of Egypt. The official letter of al-Mutawakkil was brought out and read in his presence. Ibn Miskin said, 'I will not wear the black!' Then a man got up and said, 'I have seen the Shaykh wear some of these striped coarse woollen garments from Yemen.' Al-Harith said, 'That is true, I have worn such garments.' And the Governor was moved and said, 'Well then, put on one of them. Put on a robe like that.' And Ibn Miskin said, To this, I have no objection' and the Governor said 'I am content,' and worte to al-Mutawakkil who then removed his objection against the Shaykh. Allah fulfilled the promise."
Now he speaks of the achievements and the work of this great man. Al-Kindi says:
"Al-Harith ibn Miskin gave the order that the proponents of ash-Shafi'i and Abu Hanifa be forced to leave,' - because remember, they were making judgements that were not in accord with the 'amal of Madinah - "Indeed he prohibited the proponents of Abu Hanifa from coming to the Jami'a Mosque and broke up all their circles of instruction. He commanded that the carpets that they had put down between the pillars of the mosque be torn out and removed. He stopped most of the mu'adhdhin from calling the adhan because they were not calling it according to Madinah. He prohibited the descendants of Quraysh and the Ansar from receiving special gifts of food during the month of Ramadan. He saw that all mosques were restored to sound condition. He constructed pipelines. He made waterways for providing the people with easy access to clean water. He saw that the bay and harbour of Alexandria was dredged and deepened. He made it prohibited for lands to be set aside before him. He made it forbidden for the adhan to be called for funeral prayers. He had Qur'an reciters whipped, who recited the Qur'an as if it was the melodious music of a singer. He was the first man who appointed a trustee to keep careful watch over the copies of the Qur'an in the Jami'a mosque. He would not go to visit the Governors of the land nor would he even give them greetings. He put a curse on the christian sorcerers and had them put to death. He put to death a christian who insulted the Prophet, may Allah bless him and give him peace, after first having had the christian flogged on the back in accordance with the hadd punishment for slander. He whipped him for slander and then the man was executed for insulting the Prophet. He banished from Egypt all who slandered 'A'isha and had their backs flogged by the hadd punishment for slander."
This is one man that we are talking about, who had all these qualities, and look how he brought to life the community. Look at the social work that he did. Look at how all his life was for other people and the protection of the deen of Islam.
Now we come to the last of these three people. There is much, much more about these people, I am just taking salient points to awaken your imagination and spirit about the quality of a human being. Abu Sayyid Sahnun, another of these great men.
"Now he was of pure Arab stock, and his son said, 'Father, is it true that we are of pure stock from Tanukh?' And his father said, 'And what is so important about knowing that?' But I kept persisting in the question until he finally said, 'Yes, and it will not be of the least value to you before Allah if you do not have taqwa of Him.'""He was called Sahnun because he was like a bird with very sharp sight, but his given name was 'Abd as-Salaam. He was called Sahnun after the bird of sharpest sight because of his clarity and astuteness in questions of fiqh. I heard Sahnun say, 'A particular question of fiqh became impossible for me to solve to the point that I wanted to return to Madinah to find the answer until the answer came clear.'"
"Muhammad ibn Ahmad ibn Tamin says in his book, 'Sahnun was a man of highest integrity and complete reliability. He was hafidh of knowledge. He was a thoroughly accomplished faqih. He combined excellent attributes in his personality rarely combined together. He was genuine in his scrupulousness - in his war'a. He was aggressive, and utterly uncompromising in defence of the truth. He was among the greatest of the zuhad in regard to things of this world. He wore rough garments and he ate coarse food. He was generous in times of hardship and he was generous in times of ease. He never accepted one single thing from the sultans, yet he would often given his companions sums of money of the order of 30 pieces of gold.'"
"Abu Bakr al-Maliki said, 'But with all of this Sahnun was a man with a very soft heart. He cried very much. His fear of Allah was visible to all. He was modest. He was humble. There was nothing artificial about him. He was noble in his conduct. He had excellent manners. His heart was sound. It did not have the least enmity in it towards other people. He was severe in his opposition to the people of all types of bidÔa. He feared the censure and the slander of no man in anything pertaining to Allah. Acceptance of his Imamate spread wide and far in the east and the west.'"
In other words he was one of the great Imams.
"The people of his age freely acknowledged his Imamate. They concurred in affirming his excellence and his precedence over others. His excellent attributes were very many. There has been a whole book compiled about his good qualities. It has been said that Sahnun used to sit in front of his doorstep in order to teach, and we would sit directly on the ground with the exception of those among us who brought mats, and when he had finished he would say, 'Now stand up as if you were one man, and disperse!'""'Abd al-Jabbar ibn Khalid said, 'We used to receive direct transmission from Sahnun of hadith at his house on the coastline. One day he came out with a shovel on his shoulder and a wheelbarrow. He said, "My slave-boy has a fever and I cannot teach you today. I have to do his work. When I am finished I will come back and I will teach you hadith." I said to him, "Let me go and do the digging and you give the hadith. When I come back you can review for me the bit I have missed." He did this, and when I came back to him, his lunch had been put before him. It was barley bread and stale oil.' 'Isa said, 'When Sahnun remained silent, it was for the sake of Allah, and when he spoke it was for the sake of Allah. When he had the desire to speak he would remain silent and when he had the desire to remain silent he would speak.'"
This is a protected tasawwuf because it is not accessible, touchable, visible or speakable. It is buried in the hearts of great men of knowledge of Kitab wa Sunna. And if we take this path, there is no need for anything visible on the face of the earth that you can call sufism, or anything that to the ear you can speak about as sufism, because here we have the pure Salafi phenomenon which is not what the people today who talk about it mean. Because those people do not speak out about governance, and about the limits and the hudud where things that go wrong demand punishment, and demand putting right. And therefore they are liars or hypocrites to say salafi when they are within earshot and eye-sight of what is forbidden and they do not speak. But those other men have never compromised on this and have taken the path that I have indicated to you, which is that they have stood their ground. They have not gone underground. They have not slandered. They have not denounced. They have not made a legal judgement against people unless they were before them in order to be judged and found guilty and punished according to the right - or released as innocent.
This is the Islam of the Sahaba, and this is the Islam of Madinah, and this is the Islam of Imam Malik, and there is no better, and there is no other, and that is what I have come to tell you.
As-Salaamu 'alaykum.