From the Layman’s Desk-15:
Trying Times for Sunnis and Sufis.
IN THE NAME OF ALLAH, MOST BENEFICIENT, MOST MERCIFUL.
'They seek to deceive Allah (swt) and those who believe. Nay, themselves do they deceive, though they are not conscious of it. There is a disease in their hearts, so Allah ( swt) lets them increase their disease and for them there is a grievous torment (Azaab) for the false assertions they have made' (Al-Baqara - 9)
We noted earlier that the Wahhabis have been rampantly destroying the Islamic heritage and legacy in Makkah and Madinah Munawarra and other places wherever they can lay their hands on. We further noted how in the recent past they indiscriminately slaughtered Muslims of Makkah, Madina and other cities including Taif where they killed men, pregnant women, the young and the old, the children and the suckling infants. They also threw and tore thousands of Islamic books in the alleys and on the streets. The books were copies of Qur’an Shareef, copies of Sahih al-Bukhari and Muslims and many others about al-Hadith, Fiqh (Islamic jurisprudence) and various subjects of Islamic sciences. All that is part of recorded history.
"Salafi"/Wahhabi Forgeries/Manipulations
However, it seems the Wahhabis were not satisfied with just tearing up all the Islamic books. So they came out with another brilliant idea to destroy Islam from within: Tampering, interpolating, expunging and changing sentences from the Islamic books that did not suit their creed of Wahabbiyya. To top all this, they have also resorted to false attributions, i.e. attributing those words to the authors which the latter never used or intended. Rampant forgery of Islamic books is one big industry that has been made possible by millions of petrodollars being doled out to the obliging but greedy and unconscientious publishing houses who publish the fabricated and tampered Islamic books of Classic Islamic scholars to fool the world Muslims. Especially at risks are the English translations of those classic Islamic books. So are the original Arabic texts. In the sub-continent of India and Pakistan it is the Urdu texts that are being tampered with. Thus I am sure the Islamic books that have been translated into other languages too have been tampered with by the Wahhabis. So the next time you don't find a particular hadith or some pages or citations from other Islamic books you know what has happened. Right from the Sahih of Imam Bukhari to Riyadh as-Saliheen and al-Adkhar of Imam Nawawi and commentaries of Qur'an, and great works of other scholars’ like Bin Abideen Al Hanfi, Abu Hayyan Nahwi and Imam Allama Savi have also been played with and distorted by way of wilful misinterpretations, mistranslations and badly informed notes on hundreds of traditional religious texts. Worst of all, the new words and doctrines manufactured in these factories have been falsely attributed to the righteous ulema which an innocent Muslim does not know about it. So who gave the dwarfs the right to change the texts of the Islamic books and correct those giant Islamic scholars?
To cite all those tamperings is the field of the Research Scholars of the Ahle Sunnah wal Jama’ah and this is not possible for a layman. However, we can only glean some of those tampering from the websites with a courteous thanks to those authors for spreading the word that Salafi/Wahhabi scholars are creating a “Fitna” and doing plain mischief to confuse and disunite the Muslim world by fabricating and tampering the works of basic but extremely valuable Islamic texts of the classic Islamic authors such as Imam Nawawi, Ibn Kathir, Imam Bukhari among many others. This should give enough hint to the dear reader as to how the Wahhabis under the guise of Ahl as-Sunnah are damaging Islam from within.
Now, to cite only a few examples based on the research work of those Islamic scholars with thanks to the sources.
Many books of Imam Nawawi ® have been attacked, including Riyad al-Salihin, and Al- Adhkar where he asks to seek prophet’s intercession upon visiting His Rawdha in Madina . A team of unprincipled editors and translators out of a Riyad publishing house by the name of Darussalam was commissioned to produce a glossy 2-volume English edition of Imam al-Nawawi's Riyad al-Salihin - being distribued for free to Islamic schools around the world - designed to propagate "Salafi" ideology to the unwary English-speaking Muslim students of Islamic knowledge. For Salafi tampering of the Riyad al-Saliheen, please a detailed comment by Moin Shaheed and Shaykh Gibril Haddad: http://www.livingislam.org/trs_e.html
Regarding the distortions in Kitab al-Adhkar (The Book of Remembrance of Allah) by Imam Nawawi, they were also pointed out by Shaykh Mahmud Sa'id Mamduh in his Raf' al-Minara. The late Shaikh Abdul Qadir Arna’ut who was the Head of the Wahhabiyya in Damascus was once accused of tampering with the words of Imam Nawawi in his Kitab al-Adhkar. But when Shaykh Mahmud Sa’id Mamduh directly asked him if he had done this, al-Arna’ut blamed the Riyad based Wahhabi printers for the tampering. According to Shaykh Al-Arna'ut he had written his notes on the text which were removed by the publisher or whosoever. He mentioned that he had written his analysis on the narration of Al-Utbi which were removed. Shaykh Mahmud Sa'id Mamduh asked the son of Shaykh Abdul Qaadir and the latter denied such distortion had issued from his father’s side. In fact, Arna’ut’s hand-written reply is printed in the back of Shaykh Mamduh’s 400-pages book on Tawassul, Rafa’ al-Minaara that refutes the Wahhabi lies on the subject. Shaykh Abdul Qaadir had written his defense before it was inquired by Shaykh Mamduh. He used to send it to whosoever inquired it from him. See this: http://saaid.net/Warathah/1/alarnaut.htm#_Toc70769592
Please also see the next paragraph:
Question 3: Re-Forming Classical Texts
As far as Wahhabi tamperings with classical texts goes, how widespread is this heinous crime? Can you give some serious examples of this?
Answer
I do not know how widespread it is, but it certainly does exist. Of hard evidence that I have personally seen, there is the work that I am currently translating, Kitab al-adhkar [The book of remembrances of Allah] by Imam Nawawi. The text that Nawawi wrote in the Book of Hajj of the Adhkar reads:
“Section: The Visit to the Tomb of the Messenger of Allah (Allah Bless Him and Give Him Peace), and the Remembrances of Allah Made There”Know that everyone who performs the hajj should set out to visit the Messenger of Allah (Allah bless him and give him peace), whether it is on one’s way or not, for visiting him (Allah bless him and give him peace) is one of the most important acts of worship, the most rewarded of efforts, and best of goals.
When one sets out to perform the visit, one should do much of the blessings and peace upon him (Allah bless him and give him peace) on the way. And when one’s eye falls on the trees of Medina, and its sanctum and landmarks, one should increase saying the blessings and peace upon the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace), asking Allah Most High to benefit one by one’s visit to him (Allah bless him and give him peace), and grant one felicity in this world and the next through it. One should say, “O Allah, open for me the doors of Your mercy, and bestow upon me, through the visit to the tomb of Your prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace), that which You have bestowed upon Your friends, those who obey You. Forgive me and show me mercy, O Best of Those Asked” (al-Adhkar al-Nawawiyya, 283–84).
In the 1409/1988 printing of this work, published by Dar al-Huda in Riyad, Saudi Arabia, under the inspection and approval of the Riyasa Idara al-Buhuth al-‘Ilmiyya wa al-Ifta’ or “Presidency of Supervision of Scholarly Studies and Islamic Legal Opinion,” the same section has been changed to agree with Ibn Taymiya’s view that setting out to visit the Prophet’s tomb (Allah bless him and give him peace) is disobedience. (It only becomes permissible, according to this point of view, if one intends visiting the mosque of the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace).) The re-formed version reads as follows, italics showing the alterations made to Nawawi’s text:
“Section: The Visit to the Mosque of the Messenger of Allah (Allah Bless Him and Give Him Peace) [deletion]”
Know that it is preferable, for whoever wants to visit the Mosque of the Messenger of Allah (Allah bless him and give him peace), [deletion] to make much of the blessings and peace upon him (Allah bless him and give him peace) on the way. And when one’s eye falls on the trees of Medina, and its sanctum and landmarks, to increase saying the blessings and peace upon the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace), asking Allah Most High to benefit one by one’s visit to his mosque (Allah bless him and give him peace), and grant one felicity in this world and the next through it. One should say: “O Allah, open for me the doors of Your mercy, and bestow upon me, through the visit to the mosque of Your prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace), that which You have bestowed upon Your friends, those who obey You. Forgive me and show me mercy, O Best of Those Asked” (al-Adhkar, 295).
The same printing has completely dropped nearly a half page of the section of tawassul (supplicating Allah through the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace)) when visiting the Prophet’s tomb—apparently to promote the Wahhabi doctrine that this is shirk or “assigning co-sharers to Allah.”
They have attributed the above words to Imam Nawawi without mentioning that it has been altered in any way.
This should not surprise Westerners, who have had before them Muhammad Muhsin Khan’s translation of Sahih al-Bukhari for some years now. In it, we find Bukhari’s heading about the effects of the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace): “and of his hair, his sandals, and his vessels, of that which his Companions and others used to obtain blessings through after his death (yatabarraka bihi As-habuhu wa ghayruhum ba‘da wafatihi),” in which the words yatabarraka bihi have been rendered as “were considered as blessed things” in the English (Khan, Sahih al-Bukhari, 4.218). The Arabic verb tabarraka bihi signifies “He had a blessing; and he was, or became, blest; by means of him, or it” (Lane, Arabic-English Lexicon, 1.193), or often, “he looked for a blessing by means of,” or “regarded as a means of obtaining a blessing from,” him or it (ibid.)—in either case actually obtaining, or hoping to obtain, a blessing by means of these things, a nuance quite different from the passive “were considered as blessed,” which does not entail any special benefit from them.
Or consider the seventy-three-page “introduction” to volume one of this same translation, a tract that explains the Muslim Trinity: Tawhid al-Rububuyya, Tawhid al-Uluhiyya, and Tawhid al-Asma wa al-Sifat—the (1) Tawhid of Lordship, (2) Tawhid of Godhood, and (3) Tawhid of Names and Attributes. By way of preface to it, Dr. Khan notes that many Western converts enter Islam without knowing what belief in the Oneness of Allah really means. He clarifies that tawhid is not one; namely, to say and believe the shahada of Islam with complete conviction—as it was from the time of the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) until the advent of Ibn Taymiya seven centuries later—as new converts might imagine, but must now be three in order to be one, and cannot be one without being three. While such logic may be already familiar to converts from Christianity, Imam Bukhari (d. 256/870) certainly never knew anything of it, and its being printed as an “introduction” to his work seems to me to qualify as “tampering with classical texts”—aside from being a re-form of traditional ‘aqida, in which Islam, in the words of the Prophet of Islam (Allah bless him and give him peace), “is to testify that there is no god except Allah, and that Muhammad is the Messenger of Allah . . .” (Sahih Muslim, 1.37: 8).
Another example is found in the commentary of the famous Maliki scholar Ahmad Sawi (d. 1241/1825) on the Qur’anic exegesis Tafsir al-Jalalayn of Jalal al-Din Mahalli and Jalal al-Din Suyuti, in which he says of the verse “Truly, the Devil is an enemy to you, so take him as an enemy: he only calls his party to become of the inhabitants of the blaze” (Qur’an 35:6): It is said this verse was revealed about the Kharijites [foretelling their appearance], who altered the interpretation of the Qur’an and sunna, on the strength of which they declared it lawful to kill and take the property of Muslims—as may now be seen in their modern counterparts; namely, a sect in the Hijaz called “Wahhabis,” who “think they are on something, truly they are the liars. Satan has gained mastery over them and made them forget Allah’s remembrance. Those are Satan’s party, truly Satan’s party, they are the losers” (Qur’an 58:18–19). We ask Allah Most Generous to extirpate them completely (Sawi: Hashiya al-Sawi ‘ala al-Jalalayn, 3.255). This passage is quoted from the ‘Isa al-Babi al-Halabi edition published in Cairo around the 1930s. It was also printed in its entirety in the Maktaba al-Mashhad al-Husayni edition (3.307–8) published in Cairo in 1939, which was reproduced by offset by Dar Ihya’ al-Turath al-‘Arabi (3.307–8) in Beirut in the 1970s. By the early 1980s, the Salafi movement, or oil money, or some combination of the two, had generated enough of a market to tempt Dar al-Fikr in Beirut to offset the same old printing, but with a surreptitious change. In the third volume, part of the bottom line of page 307 and the top line of 308 have been whited out, eliminating the words “namely, a sect in the Hijaz called ‘Wahhabis,’” venally bowdlerizing the whole point of what the author is trying to say about the modern counterparts of the Kharijites in order to sell it to them. The deletion was virtually indistinguishable from an ordinary spacing mistake, coming as it does at the ends of the two pages, though Dar al-Fikr made up for any technical shortcomings in this respect in 1993 with a newly typeset four-volume version of Hashiya al-Sawi ‘ala al-Jalalayn, which its title page declares to be “a new and corrected (munaqqaha) printing.” The above passage appears on page 379 of the third volume with the same wording as the previous coverup, but this time in a continuous text, so no one would ever guess that Sawi’s words had been removed.
Or consider the example from the two-volume Qur’anic exegesis of Abu Hayyan al-Nahwi (d. 754/1353), Tafsir al-nahr al-madd [The exegesis of the far-stretching river] condensed mainly from his own previous eight-volume exegesis al-Bahr al-muhit [The encompassing sea], arguably the finest tafsir ever written based primarily on Arabic grammar. Abu Hayyan, of Andalusion origin, settled in Damascus, knew Ibn Taymiya personally, and held him in great esteem, until the day that Barinbari (d. 717/1317) brought him a work by Ibn Taymiya called Kitab al-‘arsh [The book of the Throne]. There they found, in Ibn Taymiya’s own handwriting (which was familiar to Abu Hayyan), anthropomorphic suggestions about the Deity that made Abu Hayyan curse Ibn Taymiya until the day he died. This was mentioned by the hadith master (hafiz) Taqi al-Din Subki in his al-Sayf al-saqil (85). Abu Hayyan, in his own Qur’anic exegesis of Ayat al-Kursi (Qur’an 2:258) in surat al-Baqara, recorded something of what so completely changed his mind: I have read in the book of Ahmad ibn Taymiya, this individual whom we are the contemporary of, and the book is in his own handwriting, and he has named it Kitab al-‘arsh [The book of the Throne], that “Allah Most High is sitting (yajlisu) on the Kursi but has left a place of it unoccupied, in which to seat the Messenger of Allah (Allah bless him and give him peace)” [italics mine]. Al-Taj Muhammad ibn ‘Ali ibn ‘Abd al-Haqq Barinbari fooled him [Ibn Taymiya] by pretending to be a supporter of his so that he could get it from him, and this is what we read in it (al-Nahwi, Tafsir al-nahr al-madd, 1.254). This is of interest not only because it documents (at the pen of one of Islam’s greatest scholars) that Ibn Taymiya had a “double ‘aqida,” one for the public, and a separate anthropomorphic one for an inner circle of initiates—but also because when Abu Hayyan’s work was first printed on the margin of his longer exegesis al-Bahr al-muhit in Cairo by Matba‘a al-Sa‘ada in 1910, the whole passage was deleted—intentionally, as the guilty party later confessed to Muhammad Zahid Kawthari, who quotes the above passage in a footnote to al-Sayf al-saqil and then says:
This sentence is not in the printed exegesis al-Bahr [al-muhit], for the copy editor at Matba‘a al-Sa‘ada told me he found it so extremely revolting that he deemed it too enormous to ascribe to a Muslim, so he deleted it, so it would not be exploited by the enemies of the religion. He asked me to record that here by way of making up for what he had done, and as a counsel (nasiha) to Muslims (al-Sayf al-saqil, 85).
The deception was perpetrated anew when Abu Hayyan’s Tafsir al-nahr al-madd was printed on its own in Beirut with the same deletion by Dar al-Fikr in 1983, and was not rectified until Dar al-Janan and Mu’assasa al-Kutub al-Thaqafiyya in Beirut brought it out using original manuscripts of the work in 1987.
I think these examples are sufficient to give a general idea of the process, though the motives may differ from case to case. And Allah knows best.”
Answer
I do not know how widespread it is, but it certainly does exist. Of hard evidence that I have personally seen, there is the work that I am currently translating, Kitab al-adhkar [The book of remembrances of Allah] by Imam Nawawi. The text that Nawawi wrote in the Book of Hajj of the Adhkar reads:
“Section: The Visit to the Tomb of the Messenger of Allah (Allah Bless Him and Give Him Peace), and the Remembrances of Allah Made There”Know that everyone who performs the hajj should set out to visit the Messenger of Allah (Allah bless him and give him peace), whether it is on one’s way or not, for visiting him (Allah bless him and give him peace) is one of the most important acts of worship, the most rewarded of efforts, and best of goals.
When one sets out to perform the visit, one should do much of the blessings and peace upon him (Allah bless him and give him peace) on the way. And when one’s eye falls on the trees of Medina, and its sanctum and landmarks, one should increase saying the blessings and peace upon the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace), asking Allah Most High to benefit one by one’s visit to him (Allah bless him and give him peace), and grant one felicity in this world and the next through it. One should say, “O Allah, open for me the doors of Your mercy, and bestow upon me, through the visit to the tomb of Your prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace), that which You have bestowed upon Your friends, those who obey You. Forgive me and show me mercy, O Best of Those Asked” (al-Adhkar al-Nawawiyya, 283–84).
In the 1409/1988 printing of this work, published by Dar al-Huda in Riyad, Saudi Arabia, under the inspection and approval of the Riyasa Idara al-Buhuth al-‘Ilmiyya wa al-Ifta’ or “Presidency of Supervision of Scholarly Studies and Islamic Legal Opinion,” the same section has been changed to agree with Ibn Taymiya’s view that setting out to visit the Prophet’s tomb (Allah bless him and give him peace) is disobedience. (It only becomes permissible, according to this point of view, if one intends visiting the mosque of the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace).) The re-formed version reads as follows, italics showing the alterations made to Nawawi’s text:
“Section: The Visit to the Mosque of the Messenger of Allah (Allah Bless Him and Give Him Peace) [deletion]”
Know that it is preferable, for whoever wants to visit the Mosque of the Messenger of Allah (Allah bless him and give him peace), [deletion] to make much of the blessings and peace upon him (Allah bless him and give him peace) on the way. And when one’s eye falls on the trees of Medina, and its sanctum and landmarks, to increase saying the blessings and peace upon the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace), asking Allah Most High to benefit one by one’s visit to his mosque (Allah bless him and give him peace), and grant one felicity in this world and the next through it. One should say: “O Allah, open for me the doors of Your mercy, and bestow upon me, through the visit to the mosque of Your prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace), that which You have bestowed upon Your friends, those who obey You. Forgive me and show me mercy, O Best of Those Asked” (al-Adhkar, 295).
The same printing has completely dropped nearly a half page of the section of tawassul (supplicating Allah through the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace)) when visiting the Prophet’s tomb—apparently to promote the Wahhabi doctrine that this is shirk or “assigning co-sharers to Allah.”
They have attributed the above words to Imam Nawawi without mentioning that it has been altered in any way.
This should not surprise Westerners, who have had before them Muhammad Muhsin Khan’s translation of Sahih al-Bukhari for some years now. In it, we find Bukhari’s heading about the effects of the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace): “and of his hair, his sandals, and his vessels, of that which his Companions and others used to obtain blessings through after his death (yatabarraka bihi As-habuhu wa ghayruhum ba‘da wafatihi),” in which the words yatabarraka bihi have been rendered as “were considered as blessed things” in the English (Khan, Sahih al-Bukhari, 4.218). The Arabic verb tabarraka bihi signifies “He had a blessing; and he was, or became, blest; by means of him, or it” (Lane, Arabic-English Lexicon, 1.193), or often, “he looked for a blessing by means of,” or “regarded as a means of obtaining a blessing from,” him or it (ibid.)—in either case actually obtaining, or hoping to obtain, a blessing by means of these things, a nuance quite different from the passive “were considered as blessed,” which does not entail any special benefit from them.
Or consider the seventy-three-page “introduction” to volume one of this same translation, a tract that explains the Muslim Trinity: Tawhid al-Rububuyya, Tawhid al-Uluhiyya, and Tawhid al-Asma wa al-Sifat—the (1) Tawhid of Lordship, (2) Tawhid of Godhood, and (3) Tawhid of Names and Attributes. By way of preface to it, Dr. Khan notes that many Western converts enter Islam without knowing what belief in the Oneness of Allah really means. He clarifies that tawhid is not one; namely, to say and believe the shahada of Islam with complete conviction—as it was from the time of the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) until the advent of Ibn Taymiya seven centuries later—as new converts might imagine, but must now be three in order to be one, and cannot be one without being three. While such logic may be already familiar to converts from Christianity, Imam Bukhari (d. 256/870) certainly never knew anything of it, and its being printed as an “introduction” to his work seems to me to qualify as “tampering with classical texts”—aside from being a re-form of traditional ‘aqida, in which Islam, in the words of the Prophet of Islam (Allah bless him and give him peace), “is to testify that there is no god except Allah, and that Muhammad is the Messenger of Allah . . .” (Sahih Muslim, 1.37: 8).
Another example is found in the commentary of the famous Maliki scholar Ahmad Sawi (d. 1241/1825) on the Qur’anic exegesis Tafsir al-Jalalayn of Jalal al-Din Mahalli and Jalal al-Din Suyuti, in which he says of the verse “Truly, the Devil is an enemy to you, so take him as an enemy: he only calls his party to become of the inhabitants of the blaze” (Qur’an 35:6): It is said this verse was revealed about the Kharijites [foretelling their appearance], who altered the interpretation of the Qur’an and sunna, on the strength of which they declared it lawful to kill and take the property of Muslims—as may now be seen in their modern counterparts; namely, a sect in the Hijaz called “Wahhabis,” who “think they are on something, truly they are the liars. Satan has gained mastery over them and made them forget Allah’s remembrance. Those are Satan’s party, truly Satan’s party, they are the losers” (Qur’an 58:18–19). We ask Allah Most Generous to extirpate them completely (Sawi: Hashiya al-Sawi ‘ala al-Jalalayn, 3.255). This passage is quoted from the ‘Isa al-Babi al-Halabi edition published in Cairo around the 1930s. It was also printed in its entirety in the Maktaba al-Mashhad al-Husayni edition (3.307–8) published in Cairo in 1939, which was reproduced by offset by Dar Ihya’ al-Turath al-‘Arabi (3.307–8) in Beirut in the 1970s. By the early 1980s, the Salafi movement, or oil money, or some combination of the two, had generated enough of a market to tempt Dar al-Fikr in Beirut to offset the same old printing, but with a surreptitious change. In the third volume, part of the bottom line of page 307 and the top line of 308 have been whited out, eliminating the words “namely, a sect in the Hijaz called ‘Wahhabis,’” venally bowdlerizing the whole point of what the author is trying to say about the modern counterparts of the Kharijites in order to sell it to them. The deletion was virtually indistinguishable from an ordinary spacing mistake, coming as it does at the ends of the two pages, though Dar al-Fikr made up for any technical shortcomings in this respect in 1993 with a newly typeset four-volume version of Hashiya al-Sawi ‘ala al-Jalalayn, which its title page declares to be “a new and corrected (munaqqaha) printing.” The above passage appears on page 379 of the third volume with the same wording as the previous coverup, but this time in a continuous text, so no one would ever guess that Sawi’s words had been removed.
Or consider the example from the two-volume Qur’anic exegesis of Abu Hayyan al-Nahwi (d. 754/1353), Tafsir al-nahr al-madd [The exegesis of the far-stretching river] condensed mainly from his own previous eight-volume exegesis al-Bahr al-muhit [The encompassing sea], arguably the finest tafsir ever written based primarily on Arabic grammar. Abu Hayyan, of Andalusion origin, settled in Damascus, knew Ibn Taymiya personally, and held him in great esteem, until the day that Barinbari (d. 717/1317) brought him a work by Ibn Taymiya called Kitab al-‘arsh [The book of the Throne]. There they found, in Ibn Taymiya’s own handwriting (which was familiar to Abu Hayyan), anthropomorphic suggestions about the Deity that made Abu Hayyan curse Ibn Taymiya until the day he died. This was mentioned by the hadith master (hafiz) Taqi al-Din Subki in his al-Sayf al-saqil (85). Abu Hayyan, in his own Qur’anic exegesis of Ayat al-Kursi (Qur’an 2:258) in surat al-Baqara, recorded something of what so completely changed his mind: I have read in the book of Ahmad ibn Taymiya, this individual whom we are the contemporary of, and the book is in his own handwriting, and he has named it Kitab al-‘arsh [The book of the Throne], that “Allah Most High is sitting (yajlisu) on the Kursi but has left a place of it unoccupied, in which to seat the Messenger of Allah (Allah bless him and give him peace)” [italics mine]. Al-Taj Muhammad ibn ‘Ali ibn ‘Abd al-Haqq Barinbari fooled him [Ibn Taymiya] by pretending to be a supporter of his so that he could get it from him, and this is what we read in it (al-Nahwi, Tafsir al-nahr al-madd, 1.254). This is of interest not only because it documents (at the pen of one of Islam’s greatest scholars) that Ibn Taymiya had a “double ‘aqida,” one for the public, and a separate anthropomorphic one for an inner circle of initiates—but also because when Abu Hayyan’s work was first printed on the margin of his longer exegesis al-Bahr al-muhit in Cairo by Matba‘a al-Sa‘ada in 1910, the whole passage was deleted—intentionally, as the guilty party later confessed to Muhammad Zahid Kawthari, who quotes the above passage in a footnote to al-Sayf al-saqil and then says:
This sentence is not in the printed exegesis al-Bahr [al-muhit], for the copy editor at Matba‘a al-Sa‘ada told me he found it so extremely revolting that he deemed it too enormous to ascribe to a Muslim, so he deleted it, so it would not be exploited by the enemies of the religion. He asked me to record that here by way of making up for what he had done, and as a counsel (nasiha) to Muslims (al-Sayf al-saqil, 85).
The deception was perpetrated anew when Abu Hayyan’s Tafsir al-nahr al-madd was printed on its own in Beirut with the same deletion by Dar al-Fikr in 1983, and was not rectified until Dar al-Janan and Mu’assasa al-Kutub al-Thaqafiyya in Beirut brought it out using original manuscripts of the work in 1987.
I think these examples are sufficient to give a general idea of the process, though the motives may differ from case to case. And Allah knows best.”
SALAFI TAMPERING OF RAWDHA TALIBEEN:
An Islamic researcher stated: ”Recently I have been asked about Imam Nawawi’s ® stand on constructing and maintaining structures upon the graves of prophets and saints. I went through his famous book Rawdha Talibeen through an e-library called Makthbah Shamilah which offers thousands of classic books and is widely used by students. I was shocked to see the sentence has been tampered with. I went online to get the correct version, but to be shocked again to see it distorted. Praise to Almighty Allah as I continued my search until I found the exact text.
“What is striking is the divine dignity of Imam Nawawi ®. Those deceivers could not erase the sentence altogether but left behind crystal clear traces to inform the reader of a mischievous deletion! Subhan Allah. See the links and compare with the image below:
but it was very upsetting and shocking for me to be convinced of the widening deception and distortion in religious texts.”[Traditional Islamic School]”SALAFI TAMPERING OF ABU UTHMAN AL-SABUNI’S BOOK:
Abu-Uthman Al-Sabuni was a great Ashari and Sufi scholars. He along with Imam Al- Juwayni and Imam Al-Qushayri, was persecuted in the infamous ordeal which took place in Nishapur in modern day Iran and that had led many of them to depart their homeland. He was one of the scholars who signed on Al-Qushayri’s declaration in defence of Asha’aris. However, the book in the question has been published and printed by the Hashwiyya Wahhabis, and thus one can’t be sure of the authenticity of the text. Actually Shiekh ‘Al-Azhari’ of Rayaheen forum, http://cb.rayaheen.net/index.php, discovered some forgery in the different published copies of the book; take for example this early edition published in Kuwait. For details, please see
http://www.marifah.net/forums/topic/3246-examples-of-salafis-salafi-publishing-houses-tamperingalteringforging-texts/
and for various Arabic versions of Wahhabi publications for forgery. According to one version, if you can read Arabic you will see clearly in the footnote that the Wahhabi publisher mentions that he replaced the word ‘tomb’ in the original text by Imam Sabuni: “I traveled to Hijaz with intention to visit the tomb of Prophet Mohammed (sal Allahu alayhi wasallam)…” with the word ‘mosque’. The justification provided was of course that having such intention to visit the tomb is an act of polytheism ‘Shirk’! So Imam Sabuni is a ‘Mushrik’ and an idol worshiper and yet they boldly relate themselves to him! The odd thing is that each publisher wrote the name of the Imam on the cover differently. The first printed it ‘Abu Uthman Ismaiel ibn Abdulrahman’ which is correct, while the other printed ‘Abu Ismiel Abdulrahman ibn Ismaiel’ which is wrong.
SALAFI TAMPERING IN RUH AL-MA’ANI:
Shaykh Gibril Haddad informs us (2006-04-07):
“A sharp reader and unparalleled expert in rare books and manuscripts, Imam al-Kawthari long ago revealed that the printed version of Imam Mahmud ibn `Abd Allah al-Husayni al-Alusi al-Baghdadi's (1217-1270) tafsir entitled Ruh al-Ma`ani published by his "Salafi" son Nu`man al-Alusi in Bulaq (Egypt) in 1301 (then again twice by the Damascene "Salafi" Munir `Abduh Agha at his Muniriyya Press in Egypt) contained alterations and accretions from foreign hands, responsibility for which al-Kawthari laid squarely at the feet of Nu`man: "He cannot be trusted over the publication of his father's commentary, and if someone were to compare it [the latter edition] with the [autograph] manuscript kept today at the Raghib Basha library in Istanbul, which is the manuscript gifted by the author to the Sultan `Abd al-Majid Khan, one would certainly find in it what will make him certain of that."(1)
In his 1968 372-page book al-Alusi Mufassiran, Muhsin `Abd al-Hamid(2) petulantly denied the charge that there had been any tampering with the Tafsir as "a bizarre fiction," claiming he had compared the manuscript kept at Baghdad's general Awqaf library and found no discrepancies, and that he consulted with [the "Salafi"] Muhammad Bahjat [al-Baytar] and Munir al-Qadi who were of one mind with him.
Recently, in an internet communication on February 26, 2006 the Riyadh genealogist and historian of scholarship Dr. Muhammad ibn `Abd Allah Aal Rashid mentioned all of the above and commented:
"This claim [by Muhsin `Abd al-Hamid] avails us nothing, since al- Kawthari very precisely referred to the autograph manuscript and its location. In the Hajj of the year that just passed (1426) I met the researcher and teacher Ah.mad ibn `Abd al-Karim al-`Ani who informed me that the Imam al-A`zam Faculty in the city of Baghdad had tasked thirty Master's candidate students to prepare a critical edition of al-Alusi's commentary, Ruh al-Ma`ani, Ustadh al-`Ani being one of those students... and they were basing themselves on the manuscript indicated by Shaykh al-Kawthari. He told me that the printed version was indeed filled with alterations, tamperings, gaps and suppressions in many places, which confirms the words of Shaykh al-Kawthari that the printed version which is in circulation contains tamperings and suppressions."(3)
Notes:
(1) Al-Kawthari, Maqalat (p. 344) and marginalia on al-Subki's al-Radd `ala al-Nuniyya (p. 108)
(2) He also authored the 1983 book Jamal al-Din al-Afghani: al-Muslih. al-Muftara `alayh (Mu'assasat al-Risala).
(3) Muhammad Aal Rashid: http://www.elnafeas.net/montada/index.php?showtopic="38.
Was-Salam,
gibril”
DEOBANDI FABRICATION ON INTERNET.
The founder of the Wahabbi sect in the Indian Subcontient, Ismail Dehalvi wrote a book in Persisn called " Iza al Haq".
Once the book is downloaded you can see that page number 76 and 77 is missing from the uploaded book. Page number 76 and 77 contains this passage from Ismail Dehlavi,which shows his belief :
Ismail Dehalvi writes:
“ to have this belief that Allah is free of time, location , direction and that Allah will be seen without a direction ( on the day of Judgement) all this is Biddah”.
Ismail Dehalvi says to make “tawil” of ayat e mutashabihāt is Biddah “
“ to have this belief that Allah is free of time, location , direction and that Allah will be seen without a direction ( on the day of Judgement) all this is Biddah”.
Ismail Dehalvi says to make “tawil” of ayat e mutashabihāt is Biddah “
Next, the Wahhabis have been caught fabricating Ghuniya Al Talibeen written by Sayed Shaykh Abdul Qadir Gilani [ Radi allahu ta'ala]. Under the chapter of "Taraweeh" , all the printed editon of Ghuniya Al Talibeen has twenty rakats. Shaykh Abdul Qadir Gilani [ Radia allahu ta'ala] writes " The rakats for Taraweeh salah is TWENTY" . In the Urdu book, Ghuniya Al Talibeen , page 591, published by Maktaba Saudiya , Hadith Manzil, Pakistan, the words are shamelessly changed to a total of 11 raka’at. All the four school of Jurispudence( Fiqh) , all the salaf as-saliheen have narrated the rakat of tarawweh as twenty. Till this date , the number of taraweeh rakat performed in Madina al- Munawwara is twenty . All the muslims are united since last fourteen hundred years that the number of rakat for taraweeh salah is TWENTY. Only the wahabis [who follow Ibn Abdal Wahhab Najdi al-Tamimi , Albani and his company] adhere to EIGHT rakat Taraweeh which has no basis in Fiqh. In any case, according to Shaykh Haddad, “As for the Ghunya: it is not an integrally preserved text and the copies we have today are corrupt. “ Be that as it may, there are many hadith narrations which prove the case for twenty rak'ahs, but some of these narrations are less authentic than others, nevertheless they are weighty enough to back each other up and raise the level of authentication to at least Hasan (good). To take just an example: Al-Imam al-Hafiz Jamaluddin al-Zayla'i has recorded in his book Nasb ur-Rayah that: "Al-Bayhaqi has related in al-Marifa (via the following chain of transmission): Abu Tahir al-Faqih -> Abu Uthman al-Basri -> Abu Ahmad Muhammad ibn Abdal Wahhab -> Khalid ibn Mukhallad -> Muhammad ibn Ja'far -> Yazid ibn Khaseefah -> Sa'eeb ibn Yazid, who said: 'In the time of Umar ibn al-Khattab (radiallahu anhu) the people used to observe 20 rak'ahs and the witr.' Al-Nawawi said in al-Khulasa: 'Its Isnad is Sahih.'"
TAMPERING OF KASHF AL-KURBAH FI WASFI HALI AHL AL-GHURBAH
Next, Imam ibn Rajab Hanbali (1335-1393 c.e.) the Sunni Hafidh refuted those who do not adhere to one of the four Schools of Thought (Madhhab). The Salafis/Wahhabis have tampered one of his books called Kashf al-Kurbah fi Wasfi Hali Ahl al-Ghurbah as brother Abdullah of yanabi.com gives us an example:
“The Salafiyyah refuse to translate the last part of Kashf-ul-Kurbah fee wasfi Haali Ahlil-Ghurbah by Ibn Rajab al-Hanbalee (Rahimullaah) and this is what they have to say about it in the introduction to the book: [‘...And he categorizes this Strangeness into several types – both inner and outer. It must be noted that Ibn Rajab uses several weak ahaadeeth in this treatise, which have been pointed out. And towards the end of his treatise, he begins to divert from the topic by going deep into the issue of inner strangeness, sometimes focusing on aspects that have no basis in Islaam, such as talk about the ‘Aarif, wajd, khulwah, etc. These were Sufi ideas that were prevalent during his time. In his introduction to his abridgement and checking of Ibn Rajab’s monumental book “Jaami’-ul-‘Uloom wal-Hikam”, Shaikh Saleem Al-Hilaalee said: “Ibn Rajab (rahimahullaah) treaded the Manhaj of the Salaf with regard to the issues of Eemaan and acquiring knowledge. And he supported it and defended it from the false arguments of the opponents. His books are loaded with that. And he wrote some treatises specifically on this topic such as his book ‘Bayaan Fadlu ‘Ilm-is-Salaf ‘alaal-Khalaf.’ However, there can be found traces of Sufism in his books, may Allaah protect him from inclining towards it’s dangerous paths, due to what Allaah has given him from vast knowledge of the Narrations and a clear Salafee Methodology.” (Iqaadh-ul-Himam: pg. 9)’]
“Also the Salafiyyah leave this astonishing note at the end of the book: [This is where we will end the translation of the treatise. As stated in the introduction, the Imam goes into discussion of themes founded upon Sufi concepts which have no basis in Islaam and which have little benefit, so All praise is due to Allaah through whose Grace all good deeds are completed.]”
“Also the Salafiyyah leave this astonishing note at the end of the book: [This is where we will end the translation of the treatise. As stated in the introduction, the Imam goes into discussion of themes founded upon Sufi concepts which have no basis in Islaam and which have little benefit, so All praise is due to Allaah through whose Grace all good deeds are completed.]”
How low can the fabricators stoop should be clear enough from the examples of the Salafi tamperings. Evidently, to their utter discredit, they are hell-bent on correcting the works of the giant Islamic scholars in order to suit their Salafiyya/ Wahhabiyya creed.
Tamperings to continue, Insha Allah.
NASIR.
