11 - Rashid Rida, with the pen in his own hand, goes on having the religion reformer and the preacher converse with each other. While praising the religion reformer and lauding him to the skies, he belittles and abhors the preacher in every respect. He ascribes his own hasty, stupid statements to the preacher.

In this book, we shall not deal with what Rashid Rida wrote as a religion reformer. But we shall write down the answers which suit the preacher's tongue, instead of the answers which he deems worthy of the preacher. We believe that after reading with attention our dear readers and pure, true men with a religious duty will understand well the inner nature of the freemasonic ruse.

A preacher cannot be so ignorant as to think that the definitions of iman in logic, sociology, anatomy, and even in fiqh and tasawwuf, are the same, for, he has to be a man of knowledge who has studied and understood them during his advanced studies in the madrasa. But, if he, instead of being educated in a madrasa, has been educated in the Jami' al-Azhar after the reformations were made there by the Mufti of Cairo, Muhammad 'Abduh (d. 1323/1905) and his novices, he will confuse these definitions with each other, since the freemasons abrogated scientific and advanced religious courses at the madrasas both in the Ottoman Empire and in Egypt. They produced modernist religion reformers who were ignorant in Islam.

A preacher is a Muslim who knows what backbiting (ghiba) means. He knows that a word which is said about a group is not backbiting, though the religion reformer may not know the fact.

12 - The religion reformer says:

"Is it compatible with reason to deny what we see for the sake of the groundless words which we call 'ijma' or 'unanimity'?"

He makes fun of the basic teachings of Islam and claims that the word ijma' does not have a foundation. Scholars of fiqh learned it from the hadith ash-Sharif, "My umma will not have ijma' (that is, they will not agree) on heresy!" But how could the religion reformer know this fact! He has not heard it from his so-called modern masters!

Ijma' (consensus) was the agreement of the ijtihads of contemporary mujtahids of a century with one another. There has been no mujtahid mutlaq [See Article 40.] after the fourth century, and there has been no ijma' since then. The ijma's in the preceding centuries were to be used as proofs and documents by the mujtahids of the posterior centuries. Unanimity among the muqallids, the ignorant or especially among the religion reformers cannot be called ijma'. The soundest, the most valuable ijma' was the ijma' of as-Sahabat al-kiram. The scholars who succeeded them collected information about those matters which had been communicated as ijma' and wrote them in their books. The information on those matters on which there had been no unanimity and the words of non-mujtahids were strictly prevented from being called ijma'.

According to the scholars of Ahl as-Sunnat, al-adillat ash-Shariyya, that is, the sources from which Islamic rules were derived, are four: the Book, the Sunnat, qiyas al-fuqaha' and ijma' al-Umma. The Book is the Qur'an al-karim. The Sunnat is he Hadith ash-Sharif. These two are also called "Nass." Qiyas al-fuqaha' is composed of the ijtihads of the scholars who were mujtahids. One who says that ijma' is not a dalil (documentary evidence) does not become a disbeliever. He becomes a man of bidat, for he says it out of explaining away (tawil) the dubious nasses. The Kharijites and other la-madhhabi people are as such. Their words opposing ijma' do not result in disbelief. However, it causes disbelief for those ignoramuses who are unaware of tawil to express their ideas and thoughts unconformable to ijma'.

A preacher does not talk out of imagination or supposition. He does not base his decision on possibilities. He knows that it is not permissible to talk without sufficient knowledge or to decide through supposition. He does not deny what he sees, but he studies and experiments, for, the Qur'an al-karim and the Hadith ash-Sharif order Muslims to think, to study and to experiment, and commend those who do so. The book 'Aqa'id an-Nasafi, which he should have read in a madrasa and which the religion reformer would not even have heard of, writes about the means for acquiring knowledge on its very first page.

13 - He represents the preacher as a man who does not believe in geography or newspapers and who does not accept what disbelievers report. See the slander against the preacher! Muslims do believe in scientific knowledge, but they do not get deceived by the lies which non-Muslims say under the mask of science. Trying to deceive Muslims and blemish Islamic religion, those kafirs, who are not aware of science, and pretending as scientists, saying lies in the form of scientific knowledge are called (Science bigots), or (Religion reformers) or (Zindiqs). These are separatists who slander both Islam and the science. If Muslims had not believed in geography, would they have studied this branch of knowledge? The names and authors of the geography books that make known Muslims' studies and discoveries in this field are written in the books Kashf az-zunun and Mawduat al-ulum and also in Brockelmann's German Geschichte der Arabischen Literatur. Let us ask the religion reformer: who measured first the length of one meridian on the Sinjar Desert? Weren't they the Muslims of Ahl as-Sunnat who belonged to one of the four madhhabs? Won't a Muslim who follows their path and who is like them believe in scientific knowledge?

Moreover, it is a squalid slander against Muslims to ascribe the statement, "Geography is a branch of knowledge belonging to non-Muslims, so it is not acceptable," to a preacher. An ignorant person, a zindiq or a religion reformer who disguises himself as a preacher may speak so nonsensically. But it would be enmity against Islam to say that an honorable Muslim following one of the four madhhabs spoke so.

The madhhabs do not prohibit science, technology, calculation or experimentation; why, then, should a person who follows a madhhab prohibit them? The madhhabs commend them and order muqallids to learn them. A person who does not believe or learn them cannot be a follower of an imam al-madhhab. It befits the enemies of the madhhabs to attribute such words to a follower of a madhhab.

14 - A preacher could not be so ignorant as to take the humble, poor and contemptible state Muslims are in as a sign of the imminence of Doomsday, for, the imam al-madhhab whom he follows, reported that there would be wealth, excessiveness, many buildings and much fornication towards Doomsday. A muqallid should know this fact, too. If he does not know it, he is the follower of no madhhab. The aimmat al-madhahib said that people would become evil after Hadrat al-Mahdi [See the books Endless Bliss and Belief and Islam for detail information about Hadrat al-Mahdi.] and before him there will be many days of happiness. Muslims should live these happy days and, therefore, work and make progress materially and spiritually. Allahu ta'ala will certainly reward the one who works.

15 - The religion reformer uses the term "the concept of the Mahdi" about Hadrat al-Mahdi. He says he does not believe that Hadrat al-Mahdi will come in the future. The religion reformer, a zindiq, may not, but Muslims should believe that he will come since all the 'ulama' of Islam unanimously write that he will come. Such great scholars as al-Imam as-Suyuti and Ibn Hajar al-Makki (d. 974/1566) wrote books about Hadrat al-Mahdi. They quoted what more than two hundred hadiths said about him and the alamat (signs) of his coming in the future.