Ayatollah Ja’far Sobhani has given a lecture on Wahhabism as part of a series of lectures entitled “Theology and Islamic Thought” that he has been delivering in the holy city of Mashhad.
Ayatollah Sobhani explained that the belief system of Wahhabism is an anathema to true Islam. Pointing to the origins of the deviant Wahhabi sect, he explained that Wahhabis believe that for a span of 600 years that all Muslims had deviated from true Islam and had become polytheists until the arrival of Muhammad ibn Abdul-Wahhab, who they claimed was the reviver of monotheism and true Islam. He also explained that the creation and growth of Wahhabism was sponsored by the United Kingdom as part of a scheme to destroy true Islam.
He explained the Wahhabis believe that if any person prays by the grave of a prophet, imam or a righteous person, than that person has committed the sin of idolatry as the Wahhabis believe that it will lead to the worship of the person in the grave. They seek to completely destroy the holy mosque built over the Prophet Muhammad’s grave in Madinah, but they have not yet gained enough power to do it. His Eminence gave the example of the People of the Cave mentioned in the Quran as proof that pilgrimage to graves is not prohibited by Islamic law.
In his lecture Ayatollah Sobhani pointed out that the beliefs of the Wahhabi sect are in contrast to what the Holy Quran teaches: “If building a mosque and praying beside the graves of the People of the Cave was considered idolatry, then why does God allow the pious people of the town to build a place of worship over the graves of these men of God?!” Thus, verse 21 of Surat al-Kahf proves that building a mosque over the graves of the men of God or to respect a place of burial as a place of worship of God is permissible and disproves the Wahhabis errant claims that respecting the graves of the prophets and imams is prohibited. His Eminence also stated that we have been told that praying at the Station of Abraham beside the Ka’bah in has a lot of blessings. “If respecting a holy site considered idolatry, than why is it part of our Hajj pilgrimage?” he asked rhetorically.
At the end of his lecture, Ayatollah Sobhani explained that all our efforts should be to unite the Islamic community in order to distance ourselves from the vicious Takfiri ideology: “All our efforts should be to bring Muslims together and to repudiate Takfirism.”
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