Abū Masʿūd al-Anṣārī relates that he said to Huḍhayfah (رضي الله عنه): “Advise me.” So he replied:
Indeed, it is true misguidance that you acknowledge what you used to reject [as error, falsehood) and you reject what you used to acknowledge [as truth]. Beware of fickleness in Allāh’s religion, for Allāh’s religion is one.
Related by Ibn Baṭṭāh in al-Ibānah al-Kubrā (1/189), ʿAbd al-Razzāq in his Muṣannaf (no. 20454), al-Baghawī in the Musnad ʿAlī bin al-Jaʿd (no. 3038).
Al-Talawwun is fickleness, which means to be unstable, unsteady, inconsistent, to change one's colours, meaning to change one’s mind, one’s position, one's loyalties and be unreliable.
Muḥammad bin Sīrīn (رحمه الله) relates that ʿAdiyy bin Ḥātim (رحمه الله) said:
Indeed, you will never cease to be upon goodness so long as you do not acknowledge what you used to reject and reject what you used to acknowledge, and so long as your scholar speaks [truth] among you without fear.
Related by Ibn Baṭṭah in al-Ibānah al-Kubrā (1/190).
Ibn Baṭṭāh brings the following three narrations in al-Ibānah al-Kubrā:[1]
Ibrāhīm al-Nakahʾī (رحمه الله) said:
They used to dislike fickleness in religion.
He also said:
They used to consider fickleness in religion to be from the heart’s doubt in Allāh.
And Imām Mālik (رحمه الله) said:
The incurable (chronic) disease is changing [positions] in religion!
The scholars have explained that rejecting what you once knew and affirming what you once rejected is a sign of doubt in religion, and likewise, absence of sincerity, and absence of initial grounding in religion through knowledge, understanding and comprehenion.
Over the last 3 decades many tribulations came to Ahl al-Sunnah, particularly from people claiming Salafiyyah who tried to infuse reformulated Ikhwānī principles into the minds and hearts of Salafis, whether that is in the direction of laxity and softness (Mumayyiʿah), or extremism and harshness (Ḥaddādiyyah). We praise Allāh for the scholars who spoke and wrote much in clarification of these issues and in exposing the misguided ones, whether in the east or west. Along the way, many people fell and deserted Ahl al-Sunnah and every now and then they resurface with their grievances, especially in the era of social media, trying to build audiences around victimhood and trying to blame their own woes upon others, when in reality, they are victims of their own weakness, their attachment to the world (being put to trial with it), and absence of loyalty to truth.
Those who change their colours and flip, reverting to what they once considered error and falsehood, and turning their back on what they once professed to be truth, then they are deserters of Ahl al-Sunnah. They expose themselves in that their association and attachment to the truth that they once knew was perhaps for ulterior motives, whether wealth or status or lusts and the likes, from those worldly things that motivate people, and was not with true conviction.
We ask Allāh for sincerity and firmness in His religion and protection from trials and tribulations.
Footnotes
1. Kitāb al-Īmān (2/505-506)