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Balancing between the mention of the good and bad points of a person, known as "al-Muwāzanah", when criticising, refuting and warning, this is a principle invented by the people of ḥizbiyyah (partisanship) and political activism a few decades ago in order to shield their ideological figureheads from criticism and to undermine the evidence based refutations of the Salafi scholars against these figureheads who have with them great innovations such as those of the Jahmiyyah, the Rāfiḍah, the Khawārij, the Ṣūfiyyah and others.
They basically said that when disparaging or refuting, one must mention the good about the one being disparaged, lest one fall into injustice and oppression. However, after the Major Scholars demolished this principle, others came along and tried to water down the affair through other principles or misinterpretations of the speech of some of the scholars.
Deviants such as Salmān al-ʿAwdah, ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ʿAbd al-Khāliq, ʿAdnān ʿArʿūr, Abū al-Ḥasan al-Maʾribī, ʿAlī Ḥasan al-Ḥalabī and Ibrāhīm al-Ruḥaylī were some of those who played a role in undermining the way of the Salaf in refuting and warning against the deviants and innovators.
While the earlier ones who first laid down these foundations, spoke of the necessity and obligation of mentioning the good alongside the evil—and the falsehood of this is clear, the later ones among them tried to justify mention of the good through other routes.
For example, some of them tried to justify it by invoking the principle of the maṣlaḥah, the beneficial interest, or the need. Meaning, that to make the criticism more acceptable to people, you speak about the good points of the one being refuted, and this comes down to the determination, the evaluation, the ijtihād of the one refuting or advising.
However, this is an error, and comprises an attempt to justify what these people of ḥizbiyyah were doing of working with the Jamʿiyyāt, or taking money from them, or maintaining ties with those disparaged and refuted by the Major Scholars. They tried to water down the angle of disparagement, refutation and warning and the objectives behind them.
Hence, caution is needed in this subject matter as there are intricacies that should be understood.
What follows are translations of the clarifications of the Major Scholars from the late 1990s which were translated, published and distributed to counter the revolutionary Ikhwānī daʿwah of Abū al-Ḥasan al-Maʾribī, who had turned his back on much of what he knew and had revealed his true colours after the passing of the Major Scholars—Shaykh Bin Bāz, Shaykh al-Albānī, Shaykh Ibn ʿUthaymīn, Shaykh Muqbil (رحمهم الله) at the turn of the century.