subhan Allah! Allah bless Shaykh GF Haddad for his unrelenting honesty in defining and defending the Ahlus Sunnah against all the corrupt heresies around in this day and age. May Allah keep us all on Ahlus Sunnah's true aqidah and lovers of His Darling صلى الله عليه وسلم for all eternity. amen! p.s. The quoted text is so powerful and succint a definition of Ahlus Sunnah that I suggest to the Admin to use it on the homepage of Sunniport permanently.
http://www.abc.se/~m9783/fiqhi/sp1-gfh_e.html#41 How do we know if scholars are ahle sunnah ahle jamaat? Is there a special verification system one must take into consideration? If so what is the verification system so we may use it when we are reading books written by scholars we haven’t heard of. Wa `alaykum as-Salam Sunnis hold the greatest love for the Prophet, upon him blessings and peace, his Family, and all his Companions. Further, they hold in the highest respect the imams and righteous followers of the schools of Ahl al-Sunna on three broad lines: 1. The schools of doctrine i.e. Ash`aris and Maturidis. 2. The schools of jurisprudence i.e. Hanafis, Malikis, Shafi`is, Hanbalis. 3. The schools of tasawwuf i.e. the known Tariqas. When you detect the slightest whiff of disrespect for any of the above, you have been given the first sign that you are in the presence of a disconnected, unbeneficial person. The early sufis recognized such persons even from a distance, from their appearance. Hence the saying of one of the sufis in the hadith Master al-Malini's _Forty hadiths from the Sufi Shuyukh_: "One whose appearance does not benefit you, his words will not benefit you either" i.e. since his appearance does not remind you of Allah Most High, do not expect his words to.
mashaAllah In Iran, we have a deep sense of madhab following entrenched in our culture itself, but not to the point of ta'assub however. For example, even though the Baluch and the Farisis in southern Iran live next to each other, we still have the farisis following the shafi'i madhab strictly, and the Baluch following the Hanafi madhab strictly, and both talking quite openly about the other being of the other madhab, but not to the point of ta'assub as the stupid wahabi claim. In southern Iran, the situation is very similar to al-ahsa in Saudi 'Arabia. There too infact, you can find all the 4 madhabs inside single towns being practiced in masjids. Many of our Iranian sunni scholars from southern Iran go to the eastern province of saudi to study. The baluch go to Pakistan as well and a lot go to India, especially in the south.
Ahl as-Sunna (wa’l-Jamâ’a): the true pious Muslims who follow as-Sahâbat al-kirâm. These are called Sunnî Muslims. A Sunnî Muslim adapts himself to one of the four Madhhabs. These Madhhabs are Hanafî, Mâlikî, Shâfi’î and Hanbalî.
