et tu? fuqaha made this distinction out of carefulness in takfir, that does not mean a person is allowed to speak ambiguous things all the time. suppose aziz mian is a sufi. suppose what he said is a very lofty idea. but do you think the thousands who see it, get it? or does it embolden them towards repeating these and worser things? the words themselves are kufr, the ruling on the utterer is best left to a mufti. rejecting the opinion of a man is not the same as rejecting the man except for RasulAllah sallallahu `alayhi wa sallam. but unfortunately, people are blurring the distinction. there is an old song hindi which goes: pat'thar ke sanam tujhe ham ne muhabbat ka khuda jaana o my beloved with a heart of stone! we took you to be the god of love. [sanam means idol, but in urdu it also means 'beloved'. literally the line is 'idol of stone' but a metonymy meaning 'a beloved with a heart of stone'] do you think people should not bother about it because someone can claim, that the second line exonerates the first: badi bhool huwi arey ham se, ye kya samjha ye kya jaana it was a great mistake that i did, what did i think! what did i know! ---- now, such a line should be rejected outright. because people don't know what it entails and will keep repeating such kufriyyat while they should be doing zikr. do you think it makes sense if i bring imam ghazali's proof from ihya that sama'a that is permissible is a man singing love-poems to his wife to amuse her or further love in their marriage. therefore such a line [as above] cannot be ruled out. [for those who didn't get it: i am saying you cannot] i think such reasoning is absurd. RasulAllah sallallahu `alayhi wa sallam said that a man utters a thing which will make him fall into hell and he is unaware of it. should we not be afraid of it? ---- Allah ta'ala knows best.
as-salamu alaikum, I found the following interesting quotes quoted elsewhere which may be relevant to the Aziz Mian thread: http://seekingilm.com/archives/58#more-58
