Advice to Our Brothers the Scholars of Najd - al-Rifa'i Sayyid Yusuf Hashim

The Kuwait Minister of Communications then Minister of State, educator, world caller to Allah, learned scholar of Prophetic descent and spiritual guide of the Rifāʿī Tariqa as well as lineage, Sayyid Abū Yaʿqūb Yūsuf b. Sayyid Hāshim b. Sayyid Aḥmad al-Rifāʿī al-Ḥusaynī al-Shāfiʿī (1351-1439/1932-2018) is the author of al-Radd al-Muḥkam al-Manīʿ ʿalā Ibn Manīʿ (The Decisive Refutation of Ibn Manīʿ), also known as Adillat Ahl al-Sunna wal-Jamāʿa (The Proofs of Sunnis Against Wahhabis) originally written in defense of Sayyid Muhammad b. Alawi al-Maliki; al-Ṣufiyya wal-Taṣawwuf (Sufis and Sufism); Khawāṭir fīl-Siyāsa wal-Mujtamaʿ (Thoughts on Politics and Society); and al-Imām al-Sayyid Aḥmad al-Rifāʿī.

The translator first met Sayyid Yusuf in 1996 at the first International Islamic Unity Conference organized by Mawlana Shaykh Hisham Kabbani in Los Angeles, California. He subsequently kept company with him in his dīwān of Mezzeh in Damascus and at his side in his visits to the Rifaʿī tribe in Rankūs and other areas of Syria from 1997 to 2006. He read with him Imam al-Suyūṭī's al-Khaṣāʾiṣ al-Ṣughrā and al-Shaʿrānī's Tanbīh al-Ghāfilīn. He was graced with authorization from him in the Rifāʿī Tariqa and Hadith narration in 1424/2003 and vibrant forewords for two of his books, The Four Imams and Their Schools and The Damascus Answers on the Sufi Issues.

Review by Imam Muhammad Sa'id Ramadan al-Buti

I read this epistle of his. All it took to make me read it was its title that shines with the marks of appreciation for others, purity of purpose, and the motivation of cooperation in the way of seeking Divine good pleasure: Advice to Our Brothers the Scholars of Najd. Had I seen something contrary to these elements in the title I would not have paid any attention to the book nor wasted dearly precious time reading it.

When I began to read it I saw exactly what conformed with the promise of the title and fulfilled it: a quiet, kind reminder and counsels that show true jealous concern over the Religion of Allah as well as pure concern for those brethren lest they stray from the path of Allah.

I reviewed the counsels of my brother, Sayyid Yusuf al-Rifa'i, to those brothers from the first to the last. Then I weighed those counsels in the scales of the Divine Law as I understand them to be, its proofs, and its source-texts. I found him in the right in all of his advices and warnings to them. More than that, he is truly speaking, in this capacity, in the name of all the Ulema of the Muslims who follow the guidance of the Qur'an and Sunna and tread the path and method of the pious Predecessors, whoever and wherever they are.