One of the top priorities in this degenerate age is the purification of the Sufi household from within, from the intruders, impostors, and pretenders. What is the point of engaging the deniers of the path so long as such pollution festers among the people of spiritual affiliation?

(This, of course, comes after securing the fundamental principles upon which this noble way is built—foremost among them its foundation upon the Book and the Sunna, understood through the people of truth among the four canonical schools of law, and the two great theological traditions: those who engaged in figurative interpretation of the multi-valent passages in the Quran and Sunna ascribing things to God (al-muʾawwila) and those who entrusted the understanding of such reports to God (al-mufawwiḍa).

The first includes the Ashʿarites and the Māturīdītes, the second the Mufawwida among the Zahiris, and the intelligent among the Ḥanbalī school.

Thus, there is no sainthood outside the circle of Ahl al-Sunna—and this is not arbitrary or presuming to speak on behalf of God—God forbid—but because divine decree itself has ordained that no sainthood belongs to an innovator until he returns to the creed of the people of truth.

Without doubt, the strengthening of the deniers of the Sufi path and the increase of their boldness is a chastisement from God Most High for the deviation and disorder that have arisen within the paths of His elect.)

These intruders are of various kinds:

1. The Trumpets and Servants of Tyrants

Those who serve the oppressors, obeying their commands and seeking their pleasure before the pleasure of God—men who have sold their religion for the world of others. Their evil is known, for the Prophet—God bless him and give him peace—warned against them, saying, “The worst of scholars are those who go to the doors of rulers.”

This, he said, in the days of just and pious rulers among the caliphs; what then shall we say of the traitorous despots now ruling over the lands of the Muslims—those who side with the enemies of God and abhor His law, such as the wretch of Egypt and his like!

2. The Partisans of the Rāfiḍites

A group among the foolish Sufis imagine that there exists between us and the Rāfiḍa some kinship or connection. They share with them a hatred of many of the noble Companions—some declare this openly, others conceal it.

They are numerous in certain branches of the Shādhilī order, such as among the Ghumāriya, parts of the Kattānīya, and many of the Rifāʿiyya of the East, and others besides.

As for the ʿAzzamiyya and their like—those who have cast off the very mantle of the Islamic faith—they have no lineage among the Sufi masters at all; they are Rāfiḍis in essence and creed.

3. The Heretics, Antinomians, and Batinis

These are they who make light of God’s Law, glorying in strange sayings and rarefied notions, proclaiming the unity of religions and a false universal love. Mention before them the Sacred Law or the Prophetic Sunna, and they belittle, mock, and despise it. There is no doubt in the mind of any sane believer concerning the infidelity of such people.

As for what is beneath these—such as what is observed among some of the Sufis: weakness of understanding, spiritual veiling, false claims to shaykhhood, want of a true spiritual guide, laxity in observing the Sacred Law, or excessive partisanship and fanatic attachment to a particular orientation or master—these are flaws that have ever accompanied the people of the path and never wholly departed from them. Yet they do not approach in gravity the corruptions already mentioned.

~Shaykh Ahmad al-Hadi al-Hasani al-Tijani