Question:
What is your advice to someone who sits with those who oppose [the truth], and uses the excuse that there are few lessons from the people of the truth?
Shaykh 'Abdullah al-Bukhari:
This is something very strange! I say that this is something very strange! Do you sit with the people of innovation because of the small number of people of the Sunnah?! Or because of the small number of people of the Sunnah who give lessons?! Lā ḥawla wa lā quwwata illā billāh!
This question, the answer to it... its absurdity makes it unnecessary to refute, it needs no further answer. By Allāh, it is better for you to meet Allāh while you have sat with “the few,” as he calls it, the small number of lessons, or while you have listened to the people of knowledge, virtue, and pure Sunnah…
And alḥamdulillāh, Allāh has made it easy to listen to these recordings: [the recordings of] our Shaykh al-Imām ‘Abdul-‘Azīz bin Bāz, and our Shaykh al-‘Allāmah al-‘Uthaymīn, and many other imams and scholars of Islam whose lessons have been recorded, such as Shaykh al-Fawzān, may Allāh preserve him, and our Shaykh ‘Abdul-Muḥsin al-‘Abbād, may Allāh preserve him, and our Shaykh ‘Ubayd (al-Jābirī), may Allāh have mercy on him, and Shaykh (Aḥmad) an-Najmī, may Allāh have mercy on him, and others, may Allāh have mercy on them all, and may He protect those who are still alive, from those I have mentioned and those I have not mentioned from the scholars.
Alḥamdulillāh, the recordings are available, you can listen, you can read their books and listen to their recordings and understand according to your ability. This is better than sitting with those people (of innovations). Even if you had only one recording of some of them, and you were to die in that state while being upon the pure Sunnah, that is better for you than sitting with those people! This is better for you than sitting with them!! Because they are sick and infected with innovations and desires!
Among the conditions that the scholars have mentioned, such as al-Māwardī and others in Adab ad-Dunyā wad-Dīn, and others… Among the conditions for a companion, meaning the person you accompany, that they have mentioned: do not accompany a fool, nor such-and-such person… and also not an innovator! Because innovation spreads and infiltrates! This applies to accompanying, let alone sitting and learning from them! And I don’t need to elaborate further on the statements of the imams of knowledge about dissociating from the people of innovation, not sitting with them, and not learning from them.
Why do people abandon the foundations and follow this kind of desire?! We ask Allāh for safety and well-being, I seek refuge in Allāh!
May Allāh guide everyone to what pleases Him, and may Allāh's ṣalāt and salām be upon the Messenger of Allāh and his family and companions.
Translation: Yāsīn ibn Jamāl