26. Abū Sālih Muhammad bin Ahmad bin Thābit narrated to me, he said: Abu al ‘Abbās Muhammad bin Yūnus narrated to us, he said: Ibrāhīm bin Nasr narrated to us, he said: I heard al Fudayl bin ‘Iyād, saying:
How will you be if you lived till a time wherein you witnessed people who don’t differentiate between truth and falsehood, and nor between the believer and the disbeliever, and nor between the trustworthy and the treacherous, and nor between the ignorant and the scholar, and nor do they recognise good, and nor do they renounce evil.
💠 The Shaykh (Ibn Battah) said: So indeed to Allah we belong and to Him we return, for indeed we have reached this, and have heard it, and we have seen with our own eyes most of it, and have witnessed it, so if a man from amongst those who Allah has gifted with proper intellect, and penetrating insight, so he scrutinised, and constantly used his thinking, and pondered upon the matter of Islam and its people, and traversed with its people the intended path, and the rightly guided way, it would become clear to him that the majority and most common and famous of the people have indeed retreated, and apostatised, so they have gone past the destination, and turned away from the correct evidence, and indeed many people have begun to think as good what they used to think of as bad, and have made permissible what they used to prohibit, and have accepted what they used to renounce, and this is not – May Allah have mercy on you – the characteristics of the Muslims, and nor the actions of those who had insight regarding this religion, and nor of those who believe in it and have certainty. [Al Ibānah al Kubrā 📚, by Ibn Battah, Vol 1, pg 53