Ibn Baaz Asked About Interacting with Innovators and Knowing When to Boycott Them or Not
December 22, 2013 § Leave a comment
Questioner: What do you advise us with concerning interacting with innovators who we see and speak to and deal with almost every day?
Ibn Baaz: It is obligatory to boycott them for their innovations, if they openly exhibit innovations then it is obligatory to boycott them after having advised and directed them, because a Muslim advises his brother and warns him from open innovations and sins which Allaah has forbidden him, so if he repents [then that is what is desired] and if not then he deserves to be boycotted, and he is dealt with in this manner so that maybe he will repent, maybe he will feel remorse, maybe he will come back to the truth.
Unless the boycotting will result in something whose end is not praiseworthy, then it is not carried out—if leaving off boycotting is better in terms of [bringing that person closer to the] religion and greater in good and closer to being successful, then he is not to boycott him but instead continues to advise him and warns him about the falsehood [that he is in] and he does not boycott him, hoping that Allaah will guide him due to that.
For the believer is like a doctor, if he sees that a cure is beneficial, he carries it out, and when he sees that it is not, he leaves it—so boycotting falls under the category of being a cure, if it has a good effect and is of benefit, he does so, [implementing it] as a form of cure, [hoping] that he may repent and may turn back from his mistake when he sees that his brothers have ostracised him.
But if the boycotting results in greater evil and an increase in the [number of the] people of evil and helps them—then he is not to be ostracised but rather sincerely advised and directed continually and shown the abhorrence of what he has done and he does not show him that he agrees with the falsehood that he carries out, but [he does] persist in advising him sincerely and directing [him].
Fataawaa Nurun ’alad-Darb, vol. 3, p. 40.
Gifts of Knowledge 
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