In the Name of Allah, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful

Editor's Introduction

All praise is due to Allah; we praise Him, seek His forgiveness, and seek refuge in Allah from the evils of ourselves and the bad consequences of our deeds. Whomever Allah guides, none can lead astray, and whomever He leads astray, none can guide. I bear witness that there is no god but Allah alone, without partner, and I bear witness that Muḥammad is His servant and His Messenger.

To proceed: The most truthful discourse is the Book of Allah, the best guidance is the guidance of Muḥammad, peace and blessings of God be upon him, the evilest of matters are newly invented ones, every newly invented matter is an Innovation, every Innovation is misguidance, and every misguidance is in the Hellfire. And to proceed: This is a book by the Imam, the Hadith master and preacher, Ibn Abī al-Dunyā, encouraging seclusion, inviting to solitude, and urging the abandonment of social mixing. Seclusion is a matter on which people have differed between those who support it and those who reject it. Those who opted for seclusion and preferred it over social mixing include: Sufyān al-Thawrī, Ibrāhīm ibn Adham, Dāwūd al-Ṭāʾī, Fuḍayl ibn ʿIyāḍ, Sulaymān al-Khawwāṣ, Yūsuf ibn Asbāṭ, Ḥudhayfa al-Marʿashī, and Bishr al-Ḥāfī, as mentioned in al-Iḥyāʾ (2/22). As for those who rejected it and preferred social mixing: Saʿīd ibn al-Musayyib, al-Shaʿbī, Ibn Abī Laylā, Hishām ibn ʿUrwa, Ibn Shubruma, Shurayḥ the Judge, Sharīk ibn ʿAbd Allāh, Sufyān ibn ʿUyayna, ʿAbd Allāh ibn al-Mubārak, Muḥammad ibn Idrīs al-Shāfiʿī, Aḥmad ibn Ḥanbal, and a group [of scholars]; see al-Iḥyāʾ (2/222). These scholars cited as proof what Muslim and others narrated from the hadith of Abū Hurayra, raised as Marfu' with the wording: "Whoever abandons the Congregation and dies, his death is that of the Jahiliyya." Al-Ghazālī Abū Ḥāmid said in al-Iḥyāʾ (2/222): "And this is Da'if (Weak)—that is, a weak opinion, not the hadith itself—because what is meant by it is: the Congregation whose views agreed upon an Imam by concluding the Pledge (Bayi'ah), so rebelling against them is transgression, and that is dissenting in opinion and rebelling against them, which is forbidden due to the necessity of creation for an Imam to unite their opinion, and that cannot be except through the Pledge (Bayi'ah)