Why is Tawaswswul a Controversy Now?

بِسۡمِ ٱللهِ ٱلرَّحۡمَـٰنِ ٱلرَّحِيمِ

We live in an age where so many Sunni Muslims claim that tawaswswul, intercession, is shirk.  The Prophet (s.a.w.) himself said, “By Allah!  I am not afraid that you will associate with Allah after my death, but I am afraid that you will compete with one another for the worldly things.”  This is recorded in Swahih al-Bukhari. 

We are not in the age where people worship invisible things; we live in a time where people worship their egos, their material wealth and status, and those who represent this.  Because of this, people move away from intercession, because the ego cannot accept that there are those closer to Allah (s.w.t.) than they, those whom Allah (s.w.t.) is Pleased with. And so, particularly the Wahhabi sect, they claim that tawaswswul is shirk, and they fear for it, when they are already guilty of greater shirk. 

If, the a’immah of every madzhab of Sunni Islam practices tawaswswul, if it is a practice of the Salaf after the Prophet (s.a.w.), if tawaswswul is based on sources from the Qur’an and the ahadits, and was acceptable to the entirety of us for 1,400 years; why is it suddenly a controversy?  It is because we live in an age of Jahiliyyah ats-Tsani, where Muslims are ignorant of their religion, and made controversial what was not, and embraced what was once controversial.