Only a Kafir Praises Yazid ibn Mu’awiyah

Imam Shihab ad-Din Abu al-Fadhl Ahmad ibn ‘Ali ibn Hajr al-‘Asqalani wrote, in al-Imta’ bi al-Arba’in, on Yazid ibn Mu’awiyah, “Loving and glorifying him is not done except by a heretic who has void belief because he had such characteristics that his lover deserves to be faithless, because to love and hate just for the sake of God is a sign of faith.”

And yet, in this age, we have people like Zakir ‘Abd al-Karim Nayk, and others of the Wahhabi sect, who are on record praising and making excuses for this kafir.  The scholars of Sunni Islam have no good to say of him.  The heretics of the Wahhabi sect do.

The Weight of This Verdict

Imam ibn Hajr al-‘Asqalani is not a marginal figure whose opinion can be waved away.  He is the author of Fath al-Bari, the definitive commentary on Swahih al-Bukhari, a text that has anchored Sunni ahadits scholarship for six centuries.  When a scholar of this stature states that loving Yazid is not merely a moral failing but a marker of void belief, that verdict carries the weight of the entire tradition behind it, not a personal grievance dressed up as ‘aqidah.

This is not a hypothetical concern.  In December 2007, at a ten-day peace conference in Mumbai, Zakir Nayk referred to Yazid using “Radhiyallahu ta’ala ‘anhu,” “may Allah be Pleased with him,” a phrase reserved specifically for the swahabah, and characterised Karbala as merely a political battle.  Both Sunni and Shi’ah scholars in India condemned the remarks publicly, with Muslim leaders warning the controversy risked sparking sectarian clashes as Muharram approached.  Nayk expressed regret at having caused offence.  He did not retract the underlying claim, and instead cited selectively chosen fatawa to defend his position.  A subsequent Islamic Insights report on the episode noted that most Sunni scholars and jurists, including Imam Isma’il ibn ‘Umar ibn Katsir, Shaykh Taqi’ ad-Din Ahmad ibn ‘Abd al-Halim ibn Taymiyyah, and Imam Ahmad ibn Muhammad ibn Hanbal, have condemned Yazid and held it permissible to curse him.  Three names anchor mainstream Sunni scholarship across three separate centuries.  Nayk’s position stood against all three simultaneously, and he offered no comparable scholarly weight in return.

Why This Matters beyond One Preacher’s Reputation

Nayk’s broader public record confirms this was not an isolated lapse in judgement.  He has been barred from entering the United Kingdom since 2010, with then Home Secretary Theresa Mary May citing his “unacceptable behaviour.”  He faces active charges of money laundering and hate speech in India, and was formally barred from delivering public talks in Malaysia in 2019 after remarks that pitted the country’s ethnic and religious minorities against its Muslim majority, remarks even Malaysia’s own Prime Minister Tun Dr. Mahathir bin Mohamad described as crossing a line.  A pattern of controversy this consistent, spanning theology, geopolitics, and now criminal allegations, is not the profile of a scholar whose isolated defence of Yazid deserves the benefit of the doubt.  It is the profile of a man whose judgement mainstream Sunni institutions across multiple countries have already, independently, found wanting.

The Standard Imam ibn Hajr al-‘Asqalani Sets

Imam ibn Hajr al-‘Asqalani’s framing removes any ambiguity about what is actually at stake.  Loving and hating for the sake of Allah is, in his own words, a sign of faith.  A man who reserves the language of companionship and Divine Pleasure for the perpetrator of the massacre at Karbala and the sack of Madina has inverted that sign entirely.  The scholars of Sunni Islam, across six centuries and multiple continents, have said so plainly.  The fact that a modern preacher, backed by a modern platform, continues to find an audience willing to overlook this inversion says considerably more about the audience than it does about the argument.