It is pertinent to mention that the object of resorting is...

It is pertinent to mention that the object of resorting is the person or thing that is respectable before God; such as God’s attributes or names, the name of the Holy Prophet (s), his supplication, the name of great saints of God and angels and the request can be a religious and spiritual issue or a material or worldly need.

Lisaan Al-Arab which is one of the famous Arabic dictionaries says: “Tawassul to Allah and choosing the means is that human performs an act which makes him/her closer to Allah and Wasila (means) is the thing that human approaches another thing with its help.” Therefore, ‘Wasila’ is in the meaning of both asking for an approach and the thing that causes the approach. The word ‘Wasila’ has been used in two places in the holy Qur’an.

First is verse 35 of Qur’an 5 [Surah Ma’idah] where Allah enjoined the believers to be wary of Him and to seek the means of getting closer to Him: “O you who have faith! Be wary of Allah, and seek the means of recourse to Him, and wage jihad in His way, so that you may be felicitous” .

The second place where the term ‘wasila’ is used in the Qur’an is verse 57 of Qur’an 17 [Sura Isra’] where Allah says: “They [themselves] are the ones who supplicate, seeking a recourse to their Lord…” The great mistake of Wahhabis is that they assume the intercessory recourse to the special servants of God to be the same as the acts of the polytheists who are using idols as a means of getting their needs fulfilled or a means of gaining proximity to God.

The Qur’anic verses used by the Wahhabis are related to worship, whereas no one worships those referred beings in the intercessory recourse with the saint of Allah. This relationship can be graphically explained using a simple example of the light bulb. In order to light a bulb, 3 components are necessary: a functioning bulb, the mains and a connecting wire.

All three have to be connected for the bulb to glow; otherwise, although the functioning bulb has all the potential to glow, it will not do so. The bulb cannot be connected directly to the mains without a wire since the electrical current flowing from the mains is much too powerful for the bulb – doing so would result in the bulb being destroyed.

The wire of appropriate capacity becomes the ‘Wasilah’, the connection and the means through which the electrical current flows from the mains to the bulb.