April 12, 2014 in Oslo, Norway Yasir Qadhi gave a lecture. the following is an excerpt.
Senior scholars were duped by Juhayman. Senior scholars believed Juhayman to be righteous… What does that show you? It shows you that fanaticism exists in people that might otherwise appear to be righteous. Even to our scholars…
Most of the people who joined Juhayman’s movement are hafiz (memorized Quran) of the book of Allah. They were genuinely religious. They thought they were doing something good…. These are righteous people. But they’ve lost site of reality. They are so incensed and enraged at music and singing that they are willing to shed blood in the Kaba… And brothers and sisters, we see the same fanaticism in the modern jihadist movement…
Juhayman man wrote several pamphlets and I went through them for a conference that I was giving. It’s very scary. I am a man who has a master’s in theology. I know my religion I was reading his documents with a fine tooth comb. I was waiting to jump on something that I could say aha this shows he’s a deviant, aha this shows he’s a fanatic. I swear by Allah, I could barely find anything that gave me warning signals. It seemed to be very solid, very well argued, very passionate. And this terrified me.
Why? I have the advantage of hindsight looking back and I am going through his pamphlets with a fine tooth comb and I don’t find anything wrong. Many of my teachers knew him personally. They all said the same thing that we really thought he was a righteous pious individual. The movement of Juhayman is an interesting movement to study and it came from within the general Salafi tradition. Most of the people with him were from the University of Medina.