Be Fair When Judging

Imam Ibn al-Wazir al-Yamaani said:

‎”وقد ذكرت غير مرة أن في كل فرقة طوائف شاذةً تقول بمنكراتٍ من البدع، فمن أضاف بدعهم إلى عموم الفرقة التي شَذُّوا منها فقد أساء، وتَنَزَّل منزلة الذين يحبون أن تشيع الفاحشة في الذين آمنوا
“I have mentioned more than once that every sect has fringe groups that espouse various repugnant heresies. Whoever attributes the heresies of the fringe groups to the whole of the sect, then he has transgressed. By so doing, he is like ‘those who love that indecency should spread among the believers.’ [24:19].”

[‘Al-‘Awasim wal-Qawasim’, 7/241].

That sums up 90% of the conflict between the various Sunni groups.
Yes there are differences and they should be debated – but what they sometimes do is the following:
A group may have 1,000’s of scholars.
A single scholar makes a mistake somewhere.
They pick that mistake and say: ‘Look what that group believes!’
They throw the entire group out of ahlusSunnah.
As if the entire group is on that mistaken understanding!
One scholar does not represent an entire school.
99% of that group may not even be aware of that mistake of that particular scholar.
But it creates tensions, divisions and a fitnah.
The sad thing is, members of that group then starts defending that mistake of their scholar…
They should just say: this is a mistake….
It’s ok … all scholars can make mistakes, there is no shame in that. We don’t believe in infallible Imams.
If you want to refute the aqidah of a group, pick up their agreed-upon aqidah book and refute that.
Finding random odd views in non-agreed upon books which are not even meant to codify aqidah is easy.
That’s not the belief of the entire group.
It’s the mistake of an individual scholar…………..

يا ليت قومي يعلمون !!