What parts of al-Busiri's Burdah are rejected by salafis and why?

Question

Al-Burdah also known as الكواكب الدرية في مدح خير البرية is a poem of "imam al-Busiri" (the Muslim Sufi poet al-Busiri البوصيري whom studied the seerah of the prophet deeply and almost all his poems are praising the prophet()) which he wrote to praise the Prophet ().

The Burda is divided into 10 chapters and 160 verses all rhyming with each other. ... .Each verse ends with the Arabic letter mīm, a style called mīmīya. The 10 chapters of the Burda comprise:

• On Lyrical Love Yearning
• On Warnings about the Caprices of the Self
• On the Praise of the Prophet
• On His Birth
• On His Miracles
• On the Exalted Stature and Miraculous Merits of the Qur'an
• On the Ascension of the Prophet
• On the Struggle of Allah's Messenger
• On Seeking Intercession through the Prophet
• On Intimate Discourse and the Petition of One's State.
  (Source: Wikipedia)

But this poem doesn't seem to find acceptance by the salafis (like Muhammad ibn Abdulwahhab, and modern salafis such al-Albani, ibn Baz etc.). Of course mainly it is hard to say they reject the whole poem, but they surely seem to have some objections to certain parts/rhyms/words of it.

The Burda was accepted within Sunni Islam and was the subject of numerous commentaries by mainstream Sunni scholars such as Ibn Hajar al-Haytami, Nazifi and Qastallani. It was also studied by the Shafi'i hadith master Ibn Hajar al-Asqalani (d. 852 A.H.) both by reading the text out loud to his teacher and by receiving it in writing from a transmitter who heard it directly from Busiri himself.

Imam Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab]], considered the poem to be shirk (idolatory).
(source Wikipedia)

Note that the hanbali scholars ibn al-'Imaad ابن العماد الحنبلي and ibn Hisham (who also was a linguist he called his "sharh": الكواكب الدرية) is one of many scholars who have written explanations and interpretations of this poem.

In many countries, this poem is well known or in the worst case a few verses of it are popular (see for example these youtube videos: Mesut Kurtis or an-Naqshabandi). Some Muslims -mainly sufis- especially recite it/them during the Mawlid an-Nabawi.

My question is what rhymes/words/parts do salafis reject or consider as blasphemous or as words of kufr etc.? (I don't need a full list but examples of each kind of objection)

Answer 1

These are three example verses of the poem that are considered dangerously close to Shirk or even Shirk itself:-

• O noblest of creation, I have no one but you to turn to except you when major calamity strikes.

You don't need to be Salafi to see a problem with this verse. Fatiha itself is enough to tell you that a Muslim only asks for help from Allah:

It is only You we worship and only You we ask for help. (1:5)

So, in a calamity, he cannot think of anyone he can turn to except Muhammad (SAW), really? You know what about the One the Prophet (SAW) came to inform us about. The One who is the only one who can help you out of any calamity? Allah?

• If you do not take my hand out of kindness on the Day of Resurrection, then what great trouble I will be in.

Only Allah's mercy saves on the day of judgement, and even the intercession granted to the Prophet (SAW) by Allah is out of his mercy. It is not given through the power of the Prophet (SAW), and it makes no sense to say this statement rather than "If Allah does not have mercy on me on the Day of Resurrection, then what great trouble I will be in," which is actually correct.

• This world and the Hereafter are part of what you control, and part of your knowledge is the knowledge of al-Lawh al-Mahfooz and the Pen

This is a pretty clear problem. Everything is under Allah's control, and I have no idea where he got this statement that the Prophet (SAW) has knowledge of the Pen. That seems to be Allah's knowledge alone.

In conclusion, there are statements in the poem that are leaning towards or are Shirk by raising the status of the Prophet (SAW) higher than it is supposed to be.

In the end, these are not holy writings. This is not the Quran or the Sunnah. It isn't even a poem written at the time of the Prophet (SAW). So, no one needs to defend it as if they are defending their religion. We can take some good parts of it, but we must not hold it to the honour that we hold the Quran. We should not be reading it instead of the Quran. And regarding people who read this at Mawlids, the Prophet (SAW) would have preferred them to read the Quran instead.

Source: islamqa.info/en/115502