“When the Glorious Qur’an and the Sunnah are abandoned, because it is thought that they are insufficient; and when human opinions, analogy, discretion, and the words of scholars are sought, people’s natures are corrupted, their hearts become dark, their understandings become confused, and their minds become distorted. All the previously mentioned matters had a great impact on their lives to the extent that the young and the old lived under these circumstances, thinking them to be allowed. Alternative conditions prevailed, in which innovated matters replaced Prophetic traditions, inclination replaced wisdom, vain desires replaced reason, doing astray replaced guidance, the wrong replaced the good, ignorance replaced knowledge, hypocrisy replaced devotion, the unlawful replaced the lawful, lying substituted truthfullness, flattery substituted advice, and injustice replaced justice, thus these evils reigned supreme, and their holders became privileged, despite the prevalence of their opposite in the past, where their holders were the privileged ones. If you see the superiority of such evils, and their slogans are set up where their armies are invading, surely the bottom of the earth would be much desirable than it’s surface, the peaks of mountains would be more preferable than the plains, and accompanying beasts would be better than accompanying people.”
[Taken from “Al-Fawaid” by Imam Ibn Qayyim Al-Jawziyah]