Abdal Hakim Murad – Imam alBukhari Paradigms of Leadership
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Smilla hamdu lillah wa salatu salam ala Rasulillah. But early he
was off by the woman while
it's been a very diverse journey, obviously Muslims now 23% of the
world's population, existing in just about every country on Earth,
many of which they have been for many centuries and extraordinary
cornucopia of polymaths ideal types, exemplars heroes. It's been
a saga story of the Olmo is a great saga or epic. And what we've
tried to do has been to choose indicative individuals of the
various almost indefinitely varied range of human types, cultural
spaces, genders, levels of education, orientations in Dawa
and leadership that this endlessly diverse, OMA can present and one
of the light motifs I suppose, of what we've been trying to say is
that authenticity in Islam does not mean what is monochrome. But
Islam historically has functioned through the prophetic soul as a
kind of prism, the singular Divine Light, indivisible and pure
reflected refracted into an extraordinarily dazzling rainbow
of different possibilities. According to the FT level LC nerdy
calm, where l one e COMM The difference of your languages and
colors, which the Koran says uniquely amongst world scriptures
celebrates. So it's been a complicated journey in that we
have decided that the adherence to the Sunnah, which is ultimately
the essence of Muslim belongingness does not represent
the creation of a singular human type, but rather, a way in which
different human types can be uplifted towards perfection
through the light that is for Muslims uniquely refracted through
the prism of the prophetic soul. This is something that Muslims
today struggle with. Ours is the age of single solutions of
ideologies, rather than a Dianna of
quantitative explanations of the human condition. We are seeking
for singular paradigms and unique outcomes. And no doubt our
fearfulness as an ummah, the fact that we've been outflanked and
wrong footed, put on the defensive by a resurgent unexpectedly. So
Western civilization has meant that we have been too defensive in
many cases to celebrate the diversity and the love of
ambiguity and multiple solutions. That until the mid 20th century
was really the watchword of what it was to be an informed member of
the prophetic Alma. This has been very much to our discredit and
disadvantage, but it is the case of the threatened frightened human
being, that he or she will reach for a singular module of identity.
And you can see this not just in the history of Islam, but in
European history over the last century or so whenever our
community feels that it has been threatened threatened wrong footed
by the Treaty of Versailles. To take a well known example, it
tends to retreat into a single set of answers about what it means to
be itself. This is not the historic reality of the OMA of
Islam, which celebrates diversity, plurality inclusion, and this is
the meaning as we have seen of the Ishmaelites Kazakh charism.
The Ishmaelites branch of Revelation is that which includes
the line of Isaac is that which, despite its presentation of a
luminous series of prophetic examples has tended to exclude
Ishmael includes Isaac, Isaac does not include Ishmael. The
Ishmaelites are the paradigmatic unchosen that Muslims have not
reciprocated part of the anatomy of Islam part of its engineered
status as the spiritual way appropriate for the times of
turbulence as history sinks towards some kind of conclusion.
The new more final resolution is this inclusivity and those of our
great Mujaddid scholars of history who have reflected on what exactly
it is that makes Islam distinctive, distinctively
Islamic, have always stressed this Shamala this inclusiveness of
Islam with its unique incorporation of a variety of
cultures, linguistic groups, devotional mystical algebra,
I like philosophical possibilities. This has been part
of the culture of Islam, unmistakeably from the outset. Was
it not the case? We looked at this briefly last time, when we
considered the some moderns strange paradox of the fact that
the rise of Islam generated a luxuriant culture of love poetry,
Islam as the unleashing of undeniable, because it's there,
and we're central culture of romantic verse. The fact that one
of the Holy Prophets most staggering innovations in his
people was to create spaces that were inclusive. The word jam now,
mosque means inclusive, literally.
The first non tribal space in Arabia, apart from the occasional
true stays around the Kaaba was the Holy Prophet's mosque in
Medina, where for the first time in the history of the Arabian
subcontinent didn't matter at all, what tribe you were from, you
could sit anywhere. And if you were at the front, that wasn't
because of your ancestry, it was because you just got there first.
And it's almost impossible now to realize how staggering an
innovation that new prophetic geography must have been in that
time. But those people, the tribe realized universal and
incorporating the non Arab, even though will slave, the Greek
Sahabi there was Bill Allah giving the Amazon the great African
Sahabi there was sell man and Pharisee, the great Iranian Sahabi
and there are others, a space that is in Arabia, where Arabic is the
language of the liturgy, but we're there is already the fertile sign
of a future universalism. We'll draw a literally an adult MSG
there, the whole earth has been made a mosque for me. So in the
original paradigm of Islam, where it's typography is focused on the
Jama the inclusive space, we have a sign and an expectation of
Islam's future inclusivity something which Muslims today are
taking a step back from but for psychological, rather than
theological reasons. So
in all of these different human types,
what makes each of them an Islamic human type
is monotheism. Yes. But the Jews also have monotheism and other
communities as well. What makes it specifically Islamic is the second
shahada, not so much the first and the second shahada is doing what
exactly what is the principle that creates this irradiating spectrum?
Well, the principle really is that often underrated and
underestimated fact, which is part of the anatomy of Islam called the
Sunnah.
All of these people whether it be so Caleb in terms of saying or
Mowlana Hussein Madani or nana Asmat or Imam Shamil or whoever
the Islamic city consists not in they're paying lip service to a
human exemplar, but by accepting the that human exemplar as the
guiding paradigm for everything that they did. And this, again, is
something fairly new. And we've already had calls to reflect upon
this. Even the mosaic dispensation did not generate a tradition where
the rabbi tried to be like Moses in every respect. The rabbi tried
to follow Torah, most of which was in an oral form and in the town
board and subsequently and there's a lot of film convergences between
the Jewish and the Islamic way of being human. But the exemplar was
not so much a human being as an oral and written tradition of
regulation, stories and doctrines.
The hood only one door, as the Quran says of the Torah in its
guidance and a light but the Islamic way specifically is to
take one's point of origination
as a human being
seamstress strange in a scripture directed tradition. Why not just
the book? Nope. Islam as Kitab and Sunnah.
Kitab and Sunnah. And the Kitab is operation lies to the Sunnah.
Those small sects, and denominations which insist on the
Quran alone end up not having anything at all of the religion
but
goes up mo Salah will add to the care. The Quran says establish the
prayer pay there's a cat but you can't really do those things
unless you know the details which are present in the Sunnah. You
can't really separate the two if you want to have a religion that
can be fully operational. So suddenly Islam names itself not
after the Quran. We don't say it's Quranic Islam, even though that's
our first scripture
and its text is the only fully infallible uncontested text No, we
named ourselves after the second of the sources. The Sunnah we are
Atlas Sana well drama because the Sunnah NACTO Quran is only itself
when interpreted by the faithful community of experts. So this is
something distinctive about Islam in that its primordial ality. And
again, we've looked at that as a specific quality of Islam. One of
its costs is that the hut near have this handy fee religion means
that humanity is being returned to truly archaic and Aboriginal
forms.
A form of worship that is not read from a book, but which is through
memorization of Scripture, which seems to be full of incantations
and invocations of the Socratic of nature, a style of life and a
calendar which is determined not by abstract calculation, which is
the consequence of civilization but by the roar function of the
motions of the solar system, the sun and the moon, there is
something Aboriginal, archaic fitfully about Islam, and this is
why he says something Allahu alayhi wa sallam boy to Bill honey
for you it is somehow this is a critically important and a sound
Hadith I have been sent with the handy fee. Somehow, religion
somehow means generous, including hospitable, tolerant, literally.
And the honey fee is that which is what is primordial about the way
of saying that Ibrahim alayhis salam was from a time that is
primordial Aboriginal before and without the complication, and this
specificities of culture, or the car but itself denotes this is
just a black cube. It doesn't belong to any civilization. It is
just
archaic, primordial, archetypal architecture.
So we've looked at this several times that what is distinctively
Islamic is that which relates to the cottony of Islam and its
Abrahamic claim to be the reversion to something that is
truly ancient and primordial. And with modern paleontology and
archaeology, we can see that in fact, the great bulk of human
history has been precisely that the rise of the civilizations
there's been maybe the last four or 5000 years before then 50,000
years, 200,000 years. Nobody really knows of primordial life.
So there is something in the Sunnah of the Holy Prophet
salAllahu alayhi wasallam, that takes us at the end of this great
prophetic cycle, back to how things used to be and we're,
and reading the Quran.
After reading the Bible, for instance, only makes sense when
you grasp this. And this is a problem for a lot of Muslims with
inferiority complexes about progress and modernity, the elites
in the Muslim world who have been dazzled into blindness by Western
technical prowess, and want Islam to be a very modern religion and a
scientific religion and religion of progress. And that's
apologetics. There's nothing in the Quran about discover
how creation works, be amazed by it. But it's it's neither for nor
against it. It's saying, look back to what is normally human. And
this creates all kinds of strange obsessions and evident inferiority
complexes amongst a lot of modern Muslims that simply want Islam to
be this forward looking thing that embraces technology. Technology is
not embracing human beings. It's just a gray inhuman cold.
And we shouldn't embrace it in return. It doesn't want to embrace
us increasingly taking over key aspects of our humanity and
showing no signs of diminishing so we're radical in that sense. So,
this thing called the Sunnah is one of those aspects of the
tradition that affirmed this primordial ality, like ancient
man, when we're in the mosque. There isn't somebody there reading
from a book or from anything he's not allowed to read. And these
rules about this form of worship that again is so primordial that
you can't identify it with any particular culture, Eastern or
Western. It's pure geometry geometry that binds body mind and
Spirit that reflects the movements of the rising the setting of the
sun, the phases of the moon, really archaic and ancient.
That is, today's way of returning to what is our, the 99% of human
history, the normal way of being human, and a way therefore, of
avoiding some of the sicknesses of modernity which are
technologically induced by our alienation, the fact that we're
living in ways that cause increasing dysfunction.
Antidepressant sales last year reached record highs, all kinds of
confusions about identity and about gender and about self and
self harming and we're really uneasy and uncomfortable as a
species birthrate is going down. We're dysfunctional. The Sunnah is
this more precious now than ever before, Time Machine that enables
us still to operate in the modern world and to go to work and to
earn a living and to get married, but in a way that protects us from
these technologically enabled dysfunctions that are causing so
much human unhappiness. But try and tell this to the D resonated
elites in the Muslim world who want to have the biggest
skyscraper in the world, and the biggest clock in the world and all
of this sort of expression of the inferiority complex and they can't
get it at all because their hearts had been stung by this idea that
they've been outstripped by the clever white man with all of these
machines.
That's fatal to try and be Islam when you have this inferiority
complex about science and technology is really very
difficult.
So, there is something of a
radical reversion to human normalcy about the sun now, which
is undeniable from from its forms, and therefore it is a very
precious thing that it is to reestablish balance. And we can't
do that on our own.
Every summer solstice, half of the New Age hipsters from
from Clapham and Balam make their way to Stonehenge. They don't want
to go to church any longer. That's not cool. They don't know what it
is or what it isn't. It's not cool. So off the radar, they want
to get a Stonehenge and they get up so early in the morning, and
they sit there for the great moment when the gray stones
reflect the summer solstice sunrise and everybody's strumming
it. They haven't got a clue what they're doing, or what the
building was for, or who made the sunrise, complete ignorance, but
they still feel we want to engage somehow with some shamanistic love
of the earth because modernity is all about alienation. And it's
very common, not just Stonehenge, but go to top nurse or any of
those places of Glastonbury across the western world. There are
people who feel a deep sense of loss as a result of our
excommunication from nature. And the fact that we've now
effectively become the enemies of nature, not in harmony with the
natural world cringes from us.
I always think dolphins which is supposed to be the most
intelligent creatures must be amongst the least intelligent
because it's a friendly to us. Here it is. We're tourists who
want to swim with the dolphins. Get out of here. This is a species
that's destroying our habitat. He wants to get up close for those
strange white things that can't swim very well get out. But no,
they want to be friendly. So it's quite disappointing.
So this is the deep dysfunction which we have reached.
The Sunda which is from an ancient time, which nobody has the
temerity to fiddle with.
Even though it's a poor fit, with the freakish and egotistic,
hedonistic value set of technologically enabled, enabled
mentality.
Nobody really has the front hurry. If that, in any case, religiously
sincere to say, Well, I think this could be a little bit better than
the Holy Prophet didn't quite understand that pork isn't so bad.
You have those revision isms in some traditions, but in Islam, we
are
nefazodone We are protected from that kind of corrosion, because
religion is not really about conforming to the age wants the
age to conform to it, because religion is from heaven, and we're
from below. And what values that come from below are subject to
gravity and ego and
it's very evident that unhappiness to which it leads. So let me read
you something from William Chittick.
Who has a number of recent books, but this is his book on Ibn Arabi
where he explains if an Arab is
to some minds, peculiar love of the Sharia and love of the Sunnah.
Isn't he the guy who says everything is the same and part of
God and what it will do? No actually read the book, but a
great lover of the Sunnah and
A member of the Zawahiri madhhab in other words really strict in
his interpretation of Quran and Hadith so his critics explanation
of why we need these rules and boundaries.
According to Ibn Al Arabi, the law is the scale Meezan in which must
be weighed everything having to do with God, knowledge, love,
spiritual realization and the human state in general. Without
the scale of the law, we will remain forever swimming in a
shortlist ocean of ambiguity. Only the scale can provide a point of
reference in terms of which knowledge and all human endeavors
may be judged. The law, capital L, makes it possible to move toward
the center and avoid wallowing in infinite dispersion, overcome by
ignorance, multiplicity and misguidance.
One might say that the function of the law is to sort out
relationships and put things in their proper perspective, thus
providing a divine norm for human knowledge and action. Faced with
he or not he, wherever they look, human beings cannot possibly
search out the heat and cling to light without a discernment
deriving from light itself. Now that everyone has an inner light
known as intelligence, but that also needs correct guidance to
grow in intensity and begin functioning on its own, only the
Friends of God have reached the station where they can follow the
inner light without reference to the outer law. But this is
imminent Araby would say is a station of great danger, Qatar
Iblees and countless spiritual teachers have been led astray by
it, the law remains the only concrete anchor without this form
for human life, which is the sudden now we wallow as he says in
endless, indefinite indeterminacy is, and humanity will drift and
because of our nature tend to drift downwards. people clamoring
for the, for praise for the seeking of particular pleasures,
we are really we are more easily distracted by something
pleasurable than by something noble. That's the character of
Benny Adams. So for this great exponent of the the highest
understanding of Islamic ontology, a Sheikh Al Akbar, the towering
figure of the second half of Islamic history, it's not letter
versus spirit letter is how we discover spirit. This is to be
discovered through the Zaha and hence the Sunnah, becomes an
infinitely precious ontology, and also an epistemology. In other
words, it is by the Sunnah, that we know.
Because my mind is not some kind of detached thing floating in upon
Sen. Space. No, my mind is part of my physiology part of my body part
of my experience, there's no such thing as a discarnate
consciousness.
And therefore, that which I do with my outward form,
and with my moral life, towards the outward forms of other humans
subject is going to affect the moral and intellectual
philosophical decisions that I take.
And this is the phenomenon that modern philosophy will call the
body subject, getting away from Descartes idea that there was the
body mind dualism, no, it's a single aspect of a single thing,
which is why in our eschatology, we are subject to a bodily
resurrection. And eternal punishment or bliss is a bodily
thing. We're not just going to points of consciousness in a
discounted way floating around in some infinite and eternal space,
which would be
pretty unpleasant, really, we wouldn't really be ourselves. So
part of the prime modality that caught me over Islam is that we
are embodied human subjects. And this is how we have to be and any
doctor will tell you that what you do to the spirit can have physical
manifestations. And if you've lost a limb or something, it has an
effect on how you it's fairly obvious. They are inter dependent.
So we need the law. We need the light coming from the truth, which
is the source of our being anyway, otherwise, we will tend to go
downhill and the choices we make will be stupid choices.
Like a hipster in Peckham, who might go to even song down the
road and some Victorian shirt where at least something would
make sense. And it's next door. But instead, he has to go down to
Stonehenge where he hasn't got a clue what anything means. And
watch the sunrise and this is the it's from ego. All of these
contemporary decisions, not to do religion, tend to come not from a
serious study.
theology and philosophy, but from ego what people want to feel like
it's not cool to do some things. It's cool to do others. So let's
do feng shui or yoga or mindfulness or some of the things
that's cool not because we've really discovered or thought about
what Orthodox Judaism might do, when you move into a new home that
was not cool. So, without the law, without the structures coming from
above, humanity tends to drift into subjectivity and sometimes
extreme forms of crazy, body worshipping hedonism that
modernity is subject to which is also linked to body hatred in many
ways, sort of fat shaming, and lots of tattoos and
darting disorders, anorexia, self harm, these things seem to be
going up. So the love of the body and the hate of the body is
disorder, which is part of the single thing which is due to the
fact that we don't know any longer what it's for, or how to deal with
it in a wholesome way. And the Sunnah is precisely what do you do
with it? So that the Spirit can be as human beings are designed to be
in harmony with heaven and with Earth. So yep, even Araby the
sheikh Akbar is very clear about the law being the means by which
the spirit is enhanced and
becomes healthy and itself. So the Sunnah
is what it is to be Muslim.
But the Sunnah is not as some modern reductionist Muslims want
it to be. Just a kind of list of do's and don'ts after which you
mashallah very good Muslim. I praise His 200 You can marry my
daughter, Masha, Allah.
This is not the reason for our creation, really. The law is
there. And it is a law. It establishes halal and haram. And
God cares about halal and haram. They shape the boundaries of our
lives. But the point of it
is not really, that the whole of creation should be like God's
great big dispensing machine like a chocolate machine. You just put
in good works like coins, and you get out a treat at the end of the
process or the next world I'll get this, that and the other in some
kind of Tablighi style sermons can make it sound like a very
transactional. But that's actually it is L That's the Morteza like
view and that was rejected by the admin of some No, because God does
not enter into any kind of quantified relationship with human
beings because of his limitless nature and His merciful nature.
There is justice that he has written mercy upon himself, get
about Allah enough to Rama, which is good news for those of us who
really wouldn't like to meet the All Knowing seer of everything
that we do.
On the basis just of justice, that would be fairly terrifying. But he
said that to us up on the roof, I mean, and there is the
intercession of the Holy Prophet and that's what gives us
a degree of hope. So the Sunnah is not a kind of transactional thing,
as some people, particularly those who have
studied some science subjects might want religion to be, but
it's a more qualitative thing, which is about returning the human
body mind composite to a healthy, functioning, primordial state,
which enables it naturally, to recognize what is beautiful and
what is good, and what is true and what is healthy for itself and for
others.
So that's why we talk of the epistemology of the Sunnah.
Now, there's different ways of conceiving this. And it has to be
said that not everybody in our heritage has quite worked this
out. And there are some who have thought that sadhana is just the
basis for cutting a deal with God.
And we find that the Sunnah and the figure of the Holy Prophet
Elisa just said that was axiomatic. And then the second
shahada is variously received and variously celebrated.
So
here, for instance, is
a case of a 20th century Syrian
jurists understanding
of the importance of the Sunnah, and the indispensability of the
Holy Prophet. This is not a fundamentalist text. This is a
sort of traditional Sheffy jurists text.
And this is Abdullah Suraj, Anil phocoena, who is one of the great
Alama of 20th century Aleppo in Syria.
So that
The end of this book about the Holy Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa
sallam this jurist, so chooses to end with these thoughts.
Everything that the Muhammad and message brought and encompassed of
commandments and prohibitions and acts of worship and social
transactions and conduct and morality and rights and
responsibilities, is all built upon the foundation of mercy to
humanity.
All of this is nothing but mercy to the world and mercy to all
nations and peoples. Because in it lies protection against those who
would immerse themselves in corruption and evil and spread it
amongst others. If any other person's limbs becomes infected,
it is a merciful Act, to remove the limb before the infection can
spread to the rest of the body.
Likewise, society as a whole can be compared to a single body in
the eyes of the sacred law.
The essence of all this is that the Muhammad and message came with
mercy and for Mercy's sake, and this is why the language of the
Quran is that of encompass meant and is thinking here of the verse
woman or so NACA Illa Rahmatullah al al Amin, we've sent you only as
a mercy to the world worlds. Why is it that it's we've said to only
as mercy Why not we've said to you as a mercy to the worlds that
Allah might say this, this is why the language of the verses that
have encompassed meant we've only sent you for this purpose, so that
the sagacious person could see that the entire content of this
message and all that it encompasses is nothing but mercy
to humanity, in this life, and the next and within it is their
happiness and their rectitude and their success in this life and the
next.
The Muhammad and message not come to bring Felicity rectitude
success in the hereafter alone, it provided the means to them all,
both in the life of this world and in the hereafter.
So that's the classical jurist position that expert in or sold
and if you get into Islamic jurisprudence, you can see that
the law has certain purposes. It's not just a bunch of random
instructions, delivered by God. But it all has a reason. And for
the jurists, it's the ethical reason that God is merciful and
wishes human beings to be spared their own the consequences of
their own way for waywardness. And the purpose of the Sunnah,
therefore, is to maximize mercy on Earth. So this is, you might say,
an ethical or moral interpretation of the Sun. This isn't our
epistemology of the sunlight, the sun as an instrument of knowing,
knowing God, but rather it's the sun that has an instantiation of
how to live morally, that is to say, mercifully, everything in
Machete is believed to be nothing other than an expression of the
purpose of the Divine sending of the final messenger which is the
prevailing of mercy.
And this is incidentally one reason why some Muslims nowadays
who don't study the classical texts of jurisprudence go astray.
Because once you get into the ways in which each jihad is performed,
and the Sharia is deduced from the Kitab and the Sunnah, you can see
that the Allamah are aware of the fundamental purpose of the Quran
and the Sunnah, which is to make things easier for people and to
make things merciful for mankind. Again, God is not out to get us
but wants things to be as easy as possible, because this is the
religion of the Kashmir the end times and where things
are supposed to be merciful and easy. But when Muslims are
practicing Shetty app, because they're angry with the regimes or
they want to raise a angry fist of defiance against the global
superpowers where religion becomes a matter of identity seeking,
rather than looking at itself defined purposes, watch out
because then it won't be a reflection of mercy. It'll be a
reflection of the angry, vengeful, essentially Jay Haley turbulences
of the distressed and deracinated third world radical, which is
often not a sign of mercy to humanity or to the Ummah but a
sign of outrage, pride
911
A kind of icon of Arab outrage, pride, nothing to do with mercy or
beauty, the exact opposite and this is the danger to the OMA
faces with this inversion. Because these people, engineers, medics
and so forth, have not read the basic texts of our jurisprudence
and don't understand the ethical imperatives of the Sunnah.
Yep, so this book,
a good example of perfectly legitimate juridical understanding
of what the sunlight is and what the moral message of the day
Religion is and it's characteristic of books about the
Holy Prophet salAllahu alayhi wasallam which are there
essentially to reconnect us to the necessity for the following of the
Sunnah, that they give us the Shema. These qualities, the
virtues of the Holy Prophet how he was so let's just from this angle
read the contents of this book, it's available in a perfectly
respectable English translation if people want to get hold of it,
Imam Abdullah Sirajuddin of Hossaini, our Master Mohammed
Messenger of Allah, His sublime character and exalted attributes
forward forward by Xu new and Nina were translated by Khalid
Williams. So let's go briefly through the table of contents. So
you can see how this juridical ethical understanding of the
Sunnah is articulated part one the physical beauty of our Master
Muhammad, part two the eloquence and wisdom of our Master Muhammad,
part three, the exalted status of our Master Muhammad, for the
sublime character for our Master Muhammad.
His current companionship with all people his lofty manners with
those who spoke to him, the warm reception he would grant his
guests his smile, his cheery disposition with people the way he
responded to greetings. That honor he extended to people is perfect
kindness and concern for everybody who generous visits to his
companions is preservation of the bonds of love, His kindness to
boorish Bedouins, his great humility with etc, etc, as ethical
things in this fourth chapter, and part five at the end of our Master
Muhammad, the Messenger of mercy, so his mercy to the world His
mercy with his family and household, His mercy with
children, His mercy with orphans, His mercy with animals, His mercy
with birds. These are the classic moral topics all supported with
with Hadith, which build up the traditional idea of the ethical
Prophet, the moral exemplar, the Sunnah as a crafting of the self
into a model of merciful human excellence.
But there's another way in which this second shahada, and this
way in which the single light has been refracted into the world
through the prophetic prison, which is the gigantic genre of
prophetic pan, a gigantic mud, or not muddy,
probably the biggest genre in that gigantic Muslim library of poetry,
and people think of will series Baroda.
And all of the commentaries and all of the books written in
emulation of the border, and all of the books which have versified
commentaries on the border, and it's itself a huge genre, you
could create a whole BA program just on border studies, for sure,
just on the basis of what the Ottomans did with the border, for
instance, and translations and paraphrases. And, wow.
That's big in our literature.
And it's interesting to note, that unlike this juridical approach, it
focuses on certain events, and as it were cosmic functions of the
Holy Prophet.
So the birth of the Holy Prophet and the miracles which attended
it, and then the mirage of the Holy Prophet, and then the shefa
of the Holy Prophet, those three themes tend to be at the center of
this
literature, things that in this juridical thing, which is kind of
moral, ethical, may not be particularly stressed. So we think
of the summer we think of that dimension of the prophetic
perfection, that kind of cosmic intercessory Savior role of the
Holy Prophet, which, since the earliest times in Muslim poetic
literature has been so significant. So
this is almost at random.
For my shelves, any Deewan of classical poetry
from the Ottoman world, the Persian Well, that was back world,
the Sumatran world, we'll have things like this at the beginning,
usually the first poem will be about the glory of God and praise
to God.
And then it will move on to the gnat praise of the Holy Prophet
salAllahu alayhi wasallam. So let's listen to one or two of
these and think about what this tells us about how the OMA has
received and treasured this somatic principle and it's
something very distinctive and different, so I'm going to do it
in Turkish sounds better that way and then attempt to translation I
won't read the whole thing. This is by a poet Hydra T, who's one of
the early Ottoman purchasers from what's now Macedonia,
probably of Albanian ancestry, but he's writing
Ottoman Turkish
a potty Shah hairdo Sherif Shah he and Bo. They had the Huda will
show Hinshaw. He has Fiat so rich day me revert to Sarah cherish me
Karen, Sarah Defty newbie vet to set healthy so far since in duco,
Nisha, who shall ensure herself Eros, a NBI, a set of every set
Haley only up a pitch via le Hidayat top 100. All Shah has a
mean or ma hemophilic. * Do you know you have done Cerave shadow
any who didn't Jehan nor all don't come oil bean or Newmar
etc. And that's about a third of it.
Of course with Islamic poetry, to be declaimed and also to be sung.
But what he's saying and if you have old or Persian or dairy or
one of those languages, or Turkish, you've probably figured
out half of what it is because the vocabulary in that Nate Persianate
Islamic world is so, so much shared, particularly the poetic
language, but he's saying,
Oh, King, of the two lens,
prints of the prophets, the one sent by God as a guide, the
emperor of the pure of heart,
the exemplar of manly virtue, the fountainhead of generosity,
the register of prophecy, and the
the final link in the chain of purity.
In both worlds, you are the king and the Emperor without Pierre.
Oh, you who is of the prophets, the leader, and the highest
imagining of the saints, a one who stands amidst the on the spread
carpet of the people of guidance, the king of the earth, and the
leader of the world, of the moon, and the spheres.
You have filled the world with light by lighting, the lanton of
your law.
You have been for countless 1000s, the leader and the guidance of
mankind, etc. Well, it's a standard, not poen, isn't it?
We've heard quadrillions of them already. And our culture, our
poetic culture in particular, tended to find it estatic pleasure
in small, subtle tweaks to familiar themes. This is the best
of all themes who could be more amazing to write about than the
Holy Prophet salallahu Alaihe Salam, let's do it again.
And without a Facebook and screens, we got lots of time in
the evening, after eating our kebab and drinking our coffee,
what is there to do? Let's have another poem. This was illiterate.
Well,
tiny little tweaks with the rhythm and slightly new allusions and
alliterations Yeah, it was a very refined world and in translation,
those refinements aren't necessarily lost. But still there
is that tremendous rhetorical and convincing force? So if I've
got Yes, this now is from the Persian world, Saudi so relatively
early,
from Saudis Bustan.
And this is an English translation. And it's an
interesting problem, really, how you render this, very specifically
Persian kind of pulling out all of the organ stops panic Jarick and
these repetitions and alliterations. You do that into
English, because we have our own ways of read Milton of being very
Baroque and poetry.
sensibility is different. Anyway, so here's Wiccans attempt to do
justice to Saturdays.
version and it's the same kind of thing but heard here through an
English ear, generous of dispositions fair in manners
proclaimer to creatures intercessor. For people's imam of
apostles leader on the way confident of God Gabriel's
alighting place intercessor for mankind master of resurrection and
revival, Imam of guidance president of congregations
register interlocutor whose Sinai is the wheel of heaven all lights
are of his light, but raise intercessor obeyed, generous
proclaimer well favorite full bodied, fragrant, gloriously
marked orphan whose ungraded Koran soundly faced so many confessions,
libraries, and so on. Again, that's poem number two in
Saturday's
Bustan and it's the same kind of thing. This listening to this kind
of voice has been really fundamental to traditional Muslim
aesthetics and originality when the best subject has already been
reached, it's not really the point. The point is beauty. And
the point here is to reconnect people with a sense of the
ontological profit. So the first the ethical project profit, and
now we have the ontological profit, that is to say, what he
does for me cosmically
the mayor, Raj brings the prayer, which shapes my life
and indicates the unique atomia of the religion and helps me to make
sense of the ongoing presence of the other religions whose founders
were led by Him in that great amazing prayer at a Masjid Al
Aqsa, and then the intercession that mysterious, but somatically
affirmed and well documented into time event, where justice as it
were, is
shunted onto a siding.
Lucky for us, and mercy prevails. But again, just as the sun no
represents a principle enacted in the form of a human being, God's
mercy at the end of time, represented by the intercession,
which is again, God's mercy represented as a human being. So
again, this idea of the personification, not through some
abstraction, but a real human being, or be it in this kind of
exalted transfigured state, that the judgment becomes really
important. And hence this personal devotion to the Holy Prophet
sallallahu. Ali was absolutely gigantically important through our
culture, always. So the fullness of the idea of the the
prophet as perfect man and insert that camel,
and God's determination to do three things through interfaces.
We see God not directly but reflected in the broken but
amazing fragments of the world, the faculty Hawker center what you
will,
and we know how the soul should be and how to interact with that
outward multiplicity, not through just reading a text, chanting the
Veda, or reading Torah, but through observing how an
individual is himself transformed and transfigured by those texts.
So, the exemplar, again takes us back to this very ancient
primordial times when people didn't really have scriptures as
such, but there were recitals that they had orally, but it was the
person
that the hero in the epic, who was regarded as the ultimate exemplar
and the source of identity, meaning transcendence for the
tribe.
So
we said a lot about this, but I still want to
try and before we get to my paradigm today, don't worry,
haven't lost the plot completely.
That
the great thinkers of Islam or those who have not just, as it
were, caught the ball from earlier generations and tossed it onto
later generations that tradett To even though that is an
indispensable part of their
role.
That sacred heritage of alien, which must be in an intact way,
passed on to the next generation, even though these generations
something gets lost. It's kind of like inheritance tax or something,
can can never get all of those Hadees that you heard to the next
generation, but you get most of them. That's pretty good. And you
can die hopefully,
with without a sense of guilt.
But the great thing, because we've had an r&b with his insistence on
the reason why we have to have the law.
But here is Imam Al Ghazali in his hair on the dean,
which is a mysterious book in many ways. And we've already had one
paradigm lecture in which we've talked about what he seems to be
doing with this book. So we don't need to revisit that in detail,
but just to remind ourselves that it seems to be a kind of
extended Spiritual Autobiography, but without endless boring
personal reflections, the kind of modern autobiography which is very
about me and how interesting I am and
what I had for breakfast on the day when I saw a famous painting
and
her. This is not really our style, or we don't have a big,
autobiographical tradition because we don't matter very much. Really.
truth matters, salvation matters. Virtue is amazing. Beauty is
amazing. We
just as well, people don't know what we really like, who really
wants to write an all honest autobiography, so, but this here
on the dean
is a kind of very sophisticated roadmap to help people along the
journey which the Imam has emitted many serious traumas himself
traveled,
which is a journey, not really from one doctrine to another. And
it's not really a journey from Philly to Sufism, as some people
will assume. But it's a journey from a superficial understanding
of the sunnah to a really deep understanding of the Sunnah, that
is to say, the functionality of the Sunnah, which isn't just a set
of switches, which you press to turn on lights in the next world.
But it's a way of reconfiguring yourself. So that your once again,
and just fitori sense of, of me Zan, and harmony with with God and
His creation. Now, this comes up in a confusingly large number of
contexts in here. So at the beginning of the earlier chapters,
he talks about the prayer, but the secrets of prayer ablution and the
secrets of ablution, because the secret is not going to spill all
of the beans, but you do get the sense that these outward forms,
which of course are somatically.
instantiated have an inward effect. So the will door is not
just a way of pleasing God by washing up to your elbows, and
God is pleased but the revelation is not just for that, but as a way
of changing you because there is a certain psychological
transformation and a humbling that comes about when you do certain
things that you may not be able to conceptualize very clearly.
And the same with a prayer.
Putting your forehead on the ground, pleases God and ticks, the
boxes and the collections of filth, but it also changes your
being in ways that you might find it difficult and subtle to
articulate. But you may well feel it in some probably rather
imprecise way hedge who knows what the hedge really does the toe off
and the straight lines and unlike anything else,
but people tend to feel very different after they've done the
hedge, especially if it's a good hedge.
First hedge people do nowadays tends to be where is the KFC? And
why did that Nigerian woman jabbed me with her umbrella? And why is
my air cooler not working in this tent? And why is the more time
with smoking, and that's the first hedge.
And then second half, you're kind of resigned to that. And the
beauty of the thing the mysterious majesty carries you along with it.
I'm not saying we should do this modern thing of doing Hajj every
year because that the poor folk have a chance to pay for some
impoverished cousin in Bangladesh to do up to date yourself every
year but still
had us a kind of veiled thing in a way that many of our other
obligations are not but still, you will look as Ali has a book a
surat al Hajj, the secret of the Hajj and gives us some indication
as to why it's effective.
So here you have an expression of these fundamental rule based
dimensions of the Sunnah, which invite us not to transcend them,
you can't transcend something that was the essence of the prophetic
excellence, but rather to inhabit them properly, and to benefit from
them so that they sought you out. He'll you rebalance you.
So here's one of the most important sections of the here,
which comes strategically halfway through book 20, which he calls
kitab. Addabbo, Maisha o'clock in nobleworks,
the book of the courtesies of living and the character traits of
prophecy,
which is a kind of a bit like Hossein his book Shema is a type
works on the Prophet smile Prophet being nice to birds get that
but written from the Imams always cautious because he really wants
the XR tourists that his or her not to find excuses to
send the book back to Amazon or whatever. Giving it one star but
he wants everybody to take this seriously and there's a lot of
kind of veiled content and in the area which makes it helpful to our
fundamental alized modern Muslim
Omote is hyper critical of anything.
That doesn't seem to be part of the plain sense of things.
But he has this chapter which is about the excellence of the Holy
Prophet, even though he's talking about that everywhere, and really,
which is an exposition of the Sunnah.
So he says this in order to give us a hint of what he thinks the
sauna is doing for us in the air, Deb has a wire here on where to
add a bill button.
The Curtis's of our outward forms are the address or the indication
of the adverb of what is going on within us.
So, people's outward conduct is an indication of what they're doing
inside not the kind of formal practices but the adults the the
way in which they do things.
Well, hello, Katie, would you worry tomorrow to howto and the
movements of the outward limbs are the consequence of the thoughts
that we have? Well, our man a lot nitida, two o'clock, and our
formal actions are the consequences of our morality.
Well, Deb rush, Halima ahref. And our Curtis's are the sprinklings
of knowledge,
insight. So that's a subtler thing. Well, Sarah era will Oh, pm
of Ari's will f Ali woman be all
the secrets which are enshrined in the hearts are the sowing places
the the fields for cultivation of actions and the places where they
spring up from
what Anwar is surrounded he allottee, to Sreekumar, others the
Whitehair, the to the you know, what to Jalisa. And the lights
which are in our inward nature, are those which shine out upon our
outward forms, and make them beautiful, and meet and clarify
and purify them.
So, and he goes on, about this to indicate the interconnectedness of
our outward and inward life. And then he goes on to indicate the
extent to which we can be genuinely religious, if we're just
going through the outward form of things, but inwardly we're
something else and somewhere else, the atrocity of the prayer that is
punctiliously performed by somebody whose mind is simply
elsewhere, this is a kind of sickness, we have to bring the two
into focus. This is one reason why, according to our Allah mat,
that gel has one eye, because he can't see things in focus, the
times of turbulence, that would be times when people are focused only
on the outward of things, or only on the inward of things. So they
want to go to Stonehenge and light a candle or something. But they
don't really want the boundaries of formal religion, spirituality.
There's a lot of that in our time. Alternatively, the people who just
want to find the strictest possible interpretation of
religion, and the handbill is not strict enough. So they find the
czar heroes, but they're not strict enough. So they find some
strange Wahhabi Ultra strict interpretation. And they find
themselves at peace with that. And the result is detonations across
the the ummah. That's a purely exoteric form of religion that
assumes that strictness and difficulty is always a sign of
piety, which is from the point of view of us all, completely crazy.
It's just not what our scholars would say we have this principle,
most of the rules of Sharia are deduced to analogical deduction
PS.
One of the ways in which that operates and most of them have
their head is something called SDSN. If an analogical deduction
results in something that brings hardship or difficulty to human
beings, then you can find a less obvious Hadith or less obvious
interpretation that will bring ease and you do your class on that
basis. And it's deficit means looking for what is beautiful,
modern tradition it seems to the ALMA because people are not
interested in beauty, but serving their anger is what one might call
is tip about. What is the ugliest interpretation of the Cherie I can
find that really show them that will make the regime really angry.
That'll show my friends have uncompromising I am. And the ego
then turns the Sharia, which is supposed to be about mercy and
prophetic wish for mercy into something that is the opposite of
mercy. And that's one of the most Versiv things you can do to
religion, to replace this tendency towards beauty, with this tendency
to enshrine the anger of frustrated third world oppressed
people to turn that into the operative principle of
jurisprudence. That's the end of the show it really because it's
the exact opposite, but there's a lot of that nowadays, people who
think that strictness is
Same as piety. Go and read a book of Psalm.
Hello, Ken Watanabe on the Holy Prophet says, May the fanatics
perish
they do sooner or later.
So this is the idea of the Assad the secret of purity, fasting, of
prayer, the Sunnah is something that has within itself something
of the transformational, the symbolic things I wash, and the
water comes from heaven. And so that's a symbolic thing. And I
hope that inwardly it'll have the same effect. And it does have a
certain psychosomatic correlation. But there's something deeper going
on, which is that God Himself through the ideal prophetic model
has turned those practices into at a very deep, imponderable level,
something that will restore you to the fitrah into a kind of balanced
and serene human normality. Very often, you may not see that like
with the Hajj, what is this site and tawaf and artifacts and what
on earth is that it has an effect, you won't be able to define it,
even though some scholars
do so. So we might say that this is the button of the Sunnah, that
it restores us to a form of human balance, enabling us to be
sheltered from the crazy storms of the age which are directed by
hedonism and pride and money and the other stuff, we human beings
like that it is a suit of armor. That restores us, actually in a
beautiful way, because it's a beautiful form of life, to
something that is normal, natural, primordial, balanced, you might
say, the sun is more essential now than in any previous period of
history, because human beings are so stretched and warped and
unhappy and
depressed. So the Sunnah, therefore restores us to normalcy.
And it is that normalcy that the Quran addresses
in its invitation, that we should see the world and be astonished,
delighted, amazed, and should embrace its creator.
It is the sound heart that sees God's signs in the world. And it
is the egotist, who doesn't want to see and isn't interested and
doesn't have the time. No modern lifestyle is not epistemologically
conducive to religious knowledge.
Because even when we live in a village, there was a time when
people would go cycling. And they would wear Canvas shorts and have
a stack and a creaky old bicycle. And there'll be looking at the
landscape and it will be slow, and they will be part of the
landscape. Now will the cyclists in my village, they're in lycra?
They've got goggles, they're doing this, they can't see anything. And
they've got some nasty thing that tells them whether they've beaten
their previous record. What is that? And the world is beautiful
around them. But no, it's the self, the body.
They're missing a lot. What what is the point you might as well go
to the gym and do something really few tiles.
Like the ancient the ancient Romans had things for slaves to do
that all the time. And now we pay for the pleasure. So we're quite
sick in that we don't see God's super abundant cornucopia of
amazing beauty, which is not a kind of philosophical argument,
but something that in the serene soul sinks in until it all becomes
very natural and obvious, but we don't have the time for that. We
didn't look out.
Even the Saudis in the superlative
intelligence and brilliance and wisdom now built us high speed
trains at the hajis can save an hour getting from Mecca to Medina,
masha Allah, Allahu Akbar of mind what it does to the gazelles in
the desert that want to cross the line.
What's the point of that you used to sit in the bus and it was slow,
and you'd stop at these places where you get rather dubious
meals, you engage with people, and you'd see the world and you were
prepared for your arrival in the holy city. But now, anyway, it's
depressing. But modernity really exists, you could say in order to
stop us experiencing the world,
but there to stop us experiencing the world. And instead, we
experience our own cool mediocrities all the time. They're
designed to hold our attention.
difficult not to be distracted by at all. You walk through a
shopping center, and try and
recite something nice, but all of the things are kind of screaming
to you and the psychologists have determined exactly how to hold
your attention.
So you can't really blame people not
As for not being really spiritual and religious, for being depressed
because we're not living, the way our species is designed to live
anyway. So that's been the, I think, hopefully interesting,
doesn't need to be significant preparation for our subject today,
which is really about the people, the heroes who have sacrificed
their lives in order to preserve this thing called a sunnah for us.
We only have it because of generations of Hadith scholars and
Al Hadith. And folks who spent their lives and their fortunes and
their health, taking these things like
gold coins from the prophetic legacy and making sure they were
handed on absolutely right and testing them to see if the gold
was perhaps alloyed with something else, spending their lives on that
passing it on
the most precious legacy.
A book can be preserved in library, but a living tradition
of how a human being was is a more subtle thing than that. And that's
why it's necessary really, when you study Islam to study with
somebody, rather than just to read something on a website. And you
can't actually read a hadith in Islam unless you have been
authorized to do that. Nowadays, prepare hoppers by picking up a
translation of some Hadith collection, out it comes and
that's one reason why there's so much dysfunction in our
communities because the material has to be accompanied by the
wisdom on the adverb of the Majlis of learning, which we think we can
now we can and Islam from our handheld devices, it's really
structured to facilitate that. But in any case, the LL Hadith.
The people of Hadith, those who, amidst extraordinary efforts,
feats of memorization, feats of geographical globe trotting,
conserved this and they knew its importance.
And they have handed it down to ourselves. So
who are they who were they? What were they like? That's what we
want to look at. And the story begins
with a reminder of the universalism and the non tribalism
of the religion, which is part of its Ishmaelites charisma and part
of its cut Tamiya with a guy in Central Asia, called birdies,
Zoroastrian
deck on in other words, it's a kind of local squire, never
converted to Islam. He dies as borrowed his BA.
But he has a son
call, who takes the name and more lira, following his conversion in
the city of Bukhara. This is the beginning of the great age of
conversions.
And
begins the line of scholars, which leads through his own son called
Ibrahim, about whom we don't really know very much. And then
Ismail, who becomes a significant Muslim scholar of Bukhara is the
great grandson of the Cerro Austrian landowner.
And he studies in NACA on Hajj and so much of this hadith business is
facilitated by Islam's extraordinary web of pilgrimage
and merchant routes. It was a very networked world. So in 179, we
find him in the Hajj and studying under the Hajj scholars there he
studied under Imam Malik
and Abdullah ibn Al Mubarak was another central Asian, who was an
expert on
and Sufi things.
He was asked when he was dying on his deathbed
about whether his inheritance was halal. And he said he believed
that he'd never accepted anything from unlawful source. And this
used to be part of the o'clock of Muslims when handing on wealth,
they would not hand on wealth that had come to them by some dubious
means. That would they would always give away in South Africa
without the intention of sadaqa. But they made sure that their
descendants always inherited 100% Halal wealth now he has a son with
a smile. And Ibrahim has a son who's called Mohammed
who then becomes one of the great academic superstars in the
firmament of Muslim scholarship and the Imam really the Qibla of
the Al Hadith
was born in one
nine four in Central Asia in Bahara. If you've been to us
Pakistan, you'll know that we'll Hydra is still a really beautiful
and evocative place.
Unlike some other Soviet towns which were remodeled according to
scientific principles, alas, it's conserved much of its historic
urban fabric intact.
worth going. So his from Bukhara
becomes orphaned as a child,
brought up by his mother.
Even cathedra tells us a story
that when he was a child, a contracted a disease and went
blind,
and his mother wept.
And she saw the Prophet Ibrahim Alehissalaam in a dream,
who told her that because of her grief and her love for her child,
God would restore the child's sight. This turns out to be great
news for the Ummah because the child Mohammed bin Ismail is, of
course, going to become the great Imam Al Bukhari, one of the real
paradigms of leadership in our Alma. Now, as a child, he was
somebody who just loved knowledge, he loved learning things. And this
wasn't like the kind of modern child who is precocious and a bit
of a bore and a bit of a brat who wants a chemistry set for his 10th
birthday and is really nerdy and not like that.
But instead, seeing the beauty of Quran and Hadith and the
importance of those things for actual human life. So it was a
genuine love and a genuine passion. And those who have
seriously set out on the path of sacred knowledge, to this day,
we'll be motivated if they're at all serious and have open hearts
by the beauty of what they're studying. There's something about
and that carries one through it to the point of fifths and
memorization. Its internal rhythms and landscapes. It's quite unique
and intoxicating. And so it is with a hadith and with the fact
that you really have to be in love with the beauty of this inherited
tradition before you can
spend 20 years or whatever it requires to become any kind of
even little Mufti and traditional system. It's not just Do you want
a job because it's not really a very well paying job to be a
Mufti. But you have to really, really love it. And that is part
of love for the Holy Prophet salAllahu alayhi wasallam, because
the filter is nothing other than the current state of the colonists
discussions as to how to follow him. It's a prophetic discipline.
So
here's father who has died leaves him with quite a bit of money and
his relatively wealthy throughout his life. And in OHara, and
neighboring towns,
we were told that when he was still a child, he memorized 70,000
deaths. This is the kind of phenomenal memory of the child
that you can still
pick up and children do have that capacity. 5% of children are
thought to be born with an eidetic memory, which is kind of because
it's not really used in our culture tends to fade with age.
But if you get a child who has that capacity, and you feed the
memory with things of child can really be a prodigy, and you still
see some children have amazing memories like
and somebody who, on her 16th birthday said Daddy was my snake.
But he said,
Yes, when I was literally promised that when I was 16, I could have a
snake and she was about three, when Daddy had made that promise,
assuming the childhood Forget it, within five minutes, children can
have really good memories. But our culture doesn't really know what
to make of that. So in primary schools, instead of giving the
kids what their minds are ready for, which is to memorize a lot of
things. You do projects of various kinds, or you do citizenship, or
that sort of claptrap, are you seeing some pop that waste of
their brains, really, because the brain is not designed for analysis
at that age is designed to absorb stuff, because it's those learned
things that are going to provide life skills. So that's another
silliness of our culture. But in Muslim culture, when they found a
child that had that capacity of that 5% The whole system would be
oriented towards making the most of that person. So each for each
of these 70,000 Hadith were told that he would learn about the
narrator's of the Hadith because of course, the difficult bit of
Hadith study is that hadith is in two parts, the mattone which is
what is being transmitted usually from the Holy Prophet and it's an
ad
which is this list of narrators. And that can get really
complicated. Some Hadith have dozens of different lines
different isn't ads. And before you can begin to pronounce on the
usability of a hadith, you have to know all of those things. It's
kind of the Rolls Royce of Muslim scholarship, but it is difficult
and you are transmitting something that the ALMA knows to be really
precious. You don't want to be Narita of weak things and to be
recalled forever after somebody who had these Vormetric nobody
takes his Hadith that's not a good epitaph. So you want to get it
right so he learned the numerators and many of his books actually
specifically about the numerators so he learns all the Hadith that
he can hoover up in the great city of Bukhara and then he takes his
older brother and his mother off on hudge
so we have no
what are we looking at
Yeah, here's an account from one of his students and this is
preserved in
the foil hot label dark daddy study back that which
was 14 volume
by Biographical Dictionary of the great scholars of Baghdad
there's a lot of them so
called culturally abi.
A culturally ABI Abdullah Mohammed bin Ismail and Buhari I won't say
to Mohammed bin Ismail Buhari, que fucka in a bed to America futala
Bill Hadith did he start off learning or seeking Hadith? Paul
will him to himself it through anopheles tab. I was inspired by
or to the memorization of Hadith when I was still at the Khattab,
the primary school.
Girl welcome atta Alika is back.
And he said, And how old were you at that time, I should have seen
in our call. I was 10 years old or less. So massage Tumino Kuta Badil
Asha. And then after the primary school, I left after the age of
10. For gen two actually for Isla del Haley. We're hiring. And then
I went to one of the great bullhorn scholars called adaxially
and others will call the Yeoman female Kana yatra. Only nurse
Sophia in on Abby's Zubayr on Ibrahim. One day in what he was
reciting repeating to people definitely used I would say this,
this is nerd Sophia and on the authority of Abu Zubaydah on the
authority of Ibrahim fficult Allah and I said to him, you're about to
learn in Abba, Zubayr lamb Yahweh and Ibrahim so this little boy is
interrupting the great Hadith scholar and saying, I was a bear
never generated anything from Ibrahim
Fatah Ronnie for kotula so he grabbed me and I said to him,
either job eel awesome go back to the original copy in Cana InDeck
if if you have it
for DACA so he went into his house when those are our fee he thought
Maharajah kala Lee and he looked looked it looked it up. And then
he said to me
okay, for who? Yeah, who learn. So how should it be?
So he's testing him for whole two and I said, Who's the bear been rd
on Ibrahim? The real is not is Zubair Ibn rd on the authority of
Ibrahim.
For Asada kala Mini. We're at Chemeketa Bohol. So I took my pen,
and he corrected his own copy of the book for other products
for called Allahabad, wasabi. And he said, You're right. And some of
his students said to him,
even though Kim could either Odetta Ali, how old were you? Oh,
hurry when you answer back to the great scholar for call. Ignore
those 11.
For lumma, Dan tofi City archery center, and when I grew to be 16
offers to Kutub normobaric. Wolbachia, well RF to colomba
Allah. So when I was 16, I memorized the books of Lebanon
Mubarak and work here. And I knew that particular discourse which is
the discourse of Zod, those two scholars ever normobaric, who was
a great scholar of Morrow, which is in Central Asia,
wrote a famous Kitab Zod about asceticism which is a Hadith
collection which is very early and important and waqia Eternal.
geographe also wrote, it was a contemporary three volume
collection of Hadith
It's about Zoho austerity asceticism. Those are the two big
books in that genre, some Allamah specialized in particular genres.
And they were famous for this
work here was from Nisha poor and other Central Asian, and like
Apple hilarious thought to have been of local ancestry from from
the socket, the saga audience.
So, already as a teenager, he's a prodigy.
Then he goes to the hijas and he stays for about six years in Naka
in Syria, goes to Egypt days in Basra, where he says Khattab to an
elfin with Emma Nina knifes and lesufi him Illa Sahiba Hadith. I
wrote down material from 1800 1080 people who were all narrated
Hadith.
So who are his teachers, even 100 Less baloney in his great preface
to his own commentary on
Buhari, which he calls the heady Saturday to kind of preliminary
volume which is all about Kyrie and the way in which he narrates
his biography and his criteria for classifying and authenticating
Hadith headier Sadie it's a very important book, he divides
Bohorquez teachers into five different groups number one men
had better who I need to be 18
his teachers who in the rating from the tabby ain
In other words, these are the famous polythene yet the length
yet are Hadith narrated by his nerds that have just three
intermediary transmitters between the one who's writing the
collection in this case Buhari and the Holy Prophet salallahu Alaihe
Salam have the full length yet and Buhari regarded as some of the
Golden golden hadith of Islam
number two, those who are from the same generation
but did not actually enter it from the tab Ain. So there were same
age as Bucarest teachers but that is not we're not through the the
tablet in themselves.
Category number three men had the third on at bow, a tabby ain those
who narrated from the followers of the followers to this for
intermediaries in these ensnared and this important people like
Mohammed bin Hanbal in this category is happened right away.
And other great authors of Hadith collections and these Hadith tend
to go into the Hadith in Sahih. Muslim as well, if we have time
we'll talk about the differences between Muslim and Buhari. The
birth of great Sahai works of Islam but Buhari tends to have
these lengthy yet and he's very, what they call high is Ned's Ali
is nurse with which is just an snad with a small number of
narrators is other differences as well. He also notes from his
colleagues, including some who are a bit older than himself, Abu
Hatem al Razi, from ray which is now a kind of suburb buried under
concrete jungle of modern to Iran, but was one of the great Hadith
centers
and also narrates from some younger than himself, including
some of his students. There's not many Hadith in his site here that
are from people younger than himself, but there's a few
so he
lives mainly in Asia poor, the great cities of Horus and Central
Asia are mo sheshe, which is now Tashkent.
Samarkand. Bukhara, Nisha por to swear in the milk azaleas,
formulas and other towns
horison Central Asia doesn't really correspond to any current
present day national or provincial entity. It's it's bigger than the
old Soviet Central Asia, which includes most of what's now
Afghanistan and the top right hand corner of Iran. But again, as part
of the hat Nia and the inclusiveness of Islam it's
interesting that so many of the great Arab grammarians and Hadith
scholars do so at the heart of the preservation of the Arabic, Hadith
and Quran legacy actually, from this area, from an ancient Persian
and Turkic region.
So he stays mainly in Nisha port, where he has a number of key
students,
but also, maybe the best known of whom is Imam Muslim, Muslim, even
North head judge and Nisha Poori, who outlives in by five years who
becomes the author of The Great Sahih Muslim, which is also
translated. Like many of these people, he gets into trouble with
the governors. His teacher work here, has been punished by Hassan
Rashid for not doing what he was told. And Bihari also is the
typical tradition.
tional scholar who refuses to be a kind of state, Mufti type
personality of the kind that we're all too familiar nowadays with the
kind of nationalizing of Islam that's going on everywhere that he
would not accept this this Allah have to be independent of the
state because Imam Malik Imam Muhammad bin Hanbal got into the
same kind of hot water with the early Ambassade state.
So he refuses to go to the palace in Bukhara.
And if you go to Bukhara you can still see the palace although it's
nowadays mostly 17th 18th century structure, but it was in the same
location he wouldn't go to teach the governor's children in the
palace. He wanted to do Hadith he didn't want to teach Alif bat
royal brats. He said no. So the governor is really angry and
chokes him out. So he goes to this place called Hot tank, which is
this village north of Samarkand.
middle of nowhere, it's like half an hour's drive north of
Summerland, but a rural location where he spends the last few years
of his life and where he dies and is buried. And
nowadays, it's kind of pilgrimage site.
It's always full of people. And it's nice, big rose gardens and
the buildings have been rebuilt. I was there in, I guess, the 80s in
a communist period when it was still kind of
supposed to be just a historical building. But it was still very
much a living center for the village.
And
it's since been rebuilt and enlarged. And this museums and
it's part of sometimes it was bit government's attempt to kind of
demonstrate its religious or cultural credentials, it's been a
symbol that's been regarded as some ambiguity by different areas
of the ozbek. Post communist establishment, but it is a nice
place to visit. And when I was there, I was with Dr. Omar
Abdullah and some others and the Imams kind of kind of unlocked
because there's a big blue dome over the tablet, that you can
actually go down to the real grave which is underneath that. And
there's a little place where you can sit so we did that which was
very fragrant, fragrant place. So the Obama has
honored him. But you can see the
the difficulty of framing this in terms of a paradigm of leadership,
because he's an academic, he's not Imam Shamil with his flashing
sword or Sakina, with ready wit and her teenage hairstyle and is
basically reading books reciting Hadith, being absolutely super
meticulous. And one of the great achievements of classical Islam is
the development of this, this rich and extremely conscientious,
forensic physiological tradition of assessing historical data,
which the Muslims don't seem to have got from any other
civilization. It's something that was developed. isnaad is a kind of
new Islamic innovation. We'd really love to have an isnaad for
the four Gospels, wouldn't that be great?
If just a few, then you could actually see who might have
written them or what their authenticity is, but there's
nothing like that. This is something that is particular to
Islamic civilization. Although some of the Hindu texts also have
something attached to them that looks like an Israelite.
But this is certainly an indigenous Islamic evolution and
one that at the hands of super scholars highly critical minds.
Like Imam Bukhari becomes part of the pride of Islamic civilization
and one of the most paradigmatically Islamic Sciences
The the Joshua idealer.
The assessment of the reliability of narratives those who are
passing on these gold coins from
from the past.
To understand this, again, we need to revert to this idea of HEFCE.
It Ben cathedra says of a Buhari that can a young woman nozzle
written Wahida
he looked once at a hadith or here at once, and he'd memorize it,
that will be it, it will just stick in his mind is like
Mozart.
Here at the age of five, he could hear a tune at the opera, come
home and he could play the whole thing on the piano. This was
documented and of course all the courts of Europe wanted this
little five year old his feet couldn't even which the floor
playing the piano. It's a miracle of human creation really, that
some kids can do that. So remember, will Harry is from that
capacity
but
it's also and this is also worth bearing in mind when we consider
the vast importance of memorization in our culture, that
it is something the brain is designed for, and something that
the brain thrives on now,
you can read polemical works about Islam saying that Muslims didn't
really develop much that was original, because their brains
were full of memorized stuff. Once you'd memorize the Quran, there
wasn't really room in the brain somehow to have thoughts of your
own. Well, it is the case that some scholars simply regurgitate
as of what they know. And if what they know is enough for their
societies, that's fine. But so you've also created any number of
analytic minds and the latest neuroscience indicates that
memorization actually aids brain function. So, University of
Wisconsin, Richard Davidson has done some research on this, the
effect of ritual and meditative practice on neural pathways, it
seems again, the brain is designed for us to regularly meditate or
have rituals and prayers. We've always done this since the time of
remote ancestors, it's normal to us that the brain actually
functions better, and endorphins released, were more cheerful when
we have ritual in our lives and when we memorize.
Again, this is part of the primordial ality of Islam. This
kind of memorizing thing wasn't emphasized so much in Christian
civilization, but for Muslims, yeah, man. Um, yeah, files, lemmya
alum, whoever hasn't memorized doesn't know. And if you've had
the good fortune to see traditional scholars at work, and
the fact that they regard books, particularly printed books as kind
of things they'd rather not have around them when they're teaching
because if you don't know this stuff, then why are you studying
it?
And my teachers in Makkah,
studied Sahih Muslim with him.
And he was this really old guy, smoking his shisha. He was in his
90s. At the time, he is, you know, fed Ernie.
And the shisha wasn't tobacco. It was herbs and things
were really, really old.
Originally from Patagonia in South Thailand, and these young Syrians
are sitting around with Sahih Muslim, are loaded with the
traditional somatic thing of reading the Hadith.
And by the time they got through the whole thing, that he was happy
that they understood it, give them the agenda.
And the Sheikh was kind of there and kind of look as if he was
dead.
You could only see that he was alive because occasionally it'd be
bubbles coming up in the, in the she shows it is still listening.
But
when one of the students read something wrongly, usually because
it was a misprint, it was kind of come to life and tell them the
correct version, and we'd all write it in our copies. printed
books of Hadith are not the Hadith. And the automat will not
allow fetters or any serious religious scholarship on the basis
of books that have been printed by some gangster in Beirut to make
money. That's not the legacy of the Holy Prophet salallahu ideas
and quite apart from the fact that there are different durations,
which is something that Muslims tend not to know, at all. Bukhari
is not just one thing, the way the Quran is one thing whether it's
variant vocalizations. Bukhari has different Rewi yet different
narrations because various students reported the book
somewhat differently.
So the one we have today, which we normally use, is the narration of
fear robbery. And he was about 100 years later and in a village also
in Central Asia and his Bihar is kind of star pupil and his pupil l
Kush may honey gives us the version that is usually printed
today in the Arab world, the cush may honey variant of Farah berries
Buhari
but there's other ones have been doubled and other versions of the
way out of Buhari and this again is a problem for Muslims who think
oh, I just want to go in and Sunnah. So let me go to the Mohsin
Khan translation of Buhari and see how to pray.
That isn't even Buhari that somebody is translation
of the Cushnie honey variant, a few robberies narration of Buhari
and have you looked at the others and praise important. That's why
we need jurists to sort this stuff out because it's really hard work.
So we need to remember that these Hadith collections exist as
literary traditions, the more which is earlier Imam Malik,
there's no 70 or 80 Different waters, some of them quite a bit
longer, some of them shorter than water of shea banni, which is one
of the variants has been published in English translation recently
and
but we want things to be said
For but we also want to do it on ourselves which is
characteristically modern aberration. You wouldn't apply
that to say nuclear physics. I'm not going to bother with Einstein
and all of this boring physicist, I'm going to do it myself.
Well, good luck in the laboratory with that. You have to be part of
a family of discussion. This is an island. It is a heritage.
So the memorization Yeah. And so there's
here's a nice book about it when I was in Egypt, the biography of
Imam Bukhari by Sheikh Mohammed Abdullah honey Abdullah Holic
one of my favorite people great as hurry, who was
did many things professor at a US heart but also was the imam for
many years at the mosque of Seder Nafeesa, which is one of the two
or three great shrine mosques in Cairo as a big Molad and it's kind
of especially for the working classes in Cairo. It's hundreds of
1000s of people, colored lights, and it's a kind of Fiesta, but
it's really serious scholar
is enamel. Sheffy went to her in order to study with her. She was
called Nafisa Delilah in a piece of knowledge. She is the great
granddaughter of Emmanuel Hassan multiple scenes brother, so she's
from the little bait and Imola chef, he
was actually financially supported by her. She was one of these
wealthier women like like like so Cana and according to ebonite,
Imad and a number of other narrators. It's even reported that
on his deathbed, Imola chef, he said he wanted cedar Nafisa to
lead his janazah
What could that mean? It's in the sauces Allahu Allah and but it's
indicative of the knowledge of the Ummah has of enormous respect in
which she was held. I recommend that you go and visit to pay your
respects in Sharla and absorb the blessings. So he was the Imam of
Satan, Ephesus mosque and a kind of classical, as sorry, Hadith
scholar. So he has this nice book in Arabic about Imam Al Bukhari.
And you saw here and all of the commentaries, so here, I can find
it one to seven.
He
says an example from somebody called Ibn Addy who's one of the
slightly later Hadith that you Rosie about the stories that
scholars would tell about memorable Horus, memory and these
people used to test each other.
So
God Al, Hafiz Abu Mohammed ibn Lottie
and some other sources, similar to a che caumon Many of my teachers
were telling me this story, Mohammed bin Ismail al Bukhari
Kadima Baghdad, Buhari came to Baghdad, for semi
sinabi he was horrible Hadith.
As for semi RB, he was type of Hadith and the Hadith specialist
in the town, heard of him having turned up
projectemma All around to empty Hannah Hefner. So they arranged a
gathering and they wanted to test his memory
for I'm gonna do elimate at Hadith for collabo motonovo ehsani to
her. So they took 100 Hadith and they jumbled up the Mouton the
texts with the internet they give the wrong isn't it to the
different Hadith wotja aloo. Metzner hurdle is nerdy isn't it
in Africa is not a hurdle mutton limiting Angkor
Wat deffo Illa Assa T enforce and they got 10 scholars, Isla Cooley
Raju Lin Asha ahaadeeth, gave 10 of these fake Hadith to 10
Different people what Amma Rohan either harder or Mejlis and told
them that when they went to Emmanuel, Bihar is measureless and
you will call their Lika Allah Buhari to recite these Hadith to
Buhari
wa huddle no I didn't Michalis the time was set for the Mejlis for
huddle manually. So Jamaah to us Hi Bill, Hadith mineral Hora bap
and a number of non Baghdad is attended this hadith gathering min
le horizen work I rehab that relations and others warming above
the dean and from some local Baghdad is
Falun mathema and then Mejlis will be early on when the class had
settled down. In Tibet, he lay here agilan mineral Astra one of
the 10 addressed him for set Allahu Allah Hadith mintegral a
hadith and asked him about one of these Hadees Dr. Al Bukhari, la
RFO and Buhari said, I don't know that hadith
To set Allahu Anelka the same and asked him about another one for
color, la RFO I don't know, for Mozilla yokley Allah He were
hidden ukar Ali he were hidden by the word. So Hadith after Hadith
was recited to him. And normally then a hadith session, hadith is
narrated and he says it's nerd and this is correct. And this is not
correct. And this is the reason he's just saying, I don't know. I
don't know. Throughout the class had followed I mean, I shudder to
hear what Buhari old
man recited all 10 of these bogus Hadith because he just said, I
don't know.
Fuck Kenna fuqaha women men haberle Mejlis ltft to bow to home
Illa Bob. So the jurists to present into a gathering sort of
looked at each other.
We are cologne, Raju fan, the man understands he's got it. Woman Can
I mean whom? arrayed with Ellika but others people who have not so
learned. You have the Al Bukhari Bellagio, a tuxedo penitent fam.
Just Buhari to be a loser, incapable inadequate,
uncomprehending.
voluntad about Roger burradon Assar Minahasa for settleable on
policemen typical ahaadeeth al Mokuba. And then another of those
tenement came to him and asked him about more of these inverted model
Hadith.
For Karla, the odd Bologna is a UK Allahi wa I didn't bother wide and
so forth and it keeps going. This whole class is just people asking
that hadith seem to be fine. Saying I don't know. I don't know.
I don't know. Salman said about 8030. Well, Robbia Illa Tamil,
Asha had Farah who could Luhan minute a hadith in October. Well
Buhari lazy to home Allah Allah RFO at the end, all 100 of these
Hadith have been presented. Mockery says I don't know doesn't
say anything more than that.
For lemma animal Buhari yo and Mohammed ferryhill When Buhari
realized that they'd finished it taffeta L A Willie min home. For
Karla he turned to the first of the questioners and he said a ma
Hadith who can a well for contact Kedah as your first Hadith you
said such and such a thing
was so horrible who Kedah but the correct version is this and it
gives the correct version of the Hadith. Well, Hadith Luca Thani,
Kevin was a wobbu, Kedah and your second Hadith was this but the
correct version is that we're 30th word Rebecca
Arnold Willa and he did them in the same order the third and the
fourth had to enter Allah Tamil Asha until he finished the first
10 valid that could match in in either a snare so the unjumble
them and returned each Hadith to its proper it's an ad.
What color is nurdin Illa matinee and every snare to its correct,
madam, well follow Bill ASCII Rena Mithila Delic and he did the same
thing with all of the others. What are the maternal ahaadeeth Kalia
in SN Ed has reconnected all of the Hadith to their correctness
nerds for a Corolla, who nurse who will have with Angela who will
fall.
And the people present recognize the quality of his
his memorization and his academic virtue and even hudgell. Alas,
Kalani in his head, your salary, reflecting on this story says that
the most amazing thing about it is that not only that he knew the
correct versions, but that he remembered in order that the 100
Hadith that had been narrated to Him and who had asked him and he
was able to reconnect them just from his from his mind. And if you
spend time with traditional Hadith scholars nowadays, you'll see that
this is indeed how they are.
They might occasionally ask somebody present, to go to a
bookshelf and to check something. Let's say it was the Red Book, and
it's third from the left on the second shelf, and I think it's
about page 234. And we'll go Yeah, right. And it always is, I've seen
that myself. It's pretty humbling if you're part of the modern
academic thing, which doesn't really rely much on memorization,
but you just know where to look things up in encyclopedias, to see
that is quite,
quite startling. So we should finish but remember that in the
story of Evan ID, they've not just complimented him on his memory,
but on his fadul.
And this idea of the Ford Dealer of the Arlynn is important.
Academic merits doesn't quite do it. Justice, sometimes when for
dealer to shake the shake of outsiders introduced in Lambeth
Palace or somewhere they'll say, Your Grace or your reverence
because they don't know how to do Sahaba
For the law, but for the law really means merit and virtue, it
indicates the moral quality of the person. So, we know for instance,
that immeasurable Harry, having inherited a lot used to spend his
money basically on supporting students, and towards the end of
his life, wanted to distribute most of his inheritance to the
poor. And to find out who the poor were in the term, he didn't go to
the governor,
initial poor, because he thought, well, the scribes, they're going
to ask me for some kind of
tip to look these things up. I didn't want to do it that way. So
he asked around himself, and most of his money went to the poor.
Always invited passers by this is the traditional image of the
Muslim scholar as a great host. It's reported in the text that
there will never less than 100 people at his dinner table in the
evening, who just invite anybody who was around and was happy, and
a very social person, which seems and this again, fits in with what
we know about the great on that which is that in order to
understand the validity of the practice of the religion, they
really have to know society, you can't be a monk and then write a
book about marriage relieves happens in some cultures, but in
Islam, you have to be absolutely in the world that Abu Hanifa
benefited so much from being a trader in the market in Iraq,
because he actually learned how people are and the fact was we're
oriented accordingly. So
knowing known that basically as a hadith
transmitter, and somebody with very strict criteria for the
acceptance of Hadith.
He also had some fifth opinions and occasionally the factors of
Buhari are cited.
One famous factor on involuntary divorce for instance, and a few
others because he did study with an Iraqi and the people who were
using more intuitive common sensical arguments in
jurisprudence.
His fatwah that it is permissible to recite poetry in the mosque as
a tribute to tributed. To him. It's permissible for women as well
as men to sleep in the mosque, but the women have to have a screen.
A woman doesn't have to remove her veil in court, as long as identity
can be proven from her voice, things like this, but he's not
really the founder of a madhhab. He's known as a hadith expert, and
he has not just the Sahara, but other books as well, most of which
are still actively used by the owner.
One of them which has been translated into English is an edit
and mouflon which is a collection of Hadith, which is specifically
about adverb courtesy and a flock.
He has a book identifying the names of the companions, a Sami or
Sahaba, which is important for isnaad verification because
sometimes it is natural. Just say
I will mama related to me, which I will or mama there might be a
couple of doesn't do this genre of have Hadith Scholarship, which is
about identifying certain individuals by their Konya. And
also by that isn't the name as well as the patronymic.
He's also famous for a book that we do use a lot of Teddy for
Kabir,
the great dating he also has a middle sized version and a shorter
version, but we basically just used the big ones about four
volumes, which contains the names of about 40,000 men and women who
are cited in science of Hadith memorization
and a few other books but the Sahara we have to say something
about this greatest book in Islam after the Quran. Probably
some Maliki diehards would roll their eyes at this but most
Muslims would say yeah, it's the second second of our books. It
took him 16 years to write, to assemble.
Some of it was actually written when he was in Makkah in the harem
of Mecca.
He said that he had sifted through about 600,000 Hadith.
And he chose
about the usual number is 7397. But exactly how many depends on
which rewire you're using and also on whether you include repeat
Did Hadith or Hadith that seem to be the same but are in different
versions,
fully independent Hadith which are not repetitions or versions about
2600 in the Sofia.
This is very much part of the heyday of Hadith narration and the
structure of the book reflects what sometimes called the Sahai
movement or the Sunnah movement that is to say, Hadith collections
that tried to be comprehensive rather than say like even more
barracks book on
the hood and which are arranged systematically according to
subject rather than according to the narrator's either the narrator
from the sahabi or the narrator that Muhaddith has received it
from March am almost not
but uh, so, he or as soon as work is one that is arranged according
to recognize practical topics, not just filled topics, but also
topics of Tafseer and topics of doctrine, Eman, tafsir, and so
forth. So this movement continues for 200 years after his death in a
band who has a really big Sahai Dyson about 350 is the last of
them. So, so here will hurry 97 chapters with subsections. And
very often, in the mobile Hira will actually add a comment of his
own, or close quote, a comment from
one of the Sahaba or some other narrator. And this is one reason
why the automat tend to prefer it to the side of Muslim even though
the Sahara and Muslim is longer than 12,000 Hadith I think,
because Muslim never gives you his own sense of what might be
saleable about an essay nerd or a text
and doesn't usually quote other sources, either.
Similarly, will hurry.
Quite often, Hadith which have variants will seem to be relevant
to different subjects. There might be a hadith which tells you
something about the Hajj, but it also tells you something about
jihad for instance, so which chapter do you put it under? If
you're writing something like Messina, like given Hanbal? Would
you just put it into the name of the Marita subject doesn't matter,
but in this generation, which is trying to arrange things by topic,
sometimes it's a judgment call. So sometimes a hadith that is
identical or nearly identical will appear in several under several
different headings. And so here, which Imam Muslim tends not to do,
their answer will tend to be all in a single place, which
can help which is why say no always commentary on Sahih Muslim
is in many ways more useful than any commentary on Sohail Buhari,
because he's able to look at all of the Hadith variants, which
enables him to pronounce on whatever fatwah or fader issue the
benefit that there might be for us, whereas commentary on Buhari
has to cross reference a lot.
So, yeah, we have this
book. Hamdulillah.
Fine, finally, commentaries.
Maybe 70 Complete commentaries on Buhari.
It's obviously a big book and a commentary may run into 30 or 40
volumes of cluster Lani aligning.
Even Roger Broten very good beginning commentary,
but never finished it.
Ever knowledgeable humbly has Joanne Hickam I think it's called
it's been done into English recently, which is really nice
book.
It's a hadith commentary. But the greatest is Ibn hydrolyzed.
Bananas, fat Halle Berry. And the introduction had yesterday which I
mentioned earlier, which is one of our great sources for information
about immemorial Harry's life and even Hijjah. Willie, from the late
Mamluk period in Egypt, one of the great stars of our civilization,
and perhaps we should have a separate session about him and
it's interesting. Also, given the concerns we were looking at last
time that quite a lot of the Hadith scholars in his world were
women.
Guy including his mother, his sister, and his wife, Anna Scott
on. We married when she was still a teenager, but was already in
Cairo and in Mecca, arranging Hadith classes of her own scholars
like Immanuel Sahara. We will come and listen to Hadith from her and
the fertile berry which tends to be how the Muslims receive.
Bukhari and this egg
gain is a disadvantage that we have if we're trying to figure out
what Islam is from Quran and Sunnah nowadays, some of our
brothers do that the commentaries are not translated. And because
about half of them involve really intricate and dry grammatical
discussions, which are virtually untranslatable, probably never
will be translated,
that you have to have access to the original and the original will
include a discussion of the variant isn't ads, and then urban
hydro will give you an explanation of difficult words or grammatical
constructions. He will report the variant readings as the cush may
honey reading, which he uses, but there's other readings as well,
which are also Bukhari and need to be reported, he will then give you
the fatwah that might come from a particular Hadith, not basing
himself just on the Hadith, but on everything else in the Quran and
the Sunnah and the HTML, which is relevant, he will give you
the farewell aid. In other words, that kind of the benefits what
were the take homes for us of this hadith, which often are ethical
points, but sometimes doctrinal as well. He often quoted the Sufis
particularly men will cause early and memorable shayri. Because of
the 70 commentaries on Buhari all of them are written by Sufis
people have to suffer for the great preservers of this legacy.
And even Hotjar has a Deewan of poetry, which is full of not the
kind that I've just shared with you, and a lot of it is is to
author and tawassul directly addressing the Holy Prophet
sallallahu alayhi wa sallam because even hydro wrote this book
and the Hanukkah of Bay bars, which is one of the big Sufi
lodges in Cairo. That's where he was living. It was just normal in
his world. And maybe that takes us back to the
point we were trying to make at the beginning, which is that for
Muslims and for the Al Hadith, learning Hadith, and passing it on
is just is not just a matter of
sort of creating a database of information that is rather the
conservation of a style of life, an art of life, which is to do
with this primordial Fitri reality which the Holy Prophet alayhi
salatu salam is enacting for us in a form that we can actually draw
on and be inspired by today. And also, the consequences of that
life as a mammal, has led suggest an enhanced ability to know
reality to know God to recognize beauty, light virtue in human
beings and in the world. So this is the epistemological sunnah,
which is one of the most characteristic of Islamic
conceptions, which it seems to me in our high tech AI, dysfunctional
world, where ego is repugnant and people have very little self
knowledge or capacity to connect with. Anything fit through or
natural is one of the most indispensable gifts of Islam to
our generation. So may Allah subhanaw taala have mercy on him
and will Buhari and grant us in sha Allah to have Hassan Hassan of
him to benefit from his Hadith and inshallah maybe one day to visit
his his mosque and his Mazhar in Uzbekistan where the people are so
friendly and many blessings to be had in that place. Inshallah.
Baraka offical? Well I from income salaam aleikum wa rahmatullah.
Cambridge Muslim College, training the next generation of Muslim
thinkers