Abdullah Hakim Quick – Minarets And Thrones Class 12
AI: Summary ©
The segment discusses the spread of Islam across North Africa, including its importance as a trade route and its significance as a major destination for goods. The history of the region, including its influence on cultural groups and political parties, is also discussed, including its rise in the West, the importance of religion and culture in modern times, and the rise of Islam among Muslims in Eastern Africa. The segment also touches on the challenges faced by people in their roles in society, including the need for balance between knowledge and authority. upcoming programs and events in Toronto, including a new extension of the Islamic school, are mentioned.
AI: Summary ©
Bismillah ar-Rahman ar-Rahim Alhamdulillahi Rabbil Alameen
Wa usalli wa usallam ala Sayyidil Awwalin wal
Akhirin Nabiyyina Muhammadin wa ala alihi wa sahbihi
Wa barak wa salam All praise is due
to Allah, Lord of the worlds and peace
and blessings be constantly showered upon our beloved
Prophet Muhammad the Master of the first and
the last and his family, his companions and
all those who call to his way and
establish his sunnah to the Day of Judgment
As to what follows As-salamu alaykum wa
rahmatullahi wa barakatuh Alhamdulillah, we have reached the
end of this section of our discussion of
minarets and thrones and the intention was to
look at leadership and the important different aspects
of leadership itself and we recognize that the
two great divisions within leadership was the scholars
who are the spiritual leaders in a sense
and those who are dealing with the revelation
those who are interpreting the Book of Allah
and the sunnah of the Prophet, peace and
blessings be upon him and the second division
of this leadership was the umara or the
leaders and we looked at societies and recognized
and of course we're always reflecting upon the
situation that Muslims are in today and that
is where when you have leaders who have
authority they have military power, economic power they
have strong families but they don't have knowledge
they don't have a way to understand the
revelation and to put it into practice so
anything can happen and many cases unfortunately even
in the lands of Islam the rulers become
tyrants on the other hand are the scholars
and you may have cases where there are
scholars who have knowledge and they are teaching
but they have no authority and so their
teachings in many cases are not followed sometimes
they are jailed sometimes they are disrespected and
so when the knowledge and authority combine themselves
then we see that historically Muslims have been
able to reach the heights and the Prophet,
peace and blessings be upon him said in
authentic Hadith so the
strong believer the strong believer is better and
more beloved by Allah than the weak believer
but there's good in both so strength is
important for us in this world because Shaytan
is real and the forces of evil are
real and Islam needs to be backed up
with an earthly authority to be able to
develop it between human beings ultimately Allah Azawajal
is the power and so ultimately his will
will come to pass whatever happens but in
our limited world this is where we need
that combination and so we recognized that in
this leadership there is the highest level or
it's the ideal leadership and we called it
fusion so it's a fusion between the knowledge
the revelation and the authority and the best
example of this was the Khulafa Rashidin Abu
Bakr, Umar, Uthman and Ali who gave us
that example of knowledgeable people to the highest
level of knowledge but also people who had
authority and they could make important decisions for
the Muslims so they set the pace they
gave us an ideal that we can look
up towards and in many cases people tried
to follow this as the best they could
in terms of the ultimate level of Khalifa
of the whole Muslim world we have a
few examples of this and we looked at
at least one example of a fusion the
Khalifa Umar Ibn Abdul Aziz so there are
examples of the Khalifas who reached that high
level but generally the Khalifas who were successful
on that high level were the ones who
had the authority and they cooperated with the
Ulama so by cooperating together they were able
to reach that high level that ideal leadership
and because of this after the will of
Allah Subhana Islam began to spread rapidly the
Romans had attacked from the north the Persians
from the east so Muslims responded to this
and within 100 years and you can see
the green area within 100 years Islam had
reached thousands of miles this is something unheard
of especially without huge conquering armies or weapons
of mass destruction and so Muslims crossed different
barriers racial barriers linguistic authority religious barriers
and in North Africa and again you can
see how Islam went into Egypt and right
across that top part of North Africa and
these were the Byzantine lands and Islam spread
rapidly there was resistance no doubt about it
there were people who believed in many gods
those who refused to submit but generally speaking
the military aspect of the spread of Islam
is not connected with the actual coming together
of people or people coming into Islam the
military part was dealing with the military it
was dealing with the Byzantine Romans it was
dealing with the Persian Empire and that's a
military thing spread of Islam is something different
it was independent of the military confrontations and
so it was spread by scholars merchants people
who traveled and interacted showing a good example
and so it began to spread across North
Africa and this was rapid Alhamdulillah up until
today and this is one of the proofs
that it couldn't have been spread by force
that up until today over 90% of
the people right across North Africa are Muslims
so if this was by force like what
the Mongols did people would not stay inside
of this way of life think about the
Mongol Empire which was one of the largest
empires that ever existed and we looked at
this in one of our classes where's Mongolia
today?
most people don't even know where it is
on the map so it's way up in
northeast Asia and you don't hear much about
Mongolia today in any way although it was
one of the greatest empires in terms of
land and power that ever existed so this
is the difference now with the spread of
Islam and the center of Islam the capital
of Islam in North Africa was a place
called Qayrawan Qayrawan now these places are not
so well known by people who come from
the Middle East or who come from Asia
you may not be familiar with what happened
in North Africa and going back to the
spread so it's where Tunisia is the tip
where if you can see between Tunis and
Tunisia and then you'll see just below Sicily
you'll see Qayrawan that was the capital of
Islam the western capital of Islam and it
is there that the Maliki school of thought
the teachings of the great Imam Malik ibn
Anas rahimahullah his teachings were codified by Sahnoon
and the great scholars there in Qayrawan so
this became the western capital now what people
don't realize or maybe they just don't have
information about did Islam stop in North Africa
and I remember in the early years when
I was reading about Islamic history and geography
the map stopped at North Africa as though
below North Africa there really wasn't much it's
like a desert and there really wasn't much
Islam this is a major mistake that people
made and sometimes it was done on purpose
by orientalists who want to divide Muslims up
the reality is is that in North Africa
they recognized that below the Sahara desert on
the Niger river in this area were gold
mines the most active gold mines in the
world at the time were there and this
is why when we go back to the
14th century and that's the question again who
was the richest man who ever lived in
history up and even today the richest man
was Mansa Musa who was an African Muslim
leader who lived in this Niger area because
for pound for pound they had more gold
than anybody who ever had gold before okay
so to get to the gold to bring
it across the desert it's like an ocean
of sand so you got to go across
the Sahara desert and then you reach West
Africa and so there were certain trade routes
that people took one of it is from
Tripoli, Libya you can see it going down
and it ended in a place called Canem
Bournou and Canem Bournou these are two very
important places it's by the lake called Lake
Chad now in the country of Chad, southern
Libya and these areas this is a trade
route okay so you can go from Tripoli
down into Canem Bournou then there was another
one that went from Kairouan to a place
called Tahirt and then down to a city
called Gao so Gao was the place where
you get the gold and the Berbers, Amazigh
who would cross the desert they would generally
bring salt now you would think salt?
what's the importance of salt?
what is salt to us in our life?
you put your salt on your food because
you want it to taste good but salt
in those days was very crucial because how
do you preserve meat?
they did not have refrigerators so salt is
a preservative salt also has medicinal qualities so
they would literally cut the salt in blocks
and carry it on camels along with some
other goods and they would cross the desert
because you can cross the desert with salt
it's not going to melt it's a block
and they would trade the gold for the
salt that's how valuable salt was at that
time the third trade route is coming from
the city of Fez which is now in
Morocco and it goes down to another city,
Sijilmasa which is an important city in Morocco
and then down into Ghana the empire of
Ghana in this region there so these are
your three major highways going across and the
Berbers and a group called the Sanhaja they
were the ones who were most powerful in
taking you across the desert so now not
only gold and salt but eventually what came
across was knowledge because the Muslims were there
in the north and so therefore the scholars
and the merchants who had the knowledge they
travelled also across and so these cities there
was three of them in particular and one
of the famous Andalusia Andalusia is Spain right
called Andalus Andalusian geographer Abu Ubaid al-Bakri
he's a famous historian so he wrote about
three African Muslim empires this is the 11th
century now right Baghdad at its height right
it was destroyed in 1258 that's 200 years
this is way back then so there was
the empire of Takror which is circled the
empire of Gao the other circle and Ghana
which is in the middle the word Ghana
is not there but it's all in the
middle that dark area in the middle these
are the three empires at that time and
this is a long discussion but basically the
merchants were carrying it across carrying knowledge across
and these areas became known as Muslim areas
especially Takror so Takror was the first major
place and they were the first West Africans
who were making Hajj that's back in the
11th century that's a long time back so
they were making Hajj, they were going to
North Africa they were in touch with the
knowledge and these cities became extremely important cities
and in the 11th century also a movement
began amongst the Amazigh, the Berbers and this
movement was called Al-Murabitun and it started
because the Berbers who had accepted Islam many
of the tribes were reverting to their ignorance,
they were drinking alcohol, fighting doing strange things
and so one of their leaders made pilgrimage
to Mecca and he returned to Qayrawan and
he asked the scholars of Qayrawan what can
we do and so and especially he was
talking about the Sanhaja and the Lamtuna, so
these two important groups and so the scholars
of Qayrawan, they sent back with him a
great scholar, Abdullah ibn Yasin rahimuhullah and that's
a name that you need to know, if
you want to know West African history and
Abdullah ibn Yasin okay and he went into
the area where the Sanhajas were and he
began to spread Islam this is the area
of Mauritania you know Mauritanians that wear the
blue and they're some of the greatest scholars
in the Muslim world up right until now
Shankitis so this area there but these wild
tribes they fought him and he was about
to be assassinated and so his advisors told
him go back north to Morocco and he
said no he heard that Islam was spreading
in the south remember Takraw and Ghana so
he went south and he ended up on
the river Senegal which is close to the
Niger river and he only had a few
followers with him and he formed a camp
which they called Rabat and a Rabat is
like a tent or it could be like
a little village a settlement and he called
it Rabat and he trained the people in
Arabic Islamic studies and they also trained in
martial arts they were warriors and so they
could spread Islam and they could also defend
themselves so this group because they stayed in
the Rabat they were known as Al-Murabitun
Al-Murabitun ok so Murabit that's somebody who
it also means somebody who defends the borders
they defend everybody else it's Murabit and this
word comes in the Quran in different places
where it talks about Rabitun that you should
bind yourselves together so this was the Murabitun
movement and it began to spread and suddenly
he had a thousand warriors with him and
they were doing Dawah to people calling to
the good and forbidding evil teaching and he
was killed made Shaheed in one of the
battles and eventually the leadership was taken over
by another person from the Amazigh his name
was Abu Bakr Ibn Umar and Abu Bakr
made the capital of the Murabitun Marrakesh they
call it Marrakesh today so if you go
to Morocco today this is one of the
big cities in Morocco that you would visit
it's Marrakesh and this minaret it's Andalusian style
is the famous minaret there in Marrakesh this
was the capital of the Murabitun okay and
this is like a 20th century but that's
sort of what the Murabitun looked like right
so these were serious people and their movement
was based they based themselves on Quran and
Sunnah and they had three things that they
were really concerned with calling people to righteousness
that's called Al-Amru Bil Maruf Wa Nahi
Al-Munkar and stopping people from injustice and
evil okay secondly so the second one was
repelling evil and the third was forbidding any
taxation not permitted by Sharia the third one
is economic so they're concerned with taxes taxes
is a big thing even in Ontario they're
fighting over taxes so this is very so
this movement was very serious movement okay and
they changed everything they came in touch with
and Abu Bakr Ibn Umar he left Marrakesh
and he went and he traveled all across
they say hundreds and thousands of people embraced
Islam on his hands and he went all
the way across into central Africa so you're
talking about 11th century now that these things
were happening there okay so this is now
how it looks and Islam is now spreading
and the area in particular we're looking at
because that's a background for you how Islam
spread but the area we're looking at in
particular is an area called Bilad Al-Hausa
and you'll see it in a circle called
Hausa Land so and there's Takraw remember that
first empire there okay so this is where
Hausa Land is now the Hausa people it's
a central area in West Africa and they're
a multi ethnic group they're a mixed West
African group, indigenous group and according to the
sources okay because there's sources in Arabic and
Fufulde which is one of their languages and
Hausa okay there are people who travel there
so there's a lot of sources talking about
Hausa people so this is going to give
us the basis of your we're talking about
minarets, scholars and power right so now where
does this scholar this particular scholar where does
he come from how did he come out
okay so in Hausa Land the traditional traditional
religion of the people they believed in what
is called Iskoki the Iskoki were like spirits
and they believed these spirits were in everything
and especially in certain places and you'll find
spirit based religions all over the world they
just called it by different names even within
Islamic discussions we have the jinn okay so
these demonic forces they call Iskoki and they
believed that this Iska or Iskoki they were
in different places especially in huge rocks now
when you're in West Africa this is from
Nigeria you'll be traveling along in a savanna
flat and then there's a giant rock in
the middle it's like a mountain made of
rock and they believed that these spirits were
dwelling inside these rocks they also had trees
called Baobab the Baobab tree is big on
the bottom and it gets smaller as you
go up to the top and some of
these Baobab trees would be like twice the
size of this room the base of the
tree so they believed that there's some spiritual
power inside of this Baobab tree so that's
their religion it's like a spirit based religion
and you sacrifice your animals to the spirits
the Arabs in the time of the Prophet
they also had things like this Latin and
you know what not they believed that these
demigods existed in certain places so this is
an international way of looking at things now
Islam in terms of Hausa land it came
in around the 14th century and this is
with a group of people called the Wangara
and they are from another powerful group called
Mande or Mandinka they were great merchants from
Mali Mansa Musa was from these people they
were the one with all the money so
they were good business people and they traveled
around but they also carried knowledge so they
carried knowledge everywhere they went and they reached
a famous city in Hausa land called Kano
Kano I'm teaching you West African history too
Kano is a very important city today is
Nigeria ok so by the 16th century Islam
was there and there were certain teachings but
the problem was you had the traditional religion
and then you had Islam so one religion
believes in spirits and all things dwelling in
the trees because they like these trees right
and others believe in Allah so it is
reported that one scholar Abdul Karim Al-Maghili
he came into an area and the people
accepted Islam but they built the masjid by
the tree so during the day they prayed
to Allah and at night they went to
the tree and they sacrificed the black chickens
they do their sacrifice right it's their voodoo,
their shango right obia we call it right
and so they would do their magic at
night and during the day they pray to
Allah so the scholar then said ok one
night he got up with his followers and
they cut down the tree so when the
people now the next day when the people
came out there's no tree so he said
now do you worship Allah or do you
worship the tree you see that's a little
bit harsh to do to people it's kind
of heavy but he had to take this
stand and so Kano became the center of
Islam in that area he took a risk
because he was brave because that was like
their god it's like going to the Hindus
and you know you're going to get Shiva
or Vishnu and you're going to break that
idol right so it's very important the prophet
when he opened up Mecca one of the
things he did was he broke all the
idols you have to break the idols you
can't let it stay there but it takes
a lot of courage to do that but
what happened after his time unfortunately is that
Islam was generally amongst the wealthy people the
rulers and the wealthy people and the masses
of the people they were Muslim by name
but they still they hadn't fully come into
Islam so it was that kind of situation
because they were a little bit away from
the main areas of Islam and so the
rulers now went to extremes and the rulers
put they put taxes on the people again
the Murabitun had they put heavy taxes on
the people they ignored Islamic law and they
even used the word Jizya which is supposed
to be for non-Muslims on their own
people and the Islamic scholars they call Malims
were very weak minded people and they were
the scholars that submitted to the rulers and
we saw about scholars like that before ok
and it reached the point where they incorporated
their ancient beliefs into their Islam so they
said instead of calling them Iskoki then we
will name the Jinns we'll give them names
like the high Iska which is the high
Jinni they called him Sarkin al-Jan which
means the leader of the Jinns and his
minister this is the Jinns right he's called
Waziri right and there's another one called Dan
Musa, Dan means the son of Dan Musa
and there's one Jinni they call Malim al
-* he said he was a * like
he made Hajj these are the Jinns because
they were in these type of worships ok
and the king of Katsina one of the
areas he even used the name Inna like
the mother of the earth so they were
out of control magic all types of things
were happening in this area women generally in
Hausa land women played a powerful role so
they were very strong within these societies and
they would be especially assisting in farming and
gathering and the homestead but unfortunately by the
18th century women's status went down to the
point where some of the kings had a
thousand wives that's an extreme right he had
a thousand wives ok so they went totally
out of control and that was now in
the 18th century now what had happened in
that land now from the 15th century on
another group of people entered in they came
from the area of Takroa and these people
are called the Fulbe or some people call
Fulanis or Fula and they were nomads they
herded cows and so they traveled from place
to place dealing with the cows this is
an actual Fulani man you can see the
turban they wear that sombrero like Mexicans wear
it's like a hat that they wear because
they're out in the middle of the desert
and so they were like nomadic type of
people so the Kano history book called Kano
Chronicle it describes how these people came in
and amongst the Fulanis most of them herded
cows but they had scholars, ulama and they
called them Toronkawa ok and the scholars would
travel along with the caravans so they were
literally traveling and reviving Islam everywhere they went
and along with this again I'm abbreviating a
long study for you but along with this
you need to understand about the city of
Timbuktu now many people consider Timbuktu you say
oh go to Timbuktu that means oh go
get lost but Timbuktu it was originally one
of those cities that was used, you can
see where the red is there, Timbuktu it's
the most northern part as you're going for
the gold that would be one of the
first places that you reach so it was
very rich in terms of gold ok but
then the scholars went there and it reached
the point that by the 16th century and
again this is what a lot of people
don't understand about Islam in Africa because again
people don't think that African scholarship was that
high, right that's why I have to emphasize
this ok, by the 16th century in Timbuktu
in Sankore University there was 25,000 African
students these are black African students 150 Quran
schools every single family in the city had
Hafiz Hafiz of Quran every man, woman and
child was literate in Arabic they had another
language as well but they all could read
and write Arabic and it is said for
like 200-300 years no non-Muslim was
allowed to enter the city of Timbuktu only
a Muslim could enter that city ok, so
this was a city of scholars and they
had a system of knowledge that they taught
which is called the Timbuktu system of knowledge,
it's basically Maliki Fiqh so you know you
have Hanbali and Hanafi and Shafi, this is
Maliki so it follows the Maliki school of
thought so this is the background of Sheikh
Usman Usman Danfodio they say Usman Danfodio we
would say in Arabic Uthman Ibn Fudi but
Fodio means scholar so it's Uthman, the son
of a scholar ok so he was born
in what is now the western side of
Nigeria, Sokoto state and he's a descendant of
Musa Jokola another famous scholarly group called Toradbe
and they migrated into this area now, look
at his family his father was a scholar
named Muhammad Ibn Saleh right, Fodio his mother
Hawa Bint Muhammad was a scholar his uncles
were scholars so it was a scholarly family,
all of them and they literally traveled with
the caravans they administered to all the religious
things, trained whatever and so it was a
system that would move from place to place
and he was trained in the Timbuktu center
that's how Timbuktu looks today which it sort
of takes you back in time too because
that's sort of how they built the mud
style houses back then yeah so again and
I'm emphasizing this because people are not aware
of the level of scholarship in Timbuktu, it
is said that around the 16th century one
great scholar from Mecca named Sheikh Abdur Rahman,
he visited Timbuktu and he wanted to see
the level of scholarship and the level was
so high that they told him go back
to Mecca and study some more before you
come here because you don't have enough and
if you look at the Mauritanians today they
memorize everything their children, their families all of
them, they've maintained the scholarship level on a
high level even though we've gone through so
much changes again to give you a little
background it's a long study the Timbuktu system
the Tafsir, Hadith, Fiqh Usul al-Fiqh of
course then they give Arabic, Arabic grammar rhetoric,
logic they teach you Aqidah then they teach
you astronomy remember the they teach you astronomy
and they teach you history and they teach
you mathematics so it's not just a Quran
school where you just study Quran and a
little Arabic and that's it no, you're going
to learn math and some medicine they'll teach
you and also Tasawwuf in some cases, if
you're on a high level they'll teach you
spirituality and that's some of the texts that
are still existing today how they actually look
because there's thousands of these books up in
Timbuktu up until today so Sheikh Osman Danfodio
his background again to give you some idea
of who he was he learned these are
Maliki texts Al-Ishrinat Sheikh Abdulrahman Ibn Hamada
taught him Khulasa this Arabic grammar and syntax
he learned Maliki Fiqh Al-Muqtasa and then
he learned Tafsir of Qarashi so these are
famous books that are known all across North
Africa in the Maliki teachings he was also
influenced by Ahmad Ibn Muhammad Al-Amin Tafsir
Hashim Al-Zanfari Ibn Raj Al-Mudibbi in
Sahih Al-Bukhari also Sheikh Abdul Wahab Sha
'rani so he's a famous Egyptian Jalaluddin Suyuti
famous Egyptian Sheikh Abdul Karim Al-Maghili Algerian
Sidi Ahmed Zarouk who's a famous Moroccan scholar
Imam Al-Ghazali so these teachings influence him
very much and there's another famous scholar Sidi
Mukhtar Al-Kunti from Timbuktu now, one of
his special teachers was a person named Jibreel
Ibn Umar and he was from the people
you call Tuaregs today they're the ones where
the men wear the veils in the desert
and he lived in a city called Agadez
which is in Niger so Sheikh Uthman studied
with Jibreel Arabic grammar a number of things
and he said, if there can be said
of me that which is a good report
I am a wave of the waves of
Jibreel like this is his teacher because this
person gave him intellectual, moral, spiritual ideological training
especially Tajdeed how to revive Islam so by
20 years old Sheikh Uthman had mastered the
sciences, by 20 and to such level that
Jibreel himself wanted to pledge allegiance to him
this is how heavy he was now, you
know what's deep about Jibreel Ibn Umar and
this is something I found out in a
study that I did, it shocked me actually
that back then in the 18th century in
Medina there was a great scholar called Sheikh
Mohammed Hayat Sindhi so Sindh is Pakistan called
the Sindh on the coast, so that's where
he came but he was a great scholar
of Hadith in Medina at the time, famous
and he taught revivalism how to revive Islam
through the study using Hadith and authentic text
so he taught the Mizjaji family these are
famous people one of his students was Sheikh
Mohammed Ibn Abdul Wahab now you know him
from Arabia because he studied under a Hindi,
went back to what is now Saudi Arabia,
and then he revived Islam there ok, so
this is a revivalist movement in the 18th
century he also taught Sheikh Mohammed Murtada al
-Zabiri, who is a Yemeni scholar ok, and
they revived Islam shockingly enough, he also taught
Shah Waliullah al-Dahlawi now Shah Waliullah al
-Dahlawi is one of the famous Indian scholars
he is one of the most famous revivalists
in India he also studied under Hayat Sindhi
so all of these people were studying and
going back to their countries Yemen, Saudi Arabia
India Syria and they were reviving Islam by
authentic sources and through Hadith and Jibreel Ibn
Umar was one of the students and he
was the teacher of Sheikh Uthman see how
the chain goes so this is a revivalist
movement a revivalist movement and it's a very
deep study but I want to show you
the fusion because we're looking at when knowledge
comes together with power what can actually happen
so the Sheikh began his teachings at 20
and he went into the field and he
started teaching people in the villages, cities moving
around, all around Hausa land he would lecture
not only in Arabic, he would lecture in
the local languages as well and he addressed
scholars he addressed common people all throughout this
area so he did that for a number
of years so when he reached after about
10 years or so he had so many
followers he had a thousand students so everywhere
he went a thousand students followed him so
he would stop at a certain place and
it became like a university so he was
getting powerful now remember powerful people with scholars
right the kings, remember the corrupted kings thousand
wives taxes, right, they're still around and the
scholar now is coming, so one of the
kings of a place called Gober he invited
the Sheikh, that's what they call the Sheikh
Sheikh Osman he invited the Sheikh to his
palace right, now he was not a person
who goes to palaces very much the king
invited him to a palace and they had
this weapon a gun, and they actually pointed
the gun toward the Sheikh and it backfired
and killed the person who pulled the trigger
and he then the Sheikh made hijrah he
left and he made hijrah to a place
called Gudu and this is how they actually
look, these are actually pictures of Nigerians today
keeping their traditions and there the people gathered
around him all of his students and followers
and they took a pledge to him as
Amir al-Mu'minin they said you are now
the Amir fusion you're not only the scholar
now but you are now our political leader
as well and he took bayah with thousands
of people and he formed a committee around
him Shura to make the decisions which included
his brother Abdullahi Danfodio, great scholar his son
Mohammed Bello ok, now the king of Gober
ok, and their people they attacked with a
big army and the Sheikh's forces remember the
battle of Badr with the Prophet ﷺ when
the Quraish came with a thousand warriors Muslims
only had 313 right, they had 300 horses
it was a similar type of thing the
Sheikh's forces were ill-equipped poor but Allah
gave them victory and they defeated the evil
Sultan, this was like his battle of Badr
in 1804 and it was a major victory
for Sheikh Uthman and he wrote this in
his poems, he was writing books he has
150 books that he wrote he completely defeated
the army of Yunfa and from there they
started spreading Islam so he sent letters to
all of the kings in Hausa land, remember
the Prophet ﷺ sent letters to the kings
Sheikh Uthman followed Sunnah he loved Sunnah so
much that he tried to follow the Prophet
ﷺ in everything that he did so think
about Medina when they had victory, then he
sent letters to the kings he sent letters
this is one of the letters, that's how
they're writing they preserved a lot of it
today and he wrote letters to the king
and he told them that the purpose of
his Jihad was not for money, it was
not military it was the victory of truth
over falsehood that's why he's fighting Jihad and
it's also to revive the Sunnah and to
put down Bid'ah Bid'ah is innovations
right and this is a shock for a
lot of people who study the teachings of
Ibn Taymiyyah and other ones they think all
of this comes over there right but this
is the revivalist movement all over the world
all over the Muslim world so this is
a form of the revivalist movement and Sheikh
Uthman's people were highly successful and they liberated
territories they continued on all throughout Hausa land
ok and by 1810 now they went to
the point where they opened up and controlled
250 thousand square kilometers that's a country right,
most countries are not even this big they
controlled this area so by 1810 the sheikh
moved to a place called Sifawa and then
he started to withdraw and he's teaching people,
he's training them, training them right and then
he withdrew and by 1815 they consolidated the
Khilafat they had a Caliphate there, they consolidated
their rule so this is an amazing thing,
now these are the three stages of his
life the beginning was where he was teaching
correcting bid'ah confronting extremists he actually educated
and uplifted women his daughter Nana Asma was
a scholar there was at least 48 women
scholars amongst his people he was also and
again this is a deep study but if
you know African continent there is a thing
called FGM which is female genital mutilation circumcision,
he outlawed female genital mutilation in the 18th
century using Islamic sources, now that's a shock
for a lot of people in East Africa
okay, where it's still you know, it is
there and what he did one time with
the women, he went to the community and
he said I find the women ignorant, and
he said I'm giving the men, I'm giving
you a chance to educate your wives and
your daughters he waited and he said if
you don't and they didn't, he said to
the women disobey your husband and come out
to my study circle this is radical okay,
and they were serious about fiqh he said
you can disobey your husband and I will
establish a school for women and they said
how can you how can you say this
and he quoted the Hadith of the Prophet
لا تعالى المخلوق في معصية الخالق you don't
obey the creation when the creation disobeys Allah
okay so he freed the political prisoners, he
lifted taxes, see this is the effusion again
this is when somebody with knowledge has authority,
and Islam spread like wildfire and up until
today it's the majority religion in northern area
of Nigeria and the Hausa language is probably
the largest language in West Africa it's Hausa
okay, and they're the most powerful of the
Muslims in West Africa, second phase of his
life okay, from 1804 to 1810 he sent
his students out with flags and they became
governors all over Hausa land 250,000 square
miles was conquered his Caliphate was recognized by
the Sultan of Morocco and the Ottoman Sultan
the Ottomans in Turkey they recognized them, that's
how Muslim world was connected right, it wasn't
separated so they were recognized and in the
last part of his life, this is the
beautiful thing about this scholar because most people
once you get the power you want to
be the king and rule and get all
the wives and all the money, you know
what he did he gave up the leadership
and he said to his Shura you decide
who will take over they chose his son
Mohammed because he was a great leader okay
and he, the Sheikh then retired and he
taught at his town of Degel he continued
teaching and writing until he passed away now
that is a great scholar because he did
not he got the power and then he
gave it up at Sunna and you know
he died at the age of 63 the
same age of the Prophet ﷺ so he
followed Sunna you know right to the core
and this is a great scholar and for
us the witness is fusion it's the fusion
of scholarship and authority and this is not
a long time ago either right remember we're
talking about before 12th century this is now
19th century and in Sokoto they ruled for
a hundred years until the coming of the
British they ruled with Sharia and that is
the reason why in Northern Nigeria now Muslims
are really strong in the area of Sokoto
where he's from it's complete Islamic society complete
I was there a year and a half
ago and you know at Doha prayer you're
going along people if you can't make the
masjid they're praying on the streets not Jummah
regular salats it's a complete Islamic society up
until today okay so that is the impact
of the fusion of scholarship and authority and
that's not so well known by many of
the people in our community because and I'm
not blaming anybody it's just ignorance it's not
in the curriculum right it's not in the
curriculum but it is something that should be
taught in all of the curriculums and again
I love the connection that scholars made because
you know his his great scholar on the
top was the one who taught Shah Waliullah
of India Muhammad bin Abdul Wahab of Arabia
Mortada Zabiri of Yemen right many scholars revivalists
were also taught from the same source so
that shows unity right it's the unity of
Muslims from around the world so I want
to open up the floor for any questions
that anybody has concerning this final class in
this section you know of our minarets and
scholars minarets and thrones floor is open I
have a question from place to place would
they ever leave somebody behind or would they
themselves stay for a few years because in
my mind when people convert they still need
guidance so did they leave behind anybody to
kind of help with that?
yeah so what they did was he was
speaking in the language of the masses of
the people Hausa for full day the people
of the desert he could speak that too
he spoke Arabic to the scholars people who
studied Islam then they spoke and they wrote
in Arabic so he would train people from
all the areas that they went to leave
some and then but other ones would stay
with him for a period of time so
it's almost like you're going to a university
because as they travel from place to place
you're covering different texts, you're learning Arabic stronger
so you stay with him for a couple
years and then go back to your village
and also some people would get basic studies
and go back but he was, he wanted
people to really understand Islam so you needed
to stay with him for a period of
time and then you go back to your
village and you're now the leader and they
would communicate with each other by writing in
Arabic and what's surprising what Nigerians have done,
they have an archive where they actually have
letters from different sections of the caliphate preserved
today all the governors wrote in Arabic so
they would write to the central amir and
discuss the problems and the issues and all
the different things that they were doing so
this is really a high level of Islam
and what is beautiful about it is it's
completion he made a completion he not only
did dawah but he actually took over the
territory and instituted Islam you see it's a
completion and you don't find that in many
parts of the Muslim world like a completion
that stayed so long like this and so
clear so his example is an excellent example
that other people in other parts of the
world should learn that's
right, it's surprising it's something that it's now
people are now opening up that's one good
thing about internet and social media people are
realizing how much they can benefit from other
parts of the world but this is one
part that has been sort of kept away
by the desert in North Africa they know
about it because Maliki, so within the Maliki
lands they know but now these Mauritanian scholars
especially, they were so powerful in their teachings
that they actually started teaching in Cairo, in
Arabia all over the Muslim world Sheikh Mohammed
Hassan al-Didu they consider him to be
one of the greatest scholars on earth today
he's a Mauritanian in terms of his knowledge
if you ever listen to him give a
lecture you will not believe how he speaks
the only thing we have that talks like
that is artificial intelligence you got to have
chat GPT, some kind of thing like that
he's quoting a hadith and he will give
you the chain 20 people before he says
the hadith and they're all in order he's
got like a photogenic memory so this is
the level of scholarship that they had the
floor is open for any online any questions
that came Qaidawan is in Tunisia Qaidawan is
in Tunisia unfortunately when the French took over
that area the Islamic studies went down because
Zeytuna college or university also in Tunis famous
one I visited there myself and you go
there and it's just a building they have
a madrasa and stuff but it's not the
French took over and secularized everything so it's
not like other parts of the Muslim world
there's a sort of a revival going on
but it doesn't have the same the masjid
is still there but it's not the same
as now not the same any questions online
that we have some of
the key issues that we need to remember
is that leadership should be balanced it's a
balance between the knowledge of the revelation and
also the power on earth and this is
important for us today that we either develop
young people who have Islamic knowledge and they
also have authority they are leaders or you
can have strong leaders with authority and military
power and then they work along with the
scholars so that's the second model so you
can work together but the balance is needed
in order for us to get this fusion
where we get the full authority of Islam
and that's from the sunnah because when you
look at the Meccan period and the Medina
period you see that the Medina period completed
Salat came in Zakat, everything was revealed in
Medina and it became a way of life
and Umar bin Khattab and his Shura they
decided to make the beginning of the Islamic
year after the Hijra so after the Hijra
the migration was when the Muslims had authority
they had revelation in Mecca no authority and
when they had authority then they implemented Islam
and that's when our real history began that's
why we use after the Hijra Hijri calendar
starting with once the migration was finished and
consolidation of the power and authority What
is the Islamic knowledge and it is exclusive
in the Ottoman Empire or is there any
more?
In the Ottoman Empire?
There were scholars in the Ottoman times because
the Ottomans were connected also with Syria they
had controlled North Africa, they controlled Cairo, they
controlled Mecca and Medina 600 years they ruled
so all of the scholars during that time
period there underneath Ottoman rule would be underneath
their rule they were the Caliphs so it's
a long period of time Was he
Maliki though?
Yes he was Maliki Around that same time
they recognized him in his caliphate Did they
also adopt the revivalist movement?
Yes I mean the Ottomans went through different
phases because it's a long period of time
within their time you have Sultans that revived
Islam you have ups and downs because 600
years, it's a long period of time but
one of the things about this revivalist movement
and Chekhov's man is famous for it he
was Maliki and Fikh but he was not
stuck with Maliki so he would tell his
followers if you find something from the Shafis
or the other school of thought that has
proof follow it so they were not blind
followers of the Maliki school and that's really
part of the revival of Islam because the
backwardness is when schools of thought start fighting
each other and look at each other like
different nationalities and races and what not, that's
not the real revival of Islam and so
even though he was Maliki it didn't matter,
it's Sunnah so they recognized the Sunnah they
recognized his authority and they would make pilgrimage
they had scholars, they would recognize it and
that is coming back in the Muslim world,
we're hoping for now a new revival with
communications we have social media we can communicate
a lot now so we're hoping in the
younger generation we break down some of these
nationalistic barriers that separate people that's really important
for us today now floor is open for
any other general questions anybody online has a
question so this is our conclusion
but inshallah it's not the end and we
will be continuing back with other there's a
question there?
so what we have been reflecting upon all
the way through is the fact that what
is happening today is that you have leaders
who don't have knowledge and they're not respecting
the scholars so therefore it turns into a
kingdom and sometimes tyrants so we need that
balance to come back and that is one
of the changes that has to happen in
the Muslim world where the scholarship is respected
either the leader is a scholar himself or
works with the scholars that is going to
be crucial for the future if we can't
do it then the younger generation needs to
come up and bring that balance back this
is what we're looking for so for more
information if you want to know more about
Sheikhot Man Danfodio my website is called hakimquick
.com h-a-k-i-m q-u
-i-c-k dot com that's my website
and there you can download courses on different
topics one of them is called African Sunrise
this is the one on Sheikhot Man Danfodio
something of what we had tonight but much
more details and there are others as well
other information there in books you can also
follow along in islam.ca if you wanted
to get these courses and go back more
into it if you go to islam.ca
that's Islamic Institute of Toronto you will also
be able to get the previous parts of
this course that have been taught and other
courses as well in terms of Facebook you
go to public figure Sheik Abdullah Hakim Quick
public figure s-h-a-y-k-h
public figure and you can follow along with
what's going on also instagram Abdullah.quick instagram
is there as well and inshallah we will
be having other programs that will be happening
in this particular area if you're in the
Toronto area we'll be having a program on
the 15th on Islam in Spanish in the
Spanish world Andalusia to the Americas here in
Islamic Institute of Toronto and then our courses
will continue and inshallah in January we will
be back again more than likely with another
extension of the minarets and thrones dealing with
revivalism showing how it affects the revival of
Islam because again that's another important topic that
we need to understand through scholarship how to
revive Islam so we'll probably be combining that
together that will be in January and keep
in touch for any information any knowledge you
have gained in this course is from Allah
subhana wa ta'ala the mistakes are mine
and I ask Allah to forgive me ...
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