Abdullah Hakim Quick – The Khalifah Of Uthman Minarets And Thrones #05
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Bismillah ar-Rahman ar-Rahim, Alhamdulillahi Rabbil Alameen,
Wa Usalli wa Usallim 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, my beloved brothers and
sisters, to our friends, our viewers, As-salamu
alaykum wa rahmatullah.
This is another session in our very important
understanding of minarets and thrones.
And the idea of minarets and thrones is
what gives us, in a sense, the image
of scholars and rulers.
And these two elements of our leadership make
up one of the most critical aspects of
the Muslim world.
Because your leader is the one who can
give you direction.
The leader is the one who can guide
with his example.
On the other hand, the leader is also
the one who can block progress, who can
actually destroy the future of the ummah.
And so the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam
spoke about leaders, considering them to be one
of the most feared categories of people, are
the leaders who are gone astray, or they
take people astray.
And so this is very critical for us
to get an understanding of how leadership has
impacted the Muslims over the centuries.
And this is relevant to our situation today
because based upon what is happening in the
Middle East, in Sudan, in Kashmir, in many
parts of the Muslim world, the masses of
the Muslims are ready to bring about major
change.
The masses of the Muslims want to go
in an Islamic direction.
And it was a strange phenomenon for the
settler colonial system when the Europeans had dominated
much of the Muslim world in the 20th
century.
And we find that they established what they
call capitalism.
So this is individual property.
They usually supported a king, a royal family,
to be the ones who were ruling.
And then, because of the changes going on
in Europe itself, Marxist-Leninism started to come
in.
So in Marxist-Leninism, instead of being private
property and a small group controlling the means
of production, the means of production is controlled
by the state itself, by everybody.
So it becomes like socialism, ishtarakiya, where it's
like a partnership.
And the extreme form of socialism is communism.
And that is where supposedly nobody has any
wealth, nobody has any individual identity.
That has never been practiced.
But there have been forms of socialism that
emphasized sharing and that is something which was
in the Sunnah of the Prophet, because he
said that people are partners in three things,
and that is water, so the waters shouldn't
be the private property of anybody, and also
fire, so that would be like wood and
your means of heating and fuel.
And the third point is agriculture, al-khala.
So in an Islamic society, people are supposed
to be equally partners in these three areas.
And that's a serious issue, because if you
look at the Muslim world today and see
that much of the wealth of the leaders
comes from the flow of water, fresh water
especially coming in, or the water on their
coastlines, or fuel, which is oil, oil and
gas.
So everybody is supposed to be sharing that,
that's not supposed to be the property of
a royal family or a central committee.
And then agriculture, which in many Muslim countries
was one of the chief ways of production,
that's supposed to be shared by everybody.
So it was natural for the Muslims to
want to go from a capitalist society to
a socialist type society.
This happened in the 20th century.
But the problem with socialism is that Marxist
-Leninist theory does not believe in God.
So this is a secular system, and they
believe that it is people who actually shape
their own destinies.
And so that could only go so far,
because once the Marxist-Leninists seized power within
the Muslim countries, then they started to fight
Islamic concepts and tried to destroy the idea
of Tawhid, or the oneness of God.
So that couldn't work.
And it reached the point where, especially in
the 60s and 70s, where the societies are
in major rebellions.
Capitalism failed.
Socialism failed.
And when they opened up elections, in some
countries they said, okay, let us have democracy.
So democracy is we will vote for the
leader.
We will let political parties struggle against each
other.
In almost every one of the cases, the
political party that would win, especially 70s, 80s,
90s, were the Islamic parties.
It was the Islamic parties, because people were
tired of capitalism, didn't work, tired and afraid
of socialism and the oppression.
What was left, it was Islam.
And so the Muslim movements, there was a
wave of repression, and we actually saw this
even in the 90s and going into the
21st century, heavy repression upon the Islamic movements
when they took leadership, especially like in Egypt.
That's one of the clearest cases where the
Islamic party became the leader and then terrible
repression against the Islamic parties.
And so the leadership, the direction of the
leadership is in a sense the direction of
the country itself.
And the problem we're facing is that the
concept of leader, the concept of the custodian,
the concept of the ones who's controlling our
country is confusing.
And today, because of secularism, we have the
issue of being politicians.
So people become politicians.
And when you say that this person is
now becoming a politician, then it usually means
they have now become a liar, because they
will say one thing before the election and
they'll do something after.
But it's surprising to find that the Prophet
ﷺ actually spoke about this in an authentic
hadith reported in Sahih al-Bukhari, where he
said, تَجِرُوا مِن شِرَارَ النَّاسِ يَوْمَ الْقِيَامَةِ عِندَ
اللَّهِ ذَا الْوَجْهِينَ الَّذِي يَأْتِي هَا أُولَٰئِ بِوَجْهٍ
وَهَا أُولَٰئِ بِوَجْهٍ So the Prophet ﷺ said,
you will find that the worst among the
people on the day of resurrection is the
one which is two-faced, the two-faced
one.
He who comes to some people with one
face, and then others with another face.
So that sounds like a politician, right?
And that is a very big issue in
leadership.
The opposite of that is sincerity.
It is ikhlas.
And that is a quality that is so
important in our leaders on all levels.
So when we are looking at this issue
of leaders, the ones with power in our
community, the ones with spirituality and knowledge in
our communities.
We are not just talking about Muslim countries.
We are also talking about even Muslim communities.
Because one of the issues that happened in
our communities is that you have executive committees,
especially in Western countries.
You have executive committees controlling the mosque, and
then you have the imams, right?
And you have the teachers who actually control,
in a sense, or they influence the minds
and the hearts of the people.
So when a decision is to be made,
who has the upper hand?
Is it the executive committee?
An executive committee controls the budget.
They keep the place clean, and they do
an excellent job, no doubt about it, right?
But the executive committee in most of the
Western countries, especially coming out of the 60s
into the 70s, 80s, 90s, and still up
until now, that the executives are usually so
-called professionals.
So the executives would be engineers, doctors, lawyers,
accountants, because they're good at maintenance.
But when it comes to religious decisions, direction
of the community, that's where the imams are
supposed to lead, because they are the ones
who are in touch with the revelation.
So a power dynamic goes on, and that
is that who, how do you make a
decision?
The best type of leadership is where the
head of the executive committee is the imam
too.
That's fusion, right?
Remember our concept of fusion.
But you also have executive committees who have
enlightened people, and they're in touch with the
imam, and they'll make a decision together.
And in one case, it was suggested by
an enlightened elder that why don't you make
the imam as part of the executive?
And when you vote, he'll be like everybody
else, but we'll give the imam the deciding
vote.
So if there's seven people on the executive
committee, and then there's a deadlock, the seventh
would be the imam who has knowledge, and
he'll break the tie.
But other than that, he's part of the
executive.
See, so that's a solution.
So that's a way of a type of
fusion, not fusion, but a way of cooperation
between the leaders and the imams or the
spiritual people.
So this issue, this dynamic, is not just
on a state level.
It happens on all levels within society.
So therefore, the issues we're talking about here
have something to do not only with theoretical
states, but even our everyday situations in our
masjids, and to a certain extent, even in
our families.
Because how do you run your family?
The man is supposed to be the emir
of the family.
But is he the dictator of the family?
Right?
No.
That's not the way it's supposed to be.
See, so the concepts that we're talking about
are crucial for us to understand all levels
of leadership.
Fusion, the highest ideal, the best possible solution
to this issue, was exemplified by the Khulafah
al-Rashidin.
And we're looking at the third of the
great khalifas, Uthman ibn Ya'fan radiyallahu anhu.
And Uthman is generally not known for his
leadership.
Uthman is known as a nice individual and
very spiritual, but he's not known for his
leadership.
But he actually was a very important leader.
He actually ruled longer than all of the
Khulafah al-Rashidin, was Uthman.
And he was born in 576, and he
was from the Umayyads.
Okay, so that is different in a sense.
So he is an Umayyad.
And he's known for, generally he's known for
his wealth.
He was a wealthy person.
Some people just have this ability to earn
money.
And he was part of the Umayyads, but
he was very good in business.
And he had that type of green thumb,
that ability to do well in his business
dealings.
At the same time, he was known for
haya.
He was extremely modest.
And haya is not shame in a sense
of weakness, but it is very modest person.
He's modest in his dealings with other individuals.
He's modest in front of Allah subhana wa
ta'ala.
So this was part of his personality, that
he was a humble person, a noble person.
And he had what you could call a
gentle nature.
And that's sort of different than Umar.
Umar had a rough nature.
And his piety and his taqwa and his
character sort of evened off his rough nature.
And maybe to a certain extent his rough
nature kept away enemies too.
That's why you don't find so much confusion
during Umar's reign, as you see in other
people.
So sometimes it's good to have somebody who's
a little bit rough, right?
But yet their taqwa smoothens them off.
So the significance of the Umayyads is that
in Mecca itself, under Quraysh, and if we
look at the family tree of Quraysh, which
was the ruling clan and descendant from Ismail
alayhi salam, then you see that the two
big sections of the Quraysh was Banu Hashim,
they're the children of Hashim, and Banu Umayyah.
So these are like two big clans in
Quraysh.
And it was in early history of Mecca
that the power in Mecca was divided up
between the Hashimites and the Umayyads.
The Umayyads were given the flag, they were
given the Nadwa, which is like the political
aspect, the security aspect, and the Hashimites were
given the responsibility to feed the pilgrims.
Those people were coming into Mecca and give
them water from the Zamzam.
Now that's a very crucial thing because people
coming out of a desert, the first thing
you need is water and you need food.
So the Hashimites, because of this position that
they had, and also something that Allah put
into the Hashimites, it's like a charisma, it's
like something that they had, and you'll see
it in the early, starting with Hashim especially,
you will see this charisma within the Hashimite
family.
It is from the Hashimites that you have
Abdullah, and Abdullah then is the father of
Prophet Muhammad ﷺ.
So they're all Hashim.
On the other side, you have the Umayyads
who are in power and in control of
Mecca to a certain extent, and the famous
of the Umayyads is Abu Sufyan, and then
later Muawiyah.
So this is the Umayyad side.
So there was a struggle that went on.
It was like a power struggle in a
sense.
Not in a way that we know it
today, but there was a struggle which got
a little bitter at some times.
Islam changed that.
Islam united both sides, but that tension was
still there in the background, and it would
come up at some points, especially since the
revelation was now given to a Hashimite.
So Muhammad ﷺ was from Banu Hashim.
Of course, Islam wiped all of that away,
but people have their tribal identities, and that
is a reality there.
So now the difference here, now Abu Bakr
and Umar, they were also from tribes of
Quraish, but they were not Hashimites.
Okay, you see like Banu Adi, because there's
smaller sections of Quraish.
So they were Quraish too, but the difference
now was Uthman was Umayyad.
So in a sense, he was different because
he did represent this power group that had
control there in Mecca.
And Uthman was one of the early people
to embrace Islam.
So even though you have this struggle going
on, Uthman, who is an Umayyad, he was
one of the people who accepted Islam with
Abu Bakr.
Because remember there's Khadijah, then there's Ali, and
then Abu Bakr.
Abu Bakr now gave Dawah, and you have
different people, Sa'dah ibn Abi Waqqas, Talha, Zubair,
Abu Ubaidah ibn al-Jarrah.
And one of the early people who accepted
Islam was Uthman.
So he was an early Muslim, and because
of that, he actually suffered.
He suffered because the Umayyads were in power.
And of course, this is Quraish.
And now for this Hashemi to be doing
this, it's almost like they looked at him
like he was a turncoat or a traitor.
to the Umayyads.
This is a fine point, but very important.
And he suffered for this.
He actually was tortured.
Not as much as Bilal, or Sumayyah and
Ali Yasir.
Not as much as them.
May Allah be pleased with them.
But he was tortured in a sense himself.
But the Prophet ﷺ loved him very much.
And he loved him to the point where
he actually married him to his daughter Ruqayya.
So that's a big move.
Because it's a Hashemite girl marrying an Umayyad
man.
That's a big move.
And it is reported that the Prophet ﷺ
loved him so much that because of the
torture and the struggle, they were allowed to
make the migration to Ethiopia.
So the first hijrah to Ethiopia.
This is like five years after the Prophethood
began.
Uthman was part of the delegation.
Because of what he was going through.
Later on, in the Medina period, in the
time of the Battle of Badr, Ruqayya got
really sick.
And so during the battle, the Prophet ﷺ
allowed Uthman to stay with Ruqayya.
He didn't attend Badr.
And she passed away.
But after a period of time, the Prophet
ﷺ was so close to Uthman that he
actually married him to another one of his
daughters, Umkultu.
Just think about this.
Marrying two daughters.
Imagine the closeness between individuals.
And that's why Uthman is known as Dhu
Nurayn.
That he is the possessor of two lights.
Because he married the two daughters of the
Prophet ﷺ.
And he said he's the only person in
history that ever married two daughters of a
prophet.
That's one of his titles.
And these are generally things that he's known
for.
What he's not known for so much, which
is important to us in our study of
scholars and rulers, is the fact that he
was a scholar.
Because scholarship in those early days, it was
not attending an Islamic university, not going to
Hifz class and memorizing the Qur'an.
No.
The scholars were the ones who were closest
to the Prophet ﷺ.
And they were able to embody the teachings.
They memorized and they put it into practice.
So Uthman was known especially for his deep
understanding of the Qur'an itself.
So he's considered to be one of the
masters of the Qur'an.
And it is said that his recitation was
one of the best recitations of the Book
of Allah.
And he would memorize it.
Look how close he is to the Prophet
ﷺ.
He's married to his daughter.
And he had a good mind.
So he'd be memorizing it.
And he had that beautiful recitation and how
to implement this and put it in his
life.
Secondly, because he was so close to the
Prophet ﷺ, he also had a good understanding
of Sunnah.
So he understood how the Prophet implemented the
teachings.
This is what we say today.
We say Qur'an and Sunnah, right?
And so you got to learn Hadith.
You got to learn your Sunnah.
You got to learn Tafsir, to learn the
Qur'an.
And in those days, it was the revelation
coming and it was the embodiment of the
revelation in Prophet Muhammad ﷺ.
So that made him one of the top
scholars.
And Uthman was not necessarily known for this.
What he is known for, and this is
important as well, and that is his generosity.
Because not only was he a wealthy person,
but he was blessed to give off from
his wealth.
And this is where that Uthman r.a,
this is a great blessing to be able
to give from the wealth that Allah ﷻ
gives you.
So there are a few ways that he
used his wealth.
Now, to use your wealth in strategic positions,
that's part of scholarship.
That's ilm.
That's understanding that the wealth is given to
you as a trust, right?
So, one of the most famous examples is
that when they came to Medina, fresh water
was in short supply.
And the Muslims lived in an area.
The Jewish people lived where the trees and
the best water was.
The other, Ausun Khazraj lived in a section.
The Muslims tend to be around the masjid
and whatever.
But they had a problem with water.
And there was one well in particular, or
really the main well in the city with
sweet water.
That was the well of Ramah.
Okay, and that was owned by a Jewish
businessman.
And so, when the Prophet ﷺ complained about
this, he wanted to get control of that
well.
That's crucial now because one of the key
parts of Islam is tahara.
It is purification.
That is where not only drinking, which is
your life, but also your purification.
So many things Islamically are connected to water.
Okay, so this man stepped forward.
He had the wealth.
And he paid a steep price.
But the Jewish businessman didn't allow him to
buy the whole well.
Okay, so he's going to bargain with him.
So Uthman said, okay, Uthman was a good
businessman too.
So Uthman said, all right, I'll buy half
the well or half the rights to the
well.
So the businessman agreed.
And so the businessman's people would take from
the well at some points, and then Muslims
would go at other points.
So they shared it.
And finally, Uthman bought the whole well.
He gave a really good price.
And he succeeded in taking over the well.
And Alhamdulillah, that well of Ramah is in
Medina today.
So if you get a chance to go
to Medina, they have actually built it up
again.
And so if you do ziyarah to Medina,
this is one of the places that you
can do ziyarah to in Medina, and that
is the well of Ramah, which that was
a God sent to the community.
That was lifeblood for the Muslim community.
Okay, so this is a big achievement that
he made.
Another one of the great achievements of Uthman,
showing his practical knowledge, is that when people
started embracing Islam, the masjid became very tight.
And so Uthman stepped in and he purchased
the property that was adjacent to the masjid.
So the expansion of the mosque.
So he was the one who expanded the
masjid.
And this is crucial because the masjid is
the heartbeat of the whole community.
And in those days, the masjid was not
just a place where you come for Jummah
and your five salats and every once in
a while you have a class.
No, it was an all-purpose Islamic center.
Constantly something is happening.
There is teaching going on.
People embracing Islam.
Sometimes even those who are coming as travelers,
you know, might stay there for a bit.
A lot of things happen.
Town hall meetings.
It was in the masjid.
Okay, it wasn't in a civic center.
So the masjid served.
So by expanding that, he is literally expanding
the social and political activities of the whole
community.
That's fiqh.
That's what you call fiqh.
That's understanding.
The fiqh of using your wealth.
Another point that he's also known for and
famous for and there's so many in Uthman's
life and that is in the Battle of
Tabuk.
This is in the Medina period.
It's in 630 of the Common Era.
This is when the Romans had threatened the
Muslims from the north and they threatened to
bring 100,000 warriors.
So the Muslims needed to decide what to
do.
It was decided in Shura that they would
go north and they would face the Romans
so this huge army would not come into
the Arabian Peninsula.
So they had a big Shura meeting and
tried to discuss the issue.
One of the problems was they were poor.
There's some individuals that had wealth but generally
people were just sort of like surviving with
their wealth.
Uthman donated 300 fully equipped camels along with
1000 dinars.
That's a huge sum of money.
Okay?
So he literally is outfitting a third of
the army at that point.
The Prophet ﷺ was so moved by this
that he is reported to have said in
words, in translation nothing will harm Uthman after
what he has done today.
Okay?
So this is another barakah and fiqh that
Uthman had.
So you could say he was one of
the practical, practicing scholars of the Muslim community.
And again, so as a leader, he is
your ideal person to come into position as
a leader.
And that's what we need to look for
in our leaders too, in our local communities,
in our nations, right?
Is that one selflessness.
He prioritizes the community above himself.
So he cares more about the future of
the community than making money, right?
Some people they get money and all they
think about is they got two cars, three
cars, they have a villa, they have property,
so they can't spend money.
They can only spend a little bit.
Because they're worried about keeping their dunya and
their wealth.
If you're going to be a leader of
this community then you will have to be
somebody who gives of themselves.
And it is said that the Prophet ﷺ
when gold used to come into the city
that he would not rest until all the
gold was given out.
So once the gold was then given out
then he would sleep.
So that's our leadership.
So when we're looking for a leader in
the future and we're looking now for somebody,
if some of these leaders in our Muslim
world are replaced they leave.
What kind of a leader is going to
take over?
Is it going to be another leader who's
going to be an egomaniac?
Or another greedy type of person?
No.
It should be a person number two who
leads through example.
It leads through example.
So this is an individual who his wealth
is the wealth of the Muslim community.
Once you have a leader like that then
people follow that.
People will follow the example.
So Uthman was already in a leadership position
even before the death of the Prophet ﷺ
because he was providing an example to the
community.
So these are key points why Uthman was
then put into position.
There's a debate about who should be the
leader.
There's a debate amongst Muslims.
Should it be Uthman?
Should it be Ali at this point?
Because Abu Bakr is gone.
Umar is gone.
So the committee after Umar was assassinated, the
selection committee came together.
Ten people promised paradise.
They selected Uthman.
Now somebody would say this is not a
good selection because Ali is there and there
are other people who are there.
Why would you select this shy person who
is a nice person and has money?
No.
Uthman was a strong leader.
Uthman understood the Quran as well as almost
anybody.
He understood the Sunnah.
He led by example.
He went on the hijrah to Ethiopia.
So choosing him as a leader at that
point in time was a type of stabilization
of the community.
Again, these are some points you might want
for students of knowledge.
Because at that point in time Ali accepted
Islam when he was nine years old approximately.
Thirteen years in Mecca.
He's 22 years old.
Ten years in Medina.
He's 32 years old.
So you see Abu Bakr dies two years.
So if you look at Ali's age you
will see that he is just coming into
his maturity.
Whereas Uthman is a more senior individual already
in his maturity.
So these are some of the reasons why
Uthman was chosen as the Khalifa and according
to authentic sources Ali did not oppose him.
Ali became his assistant.
This is very important.
You might get in some circles where they
try to say that it was the khan
al-amanah, that the trust was broken because
Ali was not put into position.
No, the trust was not broken.
Because Ali was right there.
This is a man who married two of
the daughters of the Prophet.
So this is not breaking any trust at
all.
And Ali understood this.
So Uthman then was a very strategic person.
Put into a very strategic position.
And supported by the Sahaba.
All of them supported him in his leadership.
And because of his stability because of his
knowledge of the Quran and the Sunnah Islam
expanded during his time.
Started to expand.
And you see that it went across North
Africa.
This is the time when Uqba ibn Nafi
rode right across and people were accepting Islam
and they went across North Africa.
This is when Islam went into Central Asia.
So this is what is known as the
Oxus River.
They would say, what is ma wara an
-naha?
What is in back of this big river
in Central Asia?
This is going up into Azerbaijan and to
you know, Kazakhstan and these areas.
So this is a big part of the
world.
It's Central Asia.
So now in Uthman's time it's going into
Central Asia.
Also in his time it goes into the
Caucasoid mountains.
The Caucasus, that's in Chechnya.
That's Dagestan.
Especially for the young people, many people they
love Khabib.
He is the fighter, right?
Dagestanis whenever they fight in UFC or anywhere
they fight, they win the fight.
The Chechens, they always win the fight.
Why?
Because of this mountain man, indomitable nature that
they have.
It's during Uthman's time that these people are
embracing Islam.
So he brought a lot to the leadership
of Islam and the spreading of Islam.
Hundreds and thousands of people are embracing Islam.
So this is a scholar now and a
ruler so he is balancing the wealth.
Wealth coming in, he loves to give.
So when you have a leader like that
you can do a lot of things.
Because a leader is not worried about making
himself rich like many of the leaders you
see in the world today.
The leader, he is wealth and he doesn't
need his money because he depends on Allah.
So Uthman then with his Fiqh he worked
on infrastructure.
So he did a lot of work on
the public work, improving your roads, your masjids.
This is your civic society.
So he did a lot.
He is following Umar now.
Umar initiates this civic society.
Uthman follows it up.
So Uthman has got the wealth in order
to solidify what Umar began.
So you see how the leadership is coming
now when it's a fusion.
And he was able to unite Muslims and
a lot of positive things economically were happening
during his time.
The Islamic state was functioning economically.
Another thing that Uthman will never be forgotten
about and that is the standardization of the
Qur'an itself.
When you pick up your Qur'an today
the Ahlus Sunnah wal Jamaah if you look
you will see it is the Mushaf al
-Uthmani.
It is literally called the Uthman Qur'an.
Why is that?
Because with the expansion of Islam now way
into Central Asia, across North Africa into many
places there were people coming into Islam who
had their own tribes, they had their own
religions and so maybe they didn't understand Islam
enough or maybe there were some evil forces
amongst them who wanted to seize power.
They had to be Muslim because Muslim was
the way to go in those days.
So what they did was they tried to
make false Qur'ans or they tried to
make false Hadiths.
So there was some word coming of these
wrong versions, things being taken out of the
Qur'an things being added to the Qur
'an itself.
Uthman, he is the key person to be
in position.
What does he do?
He commissions a committee to come together to
preserve the Qur'an.
Now that's something that other people hesitated about
a little bit because the Qur'an was
not a written text book.
There were scrolls.
People would write down on bark and on
paper where they came across the skin of
the animals and so there was writing, it
was not put together yet, but there was
writing and all of these scrolls were put
into the wife of the Prophet, Hafsa daughter
of Umar.
So it was there.
So Uthman now, he made this, this is
a Ijtihad.
Remember the concept of Ijtihad?
An Ijtihad is a religious decision which is
made to meet specific needs in a specific
place, specific time.
Okay, so you gotta be a mujtahid.
Uthman was mujtahid.
But not only was he mujtahid, he was
the khalifa.
So that's the perfect situation because this is
a big move to make, it's a big
Ijtihad.
He's gonna make it into a book form.
He has the fiqh, he sits with the
committees, they agree with him, and so he
gets Zayd ibn Thabit, one of the greatest
of the Qur'an reciters and memorizers and
the people who had memorized and Uthman was
one of them, that they came together and
they made a standardized version of the Qur
'an and they actually wrote it down and
made multiple copies and they sent these copies
to the main communities within the Muslim world,
big centers.
And there are versions of this, you go
to Istanbul, the Topkapi Museum, you go to
Samakand, there in Central Asia, and you will
still find some of the original sources that
are there in these areas.
So even the written one is preserved, but
alhamdulillah the memorized Qur'an has been on
a type of chain all the way, hundreds
and thousands of people up until today.
But Uthman will be recognized and will be
known for this Ijtihad that he made.
That is one of the greatest fruits of
fusion of leadership.
Radheelahan.
And he always went to the Shura because
he was a lenient kind of person, so
he wasn't the harsh kind of person who
makes rash decisions.
So he loved the Shura, and he used
to go to the Sahaba constantly to make
decisions about what he needed.
He was the kind of person who was
not confrontational.
He is the kind of a person who
if you ask him something, you need something,
or you ask him something that is permissible,
he is normally going to say yes.
And I remember there was a great scholar
in Medina when I studied, Sheikh Abdulaziz bin
Baz, and I had the opportunity to meet
him and go to his house and whatnot.
They say, Sheikh bin Baz, that the only
time he said La, was when he said
La ilaha illallah.
That's the only time he said no.
Because he always, he just gave and gave.
Uthman had this kind of personality.
One of the great qualities of Uthman r
.a. The weakness, or what could be perceived
as a weakness, is the fact that when
the Umayyad clan, and the Umayyads chose Damascus
as their base.
So this is Muawiyah, the son of Abu
Sufyan, and many of the Umayyads, they were
in Mecca, and then they went up to
Damascus.
And so, the Umayyads began to approach Uthman
for positions of power.
And Uthman, generally, if it was a good
person and he had the abilities, he would
say, okay.
Other people approach Uthman.
And he said, I'll do it.
But the way unfortunate scandal comes about, people
only remember you for what they want to
scandalize you about.
So they say that he was doing favoritism,
nepotism they call it, favoritism.
That he was favoring the Umayyad clan.
This is not the reality with man's situation.
And he was just, and he governed with
justice all during his Khilafat.
And there were different forms of fitna.
This is the time of the fitna coming
in.
The shaytan wa'iyyadu billah.
And this is the talbis, iblis, deception of
the shaytan coming in.
And we found this out in studying the
seerah.
We found that it started to come in,
the over aggrandizing of Ali radiyallahu anhu.
And fitna is starting to come in.
But Uthman was a lenient kind of person.
And this fitna started to grow.
Ibn Sabah from Yemen.
So his group starts to come in and
make scandals and fitna against Uthman.
And the word came out that they were
actually entering Medina.
And Ali knew about this.
And Ali wanted to defend Uthman.
Other sahabas, they wanted to defend Uthman.
Uthman said, no fighting in Medina on my
watch.
So he would not allow them to do
that.
And these confrontationalist devils, rebels, succeeded in penetrating
the house of Uthman, not from the front
door.
Hassan and Hussein were there.
They went over the roof and they assassinated
Uthman radiyallahu anhu when he was reading the
Quran.
And this is a big turning point because
this is fitna.
This is when a big trial, tribulation flared
up there in the Muslim world.
It was during the time of Uthman radiyallahu
anhu.
But Uthman, his example is clear.
His example shone out.
He ruled for more than any, you know,
of the caliphate of Rashidun, you'll see.
He established so much.
He was able to preserve the Quran in
a written form, not just a memorized form.
He built infrastructure.
And so he is one of the greatest
leaders in our Islamic history.
It's fusion.
It's another example of fusion, and that is
what we need today in our leadership.
So I want to open up the floor
for any questions that anybody may have concerning
Uthman ibn Affan radiyallahu anhu.
The floor is open.
Okay, so there's a couple of questions online.
Okay.
Those of us whose understanding of leadership is
limited to Western context may interpret a scholar
leader as Plato or a philosopher king.
Is there a Muslim equivalent to this?
As a philosopher king?
May you interpret a scholar leader as Plato's
philosopher king?
Oh yes.
So this is something totally different because with
Plato and these people, they are not people
who are dealing with God.
So they're just dealing with philosophy and power.
Do they ever have positions in leadership where
they may be advisers?
No, Plato was just a philosopher.
So he's like an advisor.
But the point is, he's putting out this
thing, this philosopher king, and if you study
Western philosophy and politics, you'll see that ours
is different because our rule is based upon
the Quran and the Sunnah.
So this is not a philosopher.
The scholar actually knows the law, the revelation.
That's the basis of the Islamic society.
So it's not the same discussion here because
theirs would be a secular one with people
who do not believe in God.
With us, it's totally different because the Quran
and the Sunnah, this is the basis of
our politics, our economics, our social life.
So the scholars then play a pivotal role
in establishing Islamic society.
Now, another question.
Yes, so this is where the wealth in
the Muslim world, and again, as I said,
even the Prophet ﷺ was saying that people
should be, we're supposed to share fuel, gas
and oil.
It's supposed to be the property of all
Muslims.
And if all Muslims had the rights to
the oil and the gas within our Muslim
countries, nobody would be poor if it was
shared.
So right there, you can see a major
issue.
Other Muslims who have great wealth need to
give of that wealth.
What I can say about Muslim countries and
Muslim communities is that we are some of
the most generous people because you will see
masjids, communities, you'll see many philanthropic things happening
out of the Muslim world.
We are very generous with our wealth.
The problem again is this leadership thing because
if the leader wants to stifle and dominate
the society, they control the wealth.
So therefore, you have in some Muslim countries,
and I'm not mentioning names, you have a
thing called Wazaratul Aqaf, and that is the
Ministry of Trusts.
That's where your zakat, your waqf trust, which
finances civic society, feeds the poor, builds masjids,
all these things, where it actually becomes controlled
by the government.
It's not shared out properly.
This is one of the big factors in
producing a just Muslim society.
It's an economic one.
This is a very serious thing.
There's no doubt about it.
That's where the leadership, example of the leaders,
you will see that for the most part,
the great leaders were either people who were
very modest in their life, or they had
wealth and they used to give constantly.
They're constantly giving.
You really see somebody who builds up his
wealth and has all of this wealth to
be a just Muslim leader.
It's hard to combine the two because the
wealth is only a trust.
Individuals should not be the ones who are
controlling the wealth of the masses of the
people.
Now, question.
I have a question.
It's about back when you first started talking
about when people started moving from socialism to
democracy and then in the 70s to the
90s, there were countries who were choosing Islamic
parties to win.
Can you talk a little bit more about
that?
Especially when you mentioned Egypt as an example
of repression of Islamic leadership, what did that
mean?
What that means is you have countries like
Tunisia, that's North Africa.
It's a good example.
The Islamic, when they started having democratic elections
and the Islamic party, Nahda was the name
of their party, joined the election.
Algeria is another case that when, after the
French were thrown out and they wanted to
choose, the Islamic parties were actually, anytime they
had an election, the Islamic parties were winning
the elections.
Because people were tired of socialism, they were
tired of capitalism, they wanted Islam, so the
Islamic parties came in.
And this is where the Western powers came
in, using treacherous people from amongst the Muslims
to attack the Muslim parties, to put them
in jail.
The case of Egypt is well known, the
Muslim brotherhood that was really more philanthropic.
They used to have schools and social things
and educational things, so they entered into politics
and the people put them in power.
Maybe that was a mistake on their part.
But they entered into politics and they were
overthrown.
The powers to be of the West overthrew
their leader, Mohamed Morsi, Rahimullah, who was actually
president of the country and then put in
jail.
He died in jail.
That's a clear example of repression.
What kind of country is this?
Because it is the fear of the colonial
powers of Islam rising back up.
Because we are an alternative society.
You have to realize this.
We're not capitalism, you're kings and all that.
We're not socialism, you're communist parties.
We're above it.
If that comes, that would be a viable
alternative for societies around the world.
This is why they fight so hard to
struggle.
Things are changing now.
Again, we're moving more and more towards these
major change that Muslims have to go through.
But that's where our leadership is crucial.
Leadership is crucial.
Any other questions?
Anybody has?
The floor is open there.
Remember that the Prophet said, Follow my sunnah
and the sunnah of the Rightly Guided Caliphs.
First thing is that we have to understand
their lives.
Like I say, in the case of Uthman,
the average Muslim does not understand this information
I just gave you tonight.
The average Muslim does not understand these details
about Uthman.
They might know that he married two daughters
of the Prophet.
They might know that he is a wealthy
person and he was generous.
But they wouldn't know the details about what
he actually did and the structures that he
set.
So first thing, understand what they mean and
then institute it.
This would be our examples for our youth.
This is what we look up to.
These are, you know, instead of looking up
to the great Western leaders, these are some
of our great leaders.
And encourage people who have these qualities.
Then, Inshallah, it can start to rise to
the point where eventually it can reach to
the Muslim world.
The question is, it seems like the authority
amongst the Muslim world is not absolute.
Like the Pope with the Catholic Church.
There is the concept of Khalifa.
And we actually have a succession of heads
of state of the Muslim world.
It's gone through a lot of changes over
the centuries.
But it was a hundred years ago when
the Ottomans who ruled in what is now
Turkey from Istanbul, that was the final base
of our Khilafat.
And that was taken apart.
And so, it is something that we are
moving towards.
You know, for that central leadership to return
again to the Muslim world.
That does not mean we can't do anything.
Okay?
Because we have to deserve the leader.
Right now, anybody claims they're a leader, you're
going to have more trouble with some of
the Muslims than they were with the non
-Muslims.
Because they might say, can you speak Arabic?
Are you a Pakistani?
Are you Turkish?
You know, they're going to start asking you
these questions, right?
Tribal questions.
Okay, so we have to deserve that leader.
And that's the purification we're going through now.
That Inshallah, eventually, we can deserve a proper
leader.
And so, with this, we will close the
class.
Next week, Inshallah, we will be looking at
the final of the four best examples of
the fusion of leadership.
Ali ibn Abi Talib, there's a lot of
things about Ali that you might not know.
And so, we're going to go into some
of the details to show again a fusion
and how it implemented itself in everyday life.
So, I leave you with these thoughts, and
I ask Allah to have mercy on me
and you.
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