Abdullah Hakim Quick – What Is A True Scholar Minarets And Thrones #02
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Bismillahir Rahmanir Raheem, Alhamdulillahi Rabbil Alameen, wa usalli
wa usallam ala Sayyid al-awwaleen wa al
-akhireen, nabiyyina Muhammadin wa ala alihi wa sahbihi
wa barak wa salaam.
Our 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.
My beloved brothers and sisters, to our viewers,
as-salamu alaykum wa rahmatullah.
Alhamdulillah, this is another opportunity for us to
reflect upon some very important information regarding Islam
and Muslims.
And we are looking at minarets and thrones,
and the relationship between scholars and rulers.
And in this light, today was a strange
day for me and for many people, because
the United Nations General Assembly was meeting in
New York City, and there were leaders from
all over the world who were there expressing
themselves.
And I happened to be able to listen
to the talk that was delivered by the
President of Turkey, President Erdogan, and it was
a powerful speech.
And as the leader of Turkey, which was
once one of the most powerful countries on
earth, he made some very clear points.
And I reflect on Turkey, because I've been
in Istanbul a number of times, and every
time I go there, and you look at
the size of the buildings, and you look
at the city, and you have to say
to yourself, I mean, these people had power.
Especially if you go back to the 15th,
16th century, you can see the level of
power that they had compared to the rest
of the world.
And even today, his country is very strategic.
It was probably the only country that could
get the Russians and the Ukrainians to sit
at the peace table.
So he's a very important person.
And he spoke very clear, very straightforward.
One of the points that he made very
clearly is that the United Nations representatives have
been meeting over the past year and witnessing
the genocide that is happening in Palestine, and
now the bombs are falling in Lebanon.
As we speak, this is how he was
addressing them.
The bombs are falling.
And it is a test for the United
Nations.
Because if the United Nations, if these are
the countries of the world, this is a
group that was set up in order never
to have another Nazi, German type of holocaust
of people, or the misuse of technology, the
destruction of nations.
That's the reason why this is set up,
to stop genocide.
So if we cannot do this, then we
are under a serious test, and this United
Nations could become actually unworkable.
And he mentioned that there's a clause within
their rulings or the amendments of the United
Nations that if all attempts fail to stop
any aggression, then they have the right for
coercion, which means force.
They have the right to send in force.
And that is the reality.
If a nation becomes a rogue state, and
thousands of people are dying, this could have
consequence for the whole globe.
Somebody has to stop them.
And so he said, I want to be
part of an allied nations, the same way
the Allies stopped Hitler.
He said, I want to be part of
a group of allies who stopped the aggression,
the things that are happening now, because this
is not only going to influence the Middle
East, but this will have ramifications all over
the world.
And he even said that the battles are
going on, the world has reached a very
low place.
And he said, even the Paris Olympics was
a war against the sacred, because in the
beginning of the Paris Olympics, they had *
types of presentations.
They insulted Jesus, Isa, they insulted Catholicism, Christianity.
And he said, all people who believe in
God are insulted by this.
And so it's a very crucial point.
But the question that came in my mind,
and again, this is one of the reasons
why we are taking this course, is that
even though Turkey is a mighty nation, it
is the second most powerful nation in NATO.
It is one of the most powerful in
the Middle East itself.
Even though there are great Chechen warriors and
Dagestanis, and Pakistan has 170 nuclear weapons in
Pakistan, Afghan soldiers are still there, and there
are other major forces.
Then how can people be stagnated to the
point where they're forced to watch innocent children
being bombed and being killed?
Something is seriously wrong.
Something is wrong.
And this is what Muslims need to understand.
If not this generation right now, then the
next generation needs to understand which direction to
go, and to pray to Allah for some
real change to come about in our nation
in order to be able to come out
of the situation that we are in.
So the powerful representative of the Turkish nation,
representing the potential of the Muslim world that
we discussed, over 26% of the world's
population, all types of natural resources, strategic positions,
Turkey is right at the point, the straits
there connect Europe with Asia, the Black Sea.
It is crucial.
Yemen, Djibouti, Somalia at the bottom of the
Red Sea.
And you see what Houthis are doing now
in terms of international trade.
Malaysia is on the Malacca Straits, and those
straits that are going down through Malaysia and
Southeast Asia, much of the world's economic traffic
is going through that area itself.
So strategic positions.
There's hundreds of these positions Muslims have.
And we have the armies to protect it,
or to disrupt other people.
We have young people.
We have a future.
Intellectuals.
And we have money.
Some of the richest people on earth are
Muslims.
So many things as we looked at, our
history, our religion is still growing.
But with all this, there are some serious
contradictions that are happening.
And this is the frustration that I felt
and that many people are feeling right now,
is that with this great wealth, there is
poverty.
And with the huge armies, there is defeat.
There is humiliation.
Intellectuals.
Many of the debates are over trivial matters.
Over minor things.
And the younger generation, those who are online,
you'll see many so-called Muslim sites.
They're fighting over really small issues.
Even the issue of the mowlid, for instance.
Do you celebrate the birthday of the prophet,
or do you not celebrate the birthday?
And people go to the point where they
will declare somebody as out of the faith
if they celebrate it.
And other ones will declare if they don't
celebrate it.
The reality is that we know that it
was not celebrated by the prophet, not by
his companions, not until almost a thousand years
after his death.
And it started in Fatimid Egypt, who was
a Shia dynasty in Egypt.
But still, if somebody wanted to remember the
prophet, his seerah, his life, to give sadaqah,
technically speaking, there's nothing wrong with that.
It's only when you declare it's an Eid.
When you declare it's a must to be
a Muslim.
You put it on the level of Eid
al-Fitr and Eid al-Adha.
When you do that, now you've entered bid
'ah.
But if Muslims are taking advantage of this
time, because he was born in Rabi al
-Awwal, nobody knows the exact date.
They say the 12th seems to be the
strongest, but it's not the only date.
If somebody wants to do that, leave them
alone.
Because we have greater issues to deal with,
especially when our families are being bombed and
killed, and droughts are happening, and so many
things are happening in the Muslim world.
So it creates a type of frustration that
is there, and we need change.
And we found out that Allah said very
clearly, إِنَّ اللَّهَ لَا يُغَيِّرُ مَا بِقَوْمٍ حَتَّى
يُغَيِّرُ مَا بِأَنفُسِهِمْ Allah will not change the
condition of a people, till they change that
which is in themselves.
So it's something in our hearts, something in
the body of Islam, that has to change.
It's like a giant that can do so
many things, but the giant is sick.
The giant's been sleeping, and now it's waking
up.
And when you first wake up, you feel
really groggy, like you're not sure of things.
That's how the Muslim world is now.
It's like a giant that's just woken up
from a deep sleep.
And so, in looking at the traditions of
the Prophet ﷺ, and the different aspects of
Islam, we recognize that the Prophet, peace be
upon him, said, There is something that I
fear for my ummah more than Dajjal.
And that's serious, more than the Antichrist.
And he repeated it three times.
And when he was asked about what it
was, he said, misguided and astray leaders.
If your leaders are misguided, and this hadith
comes in different forms, one time it said,
So those are lost leaders.
And there's another one that says, So mudillin
are people who are not just lost, they'll
take you astray.
So leaderships.
He identified the leaders, and we looked at
the writings of one of the great scholars
of Islam, from Fez in North Africa.
And in looking at sincerity, in the famous
hadith of the Prophet ﷺ that is, religion
is, that religion is sincerity, and they said,
for who?
And he said, for Allah, his messenger, his
book, the general body of Muslims, and the
leaders.
So now he broke down the concept of
leaders.
And he said, leaders is the umara, and
the ulama, and the fukara.
Now, the terms you're going to see for
leaders, it is interchangeable terms.
There's amir, who is the one who has
the command.
There is imam, who's the one who is
leading, in a sense.
It's usually prayer, but imam, at different points,
means different things.
Because even the Prophet ﷺ in the hadith,
he said imma, he said imams, misguided imams.
Okay, so leadership can take, you know, the
names are interchangeable.
So the ulama, and the fukara.
And the fukara, he meant those people who
claim to be spiritual leaders.
Today they would say the tasawwuf, the Sufi
leaders, or those who claim spirituality.
So there are some who are dealing with
book knowledge, who are dealing with the revelation,
and your rules.
There are others who are dealing with ihsan,
with tahaat.
Okay, so it's two forms, in a sense.
We recognized that in early Islam, there was
no separation between the two.
So having knowledge of the book, having knowledge
of the Quran and the sunnah, would give
you knowledge of the haat.
It gives you spirituality.
It should not really be separated.
And that's originally how it was.
But as time went by, and there were
so many millions of Muslims, and people accepting
Islam, who had different cultures, specializations start coming.
People specialize in different things.
So this is where, by his time, Ahmed
Zarouk, 600 years or so ago, there were
the ulama, who are scholars of book knowledge,
the Quran, the sunnah, fiqh, and there was
the fukara, or there was the spiritual people,
who were dealing with ihsan, how to have
spirituality and righteousness.
He had an answer for all of them.
And it's something to reflect upon.
Because he's talking about sincerity, right?
This is the masses of the people.
This is us.
He said the umara, so that's the political
leaders, the one who has the gun, or
the sword, sultan, that the Turks would call.
So who is your sultan?
Who is your leader?
Today it's your president, your prime minister, you
know, whatever, who has the military under them.
That's the umara.
So he said, you give them obedience, you
should obey the leaders.
But he made a condition.
Because you'll have some scholars today that will
even say, obey your leaders, anything they do.
And that has to be put in the
right context.
Because the right context is, you obey your
leaders as long as they obey Allah.
So if they don't obey Allah, then you
don't have to obey them.
Okay?
Then he said the ulama, that you should
acknowledge them, because they are spending their life
studying, you should acknowledge them as long as
they have dalil, proofs.
They have to have proofs.
They can't tell you, well, I'll answer your
question, I had a dream last night.
You had a dream.
No, I want something more than a dream.
I want something from the revelation.
And you're supposed to be trained to give
me that.
You see?
And the fukara, if a person claims to
be a knowledgeable person, he's a scholar, but
he deals with the heart and the higher
level of spiritual Islam, as long as he
stays within sharia.
So if he stays within Islamic law, listen
to them.
Especially if they're scholars.
They go outside of Islamic law, and start
telling you to do things that Hindus do,
or Buddhists do, or Christians do, don't follow
them.
Okay?
Do not submit yourself to them.
So the point is here, you could divide
this into two sections.
One section is the people with the gun,
the rulers, political leaders.
And the other side are people with knowledge
and spirituality.
And that's the essence of our course, which
we say minarets and thrones.
Okay?
So that's the essence of it.
And a relationship between these two groups, which
is critical.
Because really, in the case of President Erdogan,
of Turkey, who was there in the United
Nations General Assembly, saying very strong things, but
unfortunately he has said things before that are
strong, and I don't take anything from him,
because it was bold what he did, but
why is it that he can't completely follow
this up?
Okay, why are there contradictions?
Okay, what is it to complete the picture?
What did Ottomans have at certain point?
Why they could establish justice in the world?
Why at different points in the world Muslims
established justice?
Okay, that's relationship.
Part of the problem is the relationship between
the rulers and scholars.
And we're going to find out how serious
this is.
What is a scholar?
Okay, so we're using the word ulama, which
is the plural of alim.
Alim from ilm.
That is a term that can also be
used in a lot of different ways.
Because if you just say scholar, you could
be a scholar of IT.
You could be a scholar of math.
You could be a scholar of science.
And sometimes scholarship is so many different areas
that you can see in a university.
Here we're talking about an Islamic scholar.
Because this has great respect from amongst the
Muslims.
And these scholars are actually literally inheritors of
the prophets.
So this is how serious this scholarship is.
And the basic job of the scholars is
transmitting and interpreting and applying Islamic knowledge.
See the three things.
To transmit it, you got to interpret it
what it actually is, and then apply it.
Okay, you got to do all three.
And this is a big task.
This is something which is really serious because
the essence of an Islamic society, what distinguishes
an Islamic society from a secular society is
the fact that the basis is revelation.
The basis is not a constitution made by
human beings.
It's not so-called democracy.
It's not Marxism.
The basis is the revelation.
And so the alim is the one who
literally is interpreting this knowledge to be implemented
in a society.
That's a serious thing.
To the point where in Surah Az-Zumar
Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta-A'la told
us قُلْ هَلْ يَسْتَوِى الَّذِينَ يَعْلَمُونَ وَالَّذِينَ لَا
يَعْلَمُونَ إِنَّمَا يَتَذَكَّرُوا أُولُ الْأَلْبَابِ Allah told us,
say, O Muhammad, are those who know equal
to those who do not know?
Only they will remember who are people of
understanding.
And this ilm here is talking about revelation.
This can be applied to a lot of
things in a sense, but the overwhelming thing
we're talking about here now is the revelation.
And the Prophet ﷺ even said, and there's
a few different versions of this hadith, he
said the scholars al-'ulama waratat al-anbiya.
So he said the scholars are inheritors of
the Prophets.
And in another hadith he said al-'ulama khulafa
al-anbiya.
He said they are the khalifas, they are
the successors of the Prophets is the scholars.
That's a big thing.
Because everybody wants a khalifa now, right?
You want somebody to rule the Muslim world.
This is saying that the scholars are the
successors and inheritors of the Prophets.
They do not leave behind dinars and dirhams,
meaning they don't leave gold and silver, but
they only leave knowledge.
They didn't leave money.
So this ulama, it's a very serious position.
And if this ulama position is right, if
it is right, and if it is leading
as the khalifa, remember khulafa, then you would
have Islam instituted from the top down.
And when the leader, who's controlling the military,
who's controlling the finance, is now dealing with
revelation, respecting revelation, now you have a powerful
Islamic society.
And this is what happened with the Ottoman
Turks.
We saw it before, of course, in the
first generations, but I'm using them as an
example because we're even looking at the Turks
now in New York City.
But that's when they had this authority.
So the khalifa, the leader, the amir, on
top, and this is our concept now, the
amir on top, he might not be a
scholar.
He's just the person with the gun, or
the sword.
But he has scholars who can correct him.
He has scholars who he listens to.
And so therefore, together, they make up the
leadership.
So now you have a solid leadership.
So once that happens, then you have a
powerful society.
And the Ottomans used to say, because I've
studied them in some detail, and when they
were the most powerful, they had three elements.
They had another element, which was an important
one as well, but they had three elements.
One is that they had what they called
the alps.
The alps would be the soldiers, the military,
the fighters.
And then they had the scholars.
And then they had the business people.
So you combine the three, right?
And that's going to be important today because
not only do we need a military, you've
got to have an economy.
So if you have your fighters who will
defend you, but they are connected to scholars
or led by scholars, and you have an
economy underneath it, now we're talking the solution,
a reality that can still happen to Muslims.
But the danger is if the scholars are
not here or if the scholars go astray,
remember what the Prophet ﷺ said, he said
he fears these leaders, if these leadership people
are going astray, they're not doing what's right.
It's worse, he fears it even more than
Dajjal.
And that's serious, that's something which is really
serious.
And Abdullah ibn Amr ibn al-Asr, the
Prophet ﷺ said, he said, verily Allah does
not take away knowledge by snatching it from
people.
But he takes away knowledge by taking away
the scholars.
So that when he leaves no learned person,
people turn to ignorant as their leaders.
Then they ask to deliver religious verdicts, and
they deliver them without knowledge, and they go
astray and they lead others astray.
This is what happens when the leaders are
the jahal, which is ignorant, the jahil.
When they are the ones in leadership, then
it's a serious situation.
Or if the leaders become those who will
take you astray, daalun, if the leaders are
actually submitting to evil or doing evil, now
Islamic society, you can have all the khutbas,
all the salats, everything you want, but we're
not going to get success.
And we have to study this.
We have to understand what it is.
But in order to understand what it is,
we need to understand what actually is Islamic
scholarship.
This is a deep subject which could take
the whole semester just to discuss what is
Islamic scholarship.
And people tend to look at it in
a very simple way.
Like the person who's going to go, the
maulana or the sheikh, in one of the
Muslim countries, I don't want to say which
one it is, but they used to say
if they had a son and they said
this son, if he's really intelligent, then let
him be a doctor.
This happened in a lot of Muslim countries
in the 20th century.
If he can't be a doctor, then let
him be an engineer.
If he can't be an engineer, then let
him be an accountant.
And this literally happened.
In one country, I'll say it, it was
Syria, they actually took your test scores and
the ones on the top, they put them
in med school, whether you like blood or
not.
The next ones, you become engineer, you become
accountant, or you become a lawyer.
Then they said in this one Muslim country,
if he's a bad little boy, a spoiled
brat, then put him in the Quran school.
Let him be a maulana.
That's what they were doing.
So the little boy who was causing trouble,
send him to the madrasa, so the madrasa
teacher can beat him into place.
So he gets beat to learn the Quran.
So what happened then?
When people suddenly realized that Islam is the
solution, and then these maulanas or these so
-called sheikhs were graduating, bad little boys who
now had a cap on, so you're in
trouble now.
Because you have the worst of your people
who are actually in the leadership position.
You see?
So when Islam was in its height, the
young males, young females, those who had potential
would study Islam.
And I'm saying females as well, because there
were many female scholars.
They would study Islam, the best of the
people, cream of the crop.
And then it would go down.
So what was it?
What was it that takes somebody who has
the highest level of intelligence to deal with?
And why would this be so important?
Number one, again, we have to understand we're
dealing with ilm, we're dealing with the knowledge
of the revelations.
So this is how you're going to govern
your society.
This is how decisions are going to be
made, economic, political, social, not just religious.
Your whole life within a society has to
go back to this, along with your engineering
and your medicine and your architecture.
Of course, these are all important subjects.
But the base subject is this.
So a scholar, if somebody is an alim,
because there are many people who claim to
be alims, but they're not.
And there's a lot of different terms.
And it's not their fault.
There's different levels of it.
And in different countries, some people are forced
to take leadership because there's nobody else.
But they should be able to say, when
they don't know, I don't know.
The problem is when the person is not
qualified and then he says, I know.
That's where your problem comes in.
That's immatil mudallim.
So the scholar, number one, needs to have
a deep understanding of Arabic language.
You cannot be a scholar in Islam on
the highest level if you do not have
a deep understanding of Arabic.
And Arabic does not have to be your
first language, by the way.
Because if you look at the great, many
of the great ulema, look at Hadith.
And you'll see Bukhari and Muslim and Tirmidhi
and Nisai, the great Muhaddithin, the majority were
non-Arabs.
Persian speaking, Turkish language speaking, other languages.
They were not Arabs.
But Arabic became their second language.
They mastered the Arabic.
And that requires not just learning how to
talk like Babel.
You take the course Babel and you can
talk in the marketplace and you can buy
apples and oranges.
You have to understand Arabic language.
And Arabic is one of the deepest languages
on earth.
I would say Arabic, compared to other languages,
is in another league altogether.
And I found this out coming from America.
And we speak English.
And those of us who are English speaking
only, we have a very narrow understanding.
If you go to the third world, different
Asia, Africa, people speak three, four, five languages.
If you only speak English, you've got a
problem.
Because you're a very narrow thing.
If you say he jumped, she jumped, they
jumped, it jumped.
You use the same form, but in Arabic,
there's male jumped, female jumped, inanimate object jumped,
it changed.
The verb changes.
There's a group of females, verb changes.
Group of males, verb changes.
So you have to know all of those
different forms.
Even like if you're studying French.
French is deeper than English.
And those who understand French, the French use
different descriptions, male and female and different things.
It's a higher level.
Arabic has got something that most languages don't
have.
And that is, it has dual, two.
So if two people are doing something, they
walked, those two walked, you have to have
another verb for that.
It's the verb for two.
Think about this.
How deep your language has got to be.
And that's why the poetry in Arabic is
so deep.
Because they can go all over the place.
And they can use, there's so much usages.
So in order to master Arabic, then you
have to get familiar with it, speaking, writing,
reading.
And then you've got to know the grammar.
You have to know something about the logic
of Arabic and also the balagha, that is
the word usage and the poetic things that
come.
You've got to study Arabic poetry.
You've got to know all the nuances within
the language.
Because sometimes these nuances come within the reading
of the Qur'an itself.
And you have to know how Arabic has
changed.
Like in Surah Yusuf, when it's talking about
the caravan came, when Nabi Yusuf was thrown
in the well.
And the caravan came.
And the Qur'an is saying, that the
caravan came.
It's the caravan, right?
But today, sayyada means a car, like Toyota.
You speak in Arabic today, you say, what
kind of Toyota sayyada do you have?
Oh, I have a Mercedes.
That's what sayyada.
So you look at the Qur'an, you
see sayyada and you think it means a
Toyota.
No.
So you have to know the changes Arabic
went through.
So that takes time to master it.
That's a subject that you'll do there.
When I studied in Medina, and I don't
consider myself to be a scholar, we just
have some taste of knowledge.
But just to get a taste of the
knowledge, to enter into the area where you
could possibly be a scholar, in the first
year of the university, I had 13 subjects.
13 subjects.
That included Arabic, and you're going to see
some of the subjects.
You're studying side by side, and when the
final exams come, you have 13 exams.
And in the first year, in the college
of Dawah and Sula Deen, you have to
memorize 2.5 sections of the Qur'an.
You have to memorize.
And you're going to get tested on it.
That's just for the first year.
And in some universities, like Azhar University, in
order to enter into the Arabic Azhar University,
the high part, you have to memorize the
Qur'an before you even get in.
If you didn't memorize the Qur'an, you
cannot even enter.
So this is serious business here.
This is like nuclear physicists as opposed to
a pharmacist in Sharper's Drug Mart.
This is a nuclear physicist.
That's the level it can go to.
So the scholar then needs to have the
basic core subjects.
And again, this is a deep area, and
I just want to give you a general
understanding of it before we go into the
practical application of what happened to scholarship and
scholars.
Number one, with the language, you've got to
study Qur'anic sciences.
That's the revelation.
Alhamdulillah, Sheikh Abdul Hameed is teaching a course
on Uloom al-Qur'an.
So you have to have these basic things.
And within that, and there's a number of
things, but within it is Tafsir, which is
exegesis or it is interpretation, understanding what the
Qur'an actually means, and that means that
you need to understand the context, why were
the verses revealed, Azbab an-Nuzul, the nuances,
the changes that it went through.
You've got to go through the commentaries.
There were great scholars who made commentaries.
And you have to be able to apply
this now.
If you're on a high level, you have
to be able to apply that to today's
situation.
That's the highest level.
And in the Qur'anic thing, there is
the qira, there's recitations.
You know it's tajweed, but you have to
master different forms of the recitations.
Okay, so that's just your basic study there.
Now, another area that the scholar needs to
be involved in is hadith sciences.
So you have to know, this is now
the revelation coming through the Prophet ﷺ, وَمَا
يَنْتِقَ عَلَى الْهَوَىٰ إِنْهُ إِلَّا وَحْيَنُ يُهَىٰ As
Allah said, he doesn't speak from himself.
He is a revelation that is coming out.
It's coming through him.
So you have to have a comprehensive understanding
of hadith.
So you have to understand what is authentic
and what is not authentic.
And that is what is called sahih, hasan,
da'if.
These are all subjects to take.
Then you have to know the isnad.
So when you say a hadith, like I
just read Abdullah ibn Umar ibn al-As.
That Abdullah, he gave the hadith.
But there are names before that.
So the scholar actually has to know these
names and understand it.
There is a scholar today that I can
say is clearly a scholar.
His name is Sheikh Muhammad al-Hasan He
is from Mauritania.
He is a Shankiti scholar.
And Sheikh Muhammad al-Hasan, when he gives
a hadith, he will tell you on the
authority of this one, that one, that one,
that one, that one.
He will list about 12 people that came
from the Prophet.
It's all in his head.
He is not reading it out of a
book.
So you have to understand what is called
isnad.
And that is the chain of the narrators.
To know what is reliable and what is
not reliable.
This is a science in itself.
It's a science.
And you'll see that Bukhari and Muslim, and
these people, they were very strict in whether
they would accept somebody's hadith.
And they would actually test people to see
is this person a reliable person or not.
In one case Bukhari was looking for a
person and he came in the area and
that person was there and then he wanted
to get his animals, his sheep, and he
took an empty bucket and he put it
there and he said to the animals he
called them and the animals came running to
get and there was nothing in the bucket.
And Bukhari is watching him.
So he said if he will lie to
the animals he will lie on the prophet.
See how strict he is?
If it's in his nature to lie, if
you would lie to your animals that means
there is something wrong with your personality.
You see, I'm not going to go to
this person because he is probably a liar.
That's how strict they were.
So that study, there is Usul al-Hadith
which is the hadith methodology.
How do you authenticate the people on the
chain?
Deep subject.
All of these things are needed in order
to understand hadith.
People throw around hadiths today.
They just read it in a book and
they throw it around.
But the person who is a scholar has
to know the chain and what is called
the metan, the body of the hadith.
Because sometimes the person will say something in
the metan, in the body and it doesn't
make sense.
It is not classical Arabic.
And the Prophet ﷺ spoke in classical Arabic.
So they can detect whether it's a lie
or not.
Then also Islamic jurisprudence, that's fiqh, which we
hear about.
We hear about the fiqh, the madhhabs.
So if you are going to be a
scholar, you have to know for instance Shafi
'i fiqh, Maliki fiqh, Hanbali, Hanafi.
So some scholars will be a scholar of
Hanafi fiqh.
So he is a scholar within Hanafi.
But he isn't in another one.
But at least you can say he is
a scholar of that.
So you have to master the fiqh.
And you have to understand not only how
the jurisprudence is set up, what are all
the means of setting it up, but the
practical applications of it.
And that is where the fatwas are there.
That's how making religious decisions are there.
Then one of the important subjects, some say
it's even maybe the critical subject right in
the beginning to understand.
You need to understand aqidah.
You need to understand theology.
And so the scholar has got to be
grounded in the tenets of Islamic faith.
Which means your belief in Allah, the angels,
the prophets, the books, the afterlife, the qadah.
You have to go over the texts.
You have to understand the belief system.
And even deeply into books like At-Tahawiyah,
the aqidah of At-Tahawiyah.
Which is a famous one.
And the theological debates.
You have to be able to handle yourself
and understand debates when people are going astray.
Why?
Because there's deviations.
Deviations have come in Islam.
People have come in Islam claiming all types
of things.
Claiming that they're prophets.
They claim all types of strange things.
And if you're not grounded in aqidah, you
can't tell when somebody is coming with a
deviation.
So that's crucial for a scholar to understand
their faith.
It is a critical point.
Right after the revelation you've got to know
these beliefs.
You also need to know, and again it's
a big subject and I've given you a
few of the basic aspects of being an
alim.
But there are more.
I would say it's important also Islamic history
and context.
Which means seerah.
You've got to know the life of the
Prophet ﷺ.
How it was applied.
And to be a real scholar, you need
to be aware of historical development.
Of Islamic thought.
That's today.
And some of the great scholars you're going
to see, Imam Abu Hanifa, Imam al-Ghazali,
Imam Ibn Taymiyyah.
And somebody says, what about Ghazali?
Because I heard that part of his life
he was only a spiritual person.
But usool al-fiqh, remember fiqh.
And you have the methodology of fiqh called
usool.
The strongest book in usool al-musasqa, that
was written by Imam al-Ghazali.
So he was a scholar also, in Islamic
jurisprudence.
So now, the scholar, the true scholar, because
we're looking at this thing in a positive
way in the beginning, the true scholar needs
to have taqwa.
Fear of Allah.
Consciousness of Allah.
So that they can actually implement it.
They can guard against arrogance and hypocrisy and
all the evil qualities.
To uphold truth and justice, regardless of the
consequences.
That is your real scholar.
Sincerity, ikhlas.
The true scholar has to be sincere.
And when that person is doing it for
Allah and not for money.
Because the problem today is you have what
is called ulama, sultan.
They are the scholars of the king.
That the king will give them a package.
Give them some money, buy the bribery.
To bribe them.
Right?
Doesn't work.
Number three, humility, tawada.
And that means that the scholar has to
recognize that he doesn't know everything.
And the basis of knowledge according to many
of the great scholars is that when you
can say, I don't know.
When you say, I don't know.
Now you've entered into scholarship.
And you have to have character.
Because you have to be a model of
what you are teaching.
And it is said that the students of
Imam Malik, especially they are quoted to have
said that two thirds of what we learned
from Imam Malik was not book knowledge.
It was his adab, it was his character.
That's what we learned.
Because he was implementing Islam.
So that is what the true scholar will
be.
What does a scholar have to do?
And again, this information inshallah will be made
available to you at the end.
If you've got a flash drive, I'm going
to give you this PowerPoint.
You can have this information.
It will be made available to you.
And what are the roles and responsibilities?
Now here's where you see the value of
the scholar.
The scholar has to teach and to guide,
transmit the knowledge.
And guide people into the knowledge of Quran,
Hadith, Fiqh.
And help the people into this.
And have that spiritual base.
Have that ethics that is needed.
Next, fatwas.
The scholars will have to issue legal rulings.
They will have to be up to date
with what is happening.
Research.
Be aware of the usage of terminologies.
They'll have to be able to do that
in order to be up to date.
I remember that when I was in Medina,
I got a message from the brothers and
sisters in California.
And they said there's a new, there's this
drug that's out here.
They call it angel's dust.
And angel's dust, they used to take embalmer's
fluid.
You know the fluid you put in dead
bodies to preserve it, right?
So in California they would take that and
they would snort it up their nose.
And they would go crazy.
And they would run around all night.
And the next day he's laying in a
hospital and they say, what happened to you?
And he says, I don't know, but I
had a good time.
They sent me a letter and they said,
go to the sheikh and ask him about
angel's dust.
So I said, okay, I've got to translate
this in Arabic, right?
Because he was Egyptian.
So I said, okay, sheikh, it's angel's dust.
He said, angel's dust?
Let me have some.
Right?
I said, okay, now I'm going to tell
you what it is.
Then I explained what it was and he
said, this is an intoxicant.
And it's haram.
So the scholars have to be up to
date.
You understand?
To be able to give legal rulings when
it comes.
Next, the true scholar.
And we're starting in a positive light, what
it really is.
This is what President Erdogan needs.
This is what the other kings and rulers
in the Muslim world need.
They have to defend the faith.
They have to stand up and deal with
the misconceptions when they come in.
Deviant undercurrents.
They have to be able to protect the
Muslim world.
The true scholar needs to be balanced.
You got to balance the dunya and akhira.
You don't go one extreme or another, but
you can actually balance things.
And you can take a strong position that's
relevant to the world.
And we'll be studying Imam Ahmed ibn Hanbal,
Imam Ibn Taymiyyah and others and the stance
they took.
What happened in their times and the stances
that they took in terms of defending Islam.
Next, the scholar needs to be involved in
dawah.
Calling to Islam.
Providing a positive image of the faith.
And scholarship, the true scholar, it's a lifetime
study.
It doesn't end when you graduate from a
university.
It's continuous research, continuous study that goes on,
exploring and asking what is happening.
And engaging with contemporary issues.
The real scholars were up to date with
what was happening during their times.
And we're going to study Islamic history to
look at the times and what they actually
did.
How their scholarship actually changed the events or
instituted major changes within the societies.
So, C, critical thinking.
And there's a thing called Ijtihad, which is
independent reasoning to be able to make decisions
in contemporary issues.
These are some of the areas that the
scholar needs to be involved in.
So, in conclusion, and there's a statement here,
again you'll have this made available to you,
that the true scholar is not merely one
with vast knowledge but someone who embodies that
knowledge through ethical conduct, spiritual sincerity and commitment
to guiding the community.
They're in a pivotal role in preserving Islamic
tradition.
The true scholar is a beacon of wisdom,
justice and truth in a complex world.
Now, somebody asked Imam al-Shafi'i how
a person could become a scholar and he
replied, my brother, it is possible to attain
knowledge only if you fulfill six conditions, intelligence,
passion, perseverance, sustenance, guidance of a teacher and
many years of dedicated studies to reach this
point.
And somebody might say, well, wow, this is
almost impossible.
When Islam is healthy and our schools are
there and we don't put our wealth and
time in secular studies, you will have a
lot of scholars.
You will have scholars on a high, high
level.
Very possible.
We still have millions, Alhamdulillah, that have memorized
the whole Quran or much of it.
We can take it a step further and
have scholarship.
But this is the basis.
We need to understand what is a scholar
and then to understand the relationship with the
rulers.
Because the rulers for us are clear.
They are the ones with the temporal, with
the gun, with the sword, the Sultan, the
President, the political power.
And what is going to be their relationship,
that will be our study, Inshallah.
And from next week, we will start to
go into some practical Islamic history to look
at how this relationship developed from early times
coming up into the times that we are
living today.
So I want to open up the floor
for any questions that anybody may have.
This is the basis.
What is a scholar in Islam?
These are the ulama.
So the floor is open for any questions
that anybody may have.
Anybody online who has any questions concerning anything?
Yes, you will see that many of the
scholars like the great Imam al-Nawawi, you
will read about him, he is a great
scholar.
He passed away around 40 years old.
That is when he died.
So the real scholarship starts when it is
a child age.
Many scholars memorize the whole Quran before they
were even 9 or 10 years old.
So it starts when you are young.
We have spoken about before of the Sukoto
Caliphate in West Africa.
His father was a scholar.
His mother was a scholar.
His uncle, he grew up in a house
of scholarship.
He learned the Quran from when he was
young.
From when they were young.
You will see the scholars, it starts when
you are very young and your brain is
really wide open.
When you memorize the Quran, you will be
shocked to see.
They say that we only use a small
percentage of our brains.
Some say maybe even 10% or 15%.
There is a lot in our brain.
There are things called telepathy and there are
things that you can do with your mind.
When you memorize the Quran, when you memorize
poetry, it opens up your mind.
Scholars develop like this sheikh from Mauritania.
The Mauritanians are famous for this.
It is like a photogenic memory.
They will read something and it is there
in their head.
It is like carrying a flash drive around.
The flash drive is your head, like AI.
Your brain is an AI that we now
go to.
When you start young, and that is what
Islamic society will do.
You don't have to wait until you are
50 or 60 years old to be a
scholar.
You will see that by the time he
was 20 years old, he had mastered Maliki
fiqh.
He went into the field at 20.
It is very possible at a younger age
the person can go into the field.
Again, it is about nobody can master everything
by the way.
Nobody.
But you will have a sufficient amount that
you will be able to understand or you
can research.
Remember, about saying I don't know.
In one case Imam Malik was asked 50
questions and in about 44 of them or
so, he said I don't know the answer.
That is Imam Malik with the first book
of Hadith.
This is Imam Malik.
He said I don't know.
He is going to research it.
The scholar isn't somebody that knows every single
thing in their mind.
You can't know everything.
But you have access to the information.
You have a good portion and you have
access to it.
You reach a certain level where you can
say that person is a scholar.
But you don't know everything.
Question.
Can you give us some history of the
scholars that became the Japanese?
This is the basis of our class.
We will be going on and next week
we will be looking at practical applications of
this.
We are in a funny period now because
of Maghrib and Isha.
Next week we will have a straight longer
period of time for the class.
This is orientating us to it.
Next week we will be going into practical
applications.
You will see scholarship in action.
Where it actually affected the society.
You will see some of the changes and
things that actually had when the people had
this.
What we are looking for again is not
just scholarship for scholarship.
It is the relationship with the rulers.
What is the relationship with the rulers?
Because that is our problem today.
Our rulers are now destroying our countries for
the most part.
Muslims want to move in Palestine and other
places.
But their leader is holding them down.
As the Prophet said, he feared these leaders
even more than Dajjal.
Part of the problem is the ulema.
If the ulema are not checking the scholars
that are the rulers, then the evil ruler
can persist.
Question?
I am kind of building off what you
last said.
I would love to hear more.
When you talk about the practical application of
the history, comparing it to today's time as
well, the things that we can do in
our daily life because we only have so
much power because we are not on the
levels of ulema and scholars.
What can we do in our daily life
to get things right?
What can we do in our daily life
to get things right?
Number one, we need to study.
We need to try to get as much
understanding of Islam as possible, understand the Quran,
understand the traditions, be involved in this as
much as you can.
The more you study and the more you
get familiar to the revelation, then you can
start to see light and darkness.
That is one of the things we can
do.
Then apply our knowledge.
This is one of the key things.
Application of knowledge.
That is critical.
We can begin by getting involved and understand
everybody doesn't have to be the highest level
of scholar, but the more we understand about
the dean, then the more we can understand
deviation and when things go wrong.
Inshallah, next week we will be starting to
go into some practical applications.
We are going to actually see relationships of
rulers and scholars.
We want to know what is happening so
that we can apply for the future inshallah,
in the next generation or even help to
correct what is going on in the Muslim
world today.
Yeah.
Right.
Right.
The Turks have their own fighters.
They have their own automobile car.
They have some of the best drones in
the world.
Their drones give it out to other people.
Right.
Plus they have a military.
They have thousands of soldiers.
The Turks still have a fighting spirit.
Something has got to happen where all that
potential now can be used to establish justice.
And right now, the biggest problem is on
the top.
Something is holding it down and that has
got to change.
Inshallah.
Question?
Yeah.
So when we say PhDs and writing books,
this is a different system than the Western
system.
But there is, again, you saw these subjects,
there is what is called ijazah.
The ijazah system is when you take a
subject and the teacher gives you the right,
they feel that you have now mastered the
subject and you can teach it.
So they give you ijazah.
And so when you get that ijazah in
different subjects, then this is the basis of
the Western society.
Because actually it was the Muslims who introduced
the university system to Europe.
That was in Toledo and in Granada.
One time there was a discussion about the
word baccalaureate.
B-A, what does baccalaureate mean?
It's a Latin word.
Most people don't know.
But it's interesting because in North Africa and
in Andalus, there was a time the ijazah
said bihaqq al-riwayah.
Bihaqq al-riwayah means you have the right
to teach the subject.
So if you look at it, bihaqq al
-riwayah, baccalaureate, you see it?
And you would put on an abaya, and
then you'd put on either a scarf or
you have a turban.
Now what they do, the black thing, but
they smashed the turban down.
They copied us.
They literally copied us in our whole system.
But the difference was that the scholars, the
balanced scholars in the height of Islam, not
only did they study fiqh and Quran, they
also studied math.
So you would go from your hadith class
and you'd go chemistry.
So you see that many of the scholars,
they were balanced.
So it's the balanced curriculum.
And that also has to be reintroduced to
the Muslim world.
This is our future.
We can't have just scholars who memorize the
Quran and they can do nothing else but
just read.
And they don't even know what they're reading.
We have to go past this.
And it's got to be now scholars who
understand what they're reading and then implement it.
You see, when that happens, then we go
somewhere.
And it's not that difficult, especially when a
society on the top, the wealth of the
society supports the scholars.
It's just like what's happening in the West.
When the Western countries, when America and Canada
or Europe, they had the wealth, then they
had scholars to give you a scholarship to
come.
How many scholars in America now, in Canada,
come from outside of America?
Go to Silicon Valley.
And you see most of them come from
India or Pakistan or from Egypt.
Go to Cape Canaveral, the Egyptians.
Go to the doctors in Texas and other
places.
You'll see that Muslims are there.
Other people, other nations are there because they
have the money.
And they'll take care of you.
So when Muslims did that, we had the
golden age of Islam.
It's the same phenomenon.
And that can happen again.
That's right.
And he's Egyptian.
And that is right here in Toronto.
The head of the nuclear thing is Egyptian.
Right.
Ibrahim Hindi.
I mean his father.
Right.
His father, actually.
Ali Hindi.
It's his father.
So to run the project in Darlington right
here, they're calling back an Egyptian.
He's a fiery practicing Muslim too.
Go to his khutbah now.
Some of them say, no, we don't want
this man around a nuclear reactor.
But the point is, he combines both.
That's what we're talking about.
It's still common in universities now too.
So when people are taking more advanced or
technical degrees, anything like technology, medicine, whatever, they're
still required, especially in the early years, to
take more social degrees as well because when
you get into this mindset of just I'm
learning math and physics and science, then you
start forgetting about the social aspect, which is
a very important part of just living with
humans.
That's right.
But I feel that too, within Muslims, we
don't have that balance.
We're always just on two extremes.
Right.
So this is now again, the balanced scholars.
And we will see this.
That's what we want to look at.
And next week, inshallah, we're going to go
to the ultimate balanced scholars, the most balanced
scholars in Islamic history you will be seeing
next week, inshallah, for our class.
So with that, we will close the class.
And inshallah, we'll see you again next week.
And we're going to take another step into
the practical world of the relationship of minarets
to thrones, to the scholars, to the rulers.
I leave you with these thoughts.
And I ask Allah to have mercy on
me and you.