Abdur Rahman ibn Yusuf Mangera – Opens up about Syria

AI: Summary ©
The speakers discuss various cultural and political culture topics, including the use of burial culture and filtration mechanisms, the impact of filtration mechanisms on political events, and the use of words and measurements. They stress the importance of learning to be successful and finding regular presence in various fields, as well as the need for regular practice and learning from past mistakes before making a decision. They also touch on issues related to Islam, including the removal of certain groups and the use of media and communication to inform people about rights. The speakers emphasize the importance of practicing Islam and regular presence in various fields, as well as finding regular presence and regular learning from past mistakes before making a decision.
AI: Summary ©
Actually, getting used to the Shami dialect was
another thing.
It's proper Punjabi.
It was a proper police state.
You couldn't say anything.
These guys were evil, man.
This is something I've not discussed before.
I don't know if you want to share
this.
As-salamu alaykum wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuh, Sheikh.
Wa alaykum as-salam wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuh.
Absolute honor to have you.
So look, we're going to jump straight into
it.
This is the quickfire round.
We'll try and make it quickfire at least
anyway, Sheikh.
What's your favorite book in Islamic jurisprudence?
In Islamic jurisprudence, my favorite book is probably
the Lubab, Al-Lubab Fi Sharhi Al-Kitab.
Okay.
Oh, that one?
It's actually a commentary of Quduri.
It's by the student of one of our
main jurists, Ibn Abidin.
It's his student, rahimahullah.
But for most people, they can access this
book.
I would have otherwise said something higher than
that, which is Raddu Al-Muhtar of his
teacher, but then that's more for specialists and
so on, whereas Lubab is just so intuitive,
the way he's actually presented the Masai, the
way he explains things.
You know, in fiqh, what's really important is
that after the ruling, you need to know
that what they call the illa, the ratiocination
as such, the cause, the reason, and he
does that for everything.
And I have to tell that some things
are obvious.
I have to tell the students, look, don't
worry about this.
It's not saying anything more than what you
know.
It's just that he's very particular about mentioning
ilal, which means ratiocinations, which really helps.
Because what I tell the students to do
is make sure that you focus on the
ilal, because that is what's going to give
you the juristic insight.
You have to develop a juristic insight while
you're reading this, because by the end of
it, then you'll be able to judge Masai
and rulings much better.
That's the real purpose of it.
So that was just what came up first
as I mentioned that.
And traditionally, ilal is one of the hardest
things, wasn't it, for scholars to be able
to define?
To define the ilal is usually the difficulty.
Obviously, now these are all the processed ones
that we already know about.
He's not dealing with modern Masai where we
have to find ilal, but it helps you
because once you've recognised ilal in many, many
Masai, you get the trend, you get the
understanding, and it helps a lot.
Excellent.
Okay.
Which past scholar do you wish you could
meet and why?
I wish I could meet a lot of
them.
I sometimes can't deal with these, like which
one in particular, because there's just so many.
But yeah, I would say there's two, one
from closer time.
One is Hakeem ul-Ummah.
They call him Hakeem ul-Ummah.
I love him to bits.
And the other one is Imam Ghazali, before
that.
So I would say it's those two, because
they were just phenomenal in terms of just
their insight into how to deal with things.
And again, just the profundity.
That was amazing.
Hakeem ul-Ummah, I've read quite a few
of his books, and he just deals with
matters on a very profound level.
So it's complex, but he's not as difficult
as some of the earlier, some others who
are very, very deep in their understanding.
For example, Qasim Nanot, he was supposed to
be much deeper.
His stuff is very difficult to understand.
He's on another level.
Whereas Hakeem ul-Ummah, he's a lot more
easier to understand.
It is still difficult.
We've worked on one of his books, and
we're working on another one of his books,
but I just enjoy him.
And Imam Ghazali, I mean, I don't think
I need to explain that because he is
one of the greatest.
Again, I remember when writing an article about
him at university, where was his influence most?
Was it in the realm of philosophy or
spirituality?
And I think we're like, okay, maybe it
was philosophy, because these were the contributions to
philosophy, and then there's the spiritual aspect.
And I think I would probably have to
say it's spirituality, because that's benefited everybody, essentially.
Because spirituality as such, it was kind of
arcane before that, you could say, before his
time, it was kind of arcane.
And then after that, he kind of made
it mainstream.
So he simplified it, made it mainstream.
And he did take a lot of the,
he was very critical.
So he was very critical of the people
of his time, the rulers of his time,
and so on and so forth.
So all of that put together, yes, there
are some of his books, which are a
lot more complicated, they're a bit difficult to
understand, but most of his stuff is very,
very good.
So those two would probably be that come
to mind.
Amazing, Mashallah.
Okay.
What's the most misunderstood aspect of the Hanafi
school in the West?
I'm not sure, to be honest, because I,
yeah, that's a that's a difficult question.
I'm not sure what the most misunderstood aspect
of it is.
Well, maybe when you think about when people
from other schools or no schools, that maybe
they try and ally an understanding to the
Hanafi school, maybe that might be an easier
way of looking at it.
Yeah, I don't know about the most misunderstood,
but there's quite a few misunderstood things.
I remember once I got a call from
somebody from Muslim country, who I know, and
consulted me, he said that they found one
of the scholars there drinking beer.
And he said, while they're all Shafi'i
in that country, he said that this particular
scholar, he tried to justify by saying that
it's okay in the Hanafi school to drink
beer.
And then I understood where he was coming
from that.
Nabeeth.
Well, Nabeeth and the non-grape or date
alcohol.
But that's, that's not beer.
It's because beer is usually you drink beer
for relaxation or to have a have a
pint or whatever, as they say.
They've only allowed non-grape or date alcohol
for the purpose of either medicine, or for
the purpose of some strengthening, but that's at
very small levels and not to the level
of intoxication.
It's a very particular, so I think he
was misusing that or misunderstanding that.
So I don't know how many other people
misunderstand that.
But yeah, that would be one aspect.
But again, I'm not sure, I can't think
of any others.
That's good enough.
Thanks for clarifying.
Alhamdulillah, Shaykh.
Okay.
What's your go-to du'a in moments
of difficulty?
I think it's a series of names of
Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala.
That's what I found to be very, very
useful.
So there are, of course, du'as, there's
multiple du'as, like La ilaha illa Allah
al-Azim al-Haleem, La ilaha illa Allah
Rabb al-Arsh al-Azim, La ilaha illa
Allah Rabb al-Samawati al-Sabi'i wa
Rabb al-Arsh al-Azim.
So that's the larger one.
And then difficulties, so there's Allahumma la sahla
illa ma ja'altahu sahlan wa anta taj
'alil hazana sahlan idha shi'ta.
But then I usually find that just continuously
calling onto Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala is
one of the relevant names, I think is
very beneficial.
So the series that I have, and again,
people can find any other name that they
think is relevant, but Ya Ghaffar, Ya Fattah,
Ya Sattar, Ya Hafidh, Ya Salam, Ya Latif,
Ya Dhul-Jalali wa'l-Ikram.
And there's a reason for all of those,
right?
Should I explain?
Yeah, please.
So Ya Fattah or Opener, right?
So Ya Fattah, then Ya Ghaffar, or Ya
Ghaffar Ya Fattah, Ya Ghaffar or Forgiver.
So because a lot of the time difficulties
could come because of some sin or because
of some wrong deed we've done.
So we ask Allah for forgiveness, we invoke
the Ghaffar.
Then Fattah or Opener.
So Ya Fattah, Ya Ghaffar, Ya Fattah, Ya
Sattar, Ya Sattar or Concealer.
Conceal me, you know, don't let my wrongs
be exposed, etc.
My defects, etc.
So Ya Fattah, Ya Ghaffar, Ya Fattah, Ya
Sattar, Ya Hafidh or Protector, Ya Salam or
One from whom all peace comes.
And then Ya Latif or One who deals
with everything in a very subtle way So
Latif or Lutf has two meanings.
One is being compassionate and the other one
is being elaborate and sophisticated and subtle and
very nuanced.
So Ya Latif, especially if it's a difficult
matter, Ya Latif.
And then Ya Dhul-Jalali wa-l-Ikram,
O Possessor of Majesty and Benevolence.
And many ulama, that is one of the
greatest names after Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala
because he's talking about the One in Majesty,
who literally owns everything.
And then you have Ya Dhul-Jalali wa
-l-Ikram or One with Benevolence, which means
the One who's kind and is willing to
spend on you.
So these are some of the ones that
I can think of right now anyway.
Who has been your greatest influence in your
scholarly journey?
Masha'Allah, this is not about Syria.
This is a quick round, quick fire round.
Okay, all right, that's fine.
I think scholarly journey, I would probably say
that after I started and entered the Darul
Ulum Seminary, Darul Umberi, I think my greatest
influence was Sheikh Salim Dorat from Leicester.
He was a teacher there at the time,
we're related as well.
And I used to just find him fascinating.
I still do.
I find him fascinating, Masha'Allah.
And I just remember some of the talks
that he gave there.
And then when I, so I did my
memorization of the Quran, which took a few
years, he was there then, but I didn't
study with him because he wasn't teaching the
Hifz program.
When I got into the Alim program, as
such, the first year he taught us for
half a year, then his father passed away,
Rahimullah, and then he left.
So I thought that was a big loss.
But I don't know.
He's just amazing, Masha'Allah.
And he's obviously had a lot of influence
on a lot of people.
So he was probably, if I just single
out one person, and then after that, the
second person on similar level is Sheikh Yusuf
Muttada.
Masha'Allah.
Giants.
Giants, Masha'Allah.
Our principal, our Sheikh, I mean, he was
just, but he was much more low-key.
Okay.
He's done so much, but he's just very
low-key.
He wouldn't even like to give public speeches.
Just wants to get the job done.
Right.
And, you know, he's got multiple madrasas to
his name and offshoots, but he just didn't
even want, he would go to give a
lecture and then kind of just walk out,
even if it's his own program.
Yeah.
Just really, really low-key in that sense.
Allah bless them.
Allah bless him.
What's your favorite place to study or reflect?
Favorite place to study or reflect?
I don't know, maybe Whitechapel.
Whitechapel, exactly.
I just can't think.
I don't have a dedicated space to reflect
and think.
I think I'm just thinking all the time,
so there's not like, okay, I need to
think.
Yes, we need to think, but it could
be anywhere.
I don't have a dedicated space for thinking.
Okay, good.
Yeah, I don't think so anyway.
I've never thought about that.
It's all about thinking.
Yeah.
All right, Shaykh.
If you could master another discipline of Islamic
studies, which one would it be?
Yeah, so there's, alhamdulillah, whatever I try to
study, I try to study it thoroughly.
However, there's a few things which I could
have done more advanced studies in that one.
One of them would have been logic.
Another one would have been Islamic cosmology.
I didn't do too much of that.
Okay.
But they used to refer to it as
hikmah.
So there's a book by, called Hidayatul Hikmah,
and then the commentary by Mabley.
Okay.
Some amazing stuff.
Quite old now, and there's probably some modern
aspects of that now.
And then there's one discipline that I actually
did, what in our language, or in the
nomenclature of madrasa students, you would call tabarrukan.
Okay.
Which means that you just attend for the
barakah kind of thing, right?
I have an ijazah in it as well.
And I knew it at one time, but
I don't, and I would have loved to
have gone.
That's the 10 qiraat.
So I'm, you know, I've got the Hafs
and Asim, but the other seven qiraat absolutely
fascinates me.
If I work on it, I can read
it and use it.
But it's not something that I would really
love to have more confidence with that maybe
one day, inshallah.
So that's one thing.
And then the other one would be the
sufism.
We're trying with that, but I wish I
could actually get into that.
Excellent.
Okay, last couple of questions, Sheikh.
What's the most memorable advice that you've received
from a teacher or mentor?
Yeah, I think that would be that there's
one or two that really helped me, and
I've told others, and they've said that it's
benefited.
One of them is that whenever you're studying,
always aim for that, aim for the highest.
So from the perspective of the madrasa system,
when you start studying, aim to teach Bukhari
one day.
Don't tell anybody, they might make fun of
you, right?
Because not everybody gets to teach Sahih Bukhari,
but at least have that aim.
And that means your whole ethos, your whole
procedure, your whole methodology is going to be
enhanced to get there.
And okay, you might not get there, so
you at least get halfway.
But if you're interested in only teaching some
children quran, which is a wonderful thing, right?
But then you may not even get there.
So I think aim really, really high.
That's really benefited me hugely.
And number two, there was a one of
the students of Hakeem ul-Umar, who I
actually met, Sheikh Masihullah in Jalalabad, in UP.
So I met him about four months before
he passed away.
And he said, when you study, study as
though you have to teach the lesson tomorrow,
even though you're the student.
But study as though you are going to
be teaching the lesson tomorrow.
That means you leave nothing no page unturned.
So what it is, is that sometimes you
get to a difficult, oh, that's not going
to come in exam.
Teacher won't ask about that.
Let me know.
But no, try to understand everything, get to
the bottom of everything.
Of course, I didn't manage to do that
in everything.
But that was an amazing piece of advice.
So those two have always stayed with me.
And that's what I tell my students as
well.
And these are the main advice that you
give your students as well?
Well, it's part of them.
Okay, Alhamdulillah.
And now something completely different.
Sheikh Masihullah, we were speaking earlier, and you're
telling us about the different travel that you
do from extreme east to extreme west.
How do you deal with jet lag?
So firstly, I had to learn how to
sleep on a flight.
I couldn't sleep on a flight, especially with
the size and one of those economy class
seats, which is usually the case.
Very, very difficult to sleep.
And then, yeah, I couldn't sleep for a
number of years.
And then I said, I have to sleep.
Otherwise, you'll really, really suffer.
So I found a way to get to
sleep.
So I always take the window seat.
Yeah.
Because then you're not disturbed, especially if you're
kind of large, you're sitting in the aisle
seat, that's better for getting in and out.
But everybody's going past and jogging you, you
try to sleep where you're going to sleep,
you know.
And the middle seat, obviously, that's not the
right place to be.
So it's difficult being in the window seat,
because then you have to ask your companions,
neighbors to, but Alhamdulillah, that's get a nice
pillow, neck pillow, but you know, get a
specific one.
And a lumbar support is very, very important.
So you get a, I usually, if they
don't have pillows or whatever, you get a
shawl or something that I usually carry with
me, I put it behind me.
What that does is that helps your back
to keep straight.
Okay, right.
It helps your back when you when you're
when you're inclined.
Yeah.
Omar doesn't need this information.
He travels business class.
Everyone else like me.
Defamation.
I'm with you, Sheikh.
The window seat, eye masks.
Yeah.
Eye mask, important.
And then earplugs.
Okay.
The sound, it really helps him to get
that dead sound.
I don't have those special.
I use noise cancelling earplugs.
I mean, I haven't really used those.
Okay, I should maybe invest in that.
But usually, I just put the plugs in.
And that helps you find that.
Oh, yeah.
It creates that white sound in there.
It's like less of the hum.
And then not when people are talking doesn't
jostle you in any way.
Okay, I think it helps.
So I've learned to sleep.
I mean, it doesn't always work.
Yeah, 100%.
Some people, Mashallah, I've traveled people as soon
as they get into the seat, they put
everything and then they go to sleep.
Yeah.
And they wake up when it lands.
I was like, SubhanAllah.
Yeah.
So it does take a bit of time.
But Alhamdulillah, I would love to do work.
But then the problem is that with the
laptop and the economy is just sometimes difficult.
I'm trying to find the right iPads are
useless for that because they don't have Microsoft
Word proper.
Yeah.
So I want a nice PC system.
I'm looking into that maybe a surface type
or something.
Laptops are too big to get some work
done when you're not sleeping.
Anytime goes or read a book.
Alhamdulillah.
Two pieces of advice I was given about
jet lag.
One was somebody said that I haven't tried
it is don't eat at all on the
flight.
Yeah.
And the other one is that when you
land, try and get the natural sunlight on
the back of your neck.
Okay.
My son looked into all of this stuff.
Yeah.
What I what I do do when I
get there, I try to just acclimate.
Yeah.
To the Alhamdulillah.
Last few times I've been to Canada.
And while it's been middle of the night
for me, as long as I've had a
little nap, because I'm I leave from here
at 12 one o'clock, you get there
about two o'clock.
Yeah.
Same day.
Right.
You've got the whole day ahead of you,
but it's going to be nighttime and you're
giving a lecture.
So try to get a little nap in.
And I try to literally force myself to
get into their time mode that really, really
helps.
Yeah.
Excellent.
Great.
Mashallah.
Quickfire done.
Yeah, it took 24 minutes.
Like you alluded to earlier, the main the
main reason we want to speak to today
was and we did a few we did
a live stream a few weeks ago.
And you joined us, Mashallah, many different organizations,
many different Masha'ikh and activists and so
forth about you know, Syria, what's happening in
Syria, the liberation of Syria.
And you were saying that, you know, you
live there and you have lots of fond
memories of Syria and lots of, you know,
lots of stuff to talk about when it
when it comes to Syria.
So we thought, no, we have to we
have to, you know, schedule this in.
So I guess I'll just start by asking,
what was your reaction when you know, you
woke up that morning and you turn on
the TV or you check your social media
and you and you saw the fall of
Assad?
What was your reaction?
When it was coming down?
And you know, they took Hama and they
took Halab and they've taken Idlib already and
so on.
I was like, they're gonna get pushed back.
Because that's what happened last time as well.
They did take quite a bit and then
they got pushed back.
But then when it fell, I was like,
wow, I had mixed feelings.
Like, okay, how did it happen?
Unfortunately, we live in a conspiracy world.
So I did have those feelings.
But I was so happy and so excited.
I think at least two or three nights,
I couldn't sleep on time.
I was just so happy for everybody.
Because the people are wonderful.
They're just amazing people.
The Syrians are amazing people.
Right.
And I haven't been to Yemen yet.
But there's a dua for Yemen and Syria,
right?
Allahumma barik lana fee yamanina wa fee shamina.
So I've seen it in action in Sham.
But I haven't seen it in Yemen.
Although I've seen some Yemeni people and Mashallah.
So having that I was just so happy
for them that after 50 years of I
mean, for some people, it was their whole
life.
50 years of this kind of get on
with your work.
I remember broaching the subject of politics or
anything related a few times.
I knew not to, to be honest.
Some people told us.
What year were you there?
I was there in 98.
98.
So that was at the farthest time.
Sheikh Bouti was alive then.
And well, he was alive for quite a
while afterwards as well.
Sheikh Bouti was alive.
And there were less restrictions, I think, on
foreigners.
I think later, lots of others, colleagues and
others who also went, but then they started
having more restrictions for some reason.
So for foreigners, you would go in there
and to get a visa or a stay
permit, you got a visa.
But then that was, you had to then,
you had to go and register.
Now the way to stay there is to
get a stay permit.
And the easiest way to get a stay
permit was join Damascus University.
Okay.
Right.
Now Damascus University, I mean, that's a university
you don't just go in and join for
a one-year course or if I, it's,
they had the Ma'ahad Ta'aleem Al
-Lughat Al-Arabiyya for foreigners, lil ajanib.
Okay.
So many of us at that time would
just join that.
Secular university or Islamic university?
No, secular, no.
Okay.
I mean, just a normal university.
Right.
Interestingly, in the, in the grounds of the
Damascus University, do you know who's buried there?
Ibn Taymiyyah, rahim Allah, and Ibn Kathir next
to him.
It's like a little, a little mound in
the grounds of the university and they're buried
there.
It was kind of really interesting.
I was surprised by the number of people,
you know, who are buried in and around
Damascus.
So, no, it was just a regular university.
They taught everything there.
It wasn't a Muslim, oh, it's a Muslim
university, but it's not like Islam.
Yeah, exactly.
Okay.
They've got other places like that, but on
a smaller scale, this was just a standard
university.
So you would go and join and a
lot of foreigners and they were non-Muslims
in Germany, many other countries would come to
study Arabic and they would join that.
It was very cheap to, to, to, to
attend.
So, alhamdulillah, because we'd already studied Arabic, I
got into the level four or level five
and I remember this Ustad Muhammad, he was
over 30 years old and he was teaching
us and I benefited, I think, because it
was an advanced level of Arabic taught from
another perspective.
Poor guy was 30 years old, but he
couldn't get married.
I still remember that discussion with him that
he says, no, because I have to have
a house, I have to have this until
I get married.
I felt sorry for him.
Allah bless him.
I don't know where he is right now.
So that's where I joined that.
So we'd have to go there a few
days a week, about an hour or two
hours.
And then after that, I would go and
study with the Mashaikh what I was really
there for.
So that, that's, that's essentially how the whole
process at that time worked.
A lot of people would do it that
way.
And then I don't know, they would probably
find some other ways to just survive there.
The study with the Mashaikh was private study?
Mine was private study.
Mine was private study.
I didn't join an institution or anything.
So mine was primarily with two, primarily with
two people.
One of them was with Sheikh Abdul Razzaq
Al-Halabi, he was actually situated and was
the Sheikh of the Umayyad Mosque.
So I would go there every day after
Asr.
So my time to go there was between
Asr and Maghrib.
He was, Mashallah, he was one of the
great Hanafi sheikhs and on in a number
of other disciplines as well.
But after Asr, he would sit and listen
to Quran, Hidh and Qiraat.
So in the subcontinent where I'd, you know,
in, in which tradition I'd memorise the Quran,
there's no ijazah that goes back.
Yes.
I mean, there's probably more hufadh in the
Indian subcontinent than there are in the Middle
East, right, put together.
They only started recently, to be honest, relatively,
even in Saudi, can you believe it?
Yeah.
They only started more recently.
And again, that was because, from what I
understand, it was from some Dehlawi people actually
pushed it and got it, got it going,
right, for whatever reason.
That's, that's different.
Yeah.
So he had the ijazah.
So I went and told him, because he
usually only allows, because there's lots of people
coming, he only allows people to read a
page a day of those 15 line mushafs.
Yeah.
So I told him, look, I might not
be here for very long.
Can I read more?
I've already memorised.
Mashallah, he took a liking to me and
said, okay, you can read half a juz'.
So I'd go in there and read half
a juz' each time, and the students around,
they're like, you know, what are you doing?
I remember, I used to mark my mistakes
with pencil in the mushaf.
Now, some of those students around me, they
said, like, what are you doing?
You can't write in the mushaf.
The sheikh, no, no, he's doing it for
mistakes.
So he, he validated that.
I don't, I don't believe in marking with
pen.
Some people do that and they graffiti the
Quran.
That's, that's completely wrong.
Some hifz class teachers.
So alhamdulillah, I managed to finish it.
He gave me this big ijazah, right, which
I value, because there's only a few people,
I think, in this country who have that.
So I value that a lot.
So that was what I did with him.
Now, after Maghrib, after Asr, if I stayed
there, after Maghrib, then he would teach Raddu
al-Muhtar.
Now, Raddu al-Muhtar, as you probably know,
it's in the old copies, it's seven volumes,
and in the newer copies, it's like 20
something volumes.
It would take about six to seven years
to complete it.
Now, what I saw in Sham, which is
very different from any other place I've been
to, and that really inspired me to do
things like that here, is that the people
that would come and study with him were
not just normal tullab or normal students.
They were actually the scholars of the city
who had their own teaching going on.
And then in the evening, they would come
and they would study with him.
So this Sheikh Fawaz, who is the Sheikh
of the Umayyad now, you're seeing these videos
come out.
He was a student at that time.
Okay.
It was him, Sheikh Jumu'ah.
He was a really nice guy.
I don't know, but he was a very
low key.
Sheikh Fawaz was more extroverted, and Sheikh Jumu
'ah, he was more introverted.
I want to go and find him, subhanAllah.
He was such a blessing.
I used to ask him questions and consult
with him.
And then there were others that used to
come.
I didn't know everybody.
I used to join in that sometimes, right?
So it's a seven-year cycle that used
to be.
I didn't obviously get much of it, because
I left afterwards.
So that is, as you get into the
Umayyad mosque, so the eastern minaret, the one
that's been prophesied in the Hadith, that's in
the eastern side, or the left-hand corner
in front, right?
That's the eastern one.
That's locked, right?
I was on the right-hand side one.
So it's not in the minaret, but that's
the minaret, I believe, they used to do
Adhan from.
And the Adhan of the Umayyad is very,
very different.
Actually, multiple people do it at once.
Oh, really?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
It's the first time I've heard that style,
them doing Adhan.
I actually saw a clip recently of them,
somebody put out.
Synchronized?
I can't remember.
I definitely, there was something that was synchronized.
Yes, for sure.
There were three or four people.
In fact, even in that video that I
saw recently, there were three or four people.
Even with microphones and speakers and stuff?
Yeah, yeah.
I don't know.
They used to just do it that way.
And what's interesting, I mean, I'm jumping, but
I used to live in another area called
Sheikh Mohiuddin, or Sheikh Ruknuddin.
That's where the Mujamma'a bin Noor was.
That was run by the Mufti of the
time, Sheikh Ahmed Kaftaroo.
Now, in his place, they actually had an
Adhan playing on the speaker all the time,
which is really strange.
I did ask around about that.
And what I heard was that the Shuyuk
had given a fatwa that that's not right.
But because I think maybe the Mu'adhins
were government appointed through whichever way, sometimes it's
just really bad.
I don't think that would be the case
in that particular place.
But in some masjids, if they couldn't do
a good Adhan, rather than turn people away,
they would let them do it inside because
that live Adhan then is taking place inside.
And then they put that out there.
There's actually some, Tunisia used to do that
as well.
Sheikh Abbas Mufti Shabbir went to Tunisia.
Every masjid, they're doing the exact same Adhan.
I thought, do they have an Adhan school
that exactly the same?
Yeah.
And then he discovered that it's actually just
a recording.
Unfortunately, that's what they do.
I mean, that's not allowed.
Really, you have to have a live Adhan.
They just put this up there as an
announcement that might be okay.
I noticed that in Turkey as well.
At the same places.
Yeah.
Okay.
Well, maybe.
Maybe like in certain areas.
Maybe they don't have a good Mu'adhin.
So then they just want a nice Adhan.
So they put a recording up.
So that's where he had the zawi.
He had his room there.
That's where we used to go and read.
But the lesson of Radul Muhtar used to
take place outside.
We used to go inside the room.
I was just so diligent with it that
he said, five, six days a week.
That was minus Friday.
One day, I turned up on Friday.
I was like, can I read?
He said, Mavi Utla.
The Shami way is just Mavi Utla.
Like, there's no holidays.
But I think, you know, I did that
a few times.
I did that with him.
And I did that with my other Sheikh,
Sheikh Adeeb Kallas.
I just turned up on a day that
wasn't my day.
And I know he got a bit upset.
But I think he forgave me, obviously.
But then I think he realizes that there's
a lot of diligence.
So I was just kind of really pushy.
And that was wrong for me to push.
Now I know when people trying to impose
themselves on you.
So I used to have to walk through
the Souk Hamidiyah.
Yep.
Right.
The Souk Hamidiyah is a place to go.
Right.
Okay.
So I had to get, and it was
so cheap at that time, like, two lira.
It was 80 liras to a pound.
And two lira from north of Damascus to
the central area.
That's what it cost me to travel in
a micro bus.
Okay, they call it a micro, which is
essentially one of those vans that have multiple
seats.
Yeah.
So I would, a Duwara Shimali probably still
runs, I want to go back and check
it out.
So I would get on to that and
go downtown.
And there's a, and then walk through the
Souk Hamidiyah and just try to ignore the
shopping.
Right?
Yeah, maybe read the market Dua if it's
possible, and then get into the Jami ul
Umawi.
There's lots of, the Jami ul Umawi is
very interesting.
It's kind of Roman ruins and everything around
it.
And then you get into the Masjid.
It's just very impressive.
And then and then attend the Dars and
then and then come back.
So that that's that that's where I finished
Alhamdulillah the Quran.
Then one of the students, there'd be some
really interesting students who would come to read
to the Shaykh.
And there was some interesting interactions with those
students because they're from different.
So after a month, I went there.
One of my purposes of going there was
that to practice my Arabic.
So I'd learned Arabic in terms of literature
and reading.
I could understand it very well, but hadn't
had any practice of speaking.
So I was actually going to go to
Egypt for a BA on BA degree, along
with to Azhar, along with practicing the Arabic.
But then it turned out that when we
were graduating from here, I'd have to wait
six more months, because they started.
Yeah, then somebody came in and said, Why
don't you go to Syria?
Like Syria, there's people are going there, I
think they just started going there like a
few a year ago, a year and a
half ago.
So that sounds good.
So Alhamdulillah, I went to Syria.
And so that's one place that I studied.
The other place that I studied was with
Shaykh Adeeb Kallas.
Both of these were older scholars.
And they both had large beards.
Okay, why do I say that?
Yeah, because in Sham, most scholars would have
smaller beards.
Most scholars would have smaller beards at the
time.
Why?
There's multiple reasons.
And this is going into a bit of
a so for example, in this country, there's
just scholars can't talk about certain things except
very diplomatically.
Yes.
Because otherwise, you just you could get in
trouble, or there's a fear of getting in
trouble.
Yeah, you have to be careful around certain
subjects.
Now, what happens is that it may not
be illegal in some of these countries.
And I've experienced this in Egypt as well,
it may not be illegal to have a
long beard.
But if you have one, you're going to
be troubled.
Okay, you're going to be harassed.
Yeah.
Right.
You're going to be harassed everywhere when you
go to do and there's lots of bureaucracy
and paperwork.
Yeah.
And you're going to be hassled.
But I think when you get older to
that level, then they kind of let you
off that, okay, this guy's just some Sufi
or some Madhub.
He's not going to do anything.
He's on his way out or whatever.
So they both had larger beards.
Okay, the younger ones didn't.
Now, what's what was really interesting is you
can see the trajectory of this.
In Damascus, on, you know, as you're walking,
there were street vendors.
Now, these street vendors would be selling posters
that you could put up in your house
of Masjid al-Aqsa, Umawi, different places.
One of the posters was of the Ulema
of Sham.
Okay.
Right.
Which meant that they had the profiles, the
pictures of all the Ulema of Sham since
photography started or whatever in the last 100,
150 years.
So all the guys at the top, halfway
down, all bearded, and then suddenly you get
the smaller beards afterwards.
It's just so obvious.
You can tell that it's obviously, there's an
influence.
That's essentially what it is.
Right.
I'm not making justification for anybody, but it's
tough for a lot of them.
And they have to then decide.
And then you find fatwas to justify it.
And that's how these things go, usually.
Right.
When I look at my life and when
we look at things in this country, you
try to find ways out.
God forgive us.
I mean, one of the things that I've
been thinking was, you know, we've seen like
with every prison that's been opened and people
coming out, people have been, you know, they
were saying that there was spies in every
Masjid and people get locked up.
I heard every house, every family.
And people were getting locked up.
They had like actual official charges, like you
went to the Masjid al-Fajr too much
or something.
I think that was a later thing.
I think that I have a feeling that's
a later thing.
Yeah.
I don't recall anybody telling me that while
I was there.
Okay.
Right.
I think that because Mashallah, you know, what
I liked about Syria is that there was
a Dars in so many Masjids when I
went.
Yeah.
So on one day, Sheikh Wahba Zuhaili, I
used to attend his, Rahimahullah, his Dars.
Sheikh Bouti would be in another place.
There'd be other Dars.
So they were quite free in that sense
compared to a lot of the other countries
I've been to.
So I think that became much more tighter
later, much more stringent later.
What era would that be?
That would probably be after Assad and it
might have been after the revolution.
After Hafez al-Assad.
After he died, but I think it's still
been okay.
And again, I'm not sure, right?
But I don't recall hearing about any of
that with the neighbours and everybody else I
used to talk to.
Because they were going to the Masjids, they
were going for Durs, they were becoming Hafiz,
they were memorising the Qur'an, they were
doing studies, they were joining these, nothing.
There was no problem.
Right?
So I think that was probably after the
revolution.
You mentioned that you tried to broach the
topic of politics and what happened.
Right.
So when I did broach that subject, immediately,
it was like, this matter doesn't concern us.
And I get the point.
I mean, I did once or twice try
to like, push it.
And they were very nice about it.
Did they think you were a spy?
I don't know.
That kind of police state, kind of people
are distrustful of each other and that they're
self-policed and self-centred.
So this was a really interesting incident, actually.
I went with the family.
So that was my wife and my son
was only about nine months old or something
at the time.
So I used to have a stroller, a
pushchair.
Usually in Damascus, we used to pay two
liras.
And I'm a student at that time.
So it was a very tight budget.
So you're frugal with your money.
You don't just splash out.
Sometimes you take a taxi itself, but other
times you could just...
So they would not charge for the stroller.
They would put it behind the driver's seat.
There was a little space.
They would just put it there.
Now we go to Hama.
Now Hama is a historical town and where
20 something thousand people were killed in like
a few days or something.
Right.
So I really wanted to go there because
there's a river there and I wanted to
see the people and just the city because
that's one of the ancient cities, you could
say one of the old cities.
So we got there on a coach or
something from Damascus and I only had a
few hours there and I need to get
back for class the next morning.
I tried to get a micro bus to
the centre of town and along with me,
there was another local who just started talking
to me while waiting for the micro bus
as they call it.
Then we got on.
The guy tried to charge me for the
stroller as well.
Right.
Okay.
So he charged me for myself and my
wife, but then he charged me for this.
He wants to charge me for a stroller.
This guy gets really, really angry.
He says, no, no, no.
How can you charge him?
This is wrong.
These guys are from Switzerland.
He thought I was from Switzerland for some
reason.
Haram, Eib.
They would say all of that and he
had a big...
And then he said, he said to me,
come on, let's get out.
Right.
So we got out.
I don't know where he was.
We got out.
He goes to the taxi rank, the proper
big taxis and he takes a taxi.
That must have cost him five times the
amount.
So that probably, this was probably two real
liras.
Yeah.
That was probably about 25.
He paid that for us and he takes
us home.
We just kind of like, okay, let's see
where he's taking us.
And we just went with him.
We got home and now he's not letting
me go.
Okay.
This is amazing Arab hospitality.
He's not letting me go.
So I'm like, what's going on?
He brings a friend over and we're talking
and he says, no, no, you have to
go tomorrow.
I'll show you all of these things.
You can't go now.
The buses have gone.
This time I said, no, no, please call
the buses.
I need to take the last bus.
I need to get home tomorrow.
Then I'm worried about my wife because they're
very modest people, these people are.
So the wife's in another room.
So then I said, okay, let me talk
to my wife.
So I went, he got my wife out
and talked to my wife.
She said, no, everything's fine here.
You know, they're cool.
It's fine.
Part of you worry that am I being
kidnapped right now?
Not fully, not fully there, but it's just
always, you have to be cautious.
You just have to be cautious that, okay,
I just want to see that she's comfortable
as well because I know what's going on.
You can't barge in.
Syrians are very particular of their brother, sister.
So then, then after that, I don't know
what it was.
He got a friend to talk to me
and everything.
Then I said, okay, fine, I'll stay.
Because you haven't eaten yet.
I'll show you the Na'urat and the
river Asi.
The river Asi is essentially one of the
few rivers in the world that go opposing
way to the way they're supposed to run.
That's why they call it the Asi, means
the disobedient river.
And it has some Na'urat on there,
which are these water wheels that carry water.
So they keep turning and they carry water
for whatever.
And they're very old.
So I was interested in seeing that as
well.
And some of the other, I remember his
name actually, Omar Al-Shami, his name was.
He was in front of the Masjid Hayaya.
If he's listening, somebody knows him, give him
my salam.
I don't know if he's still alive, but
I really want to go back and thank
him.
He was such an amazing guy.
So then they fed us and then they
made a place for us to sleep.
They took us out.
The next morning now he takes us out.
He's going through the market to all the
vendors and he's saying, these are my guests
from Switzerland.
He was telling everybody with such pride.
These are my guests.
These are my guests.
These are my guests.
It's absolutely amazing.
You know, like he really wants guests and
he's so proud of it.
So that was an amazing experience.
And I've always made dua for him.
Allah bless him.
That was that occasion.
He was one, because we had a long
conversation.
So I did try to broach the subject
to him.
And again, I still remember his face actually.
I think they've done it so much that
they just diffuse the matter so easily.
I think the only time, I think I
was going to exchange some money once in
the Souk Hamidiyah, because you go, there's all
these little shops here and there.
And I remember I went to one and
kind of grabbed me and took me out.
And then I said, what's happening?
I've never had that kind of experience.
It's a mukhabarat.
But again, I didn't really interpret it.
That's their spies or that's the government people
or whatever.
So I'm not sure exactly what was going
on, but I never had any trouble, Alhamdulillah.
As I said at that time, it was
a lot calmer.
Even amongst the other students, the foreign students,
was there a discussion?
There was, but they know the status quo.
So we would discuss.
It wasn't like we couldn't discuss.
We would discuss whatever we wanted to discuss.
What I did was after being there for
a month, I realized that I'm not really
getting much out of it because I'm sticking
with the foreign students.
So we're speaking in English.
You know the basic, you know, all of
that stuff.
So then I started going and hanging out
with Arab students and debating with them.
There was lots of things to debate, by
the way, because there was a lot of
things there that actually gave me appreciation for
the manhaj I followed.
Okay.
I was going to ask this, actually.
Connected to this, Sheikh.
What was the prevailing kind of understanding or
practice of the Muslims in Syria from Madhhab
and other?
Yeah, yeah.
The practice in Kuwait is very simple.
I would say Damascus is 40% Hanafi,
probably 60% Shafi'i.
Okay.
So it's more Shafi'i there.
Yeah.
Hanafi.
But they're very strong in Madhhab and they
were very anti-Salafi.
Okay.
They were very anti-Salafi.
They were Salafi students that I used to
meet and they would come there to study
Arabic or whatever the case is, but they
were very anti-Salafi and I think maybe
even through the government that was an issue
and so on.
Because I guess the Sheikh Bouti was close
to the government and so on and so
forth.
And that time Salafi, it was in its
heyday nearly, you could say.
Right.
So that was the issue.
Very Sufi inclined.
So I remember the first time, I must
have reached there about two, three o'clock
at night.
And it's before Fajr, we've got a taxi
and we're getting to our residence.
There was a guy called Amjad.
He's now Sheikh Amjad.
I forget his surname.
Allah bless him.
He was there from before.
So a friend had connected with him to
find us a place.
So he secured a place for us and
he met us there.
So as you're going through town, it's before
Fajr, like about an hour before Fajr, maybe
Tahajjud time.
They've got these nasheeds playing or praise of
the Prophet ï·º.
It's really interesting.
There's just this light about the whole situation,
these green minarets.
So all the minarets are in green.
They have green lights actually, green lights.
I still remember that and they've got all
these nasheeds playing, which is really interesting.
What's going on?
Is it Adhan or what is it?
The other thing is that after every Adhan,
they used to actually have, they finished the
Adhan.
As soon as the Mu'adhin finishes, he
says, As-salatu was-salamu alayka ya Rasool
Allah.
I said, where did that come from?
Because you know, I'm a student.
I'm wondering where all of this is coming
from.
So they said, oh, this is Sheikh Salahuddin
started this off.
There's lots of explanations for it.
Now what's really interesting is that there's this
Sheikh Abdul Razzaq Al Mahdi.
You've probably heard of him.
He is, you could say, the face, the
scholar of the revolution right now.
Right.
He was in Idlib.
So he escaped from Damascus and he was
in Idlib.
He's just been brought into Damascus.
Now he's got this big beard, his white
hair and everything.
You'll see him.
There was a certain book in Aqidah that
I wanted to study and I couldn't find
anyone to teach it for me.
Somebody told me, why don't you go to
Sheikh Abdul Razzaq Al Mahdi?
Now I knew him because he had actually,
he was an editor of one of the
earlier editions of Al Lubab Fi Sharhi Al
Kitab.
So I knew that name.
I went to study with him.
I studied with him for a day or
two and then I don't think he could
manage it because it was a bit distant
and so on.
I remember asking him about that question.
So he was actually quite happy that I
asked him that question because...
Which question?
Why is there Salat and Salam loudly?
Now look, there is the Hadith.
It's very clear that Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam
said, when you hear the Adhan, send blessings
on me then do the Dua.
They've just made it loud, right?
Now that for a lot of people would
be bid'ah, right?
And the Salafis would definitely call that bid
'ah.
Now there were some Hanafis as well.
He's a Hanafi.
He said, look, this is a tradition from
here.
I'm not sure if he was actually supporting
it or whatever, but this actually happens in
Lebanon, happens in a lot of these countries.
I think it's a heritage from...
And Azhar has explained it, that it's just
the Mu'adhin, but they've given some rules
for it.
That the Mu'adhin should not make it
sound like it's part of the Adhan.
So they finish the Adhan, have a little
pause and then they say, and as a
reminder maybe to people.
But I guess that everybody doesn't listen to
that.
That was, I can remember one of these
things.
There were the concepts of Tawassul and Istighaf
that I had to get to the bottom
of.
I managed to get an understanding of that
later or during that time.
Thereafter that, they build on the graves there.
And that's not even Hanafi, right?
So they build on it for whatever.
I think they say it's out of respect.
Some of them have justified it that they
only do this to scholars and others.
So that's the Ijtihad on that.
So these were kind of strange things that
I found that I had to get used
to and come to some kind of terms
with.
Otherwise, most of it was the same.
However, I do remember one masjid where the
imam, and these are little fiqhi issues.
I don't know if I'm boring the readers
with this or the viewers with this, but
he was our local masjid.
So I used to pray in a very
old masjid called Jami' Hanabilah.
Okay.
You know whose masjid this was?
Did you say Ameen out loud?
Sorry?
Did you say Ameen out loud?
No, no, no.
So there's a Hanafi imam.
But it's called Jami' Hanabilah because that's where
those Hanbali Maqdisi scholars used to, that was
their masjid.
Those that were from Maqdis like, who was
it?
Ibn Qutama.
Ibn Qutama.
All of these people, the Hanbalis of Damascus
would come over here.
Apparently, this was, I used to live right
opposite that, right?
In the area of Sheikh Mohyuddin.
Now Sheikh Mohyuddin, why it's called Sheikh Mohyuddin
is because Sheikh Mohyuddin, the Sheikh Al-Akbar,
as they say, the Andalusian one, he's actually
buried in that area in a masjid there.
He's carrying a bit more and then there's
a bazaar there.
And then he's, that's why it's called Sheikh
Mohyuddin.
That area is called Sheikh Mohyuddin.
And it's at the foot of Jabal Qasiyun,
the famous, well-known mountain of Jabal Qasiyun.
So we, I used to live on the
foot of that.
So, so he used to put his hands
up or I think he used to put
his hands up for the dua ul-qunoot.
I never used to.
So one of the locals is like, why
don't you put your hand up?
I said, I'm Hanafi.
He said, the Imam's Hanafi as well.
These little banters.
I remember trying my Arabic on him.
I said, because the word in the hadith
was for lane.
He's like, well, why is sikka?
Sikka is used for something else.
This is a sajjad or something.
They use other words.
So it was getting used to words that
I use.
Actually getting used to the Shami dialect was
another thing.
It's proper Punjabi.
You know, I remember going to the market,
buying something.
I was like, what is he saying?
And they do that stretching, you know, like
some Punjabis do.
So what does that mean?
And finally, somebody says, what thing is the
right of this?
Which means how much is it?
Instead of become.
Yeah, right.
But everything is slow.
You know, it's just so beautiful.
Got used to it.
I finally got used to it.
But the Arabic is kind of really interesting.
You know, this actually, sorry, I'm just going
to do this like, prior to this, your
kind of studies in the Hanafi madhab had
mainly been, if I can say from Indian
subcontinent scholars.
Yeah, that's right.
Now you're exposed to the Hanafi from the
Middle East, from Sham specifically.
Was it kind of a real shift or
was it just kind of a gradual enhancement,
would you say?
I would say it's a minor.
I would say it's a minor difference.
So I can mention some of the difference
in actually the Hanafi.
Otherwise, most of it is the same.
It's pretty much the same.
It's just they've given maybe tarjiha to some
views, which in the subcontinent get to something
else.
For example, you know, when you say, so
what happens is we, when you get to
and then we say, and then we keep
it like that until the end in the
last sentence, they would make it flat again.
Okay.
Right.
So that is another view in the madhab.
There's actually multiple views in the madhab.
They would take that, whereas the subcontinent all
keep it like that.
Yeah, I guess I can see it in
the camera.
Yes.
Yeah.
So they drop the finger.
Some people drop it.
Some people keep it up a bit.
That's both fine, but they would make it
flat again.
Okay.
After they've done this, and then make it
flat again.
I found that a bit surprising.
Then I hadn't been looking at it before
when I went to check, okay, that is
another view.
So there were minor things like that.
Otherwise, it's mostly the same.
Okay.
Then even in the same kind of formulaic
way that we've kept, you know, the distances,
for traveling.
I can't remember what their view was.
Now, in terms of measurements and things, there's
lots of difference of opinion, but I don't
think that's to do with anything sham and
subcontinent, because even in subcontinent, there's differences.
Yeah.
Because we're trying to interpret what a qafeez
is and what a sa is and so
on.
There's some difference of opinion.
There's about, I would say, I did some
work, it's not published or anything, on trying
to compile all the various views, and there's
about eight or nine views, not in every
issue.
So I don't think that's a shami subcontinent
difference, really.
That just depends on the muhaqqiq who's doing
the work.
Okay, brilliant.
Alhamdulillah.
So, I mean, I was thinking that when
looking at these, you know, the news coming
out of Syria now, that surely there must
have been some kind of filtration mechanism or
impact on the discourse, the Islamic discourse and
teaching that must be allowed to be, that's
allowed to be.
Yeah, because Shaykh Bouti, they were obviously with
the government, and there probably was an awqaf
system.
I never had to deal with any of
this.
So they probably, in terms of who could
probably speak, meaning who could probably give a
dars and so on, I'm sure there was
a filtration.
How do you think that impacted the teaching
of Islam?
And how do you think it would be
different now going forward after liberation?
Yeah, so I think at the time, I
don't recall anything that was taboo, except politics,
probably, because you could study any chapter of
fiqh, right?
So I don't think there was anything restricted
in that sense, in terms of actually teaching
the book, because when I used to go
to Shaykh Adeeb Gallas, Rahimahullah, his system was
different.
So I would actually go to study with
him.
I actually studied Mullah Ali al-Qari's commentary
of Imam Abu Hanifa's fiqh al-Akbar.
Yeah, I think I've got your translation.
Yeah, that was done after that.
It's a commentary on it in English now.
So I would go with the book, he'd
give me about 10 minutes, and then others
would kind of join in.
And then there would be somebody else, there
would be multiple people sitting there, he'd give
everybody 10 minutes or so, and they would
read whichever book.
I remember Shaykh Jihad Hashim, his name was
from America, he was actually doing one of
the volumes of Tafsir al-Kabir of Razi.
Then there was somebody else doing something else
and so on.
So everybody would come with their own books,
and they would just study a bit.
And there was like three days a week
or something like that.
There were some days where he had dedicated
to the descendants of Ibn Abidin, Rahimahullah, that
they would come and study with him.
Just a beautiful man.
He was just a beautiful man.
MashaAllah, Allah bless him.
Just such a simple, he was older than
Shaykh Abdul Razzaq al-Halabi.
But when he sat in front of Shaykh
Abdul Razzaq al-Halabi, because Shaykh Abdul Razzaq
had the greater position, he would act like
a student in front of him.
He was just so humble.
Amazing man he was, amazing man he was.
We had to climb up the side of
a hill to get to his house.
He used to live in Muhajireen, which is
quite a large hill.
So there were two ways to get there.
Either get to the bottom where every taxi
could get you, and then you walk up
these steps, about 100 and something steps, and
it's a good workout.
Or you take a taxi that can go
up.
They were all old taxis.
Some taxis couldn't make it up there.
They were all like old taxis.
So it was one of these two ways.
So that's where I studied with him.
How do you think it will change?
How it will change, I don't know.
I haven't really looked at, because it looks
like the new authorities as such, they might
come from a slightly Salafi perspective.
I'm not sure.
So let's see what happens.
They've shown deference to one another right now.
They've allowed the Sheikhs to continue.
I hope it doesn't upset the balance.
And Alhamdulillah, most of our Salafi brothers, they're
a lot calmer now anyway.
We work together now.
25 years of problems, Alhamdulillah, subsided in most
places at least.
So Inshallah, I pray that it works well
for them.
You know at the beginning of the uprising
we're talking about, and in the early days,
I remember Sheikh Hamid Al-Yaqoubi, he was
giving khutbah and durs and it started to
become really tense.
Was he seen as an outlier?
Was khutbahs from the Minbar outspoken or were
they all kind of toeing the line?
I think you had to, I think, I'm
not sure.
From what I recall, I don't think there
was a national khutbah that was sent around
as they do in some countries.
I think they probably just knew what to
speak about because I remember one of the
points that came up after the revolution is
that they found a book that literally showed
that it had somebody in every masjid taking
notes of what khutbah they did.
I think there were two, I think the
people would be too careful.
Yes.
They won't mess around because it was a
proper place that you didn't get, you couldn't
say anything.
I can't remember Sheikh Yaqoubi's, may Allah bless
him, I can't remember his exact reason for
him having to leave but I think it
might have had something to do, there was
a controversy by the Mufti of the time,
Sheikh Hassoun, his name was.
He said something about human rights or something
and he said something like, even if the
Prophet ï·º told me to not do this
or go against this, then I would say
you're not the Prophet.
He said it hypothetically.
Just rhetorically.
As a rhetorical kind of statement but that's
a very bad statement to make.
I'm not sure if that was the case
for Sheikh Yaqoubi to speak against him or
speak against something.
Oh no, it was actually after, I think
that might have been diffused.
It was actually with the rebellion, isn't it?
Yes, yes, that's right.
And then he left.
I met him a few times after that
and then he was in Morocco, I think
he was.
Okay, alright, subhanAllah.
Because there were, I mean, Sheikh Buti, obviously,
his position was known but there were also
many other mashayikh that would even kind of
lead their own battalions even, I heard that.
Yeah, but they would probably not be within
the realms of the Syrians that they controlled.
Do you think they controlled, what do you
mean, geographically?
Yeah, geographically.
I mean, there's lots that moved to, I
met a lot in Istanbul.
So there's lots that moved there, they got
citizenship, everything.
Those who stayed here, so for example, there's
the Farfour family.
Their father was Sheikh Salih al-Farfour, who
is the teacher of Sheikh Adib and Sheikh
Abdul Razzaq and Sheikh Abdul Qadir al-Annaout
and all of these.
Sheikh Shoaib al-Annaout, I met him in
Jordan, I remember at the time.
May Allah bless him.
So he has several children, they're all mashayikh.
Some had stayed and others I met, one
was in Sweden, one was maybe somebody else.
So I think it just depends, if you
want to carry on with your work, you
carry on, just don't talk about politics.
If you want to speak about it, you
better leave, otherwise you're going to probably mess
your family.
Again, I don't know too much because I
didn't go back.
This is just stuff that I know.
Sheikh Yaqub, he's from a very, very good
family.
His father was the sheikh and so on
before him.
So I don't think he could just probably
handle seeing something wrong and not saying anything
about it.
So he did what he did and he
had to leave, I guess.
I remember when the various, there was the
Arab Spring and everyone was kind of looking
at the different countries, but they said, look,
everyone says Syria is not like the other
countries.
Hafizah said that Syria is not going to
take it the way, because there are a
number of countries that fell, I think Tunisia,
then it was Egypt at that time.
They said Syria was always treated differently.
Where was that coming from?
I mean, we know that, to be honest,
none of the, I guess, Middle Eastern dictators
covered themselves in glory.
But was there anything specific that you kind
of heard about them?
I think they already tried.
The Ikhwan already tried in 1980 something or
1990.
That was the Hama massacre.
They went and killed about 20 something thousand
people.
So are people going to rise after that?
I don't think so.
Not so easily anyway.
So when I went to Hama, he took
me to the central mosque.
And what's really interesting, these guys were evil,
man.
The front, they've rebuilt the mosque obviously since
then, they'd rebuilt the mosque at that time.
The front, the lower half of the front
wall was pockmarked with bullets.
They'd actually kept that there to remind people.
My host pointed out and said, that is
all of the marks from the massacre at
the time.
They were really evil.
So it was probably more difficult for them
to rise.
Yeah.
As a percentage of the, because Alawis is
kind of the main, what percentage?
I still don't understand that.
That's just so weird.
They're like a minority and how are they
the rulers?
I think it was the French that heard
it.
I think it was probably by design just
to make sure that they can, because they're
very liberal.
They don't have much to go on the
theology, et cetera.
Yeah.
I think that even Ithna Ashariya called them
out of the way or whatever.
That's just weird.
Yeah.
It was an outlier.
I was thinking how they came in and
for such a small...
I don't know that history.
Yeah.
I think Sheikh Asqadi did a video, like
a lecture on the history of the Alawites.
I think someone mentioned it in terms of
recent colonization.
The French, they kind of empowered them and
put them in positions of leadership and then
they did a coup and a counter coup
against them and kicked them out and then
they kept themselves in power.
But yeah, right now they've been given amnesty
and that kind of stuff in terms of
the Alawites, not necessarily the people that were
kind of...
How were those people to deal with?
I never dealt with it.
Okay, you never...
It's difficult to discover who's what because you
couldn't really go into that.
There was not much.
I mean, if there was a Shia that
I saw, I wouldn't even know maybe.
Because you were like busy and just studying.
I didn't have time to go in.
I wasn't political.
I wasn't into all of that.
We used to go to...
We went once or twice to see those
shrines that they'd built and everything and lots
of Iranians just come at the time.
You knew because their women were dressed differently.
Yes, they would come.
In fact, a lot of Indians would come
as well from Bombay and that.
These...
So that's what I remember seeing.
But I wasn't really there.
I just didn't have time, to be honest,
to look into all of that and then
where would I go and get back?
Do you think there's a subtle, maybe unknown,
undetectable impact that these types of climates have
on our discourse and teaching?
You know, just saying that this...
When just a student hearing that, oh, this
matter doesn't concern us, that's gonna...
without us realizing, gonna change the type of
Islam we learn and teach and discuss.
There's no doubt.
There's no doubt because if everybody's saying the
same thing, then you're gonna know your boundaries
that don't get into that.
You're gonna have to be careful.
So I definitely feel that that definitely has
an impact.
It's the same in Egypt, by the way.
In fact, a large beard is seen as
Salafia and not just Salafia, but in multiple
countries have they thought I'm an extreme Salafi
and they're surprised.
Actually, when I say Salafi, sorry, I don't
mean Salafi like an ISIS almost.
For example, I go to Mauritania.
So we're coming out of Nawakshot because next
door in Niger, there's lots of issues.
So they're very careful in to not make
this, let this be a place, a passageway.
So they're very careful about who comes in.
It's easy.
They're not that bad.
And at that time, the airport was like
a small train station.
So when you go out of the cabins
in Nawakshot, there's always a gendarmerie there, which
is one of those security police.
And it takes a while.
So my host, Alhamdulillah, he had made passport
copies and everything and give it to them.
We were going to visit the Sheikh about
hours down, who's seen as a not some
extreme Sufi, but just a Sufi Sheikh of
some sort.
Now, the police is surprised that we're going
to visit him.
I had two other brothers with me also
with beards.
It's like, why are these going to the
Sufi?
They're not Salafis.
He wouldn't believe me.
Right.
Alhamdulillah, then it passed.
I go over the border.
We're at the border of the next country.
What is it?
Dakar.
Oh, let's see.
What's it called?
Senegal.
Senegal.
Mashallah.
Senegal.
They're fine.
They're not doing anything.
But they think I'm Salafi again, because of
the beard.
In Egypt, in the Khan Khalili Souk, this
guy starts criticizing Ibn Taymiyyah in front of
me.
I need to join in.
I'm thinking this guy thinks I'm a Salafi.
You're like, dude, I agree with you.
Well, I don't agree with everything he says.
And then I pulled out a tasbih from
my pocket.
And I said, I'm a Sufi.
I think he was just dumbstruck.
What's happened, unfortunately, in the world, right?
This is something I've not discussed before.
Yeah.
Unfortunately, a lot of Sufis outside of the
subcontinent, they feel that they need to have
small beards.
I don't want to make this as a
beard issue.
But it's become that you have to be
really cool.
You have to be casual.
A friend of mine who's got a large
beard, his wife had a niqab.
And he went to Tunisia after the fall
of the old regime.
They sent him back.
In a conference, where there were some members
of the Awqaf from Tunisia, I got talking
to them.
And I said, how come this happened?
So he said, before the fall or after?
I said, after.
He goes, no.
Then he said, okay, was his wife a
munaqaba?
I said, yeah.
He said, we're against the niqab.
So it looks like there's this issue between
niqab and the large beard.
In another place I was there, the next
day we had a visit.
So the person who was with me, he
said, you can't just visit him with a
normal thawbun.
You're going to have to wear one of
those Arab bishts or you're going to have
to have one of these jubbas or something.
So I didn't have anything like that at
the time.
I said, what's wrong with that?
He said, no, no, no.
He said, so the next day he orders
me one of those bishts, you know, like
the Saudis wear, the imams wear.
It was very long.
I said, I'm not wearing this.
This is too long.
I need it up to my ankles.
So he's very, very compassionate.
He said, you already got a big beard.
Now you want that to be up there.
People are going to think you're Salafi.
SubhanAllah, why is that a Salafi thing?
And what's wrong with that?
Unfortunately, what's happened is that the beard, the
trousers dangling below has become like a sign
of wrong.
Whereas it's a sunnah of the Prophet.
So I've had these occasions.
Okay.
Mention one more right in Egypt.
So there's the book fair, the international book
fair.
It's very, very popular.
Lots of people go there.
It happens in January.
So I get there before a day before
my brother.
So it's myself and my cousin.
He's a lawyer, a solicitor, but he has
a decent beard as well.
We were told to book into this Fundoq
Al Hussain near the Hussain Masjid mosque, which
is near Azhar.
Why?
Because it's a good location.
Hotel is like a one or two star,
but a decent location for the Azhar and
all the bookstores.
Because the purpose of my brother was running
Azhar Academy at that time.
So he took me along to help with
the books and so on.
He was coming the next day.
So the hotel was not that great.
And he said that, let's get a better
hotel tomorrow.
So a friend, an Egyptian friend, his mother
booked us into this five star hotel in,
I think, Misr Jadida.
That's what they call the new part of
Cairo.
They gave us a booking.
And I didn't know at the time, but
it's run by the army.
So the army, I believe, has about 20
% ownership of every industry or 20%
of the economy there.
I didn't know any of this stuff.
So my brother comes the next day.
We checked out in the evening after doing
everything.
We checked out and we reached there about
10 something.
And we're trying to get some keys for
the room.
So he's making the keys for us.
And then suddenly there's a call on the
phone.
So he goes and attends to the call
and suddenly comes back, his face has changed.
He said, I'm really sorry, you can't stay
here.
You can't stay here.
I said, why?
What's the issue?
We've got a booking.
No, no, no, that's not the issue.
This is a military establishment.
And if you have a long beard, you
can't stay here.
That's a rule.
Did someone just see the CCTV and said,
no, the beard is too long.
Yeah, exactly.
So we, you know, playing the British card,
like, you know, why not?
This is our right.
None of that.
He took me aside.
He said, look, if I wasn't working, I'd
probably have a beard as well.
I go call the guy down, the security
guy.
I was very bold at that time.
I said, call the guy down.
He said, no, no, no, don't, don't waste
your time.
And he was getting to about half 10.
So I thought we might get another booking
somewhere else.
So we left.
There's a Fondok Al Beirut.
I still remember it.
That was right near there.
So we took, it has a nightclub next
to it.
But we took a booking in there.
Alhamdulillah, we stayed there.
Then the next day, friends of my brother
found a booking for us in one of
the top hotels of the whole of Cairo,
the Conrad Hilton.
Oh, on the Corniche, right?
Omar knows it well.
I read about it.
It's very nice.
It's an amazing, and what excited me about
it is that it's actually in Bulak.
Okay.
You don't know what Bulak is.
Bulak is a rundown area.
But Bulak, one of the first publishing setups
were in Egypt.
The Mustafa, Babi al-Halabi and others were
all in Bulak at the time.
Okay.
Right.
So for me, I'd heard that name.
But anyway, my friend's mother, Egyptian, she says,
look, the Muslims didn't keep you.
But the Christians did.
Why did she say that?
Because that hotel is owned by one of
the big Christian wealthy guys called Saweris.
He owned a mobile company, Mobinil.
He owned this.
The Christians keep you, the Muslims don't keep
you.
These are experiences.
I mean, I was probably very naive.
I used to think, you know, being born
in the West, we think of Muslim countries
being some kind of utopia.
I remember the first Muslim country I probably
went to was Morocco.
And I went from Spain on a ferry.
And there's a book on Morocco in the
ferry.
So I pick it up.
And there's a belly dancer in there.
I was horrified.
I said, what's going on here?
I'm like, is this Moroccan?
This is a Muslim country.
I think it's not a Salafi or Sufi
thing.
It's a desi and non-desi thing.
The desis are the only ones that are
stuck to the Sunnah.
No, I think it's just a religion.
I know that was more like, you just
think a Muslim country is going to be
something different.
We live in the West.
I don't know.
We can understand that in the West.
So these are just experiences.
From your travels, would you say there's any
any Muslim country that comes anywhere near as
close as good as Pakistan?
Pakistan is actually amazing, to be honest.
Pakistan is amazing.
And I wonder why people go away.
If you've got money, especially if you've got
money in Pakistan, you live like a king,
right?
There's a lot of good countries, to be
honest.
Jordan's kept it very, it's expensive, but they've
kept it very stable.
Syria was good.
At the time in Syria, there was no
mobile phones.
When I went in 98, next door in
Lebanon, there was, but not here.
There was no Coca-Cola, no McDonald's.
The only foreign brand that you could find
anywhere was Canada Dry for some reason.
I still remember that.
No Coca-Cola, nothing.
Or Ginger Ale.
Post-Cold War kind of things opened up.
Probably pro-Russian.
I'm not sure what the issue was.
You could find these kind of foreign brands,
but they would be on these little tables
smuggled in from Jordan.
No, from Beirut.
Now, there were some Syrian scholars like Sheikh
Abdul Razak, Sheikh Abdul Fattah Abu Ghudda, and
a few others whose books were banned in
Syria.
Really?
Yeah, because they were part of the Ikhwan.
There's multiple types of Ikhwan.
These were the Hanafi Ikhwan.
So in political outlook, they were Ikhwan, but
they were very strong Hanafis.
There was a Sheikh from Hama who wrote
multiple sheikhs like that.
So his books were banned.
So we used to go to Jordan and
Beirut.
How do you smuggle them back in?
So if your taxi driver was already smuggling
something in, Coca-Cola in his boot, then
it's cool.
Then it's all right.
He's going to sort them out, and you
just get through.
I just hide your Islamic books under all
these drugs.
I would keep it next to me, and
hopefully nobody checks them.
Alhamdulillah, it never was checked, but it's just
among the foreigners, that was the thing.
I remember once we're coming back into Syria
from Jordan, and it's the land border.
So they don't have their timing.
It's just like they suddenly decided to close
and go for a cup of tea.
And I was next, and they've gone for
a So I'm listening, and they're talking about
poetry.
So I'm knocked on the window, and I
said a line or two from Imre al
-Qais.
It's kind of a bit of a graphic
line.
The guy got so excited.
It's describing a woman, essentially.
So he comes over, and he says, OK,
give me your passport.
Alhamdulillah.
It's just, they're just really simple kind of
people.
They're just simple kind of people.
We decided, let's go to Nowa.
So that's south, that's in the Hawran district,
south of Damascus.
So we got there, and Imam Nowa's grave
has this tree coming out of it.
At that time, I think it was blown
up by the ISIS afterwards, or something like
that.
But that's Imam Nowi, because he was from
that southern region.
That's also prophesied in the Hadith that the
necks of the camels of Busra will be
illuminated by the fire in Medina Munawwara.
So for me, that was quite a distance.
I was just thinking of all of this.
One day, I'm sitting in a masjid, Jamil
Umawi, and these Pakistanis come along from Pakistan.
And I thought they were Pakistanis, Shalwar Kameez.
That was not a normal sight, right?
So Shalwar Kameez, we're from Iran.
We're from Iran.
And I thought, OK, maybe Shia, because loads
of Iranian Shia used to come.
We're looking for the grave of Muawiyah r
.a. I was like, oh, no.
He said, no, no, we're Sunni.
They're from that area of Iran that are
Sunni.
And they look, yeah, the Baloch area, that
area.
And then he explained, I didn't know.
That's why they did look different.
They were dressed differently.
They look like Balochis, essentially.
I can imagine it's like one surprise after
another for you.
There was lots of surprises.
I think I was 20.
How old was I then?
I was 24.
I was 24 at the time.
So I thought, Muawiyah is buried there?
Oh, yes, of course.
The Umayyads who established Damascus as their headquarters.
I was like, come on, man.
I was just totally oblivious of that history.
And I hadn't thought about it.
So I said, OK, let's go and find
it.
I said, I've never thought about it.
Because I used to try to find out
where everything was.
We knew the main ones.
But for some reason, Muawiyah r.a's grave
was not on the radar.
So I thought, that's it.
Let's find out.
They don't know Arabic.
So now I'm going around with them.
So remember, what were you speaking with them?
I think, Urdu.
I can't remember now.
I think it might have been a bit
of Urdu.
I'm not sure.
Did you speak any Farsi?
A bit.
A small amount.
I don't think it was in Farsi, though.
It might have been peppered with Farsi or
something.
So apparently, we went around.
Nobody wanted to tell us.
Yeah, nobody wanted to tell us.
They're like, very vague.
Otherwise, Syrians are very helpful.
Yeah, go this way.
Go that way.
Tell us.
They were like, oh, we don't know.
We don't know.
I'm like, come on, you must know.
Muawiyah r.a, you don't know where he's
buried?
He's the biggest Sahabi here.
There's Bilal r.a and a number of
other Ahlul Bayt as well.
But Alhamdulillah, people eventually, we got to a
place that said, OK, this is behind this
wall.
It wasn't an open.
It wasn't open.
They had to put it behind the wall
because the Shiites would come and desecrate it.
I think it's now been opened, or it
may have been open since then.
I'm not sure.
But at that time, it was behind the
wall.
It said, it's behind this wall.
SubhanAllah.
And those people who weren't telling you, is
it because they were...
They thought we might be Shia.
Oh, they thought you might be Shia.
They might have thought that we...
Maybe it's a thing.
I'm not sure.
I didn't get around to it.
But somebody did tell me it's probably because
they thought you were Shia that you might
want to do something wrong there or something.
Wallahu a'lam.
SubhanAllah.
So in terms of the, like, we're talking
about the subtle impact that these things have
on our discourse, how we talk about Islam,
how do you think it might have, that
kind of environment would have affected, you know,
the discussing of Islam?
Because I was thinking about sometimes even my
own kids when I talk about stuff and
how much the kind of baggage am I
bringing when...
Like one time, I don't know, just an
example.
One time someone kind of did that thing
where we're in the Salah and someone came
like a bit late and we're in Ruku
and he just kind of, he went to
Ruku and then he started stepping a bit
forward.
And I was thinking, you know, should I
say something to him later or, you know,
it's technically not...
How long back was it?
Yeah, I don't know.
I mean, I was like, my peripheral vision.
So then I was like, you know, technically
it's not correct.
But then I was thinking, just a minor
thing, but sometimes we look at Ahkam as
though, because the way we're taught them, because
you have to be taught in some way,
the way we're taught them is like, it's
invalid unless, you know, it has to be
this, this and that.
So we end up kind of having this
kind of perception of Allah that He's just
waiting for you to slip up so He
can nullify your things.
But I was thinking it's probably like the
opposite.
Like Allah is, you know, just wanting any
excuse to forgive you, to show you His
Karam and stuff.
And I'm thinking like certain things that just
the way we're taught, maybe it gives us
a...
Yeah, but I'm not sure how that plays
out in the example you gave you.
Because that's more about, am I confident enough
to tell somebody?
I see somebody fidgeting next to me in
such a way that it's what we call
Amal Kathir.
And his Salat is probably broken.
On some occasions, I've told him.
On other occasions, I've either forgotten, or he
ran away before I finished or something.
So it just depends on how bold you
are and how you want to tell.
But that's something different, I think.
I mean, maybe the example is the wrong
one.
But I'm just thinking of things that like,
like the complete removal of what we might
call today politics from our Islamic discourse, for
example.
Or even look, the war on terror, post
9-11.
I mean, I think some of us are
still suffering from kind of PTSD from that.
And we know you kind of self-policing
the discourse, you wouldn't say certain things, how
we say it, how we frame it.
It became really intense.
Especially LGBTQ issues for Islamic schools, what they
have to teach, they shouldn't have to respond
to the Ofsted inspectors.
There's clearly influence everywhere.
I think even if you didn't have...
I'm not sure if Pakistan even has some...
I mean, look, there's some things where you
have to blindside things because there's boundaries set
up by somebody.
But I think beyond that, even in Pakistan,
I don't think there's any of that, from
what I understand.
I think it's probably the freest country in
that sense.
But I don't think there's any tradition that,
unless it's a very scholarly tradition with a
lot of influence, that you could actually take
into consideration everything.
I think every tradition will have some things
that...
Has rules.
No, meaning there'll be something that it is
a bit blindsided by, if that's the right
word.
Some things they're not focusing on.
Because we're humans, we make mistakes, we have
weaknesses.
We're not so exhaustively comprehensive in everything.
But it'll be for a different reason.
It'll just be that, okay, I don't really
talk about that as much because maybe it's
not been on our radar.
It's not something that we're thinking about.
It's not come to the fore.
Maybe it's something like that.
Whereas in political issues, it's more that it's
set up.
And in England and in other places, it's
more about, okay, you can't talk about jihad
unless it's in a very specific way.
And then the LGBTQ issues, although it's calmed
down, hopefully, a bit.
I think people have understood where things are
going.
So I think there's always going to be
some of that for either imposed on you
or just because we're humans and we don't
have that.
I'm not sure if I've answered the question.
But I just can't...
Is it something you think about?
Is there something you think about that...
Definitely, definitely.
Something I need to be aware of my
blind spots.
Definitely.
In fact, we've had this discussion with ulama
that, okay, we're not speaking about this issue
enough.
People aren't speaking about this anymore.
Because either those issues become cliched or they
make you...
Or it might be women related issues.
So men speaking doesn't sound right for some
people.
I want to get cancelled.
Right.
Yeah, exactly.
Or something like that.
Or, for example, I mean, I know the
beard featured quite a bit in my discourse,
but that's only because it has caused so
many issues for me.
But otherwise, sometimes some people don't want to
bring that up.
So there are some of these issues like
that, I think.
So sometimes they're just natural, or it's because
it's a social construct, a social issue, and
sometimes a political issue.
I can't even think how the Syrian people
managed to survive.
They clearly did.
But what that did for their brain, maybe
some research can be done on them now,
50 years under that kind of subjugation.
That's the thing with police states and totalitarianism
is kind of...
And power in our day and age, it's
what some call a disciplining type of power.
Before the pharaohs or tyrants or whatever, they
would be able to grab your physical embodiment
and kill you or imprison you or whatever.
But now the tentacles of power are even
involved in our thinking and our language, what
we think we can say or not say,
and surveillance and everything like that.
It's all because of media, social media and
communication.
Because before, if something happened to somebody, few
people would have found out, but not the
whole...
How are they gonna let everybody know?
There would be rudimentary ways of doing that,
obviously.
But I think with what we have, there's
one country where the Muslims are being persecuted
to a certain degree.
There's pogroms against Muslims and so on.
But the problem is that they're not organized.
They're not organized.
And they believe in a lot of hearsay.
They believe in a lot of conspiracy theories
or how powerful somebody is or how powerful
somebody is not.
That is another, probably a reason of why
people then do some things in certain ways.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, I was just thinking the other
day, and I tell people this sometimes like
in whatever khutba or whatever, you know, imagine,
close your eyes, imagine you're watching TV and
it's the news and they've got like a
quote-unquote Islamic person, Islamic-looking person, Mawlana
Sahib or something, with a beard and hat
and that kind of stuff, or a sister
in a or something.
And, you know, they're putting a mic in
front of them.
What is that person talking about?
You know, on the news?
And everyone's be like, you know, yeah, they're
probably talking about halal meat or, you know,
Islamic schools or something.
Or maybe I push anti-terrorism laws or
something.
But we don't think that maybe they're talking
about the NHS or policing or, you know,
the bins not being collected on time or
just general kind of real life.
They're like Mawlana Ibrahim Moghra who comes on
with a big turban and mashallah, you know.
We do have a few, but I think
we need a lot more.
But even them, they're like, I don't want
to kind of gun any individual here, but
like they always wheeled out for a particular
purpose, right?
Like, okay, let's talk about quote-unquote Islamic
issues or Muslim-related issues, not general, you
know, running almost as though they're Islamic people.
Okay, you can have your little box here
that you talk about these things, but let
us talk about the real life, you know,
about the economy, about this, about that.
I think it happened naturally though.
Eventually, I think.
I did, I was really, I was watching
this documentary, I don't know what it was,
a program about Lidl and just how it's
fascinating how it works.
And there was a sister there and it
was like an Islamic name, whatever, Fatima or
something.
I was like, wow, she's just like just
a Muslim talking about some business thing about
Lidl or whatever, some expert.
I thought, wow, that's actually a good step
in the right direction.
But like, do you get what I'm saying
here?
It's like Islamic, people who discourse Islam, Muslim
kind of activists.
I think we need to get out of
our constraints and kind of push our community
to be fully Islamic and practicing.
But, you know, like the Sahaba, the Prophet,
the senior Sahaba, they were politicians, they were
businessmen, they were traders, they were Mujahideen.
I think our Sheikh Yusuf Muttara, he took
a decision, I think around 2005 or 2006,
to start sending the ulama to university.
See, it's quite strange.
I particularly, when I first heard it, I
found it a bit strange.
That may have been his idea that, number
one, I don't think ulama are all going
to be able to be imams because there's
not enough masjids and so on.
And there's obviously ways to earn a living.
Yeah.
They've got this.
And I think the third one was so
that we have Muslim representation in multiple fields.
Yeah.
So, alhamdulillah, there are fields they've gone into,
but I guess we're still a minority, a
huge, very strong one.
So we're not going to be seen yet.
But I think we also not just ulama
and alimat, but we actually just need regular,
decent, practicing Muslims.
Yes, agreed.
To just go up there with their Islamic
look as such, whether that be a hijab
or the beard and so on.
And for some reason, there's not enough.
Is it because practicing people kind of shy
away from those positions?
Or when they get there, they shave their
beards.
I think, honestly, it will happen naturally because
we're looking at this is probably the first,
second generation now where you've got entire people
have gone through the entire system.
Exactly, second generation.
So they understand the system.
But that's here, isn't it?
That's here.
Yeah.
But this is also relevant for Syria.
Now, look, they're looking for people to rebuild
Syria, to be in the new governments in
a few months' time.
Where are there ulama that are ready to...
But does it have to be ulama?
This is the other thing.
Ulama to give the guidance, give the fatawa,
give the cutting edge kind of Ijtihad that's
required for today.
I think they do.
They have some.
Those who are part of the northern areas,
I heard that they really upped their game
and they were...
Because that's how they were able to kind
of smoothly transition this.
So what I've heard from people in that
area who mentioned certain things that in the
last year or two, they've been really preparing
those civic kind of responsibility rather than just
focusing on fighting.
They were literally focusing on building the industry
and building the infrastructure and so on.
So hopefully they've got enough, obviously.
The team, I was speaking to the team
earlier, the Assam Tunisia team, and they were
saying that one of the things they wanted
to ask you is what is the role
of scholars in now rebuilding Syria and what
are the kind of lessons from this that
other Muslim-majority countries and ulema there can
take as well in terms of...
Like, I don't want to mention kind of
individual country names, but there was one country
where there was a, for a period of
time, there was a leader who was kind
of elected who was a bit more pro
-Islam and stuff.
And he went to the ulema and the
Islamic universities and madrasas heads and said, look,
I want you to give us guidance.
How do we make our economy more Islamic?
How do we make this more Islamic?
And what I heard was they weren't prepared
to, or there wasn't enough appetite to engage
on that level.
At least try to bring the system a
bit more towards...
Yeah, there's Bangladesh right now.
I'm sure the ulema, they would be more
than happy to contribute.
They're just raring to go.
And I don't think this is my subject,
to be honest.
But even, I don't think there's anything, I
mean, I see, when we think about it
in a kind of an Islamic quote-unquote
state or a country, you're going to have
experts in different fields.
And they should be.
You have experts around urban planning, experts in
hospitals, experts in education, and experts in the
Islamic side as well, in terms of understanding
people.
And you refer to them.
I think one country that's doing it is
probably Afghanistan.
Yeah.
Right?
That's probably the model that they're probably doing
it best in terms of...
I think most of their ministers are probably
ulema at some level.
That's interesting.
Not all of them, maybe.
Yeah.
The ones that, yeah, they're probably ulema.
And definitely the big Sheikh signs of everything,
the Amir al-Mumineen, he signs of everything.
So that's probably one way to follow.
But I don't know if every place can
do that.
Because they're very tribal, traditional.
They've got that system in place.
Yeah.
Whereas in other places, you're going to have
to invite other people and so on.
I mean, you need the right person, the
right seat for everything, like you said.
But I mean, the ulema, they need to
be there for guiding, giving the...
What does fiqh say about our fiqh tradition?
What does it say about building a state
now?
There must be some guidance.
I mean, Mashallah, the Afghanis have done a
good job on that.
They've got a number of books.
Yeah.
They've got a number of books on that
subject.
I guess because they had to do it.
So they've done it.
Yeah.
We're thinking like, what...
And it's real though, isn't it, Sheikh?
Like, you know, it's very different when you're,
as you're saying, kind of thinking about things
theoretically.
Like, you know, say dealing finance.
Sometimes I have discussions with the mashaikh and
they're like, oh, why didn't you just do
this?
Yeah, it's not that simple.
It's not as simple as that.
When you're dealing with regulation and you're dealing
with...
One of the things, for example, I remember
speaking with Pakistan, with the finance minister a
few years ago.
And they had this fatwa that they wanted
to make Pakistan riba free, ribas outlawed in
Pakistan a number of years ago.
But it's not the case.
And there was actual discussions about how do
you do it?
And I said, well, look, one of the
things is that your external obligations, you have
to leave them as they are because...
And then deal with the internal first, having
a system internally.
Because as soon as you start saying we're
not going to pay external interest, you're going
to invite...
That's how you get invaded.
Yeah, a foreign invasion, effectively.
So there's certain things you've got to look
at.
But you say that some people say, oh,
so ribas allowed and you're picking and choosing.
It's not the actual navigation within the system
or when you're dealing with real world scenarios
or you're dealing with finite resources and you've
got to talk about actually helping certain patients
over others and all of these things like
real world fiqh.
So Pakistan, for example, that's a good example
because they can do things.
Yeah.
So you've got Mufti Taqi Osmani, he does
his finance things.
Then you've got another madrasa they call Jami
'at al-Rashid.
Now, they have taken a completely different role.
They've become very close to the army and
so on to such a degree that others
are criticising them.
And they are trying to produce ulama, they've
got a university separate to this, multiple projects
to try to actually produce people to go
into all of these fields.
They have that grand plan.
So there are people who are doing it,
but I don't think that would be the
first scope because who's going to hire you
if we did that in different countries?
Obviously, Syria will need that and hopefully the
ulama will now do it.
They've not had a scope to do that
until now.
They couldn't, right?
So now hopefully they will produce that kind
of thing.
Masha'Allah, in Jordan, for example, they do
have ulama that are involved in different areas.
They have the mufti of the armed forces.
So that's a special position.
And there's a consultation that happens.
So there are some countries that do better
than others.
There are no absolute police states.
We've taken a lot of your time, Sheikh.
It was really, really appreciative.
We've got, let's just wrap it up with
one final question.
One, no, there's two.
Yeah, you have some more?
I have two, just two.
One was around the Christian quarter.
Let's see, you can choose your favourite.
You can choose.
One was around the Christian quarter and the
other one was around the significance of Syria
from an end of time perspective.
So what's really interesting is that once I
went for a tour around the masjid, it's
a huge masjid, and then it's got communities
that spring off there.
So it's not easy to just walk around
the masjid or the outer boundary and periphery
of the masjid.
So what was really interesting is that we
walked and took a right, so went from
the right-hand side, if we're facing the
Qibla, and then behind the front Qibla wall.
And when you get to the edge where
the eastern minaret is, very interestingly, that is
the Christian quarter of Damascus.
All right, behind the minaret?
Yes, in that area.
I used to come in from the right
-hand side of the masjid.
That's where Souk Hamidiyah is.
Then there's lots of other small bazaars.
Then after that, there's some residences, different areas.
It's a huge land.
It's huge.
Imagine Masjid al-Nabawi.
And then the homes are much smaller, so
they're not like Masjid al-Nabawi where they
have big hotels, right?
These are small streets, and lots of people
live around those areas.
So that's the Christian quarter.
What I found interesting was that that's where
Isa A.S. is going to descend, and
the Christian quarter is right behind it.
Because remember, that's where Isa A.S. is
going to descend.
The Prophet S.A.W. made this prophecy
while this masjid did not even exist at
the time.
Right?
And the Christians, the story, as mentioned, Al
-Isha'a fi Ashraat al-Sa'a by
Barzanji, I think.
He mentions that the Muslims will be there,
and the Christians will be there waiting for
Jesus, peace be upon him.
And he will come down there.
So I find it really interesting that the
Christian quarter is right there.
I don't know what significance that holds, but
that was really interesting, right?
Now, in terms of end of time, yes,
that is where the Muslims, there'll be huge
trouble around, and some of that trouble will
be represented in Damascus itself.
There's some weak narrations and other narrations that
talk about various different events.
I'm not going to go into that, but
I've got this whole series on that.
Okay.
It's called Signs of the Day of Judgment
on Al-Zamzam Academy, right?
That goes right from the time of Prophet
S.A.W. with some of the signs,
early signs, intermediate signs, latest signs.
And then after that, everybody's going to be
waiting for Isa A.S. Mahdi, may Allah
be pleased with him, who is there.
So they say that's going to happen in
Jamia al-Umawi.
And then when Isa A.S. descends on
the angels, then what's going to happen is
the famous narration that Mahdi, may Allah be
pleased with him, is going to tell him,
why don't you go and lead the prayer?
And he says, no, you carry on.
So he leads the prayer.
After that, you don't actually hear much about
Mahdi, may Allah be pleased with him.
It looks like Isa A.S. takes over.
Then he goes from there to Damascus, and
that's where he kills the Dajjal.
So that's why Syria, there's multiple other narrations
about the safety of Syria, which are very
interesting, about the safety of Syria.
There's also many, many Awliya that are in
Syria.
If you go into the kind of Awliya
hierarchy, which I don't want to confuse people
with the Qutub and the Abdal and so
on, they're talking about Mount Qasiyun.
And I did go up there, and there's
a little masjid up there.
They've got like 40 inscriptions on the wall
for the 40 Abdal of Damascus.
So there's a very strong Sufi kind of
significance to Damascus as well.
My last question would be, if you could
deliver one message directly to the new Syrian
leadership, what would it be?
New Syrian leadership, don't make mistakes that other
places have made.
Be careful of various different influences.
Everybody wants to be influenced, because it's just
a very critical realm.
That's a very critical area.
And try to do well for the people
and make sure it doesn't go back, as
some countries have gone back into the whole
repressive regime, unfortunately.
I feel so happy for the Syrian people.
So we don't know what's going to happen.
We don't know what's going on really in
terms of what meets the eye.
But I'm very, very happy that at least
they're out of that, they're out of the
prisons.
And optimistically, cautiously, I want to say that
may Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala make it
wonderful for them.
Just try to make the place a good
place.
Learn from other places that have stabilized the
economy and did things.
I mean, Afghanistan is a good example, to
be honest.
They just stayed silent.
They cut off from the rest of the
world.
But they've got stability.
They did not implode.
I think everybody probably thought that within a
year or two, they're going to implode.
They were just critical.
The West was very critical of Afghanistan.
And they've stabilized themselves.
Their currency is quite strong now.
They've got contracts in place.
Unfortunately, they've got this little thing going on
in Pakistan now, unfortunately.
Yeah, it's just so silly.
Yeah, Allah, Allah, relieve them of that issue.
But yeah, maybe just learn.
We've got lots of examples, lots of examples.
And maybe the Taliban also learn from their
previous mistakes and their previous experiences, even before
the Taliban, where they started fighting with one
another.
They said, no, we have to stay together.
We have to stay together.
Unity.
I would just say, keep it unified.
MashaAllah, MashaAllah.
Okay, JazakAllah Khair, Sheikh.
JazakAllah Khair, Omar, for joining.
And JazakAllah Khair to you at home for
watching.
If you like this podcast, as usual, give
a like and a share.
Let us know in the comments if you
have any other questions you'd like us to
put to Sheikh Mufti Sahib.
And we'll call him back, inshaAllah, in a
future episode.
Until next time, Asalaamu Alaikum Warahmatullahi Wabarakatuh.