Hamza Tzortzis – Why Did The Companions Convert To Islam- Insights On Proofs Of Prophethood
AI: Summary ©
AI: Transcript ©
Bismillah ar-Rahman ar-Raheem, inna alhamdulillahi mursalatu
wassalamu ala rasoolillahi assalamu alaikum wa rahmatullahi wa
barakatuhu brothers and sisters and friends my name
is Hamza Andreas Doudis and boy oh boy
do we have an amazing hour plus together
with our beautiful beloved brother Fareed Assalamu alaikum
wa rahmatullah Wa alaikum assalamu alaikum wa barakatuhu
Looking forward to it ya habibi May Allah
bless you exactly for your time Now before
you continue speaking I just want to quickly
just introduce you and introduce the topic So
our beloved brother Fareed is a student of
knowledge from Bahrain with a keen interest in
Quranic and Hadith studies as well as early
Islamic history He has been actively involved in
da'wah sharing Islam for over a decade
Alhamdulillah may Allah preserve him and has been
producing polemical content through video and written formats
Fareed has also produced several published works in
both the English and Arabic language including multiple
classical manuscripts and so on and so forth
Now I just want to mention some of
his books because the books are quite amazing
For example one book is The Necessity of
Hadith We have another book which is called
The Martyrdom of Al-Hussain and you have
the book Why the Companions Converted to Islam
which is what we're going to be talking
about and I'm going to unpack that in
a few moments But also he's an essayist
and a researcher He's written various essays including
the variants of the Uthmanic manuscripts the reliability
of the reciters of the Quran and Hadith
and so many different connected topics and not
just that I want everyone to know and
for this to be on the public record
that brother Fareed has helped me as well
Alhamdulillah when I was engaging with various things
behind the scenes peer review and so on
and so forth he helped me with references
and research and you know I'm saying this
not to throw dust in his face but
not only Fareed but others like brother Bassam
and others they do a lot of work
behind the scenes which number one is indicative
of ikhlas, sincerity but also indicative of a
Allah-centric, akhira-centric mindset the dawah is
not just about what you show there's a
lot of hard work that happens behind the
scenes concerning writing, researching and all of these
other important things and that's why when you
see some of these brothers you think they
just have a hobby and they're just playing
around no, some of these brothers are very
serious they would even spend time and do
hours and hours and days and days and
weeks and weeks and months and months and
years and years of work and it would
be read by one or two people but
they know the reward is with Allah subhanahu
wa ta'ala and what Allah is going
to give them no one can ever match
so I just wanted to mention that on
the public record so you know the brothers
are actually connected behind the scenes alhamdulillah so
what we're going to be talking about is
Fareed's new book which is called Why Did
The Companions Convert To Islam?
The Historical Context Behind The Proofs Of Prophethood
now, it's an amazing book, I actually read
it this morning alhamdulillah after fajr I was
writing lots of notes look at the notes,
right, writing loads of notes and I was
like gobsmacked with some parts I learnt a
lot because history is not my kind of
thing and I'm ashamed to say seerah is
not my expertise either I learnt so much,
alhamdulillah may Allah bless Fareed and bless his
family because I know his family from parents
and even closer family and you know obviously
parents are close but you know his entire
family support him in this because duaat, they
need their family's support from the very beginning
when they were born until now so may
Allah bless him and his family and his
loved ones now, I learnt a lot and
Fareed uses four instances in the seerah of
the Prophet ﷺ with regards to showcasing why
sahaba as communities became Muslim and why they
converted to Islam and the summary of this
is basically they became Muslim for like four
main reasons number one, there was something about
the Qur'an the inimitability of the Qur
'an the ijaz of the Qur'an, the
miraculousness of the Qur'an also the content
of the Qur'an, the recitation of the
Qur'an so something about the Qur'an
Qur'an was part of the da'wah
focus of the Prophet ﷺ this is very
important secondly, it was to do with Ahlul
Kitab or specifically the Jewish tribe that was
mentioning about a prophet that was going to
come so there's a kind of Judo-Christian
-Abrahamic link it's part of the story of
monotheism yes, we know the Christian tradition contemporary
Christian tradition contemporary Jewish tradition has been changed
over time the Qur'an is the final
proclamation from Allah a testament from Allah subhanahu
wa ta'ala and so on and so
forth but there is a kind of thread
that we can find in previous traditions that
link it to the Prophet ﷺ with regards
to his coming to be a prophet and
aspects of his characteristics and the other one
was the truthfulness of the Prophet ﷺ or
his ability to access things that a normal
human being could not access and the other
one was the Qur'anic prophecy which goes
back to the Qur'an again and there
are other things related to this but the
four examples that Farid gave with regards to
conversions at different times of the seerah of
the Prophet ﷺ it's related to those elements
so I want to discuss those and I
want to discuss why this discussion is very
important because Farid, before we came on board
live, or actually it's not live but it's
recorded it's going to go up in a
few hours inshaAllah he basically asked me the
question Hamza, assuming you didn't read the book
but you invited me to engage in this
podcast and I was like of course number
one, I trust the brother we know him
from his work he's very scrupulous especially with
referencing and hadith I remember when he exposed
a so-called academic academic's PhD not referencing
very well and actually before I said it
my PhD, I might send it to Farid
just to double check all the references for
me alhamdulillah so we know his work may
Allah bless him and preserve him but also
because the topic itself really fascinated me because
if we want to give good da'wah
we have to follow the methodology of the
Prophet ﷺ and the Qur'anic methodology sometimes,
and I've been also accused of this and
I've been blameworthy concerning this that I've used
too much abstract theological philosophical argumentation don't get
me wrong that has its space if it's
connected to the Qur'an it's connected to
the sunnah and the general principle is you
could use smart language and intellectual language and
intellectual argument as long as you do not
contradict the Qur'an and sunnah and you
could find the premises of your argument in
the Qur'an and the sunnah as per
the understanding of the sahaba and our pious
masters but notwithstanding sometimes we can deviate because
we're on a journey and it's important for
us to refocus the da'wah to stick
to a methodology that's tried and tested that's
been proven but also is rewardable because following
the methodology for the sake of Allah is
a rewardable thing to do and as Allah
says the final outcome is with the righteous
as long as you do what you have
to do leave the results to Allah and
then you'll find what you find on the
day of judgment insha'Allah so I'm waffling
too much first question not at all first
question is my question no no no that's
not fair you gave like you spoke for
like 8 minutes straight it's my turn to
ask the questions okay fair enough you're the
guest the people want to know people want
to know because yes we spoke about this
of course before coming on and you didn't
give me an answer yet and I've been
waiting for quite a while for this and
I'm sure the audience has been waiting for
quite a while as well when you talk
about your conversion to Islam you always speak
about a gradual process but you never maybe
you have and I haven't seen it but
you usually don't speak about the specific points
that give you those boosts of Iman in
order for you to make that jump into
Islam we want to hear it we want
to hear it yeah so Alhamdulillah and this
relates to your book actually because your book
talks really about there's an indication of a
gradual process of course right but also it
really focuses on moments that were kind of
transformative and life-changing for the Sahaba and
you know sometimes we think it's you know
that doesn't really happen in the modern world
it actually does so I think it's a
two-pronged there's two things to consider the
first thing is I think for many converts
and I can only speak for myself but
generally speaking I've had some experience with converts
there is a moment an aha moment or
an awakening moment and at the same time
before and after there's a gradual process as
well right I'll give you an example so
before I became Muslim I was convinced with
the idea of God's existence and something being
special about the Quran okay but that wasn't
enough for me I didn't have the aha
moment to become Muslim so what I did
I used to read a kind of general
book about Islam I think it was called
Islam and Focus right how to pray and
what does Islam say about values and so
on and so forth and I learnt how
to pray and I would pray and I
would go to the masjid and I would
pray Salah and that was a gradual process
for me I would make wudu I learnt
Surah Al-Fatiha and some basic surahs before
I became Muslim and I was praying Salah
I remember one of my brother's friends and
Alhamdulillah he's a very close friend of mine
right now beautiful brother Dr. Amir Islami and
he comes from a Persian background he's a
doctor and he runs legion's fitness or legion's
gym a wrestling gym and he's Sunni Alhamdulillah
and I remember him coming to my college
which for American viewers that's not university it's
the school before university and I wasn't Muslim
then but he was giving some nasihah some
advice to the Muslims and said you are
closest to your lord in sajdah in prostration
so I used to ask Allah for guidance
in prostration when I was praying Salah right
now so that was a gradual process and
that was helping me in some way to
taste Iman or to taste Islam in some
way the aha moment was when it was
October early October one of my friends you
know stopped outside my house in his car
he told me to come in and we
used to have conversations outside my mom's house
and he basically talked to me about death
because he knew I was kind of intellectually
convinced but there was something missing here and
I don't really remember much on how he
described death and it's inevitability but it really
hit me and I'm not that kind of
person right he talked to me about death
at that time didn't really bother me right
but it's just the way he spoke about
with ikhlas and sincerity and so on and
so forth and I remember going back to
my mom's house I went into the bathroom
and I sat in the bathroom and I
think I texted him and I said you
scared the beep out of me right and
that kind of creates some kind of existential
awakening and what I did is I decided
on that Saturday I think it was October
5th 2002 to take a taxi I think
it was a taxi to Regents Park Mosque
Central London Mosque and I took shahada after
dhuhr and I think my first salah was
dhuhr right so that was the aha moment
and there was a gradual process before but
that was the aha moment was death it
made everything real it made all this kind
of abstract intellectual stuff proofs of maybe Quran
and proofs of God's existence it just made
it me it made it part of my
kind of spiritual DNA became part of my
ruh my soul rather than some kind of
abstract intellectual thing yeah and then after me
becoming Muslim then that was a gradual process
as well because obviously I'm not the same
person I was 22 years ago hopefully I'm
not right a lot has changed a lot
has developed like my understanding of tawheed was
extremely poor in the early days of Islam
even for the first one or even two
years because at that time you didn't have
really communities with mashayikh it was very hard
to access there wasn't social media and internet
all of these things but notwithstanding that context
it's been a gradual process of continued transformations
I hope yeah and that's part of the
kind of struggle of being a Muslim and
trying to connect with Allah subhanahu wa ta
'ala so to answer your question it's both
as a convert as a someone who's born
to a Muslim family the the the what
do we what do we call us I
don't even know what we call ourselves born
Muslims I mean that's not the right term
but those from Muslim backgrounds let's say want
to know something else because you said that
you accepted the Quran being something special being
from God even before that before you sitting
in the car and your friend talking to
you we want to know what caused that
to happen yeah well because it was it
was for me it was a rational framework
in actual fact many people won't believe this
but it was to do with the linguistic
inimitability of the Quranic discourse but in what
way I heard a basic structure of an
argument that if some of the historical premises
were true then the conclusion was likely to
be very true and what it was was
about the Prophet ﷺ you know being a
vehicle to revelation the eternal word of Allah
subhanahu wa ta'ala and he came to
the Arabs in the 7th century and he
challenged their fundamental worldview right challenged their fundamental
worldview that had real world implications and the
Quran was the main miracle and the Quran
was bold in Surah Al-Baqarah verse 23
for example Allah said produce one chapter like
it and the interesting thing is when you
look at the history based on western and
Muslim and eastern academics there is a consensus
that the Arabs in the 7th century Arabia
were the best at expressing themselves in the
Arabic tongue like it was the peak of
eloquence if you like it was like the
Shakespearean period for the Arab world and you
know I think Ibn Rashid he is a
literary historian Arab literary historian he mentions that
the Arabs would only celebrate two things when
there was like a birth of a child
or when a poet rose amongst them because
being a poet it's not like being a
poet today right you write a book and
it gets read by one person or one
and a half people right but being a
poet at that time you know to be
a master you would have to go out
of the city and study for like 10
years it's like equivalent of getting a PhD
right 3 year degree 1 year master and
then 3 year or 4 years PhD actually
more than that it's like doing a post
doctorate yeah because that would be around 10
years so you know they were like the
equivalent post doctorate researchers in poetry and eloquence
and not only that it had a social
and political yeah implication I was gonna say
that even getting a PhD today is it's
not that big of a deal back then
if you were if you were a very
influential poet you're not only ruining the lives
of people or you have the ability to
ruin the lives of people you have the
ability to ruin tribes and well I mean
one example is Benin Umair had to change
their tribe name to Benin Umair because of
who was it?
Jarir because of Jarir's poetry so subhanallah imagine
that you had to change your tribe's name
because of poetry absolutely notice that Sheikh as
you know poets could start wars and they
could end wars practically yeah right you know
it was like the media of today if
you like yes which has which has huge
power because media as you know can start
wars and end wars right they can support
genocides or help end genocides so this is
the reality of the media so there are
so many aspects that we can unpack here
but the important thing is that the poets
had that kind of status now that maqam
so I just want to point out that
you know I don't have you ever said
like because your answer to that question about
the inimitability of the Qur'an have you
ever said that before that being one of
the catalysts of your acceptance of Islam I've
rarely very rarely because it was part of
my kind of intellectual journey because I ended
up writing an essay which is part of
my book God's Testimony which uses the structure
of the argument but unpacks it further right
it's always been something that I've been connected
to always always that's what we've all been
waiting for we've been wanting you to say
that but you know sometimes you've mentioned the
gradual process and focus on that instead yeah
yeah yeah for sure so from the Qur
'anic perspective you know yeah so going back
to the inimitability stuff so the poets at
the time of the Prophet ﷺ were like
had a huge status now.
The Prophet ﷺ comes with the Qur'an
and announces tawheed affirms the oneness of Allah
ﷻ as you know ibadah means according to
Ibn Kathir and Ibn Taymiyyah and others the
peak of love and the peak of submission
and acts that express that love and submission
yeah so the Prophet ﷺ came to teach
people tawheed who is Allah the oneness of
Allah His names and attributes affirm His perfection
affirm His oneness affirm that He is the
King of all Kings affirm His unique oneness
He is ahad uniquely one and so on
and so forth that we must direct and
single out all acts of worship the internal
acts and the external acts of worship to
Allah ﷻ and the Qur'an came challenges
the whole worldview because as you know their
worldview was based on polytheism and shirk and
it was connected to economics and politics and
trade and all of that stuff the Qur
'an comes with the Prophet ﷺ and just
undermines that just pulls the kind of worldview
paradigm rug beneath them right and the Qur
'an challenges them and says okay well just
produce one chapter like it now for me
I mean I don't want this to be
related to this argument per se you know
they could go to my website or go
to my book and read the particular chapter
that unpacks this argument but for me I
just find it absolutely phenomenal because actually let
me just quote you something that I've written
a powerful argument that supports this assertion that
the 7th century Arabs failed to imitate the
Qur'an relates to the social political circumstances
of the time central to the Qur'anic
message was the condemnation of the immoral unjust
and evil practices of the 7th century Meccan
tribes these included the objectification of women unjust
trade polytheism slavery holding of wealth infanticide and
the shunning of orphans the Meccan leadership was
being challenged by the Qur'anic message and
this had the potential to undermine their leadership
and economic success in order for Islam to
stop spreading all that was needed for the
Prophet's adversaries was to meet the linguistic and
literary challenge of the Qur'an however the
fact that Islam succeeded in its early fragile
days in Mecca testifies to the fact that
its primary audience was not able to meet
the Qur'anic challenge no movement can succeed
if a fundamental claim to its core is
explicitly proven false the fact that the Meccan
leadership had to resort to extreme campaigns such
as warfare and torture to attempt to extinguish
Islam demonstrates that the easy method of refuting
Islam meeting the Qur'anic challenge failed so
if the best Arabs were best placed to
challenge the Qur'an failed then it can't
come from a non-Arab and we know
it can't come from the Prophet Muhammad for
many reasons because he number one he was
an Arab too and he was not known
to actually study and cultivate any special rhetorical
skills although we know he had concise speech
and therefore the best inference to the best
the inference the best explanation is that it
came from the Divine couldn't come from an
Arab couldn't come from a non-Arab couldn't
come from the Prophet therefore it came from
the Divine now there's much more kind of
intellectual arguments and nuances and premises but we
don't have to discuss that but that for
me was extremely powerful I was like there's
no other explanation and what's even more beautiful
is when you start doing a little bit
of Arabic and you start going into the
Qur'an you're like oh my God this
is something else which I'm very humbled that
you actually cited one of my essays in
the book which I didn't know about by
the way I had no idea about so
when I was going through it I was
like oh my God he cited me and
lo and behold we're actually talking about this
very same topic but when you go through
the Qur'an and you start exploring these
things you're like wow there's something amazing here
and the chapter that you cite it's quite
interesting you say in the book that some
people have tried to articulate this in the
English language but it doesn't even touch what
you can refer to understand in the Arabic
language which I totally agree but take for
example Surah Al-Kawthar and it's summarized in
the first kind of paragraph or so in
another article about Produce One Chapter Like It
which is available on Sapiens Institute website when
you go into the kind of empirical data
now and you start assessing it you're like
wow this is too much for example if
you don't mind I'll just read the introduction
here is a challenge take ten words in
any language formulated into three lines or verses
and add any preposition or linguistic particle you
see fit produce at least 27 rhetorical devices
and literary features at the same time ensure
it has a unique structure is timelessly meaningful
and relates to themes within a book that
it is part of the size of which
is over 70,000 words make sure four
of its words are unique and never used
again in the book ensure each line or
verse ends with a rhyme created by words
with the most optimal meanings make sure that
these words are used only once in the
three lines and not used anywhere else in
the book ensure that the three lines concisely
and eloquently semantically mirror the chapter before it
and they must formulate a profound response to
an unplanned set of circumstances you must use
ten letters in each line and ten letters
only once in the entire three lines throughout
the whole piece make sure you produce a
semantically orientated rhythm without sacrificing any meaning do
all of the above publicly in one attempt
without revision or amendment in absence of any
formal training in eloquence and rhetoric impossible as
the above may seem this is exactly what
the Quran achieved in its shortest chapter Al
-Kawthar the abundance and it was expressed through
the Prophet who was not known to have
composed any poetry nor cultivated any special rhetorical
gifts and the rest of the essay unpacks
the kind of quasi academic nature of each
point that was mentioned in the introduction now
the reason I've combined these two things together
because I still feel even if someone is
not best equipped to make the assessment about
the Quran because they don't have the tools
and even when you know Arabic you still
won't have the tools anyway because it's a
very specialized system if you like like Balara
eloquence and rhetoric is a very specialized subset
of classical Arabic grammar and you have to
like master it for 10 years plus you
may be able to taste it with some
Arabic but the point is even if you
don't know the language at all these two
things combining these two things should be enough
to create an aha moment especially the first
one which is about could it be from
an Arab could it be from a non
-Arab could it be from the Prophet and
when you look at all the kind of
historical evidences without needing to know any letter
of the Arabic language that's why I wrote
the essay so you don't have to know
anything about Arabic just based on an inference
of the best explanation and the testimonial data
that we have which is a valid source
of knowledge and it's indispensable the epistemology of
testimony even in Eastern and Western scholarship but
we don't have discussed that right now but
the point is when you access that stuff
and I'll put the links in in the
description it could still be enough so anyway
enough of me ya shaykh enough of me
I have so many I have eight questions
for you subhanallah and I want you to
talk now no more talking from me because
sometimes I get complaints Hamza you interrupt a
lot we're enjoying it we're enjoying it yes
because it's the Greek in me coming out
so bismillah habibi so I want to know
the journey concerning this book so why did
you write the book what was the motivation
how did you start your research and talk
to me about the kind of backdrop background
and the reasons for writing this book I've
mentioned some of this in the introduction and
much of it has to do with just
me being interested in why people believe in
what they believe in and I was just
speaking to Bassem about this recently I hope
his friend doesn't watch this but he's got
a friend who believes that a particular wife
of a former president is a man you
can imagine who that may be about and
I was like I was shocked that he
would be saying this and he was like
saying it with a completely straight face and
I was like that's like the craziest conspiracy
theory like why would that even occur and
what's up with this huge cover-up that's
insane why would you even believe this so
I'm very interested in why people believe in
what they believe in and naturally I'm someone
who's very interested in my religion and I'm
someone who's very interested in why people believe
in Islam and there are subhanallah many people
who are born into Muslim backgrounds are very
curious because you see it's not too much
of a choice for many Muslims you're just
born with it and it's your community and
you grow up with it and you go
to the masjid and I'm a Muslim there's
for a lot of people there's no active
choice converting to Islam choosing Islam is not
an active choice it doesn't really feel like
one it's just something that you're used to
to a degree at least even though I
mean definitely yes definitely is a choice at
the end of the day you're still choosing
to go to the mosque you're still choosing
to practice what you've been taught without a
doubt but we're very curious why people convert
to Islam and that's why I had to
ask was it just a gradual process or
was there something more that caught and for
answering it was very satisfactory answer and that's
what people are looking for yeah when people
are watching your story they want you to
say that they're more interested in that than
the aha moment of your friend telling you
about that even though that part about death
touched you the most it made it real
for you but the Muslim or the one
from the Muslim background he wants to know
because the reality is yeah Mustafa a lot
of Muslims they get that boost of faith
from the choices of others especially someone who's
an intellectual who's quite articulate like yourself they
want to hear it from them this guy
he made the right choice but I want
to know why he made the right choice
how did he get there so people want
that now a lot of the videos that
I've seen when I discovered YouTube and I
discovered conversion stories a lot of them very
very spiritual very very spiritual I had a
dream and I had a dream and in
that dream a man said to me your
name is Bilal Abdul Alim and Subhanallah I
don't know if you've even heard of Dr.
Bilal Abdul Alim but that's literally what happened
to him and he drove I don't know
from like Texas to Washington DC and said
for some reason he drove instead of taking
a plane in any case he passed away
a few years ago many many spiritual stories
but when it comes to intellectual reasons for
conversion at least when I started watching YouTube
videos and conversion stories there weren't too many
and there weren't too many that were very
satisfying and naturally I was curious about the
Sahaba and of course Alhamdulillah in like books
of Seerah Seerah Ibn Isha'a you find
a chapter or several chapters about the conversion
of specific companions but that's like what 10
or 20 out of 100,000 and I
want to know why the community is converted
I want to know why Al-Aws and
Al-Khazraj converted and what caused those two
major tribes to convert to Islam and you
know when you look for something it comes
to you easily as opposed to I mean
I'm sure there's a lot of people that
have read these books but they missed out
on these things they missed out on these
reports in which you have a companion saying
oh by the way that's why we all
converted to Islam and it's just a line
right there and okay you shrug it off
but when you're looking for it you realize
that's quite an amazing thing that's a major
thing they just gave you the reason of
why you have this huge community of polytheists
convert to Islam so that was excuse me
it's a bit of a lengthy answer that
was one and that was one reason the
other reason is I was really curious about
the first converts to Islam as opposed to
modern converts because modern converts they may be
influenced by something that doesn't represent the religion
correctly the first generation of converts they were
there they saw something they met the person
that's claiming to be a prophet whether it's
a false prophet or a true prophet and
when I looked into the history of Joseph
Smith by the way I strongly recommend you
should if you haven't checked it out it's
Rough Stone Rolling I believe is the book
lovely lovely amazing how those people made that
decision and the story of Joseph Smith you
learn more about people and why they accept
things from that book and many others in
any case he one of the main duaat
one of the main missionaries says that he
converted just because he wanted to see where
this religion would go where it would take
him he wasn't even sure if it was
true he was this guy was one of
the major duaat like imagine Musab bin Umair
going to Medina and converting all of these
people and he wasn't sure like that would
be quite awkward so I took it upon
myself to look further into the sahaba themselves
and why they converted I was happy to
see some very convincing intellectual reasons and I
was quite satisfied excellent well this links to
another very important point because obviously you're in
the kind of sharing and defending islam domain
you're involved in the dua alhamdulillah may Allah
preserve you and you know and obviously maybe
you didn't have this initial intention but looking
at your book now and me reading your
book as someone who is involved in this
domain what is the significance of why the
companions converted to islam for contemporary dawah so
how can we use the early converts of
islam the reasons for conversion the interactions between
the groups and the tribes and the prophet
and contemporary dawah especially considering my work your
work so what do you think the significance
is here i'd say two primary reasons the
first reason would be use the actual arguments
the arguments are really good arguments they're quite
convincing and you can just like regurgitate some
of the stuff that's in there and i
have and they were very beneficial even with
experts in the field and i've spoken to
someone who is really well versed in the
roman byzantium uh the byzantium persian war and
the guy had to concede and say hey
maybe it was just a coincidence so i
mean the guy didn't like say the shahadah
at the specific moment that he heard the
argument but when when i find someone coping
and saying hey maybe it was just a
coincidence to me that's uh that clearly shows
that they don't have an answer to the
argument that's one part of it the other
the other part of it has to do
with um looking at when we're talking about
the significance of this sort of material it
it tells me that there is so much
more that can be done in regards to
how we present islam and how we get
the message across and i don't really recall
other examples of using the sahabah and sincerity
of the sahabah as proof for islam um
al-qadhi um abdul jabbar al-mu'tazili has
this wonderful book called where he argues for
islam rationally doesn't use hadith they're not too
big on hadith right um and one of
his like first arguments is the sahabah were
very sincere as simple as that there's very
sincere people and to give you examples of
their sincerity of them being like people of
asceticism and people that spend a lot of
time in prayer and people of piety and
that's a very good um well it's not
a direct let's say this it's not a
direct proof for religion you can have sincere
followers but it's a good indirect proof let's
say that but and then of course you
connect it to the actual reasons for their
conversion what caused them to be like this
and i touch upon this in the book
itself what causes abu dhab and his tribe
of bandits and raiders to convert to islam
what changes them um it's got to be
something so i believe that's one of the
significant things that we can get out of
this it's using indirect proofs for islam doesn't
always have to be miracles doesn't always have
to be prophecies directly it can simply be
the acceptance of the um first generation of
muslims that being used as an indirect proof
and then of course the next question that
would be asked is if these people were
sincere then maybe it's worth looking into what
were their reasons and of course i tried
to provide really bad reasons i mean real
reasons like you have kuffar that say things
like oh they converted because they were promised
women in heaven you
don't believe in heaven you don't believe in
life after death someone says you're going to
get women oh okay i'm going to go
to war then that doesn't make sense so
yeah that was very interesting that was in
your afterward when you discuss the reasons that
basically non reasons the reasons that the sahaba
what's actually the title of i actually wrote
it down here to be honest you said
reasons that didn't cause the companions to accept
islam right and one of them you include
is the idea of the existence of god
was comforting right but the funny thing is
the quran affirms that they believed in allah
creator of the heavens and the earth anyway
so you know what's new here right so
you you list all those reasons which we're
going to come to in a few moments
or non reasons rather um now for me
i think there's an important theological backdrop here
as well because what it does is it
allows us to be less what's the word
to use you know to use less abstract
rational arguments because when you're using some of
the arguments that have been presented in the
book and you use the stories of the
sahaba it's kind of more conversational yeah it's
less what you call abstract and philosophical that
you have to set a whole bunch of
premises you have to show how they guarantee
the truth of the conclusion or if it's
not a deductive argument how it's a strong
inference you know are your assumptions you know
true have you got good reasons to believe
in the assumptions behind the argument in the
first place is there any missing information that
you know you have deliberately omitted you have
all this analysis analytical philosophy right and from
experience when you do that it's just ego
discussions anyway now there is a time and
space for it of course but what you
present allows a conversation to happen what you
present allows you to use akhlaaq and adab
your character your goodness your hilm your forbearance
your rahmah your mercy your hikmah your wisdom
your ihsan your goodness and excellence which are
all important characteristics and prophetic characteristics and when
you use them in the dawah with these
type of arguments and even stories of sahaba
their sincerity and why they became muslim and
using those arguments as well in a universal
way it's easier for a natural organic conversation
and the reason I think that's important is
because the theological backdrop and this is the
main point is that every human being is
born in a state of fitrah we know
this from quran 30 verse 30 when Allah
says adhere to the natural way the fitrah
of Allah created all human beings also we
have the hadith in sahih muslim the prophet
said that every child is born in a
state of fitrah and then the hadith continues
and says it's because of parenting that they
become a median a christian or a jew
and the fitrah has been discussed we don't
have to go into the theological opinions but
generally speaking the fitrah is like a vehicle
it's like a car and it's driving towards
destination haq if all the other variables are
in place but if the wind screen of
the
sahaba sincerity using the arguments in your book
or any other good sound argument in a
conversational way when you use those they act
as means to uncloud the fitrah or to
demystify the vehicle of the fitrah in order
for it to continue its journey and this
is important because you would have some people
who would listen to the same arguments and
may agree intellectually to the same arguments but
they would never become Muslim because there is
something else that's clouding their fitrah or giving
that mist to the wind screen which could
be arrogance and so on and so forth
and this is interesting because when you look
at how people convert for the past over
1400 years people have different reasons some of
them you could unpack and scrutinize intellectually others
are great but the point here is that
not everyone's conversion story is the same and
not only that they may have heard an
argument that someone else may have converted for
for the same but when they heard it
it wasn't enough for them they needed something
else and this is quite interesting especially when
you mention that many people's conversion stories are
either spiritual sometimes intellectual but many of them
are spiritual this shows to me that there
are different ways to uncloud the fitra if
you like or demystify the windscreen of the
vehicle of the fitra so you could reach
the truth and that's why I'm a strong
believer when it comes to one to one
da'wah you have to individualize the person
and I think that's the sunnah of the
Prophet which is to individualize the person who
are they what are their contexts and that's
why it's important to understand that we have
to adopt prophetic characteristics like emotional intelligence hilm
forbearance and also hikmah ya habibi hikmah is
a neglected practice in the da'wah wallahi
I could talk about this and I have
a rant on this right because Allah doesn't
necessarily say give da'wah with hilm obviously
it's assumed because hikmah is applied to hilm
and Allah says in Surah Yusuf about basira
insight but there's no direct like you know
give da'wah just with hilm the famous
ayah in chapter 16 verse 125 call to
the sabil of your lord with what hikmah
now for me it's very interesting when we
say hikmah you have the general you know
students of knowledge and public facing they say
oh this means Quran and sunnah it means
sunnah ok but what does that mean in
the context of hikmah and I want to
share something with you that I want you
to try and think about I talk about
this a lot actually hikmah and we know
hikmah and ilmah are distinct and we see
this in Surah Yusuf when Allah subhanahu wa
ta'ala says and we granted him wise
judgement and ilm and this is how we
reward the doers of good so Allah is
making a distinction between wise judgement and ilm
and virtue it's connected to virtue ok hikmah
if you look at the seerah of the
Prophet ﷺ and you look at the sunnah
you look at the ahadith concerning his interaction
with different people for example how he approached
the young man who said allow me to
commit zina fornication you will see a pattern
now I'm not trying to force a pattern
on the sunnah here but I think you
can find it in every aspect of hikmah
in the sunnah right and I'm willing to
be proven wrong hikmah is that you have
an Allah pleasing goal the goal has to
be pleasing to Allah you achieve that goal
in a particular context and you access ilm
whether it's from scholars students of knowledge or
from yourself through the Qur'an and sunnah
you access ilm to apply in that context
to achieve the goal which means you need
ilm you need a sound aql to understand
the context and you need ilm to understand
what the Allah pleasing goal is and you
need ikhlas at the same time because if
you don't have ikhlas you don't want an
Allah pleasing goal now let's apply to the
narration I just mentioned about the young man
who came to Prophet ﷺ and said allow
me to commit zina if it was just
ilm based it would have been enough for
the Prophet ﷺ to say to him in
his particular context this is completely haram you
do this this is the consequence no problem
and many du'at are like that by
the way and they think they're doing dawah
in my view they're not sorry to say
so but the Prophet ﷺ we can say
very carefully by virtue of understanding his role
as a Prophet that he is the best
human being to have walked this planet he
is the best of all creation that he
wanted the best for this young man and
this is what true love is by the
way being committed to the spiritual well-being
of other people even kuffar talk about this
not that we have to reference them but
interestingly M.
Scott Peck he writes in his book A
Road Less Travelled that love is being committed
to the spiritual well-being of other people
and the Prophet ﷺ was committed to the
spiritual well-being of people is a rahmah
to the world and also the sahaba were
committed to the spiritual well-being of each
other as well like as you know when
the prohibition of alcohol came they all spat
the alcohol out if they were drinking and
they threw the alcohol down the streets and
one sahabi was in the mosque and he
said what about the sahaba our brothers who
recently passed away and there's alcohol in their
stomachs wallahi they were concerned about the akhira
of their brothers they were concerned about the
spiritual well-being and we know it didn't
apply because the ruling came after but look
at the insight of the sahaba true love
wallahi we need to have that love ya
akhi amongst the brothers especially the dua but
today we're like brands and we're this and
we're that competing you know if someone fails
doesn't get as many likes or shares we
get really happy you know all that nonsense
anyway put that aside the person was very
dedicated to the well-being of the young
man so it means he wants to optimize
him for him to come closer to Allah
what's the context of the young man he's
young he's got testosterone he wants to you
know express himself he has a desire he
doesn't want it to turn into a blameworthy
desire which is doing acts of haram but
that's why he's saying look I have this
desire which is natural help me here right
and how did the Prophet ﷺ deal with
him he got him to empathize you know
a young man has a lot of ghayrah
a lot of protective jealousy for his women
folks he said what about your mother what
about your sister your auntie and then he
made dua for him look at wallahi when
you analyze the sunnah of the Prophet ﷺ
and you unpack the psychological emotional nuances you're
like subhanallah this is something else I believe
ya khayr just analyzing shama'il tirmidhi is
enough for you to become Muslim wallah because
when you see so many ahadith in there
like when he's Anas bin Malik right the
servant of the Prophet ﷺ what happened he
said I was his servant of the Prophet
ﷺ for about 10 years and not once
did I hear him say why didn't you
do this and why didn't you do that
khalas for me that's enough ya khayr I'm
a parent alhamdulillah I'm a father I am
telling you it is almost impossible for me
not to say that within 10 hours or
something now imagine 10 years and even if
I tried not to say for 10 years
I would be in a constant state of
anxiety and I would be in a constant
state of you know not being able to
function normally now the Prophet ﷺ didn't even
say that once right and all the other
things that he had to deal with he
was a statesman he was a father he
was a judge he was leading an army
and so on and so forth so when
you look at these ahadith and come back
to the hikmah point this is an example
of hikmah and you see this and some
people say oh but sometimes in the seerah
you may find the Prophet ﷺ a little
bit assertive that's hikmah too because he wanted
an Allah pleasing goal he understood the context
applied ilm in that context to achieve that
particular goal it doesn't always mean be nice
right another example of hikmah is the famous
story actually we won't address it now we'll
address it in one of the questions that
we're talking about why some of the sahaba
became Muslim but for me by the way
my lack of um uh interruptions is because
I'm just enjoying this yeah sorry sorry you
have to carry on I wanted to give
you platform but I'm talking a lot but
the point is the hikmah is so important
and I wanted to do something where I
look at you know public duat and some
of the things that they do in Hyde
Park other places and analyze it from a
prophetic hikmah perspective this is needed this is
so needed because what that does it does
a few things ya akhi it makes people
focus on ikhlas because if you want an
Allah pleasing goal it's not about me being
right or wrong anymore or looking good or
imposing it's about Allah what's more pleasing to
him also it means you have to have
a sound aql to understand the context and
you have to access ilm to apply it
in that context to achieve that particular Allah
pleasing goal and that's why the duat will
move away from halal and haram but it's
allowed because the dawah needs something more it
needs to understand that we have a competition
of halals some things are more pleasing to
Allah than others which connects to surah fusilat
right verse 34 Allah says good and evil
are not the same which is better between
two people there's any enmity or hatred it
would turn to intimate friendship this is very
difficult except for the patient it's a higher
value here so I want to revise this
understanding of hikmah and I think this pattern
works I'm not saying it's a hard and
fast rule but you could apply it to
every instance from my limited knowledge on the
sunnah of the Prophet ﷺ in terms of
hikmah and for that to happen you have
to be humble and that comes with age
sometimes and experience Umar ibn al-Khattab said
that when you're humble Allah will grant you
hikmah right so that means you need to
work on your nafs because you you know
have you ever seen someone who's wise and
has kibar I've never seen an arrogant wise
guy before right Um you know obviously in
the movies the wise guy but the wise
guy has a mafia context and they have
kibar anyway so anyway so I wanted to
mention the theological backdrop because it's important because
I think this is how your book and
the arguments fit within the idea of the
fitrah and fit within the idea of hikmah
because when you look at for example some
of the interactions for example the interaction with
Umair the Prophet ﷺ the way he spoke
to him you see a lot of wisdom
even in the psychology of the interaction of
why Umair became Rajaullah and became Muslim and
which we'll discuss yeah that's a good point
I didn't really think about it um what
were the things that you noticed yeah so
we're gonna get to that so I just
want to be a little bit more structured
if you don't mind and let's go to
the first lesson yeah the conversion of if
you like the the bandit tribe the Al
-Rifa'a right so talk to us about
a brief discussion of that story and what
are the kind of key lessons of the
conversion um to be honest I feel that
it's it's it's told so well by Abu
Dharr himself and that's one of the great
things about the story it's he's telling the
story he says he says so well that
I feel that me saying is butchering the
story um but I guess I could I
could just summarize it um basically Abu Dharr's
brother is someone who's very well-versed in
uh Munafarat and naturally someone who's eloquent he's
someone who's a poet and um basically he
and Abu Dharr um well him specifically goes
into Mecca and comes across the Prophet peace
be upon him and he hears the Prophet
peace be upon him reciting the Qur'an
now uh Unais al-Ghifari being a poet
was sufficient subhanAllah today we come across um
critics of Islam Islamophobes saying things like you
know I read the Qur'an I wasn't
affected but that was a 7th century poet
that decided to change his religion upon hearing
the Qur'an what does that say?
maybe there's something off maybe you're just maybe
his background is different than yours and it's
causing him to take that Qur'anic challenge
a lot more seriously than you do um
and uh that's how it starts off and
uh Abu Dharr himself then goes into Mecca
and meets up with the Prophet peace be
upon him and hears the Qur'an and
he pretty much converts as well um now
the reason why it's it's uh such a
cool story is because Abu Dharr speaks about
his initial first moments after conversion and basically
him rebelling against Quraysh and shouting at the
top of his lungs his uh testimony of
faith which eventually leads the tribe to beat
him half to death and you know what
a way to start off your you know
your your uh Islam right?
um and it's ironic because al-Abbas saves
Abu Dharr's life by telling the people by
telling people of Quraysh he's from Ghaffar that's
where that's where we go through when we're
heading off towards a Sham you really want
to mess with someone from Ghaffar that's that's
the tribe of raiders that we go through
right?
we pass through the well clearly there's a
deal between Ghaffar and Quraysh um for them
to be able to go through their areas
right?
uh but by the way Ghaffar weren't so
they're not so friendly with others because um
they they actually were famous for uh pillaging
um well pillaging I don't know if that's
the right word raiding raiding the people that
are going to Mecca how like that's kind
of ironic right?
so they're not they're not they're not uh
raiding the Meccans themselves but they're raiding the
people going to Mecca that's so that's like
that's like the worst thing you can do
right?
like these guys are on a spiritual journey
going to Mecca let's raid them that's that's
that was Ghaffar so they've changed completely Abu
Dharr changes completely his tribe changes completely they
all convert to Islam and it starts off
with Hunayth himself and Abu Dharr hearing the
Quran simple as that so yeah there's there's
a lot to unpack there but that's more
or less it how did you feel about
I'm sure you've come across this one before
though yeah I mean you know what's interesting
is you quote Hunayth and him being a
poet and he says I have heard the
speech of the the the soothsayers and this
is not their speech I have compared his
words to the types of poetry but no
one can say it's poetry by Allah he
is truthful and they are the liars for
me this is an interesting insight as well
which is an indication that the remarkable nature
of the book of Allah subhanahu wa ta
'ala is not just in the meaning yes
it's the meaning but it's also the wording
now why do I say this I say
this strategically because I think there is a
kind of quasi movement or the initial steps
of an intellectual movement or pseudo intellectual movement
that they're trying to divorce the wording from
the meaning and I know some people do
this because they're doing it for reasons of
you know many in the Asia subcontinent they
see Islam as you know sometimes an ethno
religious cult it says identity markers we recite
the Quran we memorize it we don't need
to know anything about the meaning we don't
have to understand what guidance actually says so
I get it but I think it's starting
to turn into this kind of intellectual position
which I think is a false position because
you can't really divorce wording from meaning because
words are vehicles to meaning and the way
something is said is sometimes as significant or
as a significant aspect of the semantics of
the meaning itself and this is an indication
that we can't really say oh just take
the meaning right this is the main point
I think it's a little bit more than
that as well because you know I give
an example Allah says that the one who
purifies himself succeeds okay now if we were
to divorce the style or to divorce the
emphatic nature or to divorce the wording and
the stylistics from the meaning the meaning would
be diminished slightly and I'm giving you a
point that you don't even need to know
Arabic because in that surah surah Tashams Allah
makes 11 oaths it is the only time
Allah makes 11 oaths consecutively only for one
topic which shows how important it is to
purify yourself right to purify your soul, your
nafs, spiritual diseases of the heart and so
on and so forth now if you were
just to take the meaning on its own
in an abstract sense it would kind of
like diminish the meaning itself because if it's
combined with the style then it gives that
sense of emphasis you see and that sense
of seriousness and by the way 11 of
those oaths around 3 times Allah says by
himself it's phenomenal so I wanted to add
that in there because you know I've been
seeing people say things online but they're not
very famous but you know I know where
their motivations are coming from but I think
we need to be a little more balanced
the style and the meaning can come together
and they're significant so that's one thing I
wanted to mention just to maybe you know
put it out there it's very important what
you're saying is very important and I would
argue that usually so when some people speak
about the miracle of the Quran they say
things like the Quran is miraculous because it
speaks about events that came to pass so
there are prophecies in the Quran there aren't
that many right?
it's not going to be like hundreds oh
hey there's like 6,000 verses in the
Quran right?
there aren't that many prophecies that come to
pass there's several speaking about what the Prophet
peace be upon him was going to do
his victories against Quraysh and what not and
the Romans etc etc but you know you
can't say that the Quran is a miracle
because because it barely happens it doesn't happen
too often right?
the meanings also a lot of the meanings
are similar to Biblical meanings right?
and some of the things that happened with
Moses peace be upon him and Pharaoh and
Yusuf peace be upon him meanings are similar
so some of the meanings are miraculous so
what is left is what exactly what Unais
appreciated it's the Alfaw it's the Taraqib it's
the sentences themselves it's the structures that's what
set the Quran apart from everything else yeah
absolutely absolutely and there's a view that the
kind of structure if you like of the
literary form of the Quran is distinct and
unique because generally speaking in the Arabic language
you have this idea of rhymed prose which
is Saja a rhymed prose as Devin J.
Stewart says rhymed prose is prose formed by
ends with a rhyme generally ends with a
rhyme generally a monorhyme and it has a
concentrated use of rhetorical devices okay then you
have poetry and in classical Arabic poetry you
obviously have the rhyme and you also have
the metrical patterns there's around 16 Al-Bihar
right?
the metrical patterns that it adheres to A
.J. Aubrey has a book that shows you
the scansions of the Al-Bihar of the
metrical patterns also with Saja'a what you
usually have is an accent-based rhythmical pattern
it's not based on the syllable it's based
on the accent just like in English nursery
rhymes we say ba ba black sheep have
you any wool?
right?
sorry for the singing but that nursery rhyme
is an accent-based rhythmical pattern now the
Qur'an came down and smashed it all
apart right?
it just smashed it all apart and it's
not the totality of a surah is not
metrical speech and it's not rhymed prose in
actual fact if you take Surah Yusuf for
example there's sometimes an intermingling between metrical and
non-metrical speech in such a way that
you don't even see the shift it's just
phenomenal so structurally there's an argument that it's
totally structurally different as well but obviously in
the classical intellectual tradition there are many opinions
on the ijaz of the Qur'an but
I don't like getting into them I'll tell
you why this is being empirical about it
you don't have to have a view on
the ijaz you know if it's for example
the mutazili view which is where it's not
intrinsically miraculous Allah just puts a stop to
any challenges then you have another opinion which
is about the eloquence and another opinion about
so on and so forth we don't have
to get into that just be empirical look
at Surah Al-Kawthar for example and say
okay what's going on here look at the
Qur'an and just discuss what's going on
here and I think that's more of a
more easier approach rather than pre-framing any
particular approach to the linguistic miracle of the
Qur'an but notwithstanding yeah you're right yeah
I feel I feel a need to say
that that's that wouldn't I mean attributing that
view to the mutazila as a whole wouldn't
be fair because like some of the strongest
voices against that view were also mutazili right
like yeah epic very good so Navam Navam
saying that it's simply that Allah subhanahu wa
ta'ala prevented the the Arabs from taking
part in the challenge that is that was
destroyed it was destroyed by Al-Jahaw and
those that came after him they were like
absolutely that's not what's going on it's literally
no one ever being able to match this
due to the language and again they're mutazila
themselves so I mean despite our issues with
the mutazila yeah I mean the mutazila did
a really good job in proving and showing
the strength of the Qur'an linguistically wow
Jazakallah I actually wasn't aware of that may
Allah bless you so that's going to be
important for the updated version of one of
the articles that I wrote Jazakallah so so
yeah so you're right so that's the kind
of insights that I get and obviously when
I have time to discuss and obviously this
is beyond my pay grade if you like
to actually showcase the inimitability of the Qur
'an but you know there is a strong
view that we can show that the Qur
'an is linguistically inimitable and it doesn't require
you to have any access to the Arabic
language and you could do this with the
whole argument that there's a historical consensus or
understanding of the Arabs at the time and
the eloquence and there was a challenge and
therefore we could ask the question could it
have come from an Arab and we discuss
why it can't be the case and we
mentioned this earlier could it have come from
a non-Arab and we could say why
that can't be the case then we say
could it have come from the Prophet ﷺ
and we discuss why that can't be the
case and then we say well the best
explanation is that it came from the Divine
from Allah ﷻ and to unpack that further
I could provide a link in the description
for people to read and also people can
access the book because the book actually does
start to talk about you know what makes
the Qur'an so special right and you
go into actually some fascinating aspects of the
book of Allah ﷻ which obviously I worked
before Before getting into that I just want
to point out since you're mentioning that and
this has to do with like indirect proofs
for Prophethood and I really feel there's so
much more that can be done in regards
to this because historically you mainly had books
that focus on the literal miracles of the
Prophet ﷺ and you had books that spoke
about the ijaz of the Qur'an and
books that focused on like prophecies that came
to pass and what not but you see
what you just mentioned right here about could
it be from someone that taught the Prophet
ﷺ could it be from he himself like
that sort of question and getting deeper into
that there's so much that can be done
just with that one because we do have
so many of these reports where the Prophet
ﷺ starts sweating profusely on a cold night
this is not like something that's natural it's
not something that's natural and then he starts
reciting all these verses that are connected to
what's happening in front of him and plus
you have a man who the people of
the city are identifying as Jibril even though
he's just a man it's not someone who's
coming in with wings it's just a man
in the masjid who's going over the Qur
'an with the Rasul ﷺ and they're like
yeah that's Jibril you know and that's sort
of naturally if someone who's a non-Muslim
is looking at this yeah well clearly that's
the person who taught Muhammad the Qur'an
then why wasn't he identified as the actual
person that he is and of course you
have reports that are connected to that person
with the supernatural sometimes he comes in the
form of Dahi Al Kalbi and I have
a video about that I don't know if
you've checked it out it's called I think
it's called The Man That Taught Muhammad Peace
Be Upon Him The Qur'an it's called
something like that with all these random instances
where he's there and they're unable to associate
him with a specific individual and no one
no one in town believes that he's Dahi
no one literally sees him as Dahi right?
everyone knows who Dahi is this man is
not Dahi plus of course you have the
famous Hadith of Umar Ibn Khattab in which
he comes this man comes into the Masjid
he is he doesn't show there's no signs
of a journey on him like his clothes
are extremely clean and what not and no
one's able to identify him so he's like
this newcomer in town no one's like oh
yeah that's Dahi with really clean clothes no
one's saying that so yeah there's so much
to unpack there again as indirect proof for
the Prophet Peace Be Upon Him and I
think what's really nice about the indirect proof
is that it's so easy to prove like
the indirect proof you don't need to it's
not really hard to swallow it's not something
like okay miracle right?
oh now you have this much proof for
me to accept this miracle but the indirect
stuff should be easy to swallow that's how
I see it at least yeah no I
agree and you know connecting to the fact
that you know if you were to say
it couldn't have come from an Arab it
couldn't have come from an non-Arab then
we also know it couldn't have come from
the Prophet Peace Be Upon Him you know
some of the indirect evidences are the life
of the Prophet Peace Be Upon Him because
if you see the life of the Prophet
Peace Be Upon Him he experienced many trials
and tribulations during the course of his kind
of prophetic career or mission for example his
children passed away his beloved wife Khadija passed
away he was boycotted from his beloved city
his close companions were tortured and killed he
was stoned by children he engaged in military
campaigns and so on and so forth and
throughout all of this the Qur'an from
a psycho-linguistic perspective remains in the divine
voice right?
yeah and nothing in the Qur'an expresses
the turmoil or the emotions of a human
being like the Prophet Peace Be Upon Him
having those experiences and I would argue it's
almost a psychological impossibility to go through what
the Prophet Peace Be Upon Him went through
and none of that resulted emotion manifest themselves
in the book itself in the Qur'an
itself also think about for example literary masterpieces
literary masterpieces and you wrote written a book
I've written a book Hamza please before moving
on to that before moving on to that
next point have you you know Dr. Iyad
I don't want to mess up his last
name Iyad Al Al-Nabi I believe familiar
with him?
it rings a bell yeah he has this
video it's like an hour long he goes
through exactly what you said the the divine
voice in the Qur'an and how it's
speaking from from above right?
like the tone the tone in which like
all the verses are speaking at man is
actually proof for Islam itself and it's a
it's a beautiful lecture which needs to be
put into English and I need to if
in the editing this can be like an
image of the video could be shared or
something because it's such an important video to
check out and it's done so simply it's
done so simply and so well you've given
yourself a new project oh that's you've given
yourself a new project Alhamdulillah so yeah no
absolutely you're right and these things need to
be explored and unpacked and the other thing
that I wanted to mention was literally masterpieces
you've written many books you've probably written poetry
before I have it doesn't come out instantaneously
it takes revision you have to edit you
have to remove words change sentence structure like
I'm just finishing a journal and responding to
an academic that wrote about me in published
academia and my PhD supervisors respond to him
so I've just finished it the first final
pre-final draft how many times do I
have to edit that thing right but and
literally masterpieces are the same when it comes
to Shakespeare if you learn the history of
Shakespeare even Al Mutanabbi one of the greatest
Arab poets ever lived right he you know
revised some of things and if you look
at I think Al Hatim his criticism of
him you know he actually borrowed stuff as
well and made some grammatical errors and so
on and so forth but hey putting that
aside the point is literally masterpieces go through
an evolution no doubt but Al Mutanabbi did
not go through that literary editing or evolution
and this is something which is quite interesting
as well right and you know I think
this constitutes good circumstantial evidence that the Quran
given its inimitability could not have been produced
by the Prophet ﷺ right because in the
process of making good literature editing and amending
are absolutely necessary right no one can produce
kind of you know inimitable amazing you know
chapters and verses on the go right but
that's exactly what we see with the book
of Allah ﷻ once it was recited revealed
خلص Hamza now I have to I have
to ask because the skeptical listener is is
thinking but what about abrogation yeah well the
verses are still there yeah so yeah fine
so you don't have the verses being cleaned
up that's the whole point and actually the
argument supports our argument right because even if
they abrogate from a legal perspective right like
in law the point is not abrogating style
right right yeah so there you go so
yeah usually with detractors the detraction itself is
proof against them if you unpack some of
the premises or the assumptions that they're they're
trying to come with no absolutely absolutely I
had to I had to ask for the
skeptical you know the skeptical folks no no
so now what's interesting about the story of
the first kind of testimony if you like
or the first story is that you have
a collective becoming Muslim yes what's the dynamic
there do you think it was because it
was of the inimitability of the Quran or
was it the case that they looked up
to the poet and said you know if
he's such a master and he sees the
Quran as superior then therefore we're going to
accept it what do you think the dynamic
is there was it because there was a
sense of trust there was it more empirical
that they actually also embraced it because of
listening to the Quran it was what's the
kind of history or the evidence that you
know that tries to make you smile we
don't have we don't have examples of the
people of Jafar sharing their testimonies and what
not but we can grant that it's not
necessary for everyone to individually experience the Quran
in order to come to that conclusion as
you've pointed out it simply could be a
matter of trust in Unais which by the
way shouldn't be a problem because at the
same time you have people that are in
Egypt that see the magicians prostrating towards Musa
they're not people who are able to identify
what's a trick and what's magic but the
magicians were so similarly when you have a
poet who is someone who's actually making a
living out of these literary competitions these munafarat
and what not literally making a living out
of this and he submits to the Quran
upon hearing it for the first time that
naturally does have a lot of weight and
oh by the way definitely a topic that's
worth getting into the actual poets themselves like
Hassan Bin Thabit and Kab Bin Malik and
why were they Muslim why did they convert
to Islam why did they stay Muslim despite
having reasons perhaps that could sway them away
from Islam because there were some things that
happened to Hassan Bin Thabit and Kab Bin
Malik is of course a very famous story
of Kab Bin Malik being separated away from
the society for 50 days was it after
Tabuk I mean that's not something that anyone
would enjoy I'm sure that if I was
boycotted by my tribe and my people for
50 days I'd feel some sort of animosity
towards this person that came in with a
message I could do something better but naturally
the poets themselves are they're great judges of
what their abilities are and what is something
that's within their capabilities so naturally you would
have to have some people completely trusting them
well it's like for example in most even
contemporary knowledge this whole idea of testimony it's
actually a fourth of knowledge in western philosophy
it's called the epistemology of testimony and the
discussions what constitutes valid testimony but even David
Hume the sceptic he said that you know
we have to accept testimony he made a
mistake and professor Cody corrects him they're more
contemporary because his mistake was we only accept
testimony because it's in line with our collective
experiences but basically Cody says well how do
you know what your collective experiences are?
you have to rely on someone's testimony to
know what the collective experiences are and if
you rely just on your own experience you
won't have any empirical knowledge that is worth
actually believing in like today's science if you
study the scientific method properly you have to
rely on testimony maybe in 80% of
the stuff but you're claiming to be empirical
but you're not for example the Darwinian mechanism
is so complex now with DNA this that
and the other you're not going to be
an expert in every single field and you
can't do every single experiment yourself you have
to rely on authorities you have to and
which is very interesting because even Hume he
even mentions this I think it's in his
inquiry and he says he doesn't deny by
the way mutawatir the mutawatirat like recurrent reporting
honestly and the atheists don't talk about this
I mentioned this in the book and what
he says is and I'm paraphrasing him imagine
in the 1600s we had eight days of
darkness and basically masses of people you know
from different places that didn't meet each other
supposedly and so on and so forth all
came back to us and said there was
eight days of darkness he said every rational
person would have to believe in it honestly
it's amazing it's amazing yeah so the reason
this is important is because it's not a
weak argument for a whole tribe to accept
something because an authority has basically given a
testimony we do this all the time when
it comes to science when it comes to
even believing the world is round and so
on and so forth because all we've seen
are basically testimonial proofs for the roundness of
the world I'm not saying I believe the
world is flat of course not but I
haven't seen the world being round I just
see photos but that's testimonial someone has to
say well that is earth and even if
someone says well I went in a rocket
I just have to believe that you did
that right and so on and so forth
and anyway the point is it's an indispensable
value source of knowledge so this is interesting
this is very interesting okay Alhamdulillah so perfect
this leads me to the second question then
which for me is the best one sorry
to say I mean they're all great but
this one is just something else I was
like whoa this is just fantastic so this
is the question is what are the lessons
of the two tribes of Medina becoming Muslim
the two tribes that were fighting each other
for I think what around a century and
there were many attempts to try and create
peace and they all failed and as a
result of them becoming Muslim peace was established
so tell us a bit about those two
tribes and the lessons that we can learn
from the conversion so the anything I say
would be butchering the story unfortunately it's such
a it's such a wild story and yeah
especially like some of the some of the
characters that show up and some of the
pre-Islamic Arabs you know yeah some of
them were just so heroic that that took
part in some of those wars like Huvayr
the father of Islam um that part just
like broke my heart um but yeah it's
a hundred 150 years of wars some of
them for the most frivolous reason um and
you can see how a bunch of these
wars are connected and not there there was
no sign of these wars stopping and much
of it started off initially with some Jewish
oppression against the Awus and Khazraj and then
the Khazraj getting revenge and like basically massacring
the heads of the Jews um after receiving
some help from the uh uh tribe of
Ghassan from the north um after that by
the way this is again this is spanning
like 150 years 100 something years so it's
I'm really really shortening the story here and
all these details um not all the details
of course I mean there's just too many
details but um a good chunk of the
information can be found in uh the book
itself um and then subhanallah you have those
Jews saying to the Khazraj you convert
now what I find again one of the
indirect proofs for Islam now it's so easy
to prove that the Aus and Khazraj converted
to Islam very easy to prove that they
converted right I mean it's it's something that's
undeniable yes yeah um the reason for their
conversion they just say it's that the Jews
told us it was going to happen um
if someone wanted to simply prove that Muhammad
peace be upon him is in the Bible
or Muhammad peace be upon him is in
some sort of apocryphal text that's harder to
prove right but what's easier to prove is
you have these two massive tribes converting and
you have them saying it's the Jews they
told us that he's going to come at
this time and those are very easy to
prove so you've pieced these things together and
it leads to a very compelling argument that's
the short version that's the incredibly short version
of the story well you know what's amazing
is that these two tribes basically became the
Ansar right not only that I think an
indirect proof as well which you mentioned in
the beginning of that particular conversion story is
that no one could bring these two tribes
together and reconcile their hearts it was impossible
right they tried and it just failed and
the prophet comes and you know the two
tribes believe that he's a prophet sent by
Allah and by extension of that it is
Allah who brought them together and that is
the kind of indirect miracle as well or
something remarkable to reflect upon because you had
this man and no one you know whoever
they were with different levels of power and
authority could reconcile their hearts and it took
this this man from Makkah ﷺ who didn't
travel to Medina or preach there talk there
or you know even knew the situation right
and you know from my understanding there wasn't
any kind of sit down and let's make
peace it was just it was an external
thing to that it was it was just
by virtue of him being a prophet right
or them believing it was the prophet that
the Jews actually said there is a prophecy
in their tradition and Allah makes a remark
of this in chapter 8 verse 63 as
you cite Allah says and he brought together
their hearts if he had spent all that
is on earth and you could have not
brought their hearts together but Allah brought them
together indeed he is exalted in might and
wise so that's a fascinating indirect thing to
consider but I'd like to add that the
situation was such a mess that the Aus
and Khazraj they're technically brothers like these two
tribes they're related and they're completely split apart
they're killing each other and you have Jewish
tribes siding with the Aus against Khazraj and
Khazraj bringing external tribes from different places in
Arabia to fight their brothers it's the biggest
mess and it just got worse and worse
and exponentially worse until I mean the last
one the last war that occurs is slightly
it was actually during the time of Rasulullah
ﷺ while he was doing his Dawah in
Mecca so it wasn't like yeah this thing
was about to end and he just came
at the right time now it was just
getting worse and then they all convert to
Islam and it just ended and yeah Alhamdulillah
that for me is miraculous in itself but
what's interesting is the Dawah of the Prophet
ﷺ right so and you cite this that
the Dawah of the Prophet ﷺ is that
he called them to Allah Tawheed he presented
Islam to them and he recited upon them
the Qur'an so it's a very kind
of Qur'anic centric Tawheed centric type of
Dawah it's not as if the Prophet ﷺ
said to them okay this is how you're
going to create peace this is the strategy
that we're going to use it was none
of that right which adds to the kind
of remarkable aspect of all of this but
what I want you to zoom in on
which really kind of it was like wow
right was the time of the awaited Prophet
according to the Jews okay and this is
interesting because what you do you cite some
apocryphal work right because you have these Jews
in Medina right you know how they got
there why they were there right explain and
they are making a claim that a Prophet
is going to come soon within this time
right the way you've shown this to be
likely to be the case is by referring
to actually the Jewish tradition itself and doing
some kind of biblical analysis of the words
mainstream biblical analysis and you did some mathematics
to show they actually fit that particular time
when I saw that I was like wow
never heard this before so maybe you can
unpack that a bit sure before I just
want to mention one thing the Jews knew
when he was going to come and they
knew where he was going to come and
again this doesn't need to be this isn't
like direct heavy hard proof for Islam you
could assume the Jews got it wrong but
they believed in it right so that's what
we're saying even if we assume that the
text in itself that they're quoting is something
that's unreliable or let's say they got the
calculation wrong or whatever it still was sufficient
proof for them to make those claims and
hey they used Isaiah 42 and we even
have the report by Abdullah bin Salam saying
that and the text that I was quoting
and that's by the way that's one of
the ways in which you can arrive at
the specific time and very very close to
that time period it's very accurate very accurate
time period I've seen others for example in
Abraham fulfilled what the brothers tried to do
was they spoke about the specific period I
believe they said after the fourth empire or
the third empire so basically around the time
I don't want to butcher this one either
but they arrived at their calculation as well
it was a more general calculation this was
a very specific calculation and the text that
was used I believe was called the assumption
of Moses in which Moses is speaking to
help me out here Hamza you read the
book Joshua Joshua and he was saying something
along the lines of he will be coming
this person this individual will be arriving let
me just read I think I need to
read it I don't want to butcher it
yeah okay all right here we go but
you Joshua the son of noon keep these
words and this book from my death me
being taken away until his advent there will
be 250 times that will happen and this
is the course of events that will come
to pass until they will be completed and
the term his time this person is referring
to the messenger and this messenger is mentioned
in the previous page I believe of this
prophecy yeah and then his kingdom will appear
in his entire creation and then the devil
will come to an end and sadness will
be carried away together with him then the
hands of the messenger when he will be
in heaven will be filled and he will
then avenge them against their enemies so that's
from the assumption of Moses and of course
I do mention the references in the specific
text but just to quickly interrupt now this
is a text that predates the Quranic text
of course definitely definitely predates it by God
knows how long so I think I think
like they give they do give it like
a late date because I mean there's only
I mean when one when when academics date
texts they don't usually date them to like
the time of the prophets they don't they
would often provide like they look for some
sort of internal evidence to date texts quite
a bit later I honestly don't recall what
they relied on for this specific text you
argue that due to some internal evidence the
text is given a date by some western
scholars as early as the fifth century which
predates the psalm by several centuries right right
sorry the first century sorry first century right
yeah several centuries right which is very interesting
and now okay so what is the significance
of 250 times right yeah so so the
times the term times here refers to something
that they refer to as a week here
I believe that's the that's the term that
they used for this and the week here
if I recall correctly is referring to seven
years and if you multiply that by 250
the number that you arrive at is a
thousand seven hundred fifty now we don't know
exactly when Moses passed away but we do
know when Ramses II passed away and if
we do the math plus the 40 years
that Moses was in the wilderness we arrive
at the year 577 of the common era
which is just a few years after the
birth of the prophet peace be upon him
now subhanallah now we don't know for a
fact if this is what the Jews relied
upon but hey this is a text that
was Jewish that does give you a date
that fits in with the timeline and yeah
and again these Jews knew when this prophet
would come and subhanallah and what's interesting is
that you know you rely on biblical scholarship
you're not making this up it's not a
kind of a mathematical gymnastics that you're doing
because yeah it's understood by biblical scholars as
7 years which you said is a year
week so 7 times 250 is 1750 and
if you look at the time of you
know around the death of Moses peace be
upon and if you were to argue that
Ramses the second was the pharaoh of Moses
was pharaoh he died around 1213 BCE add
40 years to that date then you have
1173 BCE and if you add 1750 years
which is the 250 times 7 then you
have just a few years after the birth
of the prophet which is phenomenal when I
saw this it was like wow that's just
amazing and again just to retrain what we
said in the beginning about theological backdrop these
things they're simple they're conversational they're kind of
indirect arguments as well which sometimes liberals
and modernists advocate no but in a true
sense that Islam generally speaking doesn't have a
monopoly on the truth from the point of
view that we believe tawheed affirming the oneness
of Allah was from the very beginning of
mankind from Adam to affirm his oneness and
also you know the key mouse on all
of this was Ibrahim on the straight path
you know shunning the idols affirming the oneness
and worship of Allah that he is the
king of all kings and must be adored
and must be humble to him and must
serve him and direct all acts of worship
to him that is the story that is
the perennial truth Islam came to actually remind
people about that and to fix the distortions
of the people of the past in other
words the Christians and the Jews and this
links to that especially in the western context
you know a lot of people even though
they're very secular and they may be kind
of atheistic they still have a connection to
things like Jesus Adam Abraham it's part of
the western judo Christian kind of narrative and
this is an interesting kind of intersection if
you like to that obviously there's more we
could cite from the Quran and so on
and so forth concerning this connection but this
is an interesting way as well it's quite
like you could connect it to the divine
story connect it to the fact that Allah
has revealed this similar message to mankind and
you know us humans messed it up in
the form of the Jewish tradition the Christian
tradition the distortion and so on and so
forth and the Quran is the final proclamation
the final testament the Quran is you know
the final awakening for all of us to
make us realize that you know we have
a purpose and that is to worship Allah
and affirm his oneness and to connect to
him and the Prophet is key to that
right because without the Prophet you don't have
the Quran right without the Prophet you
don't
have Islam without the Prophet you don't have
affirming the oneness of Allah and being in
a state of being that you worship Allah
that you submit to Allah you can't have
that without the Prophet and the Prophet this
argument is a link to the Abrahamic narrative
the Jews had a prophecy about a prophet
that's going to come isn't this amazing and
then you have these two key tribes that
were actually quite critical to the success of
Islam if you like that actually saw the
Prophet knew that this was the Prophet the
Jews were talking about and obviously you could
also understand that it was also the characteristics
of the Prophet and for them that was
enough and what was interesting it was only
Allah's authority and power that could actually create
that peace why because what did the Jews
say we're going to follow him and we're
going to fight you and we're going to
kill you and this is so interesting because
what does Allah say in the ayah nothing
could have stopped this apart from Allah what
does Allah say in the ayah itself towards
the end I'm just scrolling up on your
book now just to find it again it's
escaped my brain yeah when Allah says he
is the exalted in might and wise right
you know you could have not brought the
hearts together but Allah brought them together indeed
Allah he is exalted in might and wise
which is very interesting because this was like
you know almost a divine indirect divine threat
like you know we're fighting each other but
we don't want to fight Allah so this
is very interesting honestly the reason I've elaborated
on this a little bit because I just
find it very fascinating so many other insights
that we could get from this and yeah
I don't know where else maybe you want
to talk about this particular conversion before we
go to I just want to say I
just want to say I love the Ansar
and I appreciate the Ansar so much and
if you just read the seerah with the
Ansar in mind not with like focusing on
the other aspects of what's happening in the
wars but just like think about what the
Ansar are going through it's just it's so
it's so it's it's it's it's something that
I feel is under um appreciated yeah definitely
underappreciated I think the most touching things in
the seerah the most touching moments in the
seerah are things that are related to the
Ansar which is strange because like they're not
the ones that are being directly oppressed right
by the Meccans you feel like when you
think about oppression you think about um the
Meccans right but the things that the Ansar
go through and the it's just yeah to
me to me it's uh I don't know
I lost for words yeah yeah I can
see that just by people viewing you right
now they're going to be encouraged to go
deeper to go deeper alhamdulillah inshallah inshallah let's
let's go to the third conversion now so
you have basically the conversion of many Meccans
after the battle of Badr yeah and the
key kind of figure in this is Amir
right yeah now tell us the story behind
this and again some of the insights and
lessons that we can learn for contemporary data
I think what we need to be doing
here is I'll share a brief background of
what happened, and then I want your thoughts
on the hikmah being applied in this conversation,
if you don't mind.
Yeah, we could do it together, if I
have insights, I'll share them.
If nothing comes to mind, then...
Inshallah.
I don't mean to put you on the
spot, but the idea is that, what you
said earlier, I'm really interested in getting your
perspective.
So, Umair bin Wahab is someone who takes
part in the Battle of Badr, and Umair
is, he's with the Mushrikeen, and he's got
family members that take part in the battle,
some family members are killed, his son is
taken as a prisoner of war, his uncle,
Umayyah, is killed, Umayyah's son is killed, and
to him, he's just lost everything.
And it's a famous story, what happened with
Umayyah and Safwan, and basically they're having a
conversation in Makkah at the time, and they're
just talking about what they've lost, and lamenting
over their losses, and basically Umayyah says, if
I had someone to take care of my
debts, if I had someone to take care
of my children, I would go up to
him and I would kill him myself, because
I have a reason to go into Medina,
because my son, Wahab, is actually in Medina,
so I have a reason to be there,
and I would go there and I would
assassinate Muhammad, salallahu alayhi wa sallam.
So Safwan takes advantage of this, and he
says, alright, let's do it then, and Umayyah
is like, okay, seriously, yeah, I'm putting up
the money and I'm going to cover your
debts, and Safwan bin Umayyah at the time,
he becomes like the head of the tribe,
and Safwan basically is now a major player,
I'm pretty sure he was a major player
before, but after the death of his father,
he's an even bigger player in Quraysh, and
remember, the heads of Quraysh, they're killed in
the battle of Badr, so Safwan bin Umayyah,
his name reappears in the seerah a bunch
of times later, he's one of the top
guys in Quraysh at the moment.
So Umayyah himself goes into Medina in order
to assassinate the Prophet, peace be upon him,
and when he gets to Medina, first person
who sees him is Umar bin Khattab, and
Umar bin Khattab, his reaction is, this person
is here to kill the Prophet, peace be
upon him, and I mean, you can imagine
how Umar is going to react, and I
think we should look into the text itself
and go through it, how about that, Hamza?
Yeah, so it's actually a beautiful story, because
Umar after, he said like a pig was
more beloved to him than Umar, right?
But after Umar becoming Muslim, he said he
was like more beloved than some of my
family.
Some of my own sons, I believe.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, subhanAllah, so what's interesting is,
you know, as you write here, then Umar
entered upon the Messenger of Allah, peace be
upon him, and said, oh Prophet of Allah,
this is the enemy of Allah, and he's
come displaying his sword, and the person said
bring him to me, and Umar came in
and held his holster, stringing him by the
neck, as you can imagine, dragging him, then
told some men from the Ansar, allow him
to enter upon the Messenger of Allah, peace
be upon him, and sit with him, and
be wary of this wicked person for he's
untrustworthy.
He then entered upon the Messenger of Allah,
peace be upon him, so when the Messenger
of Allah, peace be upon him, saw that
Umar was dragging him with the holster, he
said leave him Umar, come here Umar.
Now, that insight there, psychological insight, this is
a person who wanted to kill the Prophet,
peace be upon him, okay?
And we know later in the story, we
knew, the Prophet knew that he wanted to
kill him.
And he's telling Umar, leave him, he's not
saying, oh you know, just hold him, make
sure, because you know, Umar, what he could
have done is, you know, had hidden a
dagger, right?
Maybe he gave his sword away, but he
had a dagger, and he had poison.
But look what the Prophet of Islam is
doing, the kind of psychology here, almost the
disarming, almost the tawakkul in Allah, almost like,
you know, I'm here to give you something
better, to elevate you, right?
Because I have a view that the Prophet
of Islam, how he used to relate to
people, how he created from them, who created
the most optimal version of people, how he
relates through his language and body language, is
what he creates, which is phenomenal.
We see this with Fadala ibn Umair, for
example, he normally became Muslim and was second,
second ambulating the Kaaba, and wanted to kill
the Prophet of Islam, and what does the
Prophet of Islam say?
This is what you're risking to yourself.
And then he kind of hesitated, and the
Prophet of Islam put his hand on his
heart and said, ask Allah to forgive you,
and then Fadala ibn Umair says, after that
moment, no one was more beloved to me
than the Prophet ﷺ.
So his language and his body language is
such that optimised people.
Similar, this is a similar scenario.
Leave him, Umair.
Come here, Umair.
Right?
So he came close by and said, may
you be blessed in the morning, which was
the greeting of the people of Jahiliyyah.
So Umair said this, may you be blessed
in the morning.
So what is the message of Allah ﷺ?
He said, Allah had granted us a better
greeting than yours, Umair, which is peace.
Think about this, the framing, the psychological, this
is one of the huge responses now, yeah?
The framing, the framing here.
He's come to kill him, and the Prophet
ﷺ is saying, I will go for something
better for you.
It's a better greeting that Allah to us,
which is peace, and that is the dwelling
of the people of paradise.
This is someone who wanted to kill the
Prophet ﷺ, and look at the response to
the greeting.
Now the Prophet ﷺ could have said, okay,
you know, thank you for your greeting.
What are you doing?
Why do you want to kill me?
What's going on?
But look at the psychological, emotional intelligence here.
Allah has granted us a better greeting than
yours, Umair, which is peace, salaam.
And this is the greeting of the dwellings
of paradise.
And then he said, Umair said, O Muhammad,
by Allah, you are greeting until only recently.
Then he said, what is with the sword
on your neck?
And he said, may Allah ruin these swords,
have they benefit us in any way?
And then he said, be truthful with me,
what brings you here?
Then he said, I only came for that,
right?
So from what I understand here, he only
came to actually use the sword, right?
I think it was, I think it was,
I think, yeah, that is actually, so check
out the footnotes.
In Marj al-Tabarani, it said, I came
for my captive.
Yeah, it says, I came for my captive,
so allow me to meet him for your
family.
Okay, Alhamdulillah, so it had nothing to do
with the swords.
So it was to do with the fact
that he came for his captive.
Okay, now, so he could meet his son,
I believe, right?
Yeah.
Brilliant.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So he's not actually revealing the truth, the
truthfulness of why he came, you know, why
he came to the Prophet, because he knew
to come kill him.
What does the Prophet ﷺ say?
He actually narrates the exact conversation, the private
conversation that Safwan actually made an oath not
to reveal, and he narrated that private conversation.
As it says here, rather you sat with
Safwan, spoke about the deceased from Quraysh and
were put into the well, then you said,
if only I didn't have a debt to
pay all my children, I'll go out to
kill Muhammad.
Safwan then agreed to take care of your
debts and your children as a compensation for
killing me, which Allah prevents.
And then Umar says, you know, you're speaking
the truth.
And he basically testified that that's a very
important way, Hamza, where Rasul Allah ﷺ says,
which Allah prevents.
Yes, that's, that's a very important one, that
specific sentence, pointing out that this is like
an actual impossibility.
I think that's a part of the hikmah
here.
Yes, yes, of course.
And it's to show that, you know, Allah
inspired the Prophet ﷺ with this knowledge, right?
Yeah, yeah.
And it's Allah that is preventing this, this
killing from happening.
And it actually echoes the psychology of the
Prophet ﷺ, right?
Because Amr, leave him alone, bring him here,
right?
Even though I know he wants to come
and kill me, we don't need your backup.
Allah is with us, right?
Allah is dealing with this, Allah is preventing
this.
So it's not like a made up narrative,
right?
It's like from the psychological state is already
there, the psychological linguistic framing is already there.
Even when he says, I have a better,
we have been taught a better greeting than
you, right?
Salaam, peace, right?
And so this is, this is actually phenomenal.
And so Amr basically says the Prophet ﷺ
wasn't there, how could he have ever known,
right?
It's impossible for him to have known.
So this means this is from Allah ﷻ.
I affirm that there is no deity worthy
of worship except Allah, and I affirm that
the Prophet ﷺ is the final Prophet, is
the Messenger of Allah.
And this is how Amr became Muslim.
But obviously, there's more to it than that.
Because you're connecting the conversion of Amr, which
by the way you say he was from
a noble family or notable family.
He was the son of the tribal leader
of Banu Jumah, I believe, yeah.
And so he was he was he was
quite, you know, influential.
So how, if you could tell us, his
influence now made many Meccans become Muslim.
So I don't recall, I'm not really sure
if his father was the leader of Jumah.
I'm not sure if I came across that.
His uncle definitely was.
I probably misread it.
But he was a notable figure within that.
Of course, of course.
Without a doubt, without a doubt, he was
a notable figure.
And him having everything to lose, or excuse
me, him actually losing everything and him going
on this sacrificial mission where he's going to
assassinate the Prophet, peace be upon him, and
naturally get killed right after.
And then all of a sudden, he comes
back to Meccans like, okay, guys, listen, I'm
Muslim.
And that's not a natural thing for him
to do.
And then he just tells the people what
exactly happened.
And you simply had a lot of people
converting to Islam because of that reason.
It's very straightforward.
Yeah, but this is the insight in contemporary
Dawa, I believe, and you've highlighted here, yes,
you've written, you said, the police of Mecca
didn't share his experience, but his testament that
he knew his private discussion with Safwan was
sufficient for many of them.
Why?
And this is a key point, as there
was no other justification for the sudden change
in his worldview, apart from the truth that
he presented to them.
And obviously, they listened to him because he
was a notable figure.
So there's two things that we need to
unpack here.
The first thing is, or at least one
main thing in the Dawa, we neglect giving
Dawa to influentials.
Because, you know, the title of this section
is that many Meccans became Muslim as a
result of one notable person becoming Muslim, right?
So sometimes what we fail to do sometimes
is we like the numbers, right?
But we forget the influentials that can bring
more numbers, right?
And I think we need to be more
strategic in our thinking in the Dawa, which
is very interesting because Ibn Hazm, he talks
about three types of struggle of Jihad.
And he talks about the physical Jihad, he
talks about Jihadan Kabira, if you like, in
Surah Ruqan, verse 52, I believe, when Allah
says, Do struggle bihi, with it, with the
Qur'an, Jihadan Kabira, a great striving, bihi,
with it means the Qur'an itself, use
the arguments of the Qur'an.
And then the other form of Jihad is
strategic thinking in times of danger.
And Ibn Hazm says, the two main forms
of struggle wasn't actually physical.
And he's not belittling it, he's just saying,
if you look at the seerah, because many
of the battles, the person didn't engage in
himself, he actually delegated that authority.
But the person was always giving it was
many times majority of time giving Dawah with
the Qur'an using the arguments of the
Qur'an and strategic thinking in times of
danger.
Now, if we could project this to the
universal of strategic thinking, we neglect this in
the Dawa a lot, what benefits the Dawa,
not my brand, the individual or just online,
but the Dawa in general?
You know, I haven't seen a strategic paper,
I haven't seen a white paper, I haven't
seen brothers and mashayekh come together in my
view, yeah, maybe it happens.
But where are we going with this Dawa
in the next 5, 10, 15 years?
You know, have we got a list of
the key influentials, which don't have to be
like online influences, that's, you know, a bit
shallow, to be honest, it could be other
types of influence, whether in different domains, like
politics, sports, psychology, academia, have we done an
analysis of this particular domain, right?
Where a lot of brothers get involved in
academia, they just get lost in academia, and
they start writing books that only five people
read, and they tap themselves on the back.
Where's the Allah-centric vision?
Where are you thinking?
Who are the main key influentials in academia
that if I have dinner with, I have
conversations with, you know, there's a lot of
background work that we have to do with
these people to develop trust, right?
And this for me, and may Allah bless
you for writing this book, brings that insight
in a contemporary way, that, you know, if
a key reason for many Meccans becoming Muslim
because of a notable figure and influential, and
one of those, and that reason was because
Allah gave an insight to the Prophet ﷺ
that he couldn't have access to himself, which
proved his prophethood.
But the kind of method here is important,
which is the notable person himself becoming Muslim.
So that should give us a strategic insight
that we need to start thinking about that
a little bit more seriously in different domains
that we're engaged in, whether it's academia, whether
it's online, whether it's sports, whether it's politics.
And that means it requires an effective method
using hikmah, as we discussed before.
That means we may have to spend a
lot of time actually developing good relationships with
people.
It's not just like, you know, here's a
video.
You know, sometimes we have these videos from
some brothers, my message to so-and-so.
To be honest, that can work, but I
just find it, it's not well thought out.
What's much better is that we sit down
and we have dinner with people.
People don't have to know.
You create that long-term relationship with someone
in order to try and establish, you know,
an effective relation, because if they don't trust
you, they're not going to accept what you're
saying, irrespective if you're famous, right?
I think it does happen, but perhaps not
in a very strategic way.
But you see someone influential, and they seem
to be open to a conversation, and you
see a lot of people pounce on that.
Not, again, nothing strategic on paper, but it
does happen to a degree.
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, maybe, maybe in the online world, but
in terms of making it a main focus,
I've been involved in organizations, I have connections
with different leaders of organizations.
The kind of influential dower, influencer dower is
not as focused upon, I think, because I
think one reason is economical and practical, because
in order for organizations to sustain themselves, they
need actually money, right?
In order for that to happen, they have
to actually show that they're doing a lot
of work, and the kind of strategic, influential
stuff, it's not very marketing.
Sorry for the use of this word, I
can't think of anything else.
It's not sexy enough from a marketing perspective,
yeah?
So they're not going to be like, oh,
yeah, you know, let's, because you have to
start convincing people why this is important and
this is needed, right?
So there are practical reasons for it.
But I don't think it's happening on a
level that it should be, you know?
It should be.
Do you know what I mean?
All right, good.
So the final main question, and then after,
you could talk to us about where you
could find the book and any future projects
that you have.
And obviously, in the video, I'm going to
tell them where to find you on Twitter,
on X, and where to find you on
YouTube.
So the final main question is the insights
to the fourth conversion story, which many Muslims,
many Sahaba became Muslim, which was the prophecy,
the prophecy in the Qur'an itself.
And so talk to us about that, the
prophecy in Qur'an 30 verses 2 to
4.
The Romans have been defeated in the nearest
land, and after the defeat, they will be
victorious within a few years.
So bismillah, talk to us about this.
So what initially got me curious about that
one is I read the book on the
Proofs of Prophethood by, mashaAllah, a well-established
author.
And he wrote something along the lines of,
this prophecy came to pass in either the
year 621, or not, 623 or 628.
He said 623 or 628.
And I was like, we don't know when
this happened.
And I was, I was, I'm like, I'm
like, I know this happened.
There's no doubt it happened.
But what happened?
We don't know the dates.
And that's what got me looking into it.
And so what I did was I picked
up all the earliest Western sources that speak
about the battles, the war, and I started
researching that until I came to this conclusion
that the year 628 is the correct year.
And for some reason, you have, you have
like this, this modern, like, nowadays, a lot
of people say 623 for some reason, they
match it up with the Battle of Badr.
And it's based on a statement by Sufyan
al-Thawri where he says that, we heard
that this happened in the Battle of Badr.
He doesn't provide a source.
He just says, we heard this happens then.
And they rely on this hadith by Abu
Sa'id, not even Abu Sa'id al
-Khudri, but Abu Sa'id Muhammad bin Thabit
al-Kalbi.
Completely the most weird, the weirdest hadith, which
doesn't even fit in with a prophecy in
the first place.
But that's a long story.
And the reality is, you have all these
Tabi'in, and you have a companion.
And when you go through the dates that
they provide, 628 is the correct year.
That's the actual year that the war ends.
That's the year the war ends, guys.
And so like, what's up with all the
confusion?
And the war, and for some reason, people,
when talking about the battles between the Romans
and the Persians, for some reason, you have
people trying to find the specific battle, which
was the battle in which the Romans defeated
the Persians.
Happens all the time.
People win and lose battles all the time.
Speaking about the war, the prophecy is about
the war, and the war specifically as a
whole ending.
Because it's not much of a prophecy if
you say someone's going to win a battle.
People win and lose battles all the time.
It's about the war in itself.
That's why it's a big deal.
So when the prophecy was made, that was
it for the Romans.
Everyone thought that was it for the Byzantine
Empire.
They thought that it was no longer going
to exist.
They lost the majority of their territory.
They were cut off from Africa.
They didn't have access to the wealth from
Africa at the time.
Egypt was very rich in Africa as a
whole.
Northern Africa was booming.
And when they got cut off of that,
that was it for them.
And then the Romans, they were, for some
reason, going to war with two fronts.
They were fighting the Avars in the west,
and then they're fighting the Persians in the
east.
And the Persians, they got all the way
to modern-day Turkey.
And they actually got all the way into
Istanbul, Constantinople at the time.
In the year 626, they actually besieged the
city.
And again, from both sides, the Persians and
the Avars.
It's crazy.
And two years after that, they win the
war.
And the problem is, subhanAllah, when we read
the verses, and the average Muslim who reads
the verses is familiar with this idea of
this prophecy coming to pass, they think it's
simply a matter of two biggest armies in
the two biggest empires.
One beats the other in a battle, and
then the other beats the first one in
the battle.
And that's it.
That's the prophecy.
They think that's it.
No, no.
It's, as Edward Gibbon puts it, at a
time in which this prophecy is said to
have happened, he says, his words, is said
to have happened, did happen.
There was nothing further from occurring than that.
It is something that could not have been
foreseen.
And Niyar ibn Mukram, who's a companion of
the Prophet, peace be upon him, he's, I
believe, he's an Aslami.
He, from a tribe of Aslam, which is
the sister tribe of Ghaffar, or an ally
of Ghaffar, he says that that's, yeah, they
have hordes of people converting because of that.
Because something that no one could foresee happening.
And Muhammad, peace be upon him, not only
is he saying that it's going to happen,
but he puts a time limit.
So it's a very dangerous, very dangerous prophecy
to make.
Because if you put in the time limit,
you see, if you leave it open, it's
something else.
But you put a time limit, halas, people
are just waiting for it to happen in
a few years.
Halas, you're going to, it's going to fail.
And that's it for you.
That's it for your religion.
That's it for all that time that you
put in, all the suppression, all this patience.
It's all going to go down the drain,
because you put a time limit.
It's a huge mistake to make, to put
a time limit, which is why Mirza Ghulam
Ahmad, his prophecies backfired, because he put time
limits, and he got exposed for it badly.
And we keep on using these arguments against
him.
Yeah, absolutely.
And what's very interesting is you providing the
historical context of this conversion, because sometimes when
people just read those verses, like, okay, great,
it's a prophecy.
But when you explain that many people became
Muslim as a result, and you look at
the kind of geopolitical, strategic, geographical, and
context, the people who became Muslim as a
result of that prophecy, it's like they were
living that prophecy.
They're saying, look, we know this is like,
you know, if you would toss a coin,
we wouldn't know if it's head or tails.
And this has come to us left field,
because we know the kind of cultural, historical,
technical, technological, at that time, geopolitical goings on.
And we're thinking, how on earth can this
prophecy be true?
And this is a very unique thing of
explaining the prophecies in the correct academic historical
context, which you do very well when you
cite historians, and you give us some nice
pictures as well.
And you cite, you know, history and the
Chronicles of Theophanes, and the Chronicle of John,
and about Heraclius, and so on and so
forth.
But you're actually showing the real life effect.
It's like, for example, someone says, you know,
200 years ago, some guy did this, and
there you go.
It's an interesting story.
And that's different.
You know, if you either lived in that
moment, or you had acts to testimonies of
people explaining the impact and the geopolitical context
and the impossibility of that thing happening, that's
a different fleshing out of the verse, you
see.
And that's very powerful.
And what that teaches us, I think, from
a modern perspective, just coming to my mind,
is number one, use the Qur'an in
your dawah, of course, and that's been happening
with most of the examples that you've given
us.
But also, unpack it.
Study the historical, exegetical context, what the Sahaba
said, what the living recipients of revelation said,
what the Prophet ﷺ said, and don't make
your mind up.
Allow the tradition to speak for itself.
And when you do that, you have so
much richness behind these verses and these ayat
and even these arguments.
I learned this as well.
When I want to try and prove God's
existence, the major proof I use now is
this from the Qur'an.
The Qur'an hardly argues God's existence, because
it's intuitive, it's in self-evident truth.
There's probably only two verses.
Chapter 52, verses 35 to 36.
Did you come from nothing?
Did you create yourself?
Did you create the heavens and the earth?
بَلَّ يُقِنُونَ Indeed, you don't have any certainty.
Now, just looking at those verses, if you
don't know the kind of exegesis or the
language or the background, even the way a
Sahabi responded to it, if you don't understand
what Al-Bayhaqi narrates, Sulayman al-Khattabi, I
believe, unpacking the kind of sound rationality behind
these verses and applying it to creation.
When you go into the exegetical tradition, the
sunnah, the sahabah of these verses, you have
a great argument.
I've used the argument with some of the
biggest names in atheism.
And people can say it for themselves.
The universe is makhluk, it came into existence,
just like the human being.
Did it come from nothing?
Did it create itself?
Was it created by something else created, which
is implied in the verse?
Or was it created by something uncreated, which
is implied in the verses as well?
This is all Qur'anic.
And I'm telling you, and I'm not saying
it because of me, no one has been
able to respond to this argument effectively with
an undercutting defeater.
And it's from the Qur'an.
I learned it the hard way, right?
But this is a lesson, go to the
Qur'an, find out what the sahabah said,
what the sunnah says, what the Prophet Muhammad
said, what the historical academic background to all
of that.
And when you bring it together, you have
something amazing which you produced, which was the
final story of conversion.
And that's your methodology here.
And that's what we should learn when we're
approaching the Qur'an.
Use the Qur'an, use the sahabah, use
their statements, use the historical and academic backdrop,
and use the sunnah concerning these verses, and
you'll get the best arguments.
What do you think?
Oh, definitely, definitely.
I recall even Maher Amir saying something similar.
I'm not sure if you're familiar with Maher.
I'm not very familiar with names.
If I see a piece, I'll probably say
yeah.
Yeah, mashallah, he was a very, very active
brother, at least used to be very active.
Someone who specialized in ideology brings that up
all the time.
We're having discussions with anyone, always go for
the Qur'an.
The Qur'an provides the best arguments you
can come up with against anyone, without a
doubt.
I mean, that's natural to expect.
I would like to read the very short
section, because I want to highlight how much
of an unlikely scenario that we're dealing with
in terms of the Romans defeating the Persians.
Yes, it is.
Because it really is crazy.
Here it is.
I'm just looking for it.
Okay, okay.
Okay.
So, subhanAllah, this is what leads to the
downfall of the Persians.
And again, this is just a very short
section of what occurs.
This is from Al-Hurmazan, the Sassanid governor
speaking to Amr ibn al-Khattab, speaking about
what happened, telling him how the battles ended,
how the war ended.
He says, Khosrow sent Sheherbaraz along with the
Persian soldiers.
He conquered Levant, Egypt, and destroyed most of
the Roman fortification.
However, he could not conquer Constantinople.
Khosrow rebuked him for failing to conquer it,
and Sheherbaraz, again the general, wrote letters back
apologizing.
This continued, and remember, this is the Persians
completely dominating the Romans.
If they just stayed the way they were,
if this incident didn't happen, then the whole
tide of history would have remained the same
instead of changing so dramatically.
But here's what happens.
Khosrow rebuked him for failing to conquer it,
and Sheherbaraz wrote letters back apologizing.
This continued until Khosrow was fed up and
decided to kill Sheherbaraz, the emperor of the
Sassanid Persian empire, decided to kill his general
for being unable or for taking so long
to conquer Constantinople.
He then sent letters to one of his
generals, his other generals, who was hesitant about
killing Sheherbaraz and kept making excuses for him.
So basically Khosrow wants another general to kill
Sheherbaraz, and that other general doesn't want to
kill Sheherbaraz.
So he kept on making excuses.
This also continued until Khosrow had enough with
the general and wrote to Sheherbaraz to kill
the other general.
When Sheherbaraz received the order, he had the
general summoned and confessed that he was going
to carry out the order.
The general retrieved the letters sent by Khosrow
and showed Sheherbaraz that he was supposed to
be put to death first.
And Sheherbaraz shocked and reached out to Heraclius
and a truce was made, allowing Heraclius to
march into Persia with little resistance.
So it was simply because of Khosrow being
impatient with one of his generals and then
his generals having this mistrust against him and
against one another, well against him, and then
the main Persian general just deciding to not
take part anymore, that allowed Heraclius to simply
march into Persia and to end it, when
that would have been impossible before those specific
events.
SubhanAllah, subhanAllah.
And there's not much that needs to be
said apart from everyone needs to read this
book.
Please download it, read it.
And I think you should do a second
edition in the future.
Maybe what we can do is you can
use maybe this podcast as an example to
motivate you to do a second edition maybe
in a couple of years to say, right,
what are the contemporary lessons?
Let's unpack the psychological strategic lessons from this
and apply in a contemporary sense.
That'll be a phenomenal, or a second book,
a part two in doing that.
And I think you're the right man for
the job.
So final two questions.
We have been going for a while now.
Allah bless you for your patience.
And the final two questions are, where can
they find this book and where can they
find you?
And what's new projects coming up, inshallah?
Okay, so the book, Why the Companions Converted
to Islam can be picked up from the
Dar Al-Arqam website, even though it should
be available in many popular Islamic bookstores around
the world, in the States, in the UK.
But yeah, if it's not available in a
bookstore near you, then you can definitely pick
it up from the Dar Al-Arqam website.
Inshallah, we could include the link in the
description.
100%.
Inshallah.
In regards to what I'm doing, well, I
said, I'm someone who's very secretive about my
upcoming projects, unfortunately.
That's probably a good thing, to be honest.
Actually, it was a bad question, because, you
know, you don't want hasad, or ayin, or
god knows what.
No, not at all.
I usually go after people, and I like
to surprise them, you know.
I like to surprise them by dropping episodes.
This reminds me of The Art of War
by Samzoon, right?
He said something like, work in the darkness,
and then strike like a thunderbolt.
So I want you to strike like a
thunderbolt.
Keep on striking like a thunderbolt.
This book was a thunderbolt, in a positive
way, giving light to the dawah.
It was an amazing, I mean, this was,
it, you taught me.
I spent the morning going through your book,
writing notes.
I came up with these insights from our
conversation.
And, you know, your kind of, mashallah, laid
back, informative, teacher-like approach has allowed me
to express myself.
But yeah, so Jazakallah, it should be the
other way around.
I should be getting you to speak more,
but you got such, you got such an
amazing approach that you got me to speak,
because I was really inspired, actually.
And I'm going to think more about the
book, and I'm going to put it in
the description.
Everyone, please buy it.
I appreciate it.
Buy it for your friends as well.
Buy it for your friends, your family, your
dua.
Don't just buy one book, buy five and
give them out.
That could be part of your dawah as
well, mashallah.
Barakallah.
I think it was my pleasure being here,
and definitely enjoyed some of the insights, especially
what you were saying about Umair and the
Prophet, peace be upon him, his hikmah, and
his word choice, and what he was saying
to him.
Definitely, those things can be added, inshallah, to
a second edition.
May Allah bless you for your time, and
inshallah, this is not the last.
We'll do this in the future again, inshallah.
Assalamualaikum warahmatullahi wabarakatuh.