Hamza Yusuf – The Concept of Isnad
AI: Summary ©
The church's authority in religion is discussed, including the use of "mon stands" and proper pronunciation in communication. The Bible's transmission of rumors and false rumors through media is also discussed, with the elect's authority seen over the people and the physical world. The transmission of rumors and false rumors through media is also discussed, with the elect's power seen as over the people and the physical world.
AI: Summary ©
Bismillah
Al Rahman Rahim o salat wa salam ala Sayyidina Muhammad wa sallam to Sleeman kathira
what a holdover of water in ambala, Ronnie and all the
Medina Illa. Allah.
Allah Allah,
Allah Allah, Allah, or visiting near Alma,
along with the heading hc medical insurer, Elena hermetica, Angelica cromo, Sarita Hamada Sina, Mohammed
Al Hamdulillah. I. inshallah, what I want to talk about today is the concept of internet in our tradition, why we call this program living links. And some of the
addressing some of the problems that have risen in the,
in the global Muslim scene because of the breakdown of a tradition that worked actually,
relatively well, it had its problems, but it did work for a long, long time, and attempting to
contribute to the revival of that tradition. I mean, we're not the only ones trying to do this, or others in other places. So the first thing, one of the
one of the most important aspects of the Islamic tradition, is the chains of authority. In fact, that there there is a reference in the New Testament, when the rabbi's surround Jesus, I loosened him and they asked him on whose authority are you speaking. And that comes out of the rabbinical tradition where rabbis did not speak for themselves, but they spoke from an oral tradition because they also have an oral tradition. So they would speak on the authority of Rabbi Gmail or Rabbi cmll are one of the rabbis and that would buttress whatever they were saying. And obviously, Jesus, I didn't set them was a prophet. So he speaks with direct authority, he there's no, there's no, even
though he's in a chain of prophets, who are teaching the same thing, their sources the same source. So they get the teaching directly, they don't get it through transmission of human beings, they get it directly as revelation through either angelic, or a direct revelation from Allah Subhana with Anna, so the the problem of authority in our religion is a problem. It's a problem in every religion. Every religion grapples with who has authority, what substantiation authority? Where does authority come from? What's the nature of authority, even the legitimation in government is also a major problem. Like one of the things that we're going through right now, in some parts of the
world, is this idea of whether or not governments are legitimate or have legitimacy, because they don't, for instance, reflect the voice of the people. In fact, there's a recent book, written in Morocco by a Moroccan scholar, arguing that the wilaya, which is government authority, is actually nabba. It's a type of representation. And he doesn't say nabba from God, he says, nabba from the people that the government represents the people which is a radical departure from how earlier Muslim peoples would have viewed it, they would have viewed it in a very different way.
But that shows you
the the impact, even on Islamic scholarship of Western political theory, because we also have within our epistemology, in other words, how we substantiate things through knowledge, processes, we actually have within our epistemology, a political tradition that many modern Muslims would consider simply just antiquated, they would see no value in it, they would say it was written for another time, another place. Now, certain aspects of that tradition. Undoubtedly, were written for another time in place. But the idea is somehow that the ancients have nothing to tell us about the human condition, and about human problems is an absurdity. Anybody who spent any time in classical texts
knows how relevant a good deal of what they are talking about
I want don't you sit up like, please, when you're in the setup, if you can, yeah.
So it's important that you,
you understand that this problem is not just a problem of religion, it's a problem in many, many different fields.
In Egypt right now, who has authority? Is it cc? Or is it mercy? And this is a problem and the end scholars have taken different sides. Some of the scholars are saying this is what's called the hookah minimum.
This is what our traditional books say about the situation. Other ones say that doesn't apply anymore.
So even the scholars have split now one of the problems inherent in that is that
it becomes very confusing for people.
Because when you have scholars radically different, and you're looking for them for guidance, who do you follow?
So who has authority? Because it has, it has spiritual implications? It has political implications, it has economic implications. We have, for instance, if you're following it at all, but Neil Ferguson, who's a historian of economic economics, and Krugman, who's the Nobel Prize winner, right now are having their little blog battle
about economic theories. Right, so do we follow a Keynesian model? Or should we follow
an Austrian model, or a monetarist model? So even within economics, who has authority who's speaking with authority, these are all if ttfn these are the differences of opinion that arise from the human condition? Because people look at things from different perspectives. So in light of all that confusion, if you can say that, in light of all that confusion?
How does a religion
assert itself authoritatively? When the purpose of religion is actually to unite people and not to separate them?
In other words, if you have a religion where all of the people are differing about what that religion is, how is that going to bring them together,
they're going to end up fighting each other, disputing over it, creating their own *, you can see, for instance, in this city, there are
probably hundreds, if not at least, dozens of churches of different denominations. And this is what happened to Christianity, it's split up, you will see within this, on this hill, many different types of Christianity are being taught in these colleges,
Judaism, you can go to a reformed synagogue, you can go to synagogues in Judaism, where it's not considered necessary to believe in yawei.
You don't have to believe in God, you can still go to the synagogue and be part of a Jewish religious community, and not believe in God.
And I learned that from being an interfaith dialogue with a rabbi who didn't believe in God.
Because I said, Well, we have the commonality of God. He said, No, we don't, I don't believe in God. And it really shocked me. But you know, I went back and I did my research and found out indeed, that there are reformed versions of Judaism that do not stipulate a belief in God, that it's more of an ethnic, cultural binding tradition really do. So it's purely on a horizontal plane, there's no vertical reality to the religion anymore. So you can you can find all these differences. Now, within the Islamic tradition, you can be a progressive Muslim, you can be a transgender Muslim, you there's all these different types of Islam out there. And this is part of the fragmentation of the time
we're living in. And so the question about authority, how did Muslims deal with this? Because, again, one of the things that we can learn from the ancients is that they went through the same things that were going through.
They had authority problems in the early part of Islam. They went through their own types of disintegration. They went through their sectarianism, their schisms, right, the Sunni, Shia split as a schismatic split. And the Prophet said that you will split he told us that it's, it's it's it's human nature. But then he said, but one group is guided. So everybody if they're all claiming that, how is that claim substantiated?
Because this might release
claim that they have the botany authority. And this is what gives them the truth, the sheer claim that they have the Alan Bates authority of the unbroken chain of the 12 impeccable imams that can't make mistakes
within the the Allawi or the sad, also a sect radical sect of the Shia tradition claims that they have a direct line to Allah who's an incarnate like, the logos like Jesus. So you have all these different competing claims, what substantiates them What legitimates? And what enables us to discern how from Bothell, the four can, what is that, and somebody was talking about assumptions earlier, it's a problem because we assume many things. Most people were simply born in a place. And they take on the history, history, historical, cultural nature of that place, they were born,
one philosophy, terms of historical products, their products of their historicity. And so they're trapped in
a
religious, ethical, social, economic situation that determines everything that they're going to think about those things. And so we live in a time where people have prepackaged ideas that they then and the really the great leisure domain of the time is to make people think that these are their own ideas,
that they came up with them themselves that this is some kind of self actualization, that I I believe these things and, and I came to these conclusions myself, everything's relative, you can trace that, that there's a senate with that idea that has a lineage, and you are in a chain of transmission when you make that statement. And we can trace that chain and see who the first people that said it were,
if you say there's no God, there's also a chain
of atheists, you're in a chain, you're in his snad, whatever position you take, that you think is uniquely your own or original, you are in a chain of transmission.
Now, from our perspective, and I'm talking about from believers, whether you're Christian or other traditions, because almost all these religious traditions do believe in in a dark realm. Those chains either go back to demonic sources, or they go back to angelic sources. So either it pleases at the end of the head, Destiny, Marx, and Hegel, and right, you go back, and then Iblees was the first rally in the chain.
And so that's your chain, it goes back to a belief. So you're a transmitter of narrations from a police. He's your source, but people don't recognize that.
Or you go back to her destiny and funan, unfallen and Sudan, and Isa and Mary Ann jabril. Right, or from God. So these are the these are the, these are the basic, the 231. For general, for contraception, those are the two chains, you're in one or the other. There's no other chain and dunya you're either in the chain of it pleases transmission, or you're in the chain of prophetic transmission. Now it bleeds. People forget, you see that the occult people don't want to deal with the occult, the occult is everywhere.
You're dealing with a cultic phenomena everywhere. There are cultic elements in the way San Francisco was designed architecturally. There's a reason why pier 33 is the central pier in San Francisco. There's a reason why there's a pyramid embodied in the actual street structure of San Francisco, Washington DC is designed in an occultic.
Design. Why? Because there are people that have religious beliefs, spiritual beliefs, and those spiritual beliefs impinge the way they see the world the way they act upon the world.
All you have to look up is john Parsons, one of the most important people in rocket science developed a type of fuel that enabled the
the whole telecommunications period and he was an open worshiper.
Whatever you want to call that dark force, he was open about it's on his Wikipedia site, and you can there's books about it. So you have scientists that are in the occult, that are at the highest levels. You have people in government at the highest levels, that
In a cultic rituals, I mean, this is part of the world. The Christians have a saying from Paul, that our battle is not of the flesh and the blood, but it's with the principalities of darkness.
And so if you want to know who's behind Syria, it's not that Allah we, it's not the Iblees is behind that situation.
These are dark forces working to destroy people's homes, to destroy their lives, to destroy their livelihood, to make them suffer, to put them into a state of despair of blessa.
To make them question, God,
where's God? How could there be a god? How could he let little children suffer like this? These are the questions that a breeze always poses.
And people in weakened states, when their faith is low, when they're suffering, they will succumb to those demonic insinuations, this is called 10 B. So it believes the dhupguri of the devil that we believes. So, the is NAD is the way in which a normative and if you study academic religion, they talk about descriptive and normative religion. There is a modern argument that many, many people in religious studies would like to,
to put forward or do put forward. And many, many religious studies programs are rife with this concept, that there is no such thing as normative religion, there is only descriptive religion, the normative religion is a fantasy, that whatever the religion might say about itself, it's never that if you if you chip away at the Formica of a South Asian Muslim, you will hit the bedrock of Hinduism. Hinduism has never left the subcontinent. And will we have scholars in the 19th century that wrote all the Hindu influences on the Muslim culture in South Asia?
If you go to Morocco, you will find pre Islamic pagan rituals still being practiced within Moroccan Islam. So they will argue that is that any religion that ever claims to take root in reality, it's just another patch on this quilt
of human behavior. And so if you look at Christian Christianity, they celebrate Christmas here on December 25, that was the Roman sun Gods birthday Mithra.
They have Christmas trees, no tide, what does snow have to do with Palestine?
What does Santa Claus have to do Palestine? Right. But that this is this is basically how religion manifests in human societies it manifests with a lot of different streams flowing in tributaries
that are enlarging the river of religion.
The same is true and if you go Tibetan Buddhism Tibetan Buddhism is is, is there's a Tibetan mask on bon animism, which is the previous religion that was in Tibet before the Buddhists got there.
It's filled with with animistic, pre Buddhist rituals and beliefs. And so Islam is no different. You will find many, many beliefs that came into Islam, or were already in the previous cultures. The Muslims were heavily influenced by Hellenistic tradition. The Greeks had a massive impact on the Muslims, when they come up against the Greeks, the Arab say, at higman, tunas, Etta adumbrated, Yun and Jean, were idiots at a scene where lc nazzaro, that wisdom came down on three on the intellects of the Greeks, on the hands of the Chinese, because they were great manufacturers and on the tongues of the Arabs, but the Greeks had a huge impact on the Muslims. So normative Islam is is would be
what the religion actually says about itself. What What does the religion say about itself? What is it?
How do we know what Islam is? is Islam simply the hijab, you see, if you go from if you go to now you have, for instance, in Syria, you have a hijab, like it's a raincoat.
There's nothing traditional about that.
It's a European coat that however that came in, I mean, there was must have been some first woman that started that, right. But that is not a traditional dress. If you want to see a traditional Shammi dress, you have to go to Palestinian villages, or Syrian villages where they were those
Traditional, they used to have their own little, it would tell you knew what village they were from based on the patterns on the hijab,
right? So you would know where they were from.
But now you have, for instance, the the mother, which is basically the Iranian version of the hijab, which probably is close to what some of the early Muslim women were wearing, but it wasn't black. I mean, we know that black was actually they couldn't sell the black hijabs in the third century in Medina, and they actually died. And he had to write some lines of poetry for this poor Iraqi
hijab merchant who brought all this black cloth and none of the women wanted it. And so he wrote this thing about how tempting black was on women and how good it made them look, and suddenly they were selling out of the black hijabs. Right, early marketing. But the point is, is that Muslim women this idea that black somehow is the black is a morning
dress. So what people were like for funerals and things like that, right, black, but this idea in Tunisia and Morocco, women wore white, and we're black. If you go to West Africa, women have always worn colorful garments in Mauritania, they wore what they call kneel, right, which was a blue, and that actually made them blue and the men wore the blue turbans from it. So they they're called the Blue Man zork because they would turn blue from it, but the women actually thought it was attractive, their whole skin got dyed blue. So you see these more Indian women, they look blue. They don't wear that anymore. Now they were the the colorful male heifer, which was introduced by
merchants. So those change, but does the hijab change, do the essential demarcations of the hijab change? That's normative Islam. Descriptive Islam is how they choose to wear that hijab. But normative Islam is what tells you what the hijab is.
Right? That there's a big difference between the two. Now,
the way that our scholars went in the very early period of Islam,
the Quran was clear and the Quran are also the scholars differentiate between Mottola, char and Ahad. mutawatir is factual. It's just simply historical. It's in a historical account of something because and the point between mutawatir is so many people have seen it. So many people have transmitted it.
They have so many multiple sources that it could not be possible that they could have conspired to make it up.
So we know for instance, in 1776, if you want to use that dating, if you want to use another dating, I mean, I want saw some Native American argue with Adler and others that will surely we can agree on historical facts. And he said, like what he said that America was discovered by Columbus in 1492. Big mistake to say to a Native American, and he just threw it back. He said, I don't accept that fact. First of all, 1492 is not a Native American dating, so I don't accept the date. Second of all, we we weren't discovered we knew we were here. Right? So but generally in 1776, all of us can agree. Unless we have a nutcase in the audience, all of us can agree that a group of people in in
Philadelphia got together and they signed this thing called the Declaration of Independence. Right? We can all agree on that. Nobody's gonna disagree about that. That is mutawatir. So if you say no, it's actually 1775. It was a scribes mistake. Okay, prove it.
You can make a historical case for that. There's a PhD in India, who's a Hindu who's arguing that the Taj Mahal was built by Hindus, not by Muslims, and the Muslims just claimed it later.
And so he's got a PhD. He's got a website, you can go on the website, but as far as everybody's concerned, he's a nutcase.
PhD notwithstanding, because there are plenty of nutcases with PhDs.
So, if you go against mutawatir, you're just simply denying reality, which is one of the reasons I wrote an article called how the Holocaust undermines Islam. And the point of that denial of the Holocaust undermines Islam. The point of that and I asked Dr. Khalid Blankenship who I trust as a really, really reputable historian who also knows Islamic tradition, did he think the Holocaust was mutawatir? And he said, Yes, I would consider it mutawatir.
So for me, that's enough to say that if you're denying that you're undermining our tradition, because what you're saying is mutawatir evidence is not proof of stuff.
Something.
So that is what not all of the Quran is mutawatir in terms of its source in terms of its meaning.
Right? Because you have katanas and Vanuatu nos, the copier is that it's absolutely sound, and its source that's mutawatir, but the meaning of the text, if all of the owner agreed on it, and we had Hadees that the prophesied, Sam said this what is what it means, then we would have to say, this is the meaning of the text. But if there isn't that agreement, then it becomes one nia. It's probable the meaning but the meaning is exhausted linguistically. And this is why our scholars exhausted the meaning possibilities of language, no human civilization, in history. And and and I would call as my authority and appeal to authority is a legitimate form of argument. It's the weakest according to
scholastics. But it is a legitimate form of argumentation to appeal to authority. Franz Rosenthal, one of the great
Jewish orientalist wrote a book called knowledge triumphant. And in that book, he argues that no civilization in human history was more committed, and had as its central theme and purpose, the acquisition, preservation, development and transmission of knowledge that this is the Islamic civilization, it was about knowledge. And so it is not fortuitous that the Quran begins with acara. It is not fortuitous that the prophets Allah Allah is him said in Namibia to mollema I was only sent to teach knowledge while I Lima to Allah inmon. The muster is knowledge I was sent to teach knowledge. All of these things are at the core of what the meaning and purpose of Islam is, as a
religion. It is about knowledge. And the highest knowledge is that it is Madiba. So it has it has levels we call these morality but in the degrees of knowledge, this civilization largely argues that knowledge is empirical. That's only one of three forms of knowledge that our civilization recognizes because we have empirical knowledge, we have rational knowledge, but we have revealed knowledge.
In this civilization, somebody like Dawkins, who will concede to rationalism somewhat, but his central argument is that knowledge is empirical is what we can feel sense taste touch, what we can deduce rationally from empirical evidence. So they only believe in deductive inductive reasoning, they don't allow for deductive reasoning.
They don't believe in universal truths that we can argue from.
They only believe in probabilistic empirical truth. And that knowledge changes as time progresses and we discover new things when the Black Swan is discovered in Australia, all of the English a naturalist were forced to concede that they're that Swan by definition is not white. There can be a black swan, it's called the Black Swan problem in logic in inductive reasoning. So
the the Muslims because that central theme was knowledge, they set out to to master the language skills, the language arts, in order for them to understand what the possible meanings of revelation are, and then they divided meaning into
what they called a shot, which are, these are like
a shout out are indications as opposed to significations
so they differentiate differentiated between significations what the money were,
which are the via the outward meanings and what the inward spiritual meanings were, if they went into the inward spiritual meaning entirely dismissing the outward meanings, they will they will call bothnia
Isa terrorists if they went to the outward meaning denying the inward meaning they were xo terrorists, they were called harvia or bahariya. People that deny that meanings are more than just the apparent meaning the via via wrongness. There's other meanings can be one else. There a shout out that come. So because they exhausted these language skills, Arabic has
the Quran has limited significations
in terms of what we can understand when Allah says yeah, you have Latina Amano, a taco
Law how to party. There are limitations to the outward meanings that we as human beings that use language to communicate can understand from that the inward indications that you shall rot, inexhaustible. You can speak about them until the day of judgment. But the outward significations, they've been exhausted merely by the meanings of those words that have been
collated and all these massive, incredible dictionary works that our scholars did, and the Muslims, they created dictionary science, it's no dictionaries before Islam, the Hebrews didn't have dictionaries for Hebrew. They learned that from the Muslims. The Chinese had very, very esoteric dictionaries that weren't really practical, in any sense of the modern idea of a dictionary, but the Muslims from right from the get go, they established what words meant
and continue to develop that so we know every word in the Quran, we know what it means, unless Allah hid that from us like Addy flam mean,
are those words are they letters? What we do know from that? is unlike Western linguists who will argue in linguistics, that phonemes have no meaning. that language is actually based on meaninglessness what the Quran is refuting there is no its meaning all the way down.
The letter has meaning the sound has meaning. It's meaning all the way down. This is about meaning. And we are interpreters of meaning it's our nature to interpret.
We're constantly listening, and we're interpreting and we're understanding that's human nature. We do this constantly. And language is the great gift. So the Quran
and you know, we have these people Haggar rights, and I mean most of this, this idea has been completely dismissed even in orientalist literature. But you will have articles in the Atlantic Monthly not that long ago, a few years back, arguing, oh, the Muslims are in a big shock. they've discovered Quranic manuscripts that don't jibe with the Koran that they have. So they're going to have to wake up to the fact that Islam has the same challenges that Christianity went through when they discovered that they had different receptions of their book. So they would love for that to be true. But the reality of it is, we have from Indonesia, to California, from the furthest east, to
the furthest West, and everything in between. And every sect of Islam, whether it's the Israelis, whether it's the Yemeni Yeezys or Sadie's, whether it's the the bhavya of Oman, whether it's the Hanafi. The shaeffer is the mannequins the ham buddies of the Sudanese, whether it's the VA Hadees of Andrew sia when they were there, whether it's the Shia isn't actually
the eight, the eight or the seven, or is the 12 versus the fivers all of the Shia groups. Every single one of the Muslims reads the same Koran. None of them differentiate on the Koran, not one why, what How is that possible? How is that possible? If if the Bible has all these different receptions that even the Protestants and Catholics don't agree on the books in the Bible, they don't know how the Greek was pronounced in some cases, they don't have a science of phonetics, we have tissue we, if you go from Indonesia, if you take an Indonesian party, and you take a party who learned to read in California, they will recite the Quran exactly the same way. They might have
difference in like the color of the hijab, the tone, the arm, those aspects, but it will be the same, they is hard will be the same, the FR will be the same.
The Honda will be the same, the mu dude will be the same. The counts on the mu dude, if you have an expert, he'll determine whether their counts are right or wrong. And we're all in agreement on that. The 17 points of articulation mahatmas, you'd heard of all the same, they'll see that you will find very, very slight
differences about a few letters. And the effects of the letters amongst the poor are very few differences. But generally they're they don't change the meaning. And they're accepted. There's some debates about gene and the C fats of the gene, things like that.
essentially the same How did that happen? Because if you take the senate all the way back, you will see the same reciters from the Sahaba. All of the Quran comes from the same few men. There's no difference and they got it from the same source. That is a proof of the internet right there. Because there's no way you can tell me if you go to Watford, you know Watford in England. It's actually Watford right
But they say Watford. Why? Because they don't pronounce the T. If you go to Australia today, mate, you know that good day? Good day. Right? That's how they say it right? Good day. Right? If you go in California, if you want a glass of water, you don't say water. I'd like some water, right? Because we turn into the tie into a DA, right? These are all differences of attributes of the way language elocution. The way we speak differs based on where you're from, if you speak, the reason comedians have field days with foreign accents is because people from other languages when they speak English, if they have absorbed that language, and they didn't learn English early enough, they will speak it
in a very similar way. So Arabs will say for paradise, they'll say paradise paradise, and they put those heavy accents, they can't help it because what they're doing is they're articulating English the way they would speak Arabic. Brother.
Right? It's not brother, it's brother. Right? Or, you know, there's other ways brother, bro, right? These are all different ways people speak. Why is it if you have all these linguistic differences in one group of people, you go down south and they speak English in a different way. If you go to Texas, they speak English differently than the way we speak. They make fun of us. And we make fun of them. Right? That's the end that's in one country. We speak English different. In fact, the English would argue we don't speak English at all. Right? It's their language.
Garage, right? They say garage, right?
I mean, they have all these different tomato tomahto. They don't say tomato.
Some people say tomato.
Right? The way people talk.
They used to teach elocution. So and you can actually still go to these courses like people with New York accents with a heavy New York accent. Because if you see a lawyer that speaks with a New York accent, you just you think of all those mafia films that you've seen. And you just don't want that guy representing you? Because he sounds like some kind of wise guy on some Brooklyn street corner trying to muscle some money from some poor grocer. Right?
Isn't that what happens? You know, poor German people. If you speak.
People that grew up with World War Two film, they just hear that Nazi right when they hear a German accent in English, this is the way it is, right? So all of these differences, all of these,
the only way that you get to any kind of
sound is through this idea of a proper way to speak. Right? Now proper doesn't mean again, it's like the hijab, you can wear it a lot of different ways. But if I pronounce water, you know, way wafer.
It's a different word. So we have to have some limitations on how it's pronounced. Right? Or else we lose the ability to communicate. This is the argument
that I would make for the internet. That it what it was it came into existence, in order to prevent things coming into this religion that we're not of this religion.
So the Quran is mutawatir the meanings we differ but because Arabic is taken from sources. And this is one of the miracles of Islam is that each
of the signs of Islam in the early period of a song.
All of these incredible people emerge to preserve these sciences. Where do they come from? Where did you get something like CBE
or us melasma? You just went around collecting poetry everywhere. Where did you get these people where did their hima come from to do these things? What inspired them
to spend years
what inspired somebody to travel all over the Muslim world to collect Hades to go months on a journey to hear one Hadeeth because he heard so and so had a higher chain.
What inspired them? It's it's one of the miracles of Islam as far as I can tell. So
when the Quran if it's agreed upon, there's no debate about the Quran. There are seven variants. There's there's then you have the three the three to 10. Then you have the had, you go up to 14, but to that and then you have shadows
agreed upon so we've always recognized that there's alternate care
out there. Nobody's ever denied that Atlantic Monthly is not going to teach us anything about our religion that we didn't already know. We're not going to be a big shock to find out Oh, there's other recensions out there that don't jive with the one that they recite from Well, how is it 1.3 billion people recite from the same one? I mean, isn't that a little odd?
Right? Isn't that a little strange?
In fact, emammal portobay in his tafsir says that,
in the Quran in an unknown azana decra when Allah Allah, how have you done, that we have revealed this poron and we have taken upon ourselves God the Royal we
to preserve the Quran. Mr. Porter bns Tafseer says that there was a Jewish man in Andrew sia, who wanted to see who had the truth. And he was a calligrapher. So he calligraphic a Torah. And he put a lot of mistakes in it. And he took it to a rabbi, and it was a beautiful khaligraph Hebrew Torah. And the rabbi read it and he said, Are there are there How is it he said, It's beautiful. So the one of the finest editions of the tour I've ever seen, and he said, Okay, thank you. And then he did the Bible. He took it to a Christian priest, and he read it and he said, What did you think? He said, beautiful,
excellent Bible. He said, No, nothing you said knows wonderful. Then he did the Quran, he took it to a mom. And he mom told him you have to burn this. He said why he said it's filled with mistakes. I don't care how nice the calligraphy is.
And he knew then that these people had a preserved book.
In one part, we mentioned that
that's from his snad so when you study the Quran, you're studying a book that was preserved there's no doubt about it.
We can differ on some of the stops you know the the walk fat, they differ on those things, those are all
but the Quran is the same. It's the same there are some differences about is about what's an eye and what's not where the eye and those are all insignificant differences, but the text is not only is the text preserve the earth, many russom is preserved. And in Mauritania, you're not a half if you don't know how to recite read, write the entire Koran. According to the resume as money from scratch. You have to be able to sit in a room with paper and pen and pen and be able to write the whole pot on out without any mistakes or else they don't give you this net Mauritania has one of the most difficult they're they're they're easier on the tissue weed because they tend to the tissue
weed you have the hand huffy and Lohan jelly in touch we do you have you have a hand a mistakes of pronunciation that are a result of
of grammar and that's that's jelly do you make those mistakes is hot on the coffee is mistakes in like Islam. Sierra
there's Iran there because the hotel full Iran Dr. Malone, the while there is there you get the 10 wins, so it should go assimilate. If you don't do that you say Sarah john Maharajah and you do it is hard. That's coffee and so the later Obama tended to be easier on that then then the the earlier but now if you go like Syria or some Egypt, where they where they have a very strong tradition of Tajweed they're very strict on those things. But if you go to North Africa, they're not as strict there's also a hadith indicating that's one of the signs of the amount of time that Muslims would be obsessed with weed and they would forget the who dude of the quarter they would learn the whole roof
but but have no not he said you don't know the whole roof but you know the whole dude. He's about the time is coming when they'll know the hotel but they won't know the whole dude.
Right? They won't have 50 of the Quran understanding of the Quran so that the Senate
Abdullah even on Mubarak, one of the great mohabbatein he was a student of human mallex he was from hazzan.
And he was a Mujahid very well known, he said
one of his students I've done said that I heard him they were talking about the Zen agita about heretics in Islam, and I believe in a MOBOTIX said in that is nada en de Mina Deen is snad as far as I'm concerned is from the religion. It's part of the religion.
Well, while Ola is NAD la Cala Mencia, Masha, and had it not been for the snad whoever wanted to say something would simply just say
And then he said, but as long as somebody says,
Where did you get that from? And he said had definitely fallen back to your dean. As long as somebody makes a statement in the religion, and you can say, where's that statement from and he can tell you he said the religion safe.
But once you lose that, another one of the early set of said, that have been be the habit Senate. This religion will will go when the senate goes.
The religion goes when the senate goes now, in the early period, because the Hadeeth there were a lot of people putting Heidi's down that were not Hadeeth These are called mobile ads. And it's from the father of the women are more hadn't mentioned that never in the history of Islam, was any woman noted for fabricating Hades. This is one of the makara of the Nisa because many of the women were Heidi transmitters. There's no woman who lied on the Prophet sighs we have no recording of any woman that told a lie and invented a hadith. But many of the men invented Hadees they made up howdy sometimes with good intentions. Believe it or not, even though the Hadith says men, men, men,
Kabbalah your mother Amida and it's a mutawatir, Hadith, this Hadith, whoever lies concerning something I said earlier about what makhado human and not let him take his seat in *. That's how serious it is. But we do have some odema. Historically, that would.
Maybe they heard something, and they would just put it down. And sometimes because they thought the Hadees was true, they would add a Senate. There's people that do that Ted Lee's and, and well that. But I've mentioned that Hadeeth about one one of the setup said I prayed behind the 4k lips, and they all put their hands at the side. All the other yard says we don't need this to defend the Maliki position. You know that his intention might have been good, but this is how long and one of the proofs for me that the Hadees are true, is that why didn't I had to sort of put down if they made up all these Hadees Why didn't they put down Hadees to defend positions like hunter Quran?
When the big sydnor came? Why didn't they just invent Heidi's about the Quran? And so these arguments that somehow people made abubaker makes up the Hadith about the Ayesha and the dogs barking and hold up just making it up. It's rubbish. So how it didn't make up Hadith?
Does that mean every Hadith and Buhari is absolutely 100% true. No. There are many probabilistic Heidi's into Buhari there according even some of their own Ummah there are Hadees that shouldn't be in there.
JOHN
Jonathan brown wrote a very serious study of the canonization of edible hottie because there were there are many criticisms of Bahati early on, but later it becomes almost sacrosanct impossible to an audible hottie undeniably had divine guidance and I mean, we believe that I believe that about him. He had dreams he saw the prophet in dreams.
His memory was beyond belief, really beyond belief and and the only reason I do believe it is because I've met the mortality and still have people that have these type of memories. Because I met people I've met people I met a man in Mauritania memorize entire permits and more help of Pharaohs Abadi by rote, he could quote any word, tell you what page it was on and give you are complete.
Just start it and like the whole thing, and that's like 1000s of pages. Is rote memorization. So people people had much better memories than they do now.
So anyway, I wanted to
it's not an Arabic, by the way means, Senator Yes, no do it's a pothole Domine for those who are in my class the other day
is not means to a pillow is called a maisonette. Because you lean on it. So the Senate is something you support yourself with your Steny do attache, or you stand in LA, right to depend on something. So that is not is something you depend on. It's also called a Silsila, which is why we call this program living links. Because the idea is that in each generation, you become a link in the chain. So you learn it from somebody who learned it from somebody back to the prophet SAW them or depending on the science back to whatever science it was.
So, for instance, the Agile romea, right?
Is is a book of grammar. And, and
you can go back
to imagine a room with the Senate. So if you study it in that chain, Now, obviously, once these sciences were preserved,
then the cinema became more lacks on the idea of the Senate. So with Hadeeth, obviously, the books have been preserved, and we don't have the type of memories anymore. But you still need critical editions. And the computer age is, is very dangerous because things can be changed. I'll give you an example. I have a Tafseer of the jela Lane. And there is a paragraph in there that criticizes a certain group in on the Arabian Peninsula as being heretics. And that's that group.
Because there's a lot of money, they ended up buying a lot of the publishing houses. So in the new editions, that paragraph is completely taken out, but I have the original edition. So people don't realize that we're losing I actually have a party for Robbie's here with me years ago, we were reading the shadow of Mr. manoli. And he had an addition from Lebanon, and we were reading it and
part of you here you saw this. And and when I started it, I remembered there was a he said that, you know, I had to come at you heavily AHIMA, you're humble enough, see, you don't truly believe until you love for your brother, what you love for yourself. And in his addition, it didn't mention that this included the Jews and the Christians. It just got taken out. And I said,
You know, I that's not the way I learned it. And we looked at other additions and there was a mom, no, he mentions Jews and Christians as being your brothers. But because there's people in, in that region of the world that don't want people to think of Jews as brothers.
Right, they just eliminated that. So we have to be very careful. There's also people changing of lab. There's a chapter an edition of the real scene, which has Babs Dr. Pepper nebulizing, the chapter of visiting the grave of the Prophet, they took grave out and put Masjid because they don't like the idea of visiting the grave of the Prophet. So this is this is a piano to NACA, that's what our own I'ma call it being treacherous in how you transmit. And one of the things that prophets ally cinemas reported to upset I mean, it's a more subtle in its Sahih transmission but the meaning is sound and our Aloma transmitted emammal Bay happy Ramadan others Ahmed goes first Mr. Mohammed and
an Imam will be happy and others transmit this it has a lot of burrup but the prophet SAW SM was reported to have said Yamato had a demon Cooley hellephant Rue du Lu, that this religion will be carried in each generation by all of our good people that come after us health is negative if it has to skin over the iron letter. It's negative thought or common bad health with a sukoon if it has color with a bounce, the Fatah then it's it's good. They're good people. So the prophet SAW him said good people would carry this religion from every generation
who were upright, just people, young funa and who
they would
get rid of the the info nanotechnology for violin, the
decontextualize ation of extremists taking things out of context. They will negate that. So when they hear somebody quoting a verse, they'll say that's out of context
when to Holland multiline and the plagiarisms of people trying to undermine the religion
with that wheel and jailene and the interpretations of ignorant people. So that's the role of the oma. So,
you know, just as an example.
This is one of my bats from my teacher,
Chef Ahmed dbrand, who's also teacher chef Abdullah Ali, he was a student of yacine Alpha Dan is one of the last really
Maha detune in in Mecca. And we used to visit him whenever we want to make and read with him. But these are his These are called f bat. So these are his f bat and this is bacteria.
So with the Jo hora johannah Toshi, which was written by Mr. Moloch Donnie, great Maliki as Harry scholar, it was taught not as hard.
It still is.
That this is he relates it shakaama jabber
related from yacine and Danny
who was called moderator haramain. he relates it from Imam and mahallesi
who related from Ahmed bin shrimp session fealty
to madonie so he went from Mauritania to Medina, who related from most of our been father had been my ministry and fealty and Maliki and Abdi that evening Ibrahim Allah Allah Al Maliki and Mohammed bin al Hassan had banana great Moroccan scholar and Abbey Abdullah Mohammed bin Abdi ceramah banana el fassi from Morocco first and Mohammed this ceremony and other bark even use parameters are Pani, a great Maliki scholar in Egypt and ignore Abul Hassan Ali Mohammed bin man, a jury, one of the students of Ibrahima LA County great Monica scholar, Trudy and Elif are bardhan Ibrahim and Harun Allah Al Maliki. So there's a chain to Imam
Lakhani in the Joe hora just to give you an example. And
so you studied with a teacher, this is another this is a ijazah this is like a diploma. That is from another one of my teachers who actually wrote a commentary on the Joe Hara a very large commentary on it. And this is his
This is his ijazah to me, and then they
they did it with witnesses, so that you don't say, Oh, I got from so and so once he dies, right people may allow give him a long life.
But and he put the job on me as well, which is as soon as like a graduation. This was actually his job. So I work today for that reason.
So, in conclusion,
what I want to
read from very quickly is Mr. Ravi Hani, who died in 502. He's one of the teachers by books of Imam ghazali, a moment of bizarrely memorize this book.
It's the foundation of his ethical theory, a beautiful book on ethics. He says in here lashay ojibwa, an assault on men more art and more sadena Laurie acity beloeil me there is nothing more important for government,
then to have some type of quality assurance for who becomes leaders in knowledge.
Fundamental if Lally be her young tissue or shower, because when knowledge becomes confused, evil becomes widespread way up through Ashura and you will see evil people multiply well jacobina nesea trabajos what an alpha and you will see mutual animosity and hatred begin to emerge amongst the hearts of people well, that he got an A serve as our bar. The reason for that is because political leadership leadership
is a four types MBR The first is the profits inside Bahati that Benny is set up, they assume it said that they used to lead them see as a means to lead. And and the route comes from training a horse because people have an animal knifes and so the Sasa are the ones that are supposed to help them to learn to control their animal knifes
right until they become human beings. That's why you have law of functions. When people are human beings. You don't need the policemen are there just to make sure the odd character that's not behaving like a human being, he deals with him. But generally in a civil society where people are educated and human beings, the police have very little to do.
Right? But when people are are behaving like animals, and obviously, social circumstances create animals, right? People say oh, that's just their nature. No, you take a monkey and you put a monkey in a cage that's very small with other monkeys also
are killing each other.
Humans are their animal nature is not different in that way, if you put people in very unhealthy circumstances, they will begin to behave in a different way that it's their fifth or nature. You change those circumstances and their nature will flourish.
People are not aggressive by nature, this whole idea that humans are aggressive by nature, most of you have never even been in a fight in your lives. Except when you were little kids. Right? You walk around, people aren't aggressive, but you step on their toes, they'll get aggressive.
You know, you run somebody off on the road, he's gonna get angry. And if he's not, well, he might get really angry and try to shoot you.
But if you don't bother him, generally, he's not gonna bother you. You know, you go to Palestine, and you take people's land. Yeah, they're gonna get angry.
You know, somebody comes into your house moves you out, moves all your furniture out, puts you on the front lawn.
And then if you start lobbing rocks through the windows, and they're like, what's wrong with those people out there? A bunch of animals
does that make any sense? Yeah, they're gonna be upset. You know, you change the property line on your neighbor's see how neighborly he is. Tear down his fence and extend your property maybe 10 feet into his suddenly that smiles off his face. He's not waiting. Good morning, Bob. How are you? You know, he might be loading up is 12 gauge.
Right? And then the police come? Well, it's an unfortunate situation, you know, but the guy probably shouldn't have extended his fence into the right. I mean, they can understand when a guy loses it in those situations. They used to have in this country marriages, crimes of passion. Somebody came in found the spouse with another person in their bed, and they lost it and killed them both or something like that. People got off for that.
Right now they don't because there's no more Hara the the hair is gone. So I was like, okay, you're with Bob. Now. That's alright, I'll see you later.
But that's the way it used to be.
So the first or the profits will hook Mohamed el casa, will ama and their authority is over the elect and the common people. What does that mean? House and the house
are the notables. Every society has people through education through wealth, through accomplishment through achievement, they enter into the Naba and this idea of total egalitarianism is just rubbish. It's a lie. It's never been true. It will never be true. It's just a simple life. We live in a hierarchical world it is the nature of the world. The thing the challenge is spiritually not to hold people below you in contempt. I mean, below you not spiritually because they might be above you spiritually. This is one of the paradoxes of this reality is the illiterate streetsweeper could be closer to God than the PhD.
Doctor who discovered a cure for cancer.
We don't know that and that's why you don't hold people in contempt. But the idea that there are not no there are Butler's in the White House.
Right. And this is the way the world works. And every society has the communist tried to create a gala terian society, they just created the same monstrosity.
They had their elite that had their caviar and vodka when everybody else wasn't, you know, eating very well. So it's always like that just read Animal Farm. So whole stories in there, right? George Orwell, the pigs all animals are created equal, but some are more equal than others. Right That was a little addendum added in later.
So
Vahidi him about him so that the prophets have control over the inward authority over the inward and the outward When will that and then the political rulers will hook mahoma dava hero ha see what I'm doing about any him their authority is on the outward of the elect and the common people but not their inward so they have control over our outward they can tell us you have to pay taxes but they can make us like it
because that's your inward.
But if a prophet tells you to pay zakat, and you don't like it, your Eman if you're paying it, but you're angry about it, your Iman is something's wrong with it. Because you should be happy to do that. Because he has authority over your internal states as well.
And then he says well who come out Oh, now he means like the llama the people that know how to apply the sacred law
In its circumstances, these are the IRA hoobler. These are the, you know, Plato would have called them the philosophers he uses the word hakama, which Hakeem is the wise one, so the sages, and then there's the sages will help him out a bow out and aloha saw, their authority is over the internal states of the elect, spiritually led because you can have politically lacked, so you can have an illiterate person who's from the hospital. This is one of the secrets of our religion. election is not limited to the outward meanings, you can have the the Hossa that are the elect of God. And then over everybody, and and it can be an illiterate person, like, as he's at the bar or something like
that.
That's and that's why I don't hold people in contempt because you don't know who they are. With God, you just don't know don't have contempt for people, respect them, but also acknowledge the hierarchy, that people that we are supposed to have the decorum of respecting age.
Age has rights over us. If somebody is older than you, you don't treat them like you're Hey, buddy, slap them on the back. If he's got gray hairs, and you're a young kid, that's not appropriate behavior.
Right. The prophet SAW him said he is not among us who does not respect the aged
or have compassion on the youth. So the old have to have compassion on the young, when they see them slipping when they say, Oh, I remember I used to do that not get in that, you know, you get these kind of 5060 year old men who had terrible use, but then they become very pious, and suddenly they're wagging their fingers at everybody forgetting what they were like when they were 20
right, this kind of
sanctimonious piety
and, and and then he says, well, wow. And then there's the preachers. And we could add to these people, the newscasters. The propaganda is the op ed writers, all those type people
will hook mahoma bow up and allama and they have control of the internal states of the common people and that's why they're the most dangerous the war our
Salah Hill and be marotti Emily, how do you see asset if you want to rectify the world, it's to ensure the quality of these four and how it relates to the masses.
In order for the the the AMA to fulfill their function
towards the the hustler and in order for the elect to fulfill their function towards the AMA. We all have a purpose.
Well facade to houfy actually that he can and the corruption the world happens when it's turned upside down.
When a maturity cut Marotta Mutasa de Lille Hekmati barrois v. terashima. Homeowners Amityville in Maine, Harriet Tubman home when
the who
comes forward to teach wisdom and to preach was not guarded and the quality of those people was not guarded. A group of people elected themselves to take leadership in knowledge without having the requisite
ability
for that, to be jolly him began to struggle to be an AMA and because of their ignorance, they innovated in the religion and they diluted the common people was stege level B ham and fatten were yassa. And they also benefited because people get worldly benefit. And also leadership Jah being in a position of power.
What do you do when an Imam Masada Timmy Masha, karate him know whom, and they found from the common people help because of the relationship because they're really they're not refined people. They're not elect spiritually. And so the people that are are and again, you can have spiritually you can have people in the highest positions that are the lowest of the low there ama, spiritually. They might be a hustler in their lab, but there are ama in there button. And then you have people that are ama they're, they're from the common people in their outward but they're from the hosta in their inward. So you can't see this in black and white terms. It's very sophisticated way of viewing the
world.
For kulu Corinne and era Shaka de every birds of a feather flock together. Come on sir hanafis but acara like the dung beetle who likes to hang out with the scorpion.
Well for the Hopi daddy got
europen masand moonset Dutton and then they open doors that were closed What if it will be has to tour on muslera and they, they remove curtains that had been hanging? Well thurible menza Taha saw and they saw the rank and stature of the elect philosophy they have been waka hottie so they achieve these positions in utter shamelessness
or be Mafi him in a Shara Shara for better or una Ma and because they were evil, they they claim the real onomah were innovators
will come home and they may taxi rob them. If you saw Bernie Soltani him, rapaciously stealing their authority means that a 10 fee mechanic him for a hobby. They diluted their followers hot water Olympia Fathi him.
They, they diluted their followers to the point where they even stepped on the scholars with their feet.
And this happened many times in our history. Mr.
Bharani he was was stomped to death in a Masjid
by these OHA they they put him on tabari they attacked his house. The whole have the Hannah Buddha in it's mentioned in his he mentions in his history, they literally attacked his house.
And, and because of all of this
great destruction is is is given birth to and oppression becomes widespread.
So we're going to go shadow on the hill and stop