Hamza Yusuf – The Forgotten Science – Understanding Islamic Inheritance Law
AI: Summary ©
The speakers discuss the importance of the heart in Islam, with a focus on the challenges faced by Muslims in modern society, including the lack of awareness about rules and the use of vague language. They stress the need for people to convince themselves of their actions, privacy, and proper distribution of wealth and mortality. The legal system and the end-of-life and death laws are also discussed, emphasizing the importance of trust and fiduciary agreements, learning about the tax system, and the need for a judge's decision in light of the pandemic.
AI: Summary ©
hamdu lillah wa Salatu was Salam ala see then what have you been our Rasulillah? The woman 100 in. First of all, thank you, the people online also, we actually had an incredible outpouring of interest in this. And it is a it's a fascinating topic. And it's a topic that obviously concerns every one of us because Kulu come, you know, my utopia, like we're all going to die in a coma utopian, whom a utopian, you know,
Allah subhanaw taala, has written, decreed for the children of Adam, coolness, and that petrol mode will all taste death, which is a beautiful expression in Arabic, because it's an experience, it's not something that you can describe. It's like, you can't really describe the taste of strawberries, somebody has to taste, strawberries and death is the same. In fact, there's a German philosopher, Martin Heidegger that I studied a long time ago, in a graduate course. And he actually, he really thought that
the only single original act that you will do in your life is to die. And he said, everything else you're going to learn from everybody else, but he said, death will be uniquely yours, nobody can do that for you or teach you how to do it. You can see other people die, but you will have your unique death. So he actually that was central to his philosophy, when he called a being unto death, like to embrace your death and, and accept that we, yesterday in the hotbar, I mentioned the Hadith, the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam said, in a hadith
in the hadith of Kuru tous that these these hearts oxidize, and are there any doctors in the room just curious, no. One will type medicine to practice
research scientist, okay, so so now they know the oxidation, you know, these free radicals and they really wreak havoc on the human heart. So the province and the Quran also kettlebell around adda Peruvian, you know, so the Quran actually says there's rain, which is one of the words in classical Arabic for the rest that develops on metal. So the Quran states that the heart oxidizes the prophetic idea states that the heart oxidizes. And so, the Sahaba said Magilla you know, how how do you polish it because, you know, in order to prevent oxidation, you have to polish the metal. And he said cathedra to Dicker and mouth, will tear out or Quran by doing much remembrance of death. And
also, T Dawa of Quran recitation of the Quran. So this really is a death meditation because were we all the prophets, I said, I'm warned us of not allowing, you know, time to go by without having a will.
And,
you know, in the early part of Islam, there was the WA sia which because the rules, Nisa hadn't come down yet. And it's interesting that it's in the chapter of women, inheritance that the fact that Allah revealed in the chapter women because women prior to Islam were were, you know, it was not a good situation for the women and in the people that were added on that the jehadi did not consider for inheritance. Most of them were women. So the concern for making women giving women some kind of independence in their wealth was very important. And so hopefully, you know, we have a legal expert on on both the Islamic foreign aid or Feraud, the inheritance laws Maori, and then also very proud
to say that
we have our brother Abdullah Qureshi, who is a graduate of zaytuna. Came here out of high school. His father has been a major supporter of the college, but he went from here to he was shortlisted at Harvard Law, but he got into also top law University Georgetown, and graduated recently. And so he has a special interest in this subject. And so we're very happy to have him it's nice to have a student who's now no longer in the role of a student but in the role of a productive member of our society. So happy to have him here with me.
We also have Chef Marshall, who is a very
serious chef, a scholar and
I think one of the best scholars we have in the United States and we and we have also chef Mohammed boo Faris, who is an expert in Mauna Kea law and also the and also studied the Tariqa laws of inheritance, which traditionally was the, that was the area they tested you on, you know, to see a scholars Wait, they would test them on the inheritance because
even though the math is basic, you get into some very tricky problems and trying to work out how to resolve the portions. So I'm going to
just
here to hand it over
to you, and then we can you know,
Zack gonna fit in. So Hamza, it's really an honor to be here with all of you. And
you know, I was
my brother, no one was giving us a tour of the campus before And subhanAllah it's so amazing. When I was in law school here at Berkeley. You were just getting started. And you know, the first building I remember walking down and going to visit with the moms aid and to see how far it's come in, in such a short time mashallah, it's incredible till fifth, my last Python to accept and continue to bless you in this institution. I was reminded, you know, the Ionesco Malka demo, I thought, like people know, all of the contributions that you've made to the Muslim American community, but I don't think they realize what's going on here yet.
So, these people do Mashallah. Everybody here in the room. So that's amazing. The other thing I was thinking about on the way here is penalized. We're talking about inheritance. And this conversation.
It's so rare, these conversations, you know, the Prophet saw seven talks about, oh, what to say and use them and omit it like this, this conversation and discussions just aren't talked about very much in our candidates, half of knowledge, and that it's half of knowledge, like, life is one half and death is the other. Like, so. So, so I was thinking about, like, we're talking about inheritance. And, you know, he also mentioned that Allah, Allah, Allah will MBA that the scholars are the heirs of the prophets. And so, you know, we're able to take, essentially, everybody here and joining online is, you know, receiving a portion of that inheritance, Inshallah, from this conversation and
benefiting from you and the institution. So. So we're very excited. We have a lot of questions. We're gonna try to get through some of the questions that you know, that Abdullah, and I've been working together for the last year and a half, to kind of study these questions about how we apply inheritance in the United States. And so I want to sort of present some both theory and practical questions about, you know, inheritance and its application in the United States, but maybe to start, if we could just talk to kind of give a frame of, as you mentioned, and certainly how sort of when these ideas were revealed how like radically transformative, they were, from the jaggedy system to,
you know, the Islamic inheritance system and some of the wisdoms that underlie that. Well, yeah, I think, you know, women were more like chattel to the aristocratic women have always had a high position, you know, even in Janelia. So, there's some exaggeration, I think, in amongst the some of the Ummah about how bad it was, for the but the aristocratic women were very powerful. They always are in every, in every civilization, you know, women find a way, women have always found ways of expressing their power, you know, Cades, indicato, nauseam. I mean, one of the things that they say about that is that that, you know, when women are prevented from a kind of
ability to assert their power, openly, they find other strategies of doing it, and that's where the kid comes. And as one of the Moroccan faqih had said, you know, Kate is also an attribute of God. So it's not necessarily always a negative thing. It's it's, it's people find ways to assert their authority.
And so, but many women, especially the more impoverished, and we shouldn't forget that Arabia was a very impoverished area. I mean, Mecca, was a fruitful area and Medina was a fruitful area, but many people lived in what we would call today abject poverty, there was a lot of starvation. Clothes were very expensive textiles, these types of things. So a lot of people were rags, we know about Sahaba that used to, they would run after the prayer back to their home and then the Prophet asked him why they would do and they said, the wife needed the, his ridaz to cover her nakedness because she didn't have enough clothed cloth. So we kind of forget about, you know, the environment we're
associate we're so spoiled and in such a cornucopia of well
off. And that's one of the signs that the Prophet told us about the latter days is that there would be an explosion of wealth. And one of the things he said was that there would be a lot of food, which is very interesting because historically the Muslims were encouraged by the prophesy Sam to have at least a year's supply of dry foods in their homes. And he kept that it would be exhausted during the year because he would give it out to the Quran domesticate, but it was his sunnah to actually have
supplies in the home for for famine, because famine was so common in many places until very recently. I mean, it still is in certain places, but it's not because of in the past. I mean, it's that has to do with just bad distribution and neglect from. I mean, 200 years ago, Algeria, sent bumper crops to France during one of their famines. So the Muslims used to send aid to non Muslim countries, we know that Turkey sent a huge
several ship loads of wheat to Ireland during the potato famine that was prevented from getting there by the British because they, they they didn't want to look bad. So they actually stopped the ships, so the Turks had to smuggle food in. So you know, we don't think about that type of difficulty that people had. So inheritance, wealth is always a problem. Woman, you use a shorthand of say, you know, the knifes is Shaheed by nature, and Chef Shah is Boulogne Chedid. You know, and when Allah says, Woman you will. So it's, you know, it's in a passive form, like the one who doesn't prevent himself but he is prevented from his own greed. You know, so greed is part of human nature.
And people get very strange around money. You know, the Arabs say, a man who shot people, knifes, you know, wealth is the blood brother of the soul. So there are people that find it harder to part with wealth than they do with their own lives. Which is why sometimes we have suicides, when people lose vast amounts of wealth, it's as if they died, because they've lost their wealth. So I think it's it's important to remember that, but the women I think, did suffer a lot. One of the things that Islam did, which is very interesting is the dowry,
which,
in Europe, that was the opposite. So they gave the woman and the purpose of the dowry really was to let her start with some financial independence coming into the thing. So I think there are a lot of rules and Shediac that were designed to give women a type of independence, because the dominant dependence that a woman, especially women, in the childbearing years, the dominant dependence that they have on men is, is money that reaches a woman at an ISA, you know, they're the maintainers of women. And that is a natural order. And it has been for millennia.
And so the idea of giving a woman some type of financial independence, one of the things that fascinates me, and even though there's a feed off about this, but in the monarchies hidden about Tina, for a woman is generally unless she's like a an aristocratic type woman, then then the husband has to provide help for her in the house. But for normal women, she can actually charge her husband for domestic service. And I think it's only recently in the last 40 or 50 years that economists started thinking about.
It actually women's contribution to the GDP inside the homes, like it wasn't really factored in, they just took all this labor, that's done without any monetary exchange, whereas Islam, you know, was was already considering this, you know, 1400 years ago, it's one of the many things that the West kind of catches up on it takes them usually about 1000 Maybe give or take two or 300 years, like slip on shoes.
So I guess building upon that
the the system of inheritance with the federal aid comes and mandates you know, in addition to the obviously the discretionary, we'll see a portion of that a person is entitled to at least the residuary portion is is in predetermined shares. Right the thought of that Yeah. The world for dinars, harbor fluoride. So though, the reason I think that is like my own family, you know, my on my grandparents side, they're very wealthy. It wasn't true for the my generation, but for my grandparents generation, and my great grandparents, but the money was destroyed by by fighting over the wills and lawyers took a huge amount of
My maternal grand father's legacy, because they split over the will. And I think that's one of the things that destroys families is fighting over. I mean, you must see Lucia all the time. And so I think that's part of the hikma of because this is one of the few areas in the Sharia there is some difference of opinion, but it's relatively small, it's remote, it's remote, and, you know, like residual like Maliki's put it into the public, you know, debate on MMA, things like that. But they're very small and don't occur that often. The majority, this is an area where the Quran clearly defines, you know, who gets a half? Who gets a third who gets one eight, who gets 1/4? Who gets two
thirds? I mean, all that's defined very clearly. And then it's also if you look, it's, it has a, you know, that the primary inheritors are to preserve that, that solid family that's, that's, you know, that's very important. And then the secondary ones, it's, it's the extended family, because I think a lot of people, you know, Vivek Ramaswamy, has been talking a lot about how central the nuclear family is, the nuclear family is already a broken family, like people don't think about that. The nuclear family is is is the remnant of what was once real family, you know, and Zimmerman in his book on on civilization and family, he argues that there's three types of families, there's, there's
a clan family, which governments do not like, because they present threats to clan, to governments, you know, when you have like the, the magenta de clan in Afghanistan, you know, that's, that is a serious clan, and they have clients, you know, so, or the Caetani, in, in Morocco was a threat to the government, I mean, the money that he actually had one of them killed, because he was so worried about, you know, the threat that he he presented to, so and but then you have what he called the domestic family. And that is, is the best family, which is an extended family, with uncles and aunts and cousins, because it takes the burden of government in taking care when families break down.
Whereas the nuclear family was the worst form of according to Zimmerman. He wrote this in 1947. He was a Harvard sociologist. And he said the nuclear fan was the worst form of family, because the burden on the government when it broke up, was immense. Right. And so, Islam is there to preserve, you know, one of my teachers said that the Sharia the fundamental MCSA of the Sharia, that I mean, we have the six, but of all of them, really after Dean, the most important one is preservation of family. Because if that breaks down, everything else breaks down. And so if you look at the Hadith, of when when IBLEES sends his his Sariah out, right, so when they come back, he said, what Mother
Son act, what did you do, he sets out to kill the kid, they said Masatoshi, and you didn't do anything. And then one of them says, my truck to my truck to hats off to Ben, who were Boehner zpagetti. And he said, Nana, and the Navajo, so I thought about that headin I realized, you know, he is the, he's a metaphysician, you please. So he was going to the he was going to first causes like murder, you didn't do anything stealing, you didn't do anything, you know. But you do that you get everything else, you get all of that social dysfunction. And that's what he knew. And so inheritance is fundamentally to preserve the family from from breaking up over something as insignificant as
property. Yeah, in terms of our hearts.
So
how I think in America,
in particular, what's interesting is that they say about, you know, some 30, or maybe 40% of people have created an estate plan.
I think anecdotally in the Muslim community, it's way lower. And it's an interesting irony given our, our, you know, our tradition is so focused in on thinking about death and remembering death in every capacity. And yet, at the same time, there's, you know, this just lack of awareness about the rules and understanding the rules. I want to shift a little bit to some of the wisdom behind some of the rules and the challenges that people have in understanding the rules and sort of today's modern context.
So the first you know, I think the the first question maybe even just foundationally is these rules that come in the Quran that are so explicit, perhaps the most explicit of all the injunctions in the Quran?
Are they binding upon us as Muslims in America in 2023? Or are these things open to reinterpretation like I'm not you know, I feel first of all these these are generally not sort of Quran there's no
No, you know, there's no room for HD had female older than us, like when you have, you know, a text that's that's unequivocal in the Quran you know it's it's not the de la vida prayer world if it's if it's if it's like that then then we have no opinion if it's a Qatari rule like the Quran in other words a real world just for people maybe haven't don't know these this terminology so the Quran everything in it is but that yet the world if it's mutawatir the 10 carat so that means that we know this is from God, but then the Delilah or the significations of the verses Delilah tell and fall. There's differences of opinion because language is ambiguous very often, you know,
the, if you read the verse in Surah circuses about the man who came, you know, Roger Stone,
you know, yes, I'm an opsin. Medina. Right. So so so in one verse in that verse, it could be that he came, he came and he was from the furthest part of the city. But yeah, seeing clarifies this mobian Because that was Maupin. So in Yes, and it says wotja monox. And Medina T Raggio. Dunya. Sal. So there's an example where something that's ambiguous in the first one, like if I say Jow, Rajpura min. Surya. So you could live in Berkeley, but you came here. You're originally from Syria. But if I say German Surya Raju lon, it's very clear that Oh, you came from Syria, you see. So in one, it's more of him in another, it's mobian. So sometimes things are ambiguous. And other times they're
clear.
When it is unclear, there's room for SD hot. And that's why we have a lot of difference of opinion. And I believe that's from the acid of Shediac. Because it had got one he could have gave us absolutely unambiguous legal statutes for everything. And we would have been robots, you know, just programmed. But language by its nature is ambiguous, because it forces us to think it forces us to do it yet. So it's the hardest part of our religion and a very central part of our religion. So most of these verses are unambiguous fractions. Yeah, there's no, there. There's no room for reinterpretation of what half means, or what one six means or one on 1/8 You can't, you can't
misinterpret these things. And, and for that reason, to go against these things, means you're going against the null sort of Quran and, and putting yourself in a very dangerous to the law, which is to do the law. If you reject it, you're outside of Islam, if you just don't want to follow it, because you're in Masia, you're still a Muslim, but you're putting yourself in a very dangerous place with God. Now, there are considerations in our time, which are important one, because we are reduced to families that don't have the same type of social structures. So the Wilaya of a man for a woman in the xojo, right, so the PERT The reason there's a wily is because women are very often oppressed,
there are men who are oppressed, if they estimate, you know, that it's anywhere between 20 and 30% of marriages that have domestic problems, the men are actually suffering more than the women. But but these are all debatable, because we, you know, it's hard to, but in most cases, it's the woman that suffers because one, she has physical disadvantages with the male. All you have to do is watch a female cop try to bring down a male, you know, criminal, and you'll see the disadvantage that even women who are trained to do these things have a difficult time. So it's very easy for men to oppress women physically let out Luna I mean, Allah uses a word where that comes from Allah, Allah from the
muscle, you know, let's go to Hoonah. You know, don't like oppress them in that way, especially in you know, because we we've been given this dosha and it is a data, it's not a big difference, you know, but it is there. And it's a data show of empty hands. It's, it's not, it's not there, to oppress, it's there to serve and help. And so that's really important for us to remember that, that that that
you know, that women do have these things. So, because of that, I have seen many cases in the United States, where I clearly believe a woman was oppressed because of following the letter of the law of the Sharia. And this is where his son comes in. And so I'll give you an example. I had a discussion with Chef Abdullah because we were talking about community property in the United States. And he said have a bone and I said, Well, let me explain to you how they view it. So they view
As a woman's works 20 years in a home taking care of a husband should be clarified community property for Yeah. Just the idea here in California or in one of the worst. Yeah.
I know, it's generally prevalent on the West Coast of the United States and certain jurisdictions where the idea is all the wealth that's acquired inside of a marriage is deemed to be the community to be the community. And when there is a divorce or a death, then the the 5050 split would occur. Yeah. So it's actually and this is why it was. So in Sharia a woman's wealth is her wealth. Khadija, whatever she earned was hers about the law. And the prophets eyes him whatever he earned was his in their relationship, right. So Sharia, that's what it says, If a woman has her own private business, she makes her money. And what's interesting is a woman's Well, in a marriage is purely
discretionary. So she has no obligations of maintenance over a man, unless she chooses, like, if the man gets sick, and she can work, but that's de gratis. I mean, that's from the goodness of her heart, and she'll get a reward for that. But, and so, in California, because a man's out there working like, you know, I mean, comedians, this is the fodder for comedians, you know, these these, these men who have like $100 million, and then the wife leaves them and takes half of it, right. And she all she was, was on his arm at those galas and things like that, right. So that chandelier just said, you know, it's a volume and I and so I explained to him how they view it like that. Here's
somebody who's enabling this man to be out there, and she creates the home and the domestic environment that renews him to go out. Yeah, and then she's probably ironing his shirts. And I mean, not these billionaires, they've got maids to do that. But, you know, in most situations, she's doing the right underlying, yeah, the theory underlying it. And so when it breaks down, you know, she should get half of it. So I explained that to him, and he said, You know, it's that Sanan, like from an SSN. And I mean, there's different types of SSN. But the basic idea behind it is where the letter of the law can be, can actually end up being oppressive or unjust. The fuck, he sees something in
the situation that takes him outside of the letter of the law, and, and he, and he does something, because he deems it, you know, it's something, I mean, some say, You're a Bronco, you know, it's something that he understands in his own mind, but really can't express it. But there is an intuitive element to SDSN, where this doesn't seem right. And so so in that case, they can actually end up
you know, determining a situation where the woman, you know, should get more perhaps, like, I've seen women lose the home, because the man bought the home. And she's a believer, and he just says, Well, I bought the home, it's my home. That to me, if especially in a nuclear family situation, that's a warning, because I have seen women just literally end up without a home. And so I think these are situations where we really need
our own civil courts. I mean, one of the beauties of the United States and the Jews really understand this, and they utilize it. So the Jewish community has their own civil courts, for devout Jews, where they actually have rabbis system, exactly. And we could do this. And these are binding legally, if you want to sign you have to accept the arbitration. And so you will so higher, you know, arbitration is a good thing to reconcile and, and come to that. So I, you know, I think there is cases where we have to be really careful. I have two thoughts before Abdullah will jump in the first on the on the idea of community property in London,
you know, the it's usually present or Islamic inheritance. And we'll talk about, you know, what's in following. People often say Islam, Islamic inheritance rules are unfair to women. And what's interesting is if you take the community property rule, and you take that same example, and you invert it, the woman who works in California,
and the husband, let's say, doesn't work. under Islamic law, she would get 100%. Right? It's her money, right? But under California's progressive,
seemingly progressive rules, he actually gets 50%. Right? Right. So it's like, it's often important to it goes both ways. It goes, it goes both one way, you know, and so if we invert that, that's important. And then I think when what's really to noteworthy on this point is like moving to practice, you know, the fractions that you said, they're called to a versus there's no room to figure to reinterpret what is a half or what is the third one is a fourth. But you do have the ability to determine what
are we dividing up? Like, what is the dedica? Right before we get started? Yeah. And there's a husband and a wife, who actually owns what, like, that's the first conversation that we have exactly. Is this 5050? Yes. 100 Zero is that 7525? Like, you can't got jewelry? It's her is. Yeah. So, so defining that you can't, you can't define fractions of stereotypical statement. I apologize, you know, but I mean, many women have gold jewelry, especially our Muslim women have 24 karat gold jewelry, which is quite valuable, you know, so yeah, that's a good point. What? Because is the car, you know, did he give her the car, then? It's her car? Yeah, yeah, it's not so and most of the time,
is, you're gonna imagine that conversation that was never taken place. Right? So now when we first spell, it's a really good point. It's there's no way to know what the fractions are dividing, right? Without having that conversation even internally. Yeah, that's a really good point, is that the area then that he would say has the most room to
adjust for differences in today's talk, give you an example. I know many situations where when they're family situations where the the sons are very well to do and the women aren't.
They don't need the the inheritance, whereas the woman does. In those type situations, I think there should be some kind of arbitration because, you know, in our tradition, and I don't know about the Hanafi method, but in the modern humans have, you know, if the inheritors are in agreement, yeah, then they can, you know, they can come to an agreement with the person who's doing the will, where one of the inheritors gets more than the others. So let's take this question. Okay.
Because this is like the question that's presented, I think, out of all of the questions that I get in practice.
The first question is the first idea, you'll see them will love your daddy complete daiquiri mental health, right, this share of two to one male to female, yeah, which is the Son, the Son and the daughter, son and the daughter. Yeah, and I mean that, again, the woman's wealth is discretionary. The man by by binding by Shediac, is going to have to take care of that, that daughter, if she doesn't have anybody to care for her, that becomes a legal obligation of his, he's legally obligated to care for the parents if they become destitute and need care. I mean, there's a lot of
obligations on the wealth of men that do inherited, inherited wealth that don't exist with the women. I mean, they're really given much more free rein, their wealth is discretionary. I mean, other than zakaat, they pays a cot, but outside of zakaat, their wealth is discretionary. Whereas the man has the py, he's got the obligations of maintenance. He has a lot, you know, and these things, again, things are breaking down. I mean, these worked very well, in traditional societies. We're not in a traditional society. And, and I think that's where the questions come. You know, is there room for HDR? I mean, the argument is essentially that that, where is that there is no legal
enforcement mechanism today. Yeah, for the girl for the daughter to go to the body and say myself, but there are certain things like, for instance, we have 1.7 billion Muslims say, Europe and America become Muslim. Now we have 2.7 billion Muslims. You know, what do we do create another Mecca, so that people can make hods there as well or 10 men because we can't do that there are certain things that we just do not have. And this is why is still bar is foundational in our tradition, what you're able to do, you know, it's what you're able to do. And I think there are ways of getting around. And this is where he'll come in. And there are ways of getting around things. And this is for the folks
behind the bush that he's doing to work out. And unfortunately, and this is part of why we in the United States have to create world class institutions where we can develop our own scholars and our own wish that he doing for because one of the rules of the Mufti they're really not supposed to give if ta outside of their own area. They shouldn't, you know, the Mufti should live in the area, he should be local, because he knows the customs. You know, when Adam Adam hakama, like customers is has legislation
to a certain degree. So these are important considerations. But this is the ad and it's difficult to do and like I said, you know, lastly had a few more than us if they're if the nurse is copy rude and a Delilah, there's no wish they had in it. There are situations where the topic and Manav which is, you know, where, where the the fapy is looking at the at the minute it does, does the hokum apply in this situation, that those situations, and that's the most difficult form of HD HUD, and that's not just for the folks that can be for a doctor that can be like everybody does that type of wish they had if it's related to their thing. So there are
situations. I mean, I'll give you an example. It's basically image Miley, that a woman cannot marry a non Muslim male. And I could, I looked for a difference of opinion on this issue because it's a big problem in our community. I could not find any difference of opinion on that issue. But there is in even ABI Shaybah, there is in the Mossad enough, there is a Hadith from Ali, that he permitted in Iraq, a 100 keytab, a key Tabea, who became Muslim and her husband remained in his faith, but he wasn't opposed to her, he let her stay with the man. And he said, how could we have, he has more right to her. So chef abdomen Bay, use that as an issue he had in the West that if a woman becomes
Muslim, and her husband remains Christian or Jew,
that if he's not opposing her faith, then she can stay with him. So that's, you know, a situation where he actually had a nurse, he wasn't, you know, even though it's, it's a, it's weak that not the Hadith, but the actual opinion, is not an opinion that that the vast majority of Otomo went with. And it's not the gym hall or the format hubs. were opposed to that. So but we have seen women who have left Islam because they were told they have to divorce there. I've seen that personally. And then I saw we had a situation of a woman in Philadelphia who became Muslim, and they told her, You have to divorce your husband because he was Christian. And somebody there told her to call me and I
gave her that photo from Sheikh Abdullah, she stayed in Islam, she was actually a lawyer, she stayed in Islam, and then six months later, her husband became Muslim. So we gained two and we could have lost one, you know, or two, you know, so, so, those are examples where, you know, the, the Manam, the, where the hokum hinges what it hinges upon in the circumstance. So, so say not all mod when he did not implement the HUD punishment, of of theft during a Amara murder when there was a Madonna, he didn't implement the HUD punishment. People say he's he, he didn't he suspended the hokum of Allah. No, he saw that the hokum in this situation was to do this. It wasn't to apply that How come it was
to apply another hokum, so that's very important to understand that, that that's why we need which they don't like, we need to pull that and folk Aha, that can do these things. Like I'm not capable of doing it. But but you know, somebody like Chef Abdullah, Bin Vidya does this on a regular basis. And those are the type of Aloma that we need that are able to make these momentous decisions. Now, there is an opinion also, and this is in the reality of, of
Imam at Haramain. He actually says that in the latter days, very little will be known as the Sharia in in those cases, it's the fundamental principles that should be preserved. Just you know that people are going to lose the Sharia and went when he said, the first thing to go would be the thorough job. It's clearly not the knowledge of the fryer. Right? Because the knowledge of the FARA is there. And but what is it? I think it's the implementation and the knowledge that this is something we should all be concerned about. I think that's what we're losing. Because I think a lot of
people no longer divide their wealth when they die according to these rules. So yeah, I mean, and one of the Hadith promises and mentions also the, the will come a time where you won't find some somebody who can do the fighting. Yeah, can do that. Yeah. You know, today, like you're saying, it's just it's something I don't think just in America, I think across across the globe, across the globe. There's, there's very little implementation, unfortunately.
So we moved,
just going back to practitioners.
In classical society, the obligation on a person was very little right, it was more or less maker will see and make sure that that will see is not it's available. Right, it doesn't
harm the heirs in the chronic shares.
Today, of course, in the West, in America, the default system is not distribution, according to Islamic shares. Its distribution according to the whim of the exegesis, right, or the test. So so for a person living in America, what is actually the obligation on that? Because there's a few different iterations that we could say we could say, perhaps the obligation is, there is no obligation and that it is on the heirs and the executor to make sure that everything after death is distributed properly. No, that's really good point. Yeah. So traditionally, I think that's the way it would have been because
in Muslim Societies, if somebody died, the shares would have just been distributed according to the even today. Yeah, in Muslim society. Yeah. And everybody believed that and didn't have a problem with that. The will see is another thing because they obviously they have a third of that wealth. They have some sort of, as long as they're not chronically like, if they're not sick, I don't know if that's, I think that's agreed upon, isn't it? Yeah. Yeah. So So if it's a model model model of, like cancer, that's terminal, then there's there, it's modular, you know, they can't, they can't, they can't give away all their wealth. But before that, they can, they can give all of it away
before they die, as long as they're healthy. Once they become terminally ill, they still have a third that they have to solve, but they can't start giving all their wealth away. Like some people want to buy their way into paradise. You know, like, they realize, Oh, God, I'm gonna die. And so I'm gonna build a masjid. And we get this a lot, you know? Exactly. And it's, I mean, I think that's a healthy thing. Because, you know,
you know, they say, it's, it's one of the wisdoms of Allah, that we don't have to think about death all the time, because most people wouldn't be able to go to work and realize, yeah, it's very paralyzing. And that's why I think when the Prophet said, do much death meditation, it wasn't in that paralyzing sense, it was in that sense, that just live your life fully like it. Because if, if you forget that you're going to die, your days don't have the kind of weight, you know, if you really wake up, you know, and don't expect to see that evening, you're gonna have a different day, when you say goodbye to your spouse, going out and not knowing if you're going to ever come back,
that's going to be a different goodbye, I think it really will make a life much more fully live by being aware of mortality. And, you know, when I was 17, I was in head on collision had a near death experience. And that's what shook me out of my sleep. You know, like,
whoa, like, I could leave the world anytime, you know, because young people don't often have that awareness. And, and I used to think as you get older, you're gonna think more about death, but actually concluded after a while, that actually people think less about it. And the reason I think that's true is because they get so used to being here.
Like, you've been here, like, for 60 years, you think, you know, where am I going? You know, it's like, every day, you just wake up and it's, well now there's this whole movement of trying to you know, live forever and anti aging. Yeah, anti aging live forever. Like, there's this health Gouda that says live forever. Like really? Yeah. And then there's people chronically froze, they want to freeze the cure for the thing that killed them. Yeah, amazing. So I mean, I don't know anybody that has spent enough time in this place and really thought about this place. Death is one of the great reliefs are which are and Malta Rohatyn, Lehman Cooley Sharon, and there's a dua of the Prophet may
death be the repose from every evil, you know, and so death and multi factor government, that is the gift of the believer, and Jaffa is a beautiful word in Arabic is a special type of gift. So I think, you know, thinking about death and being, you know, really aware of death is is an extremely important thing. In terms of the, you know, that what we were talking about the fraud being distributed, I think now the onus is on the person to make sure, because in the United States, I, you know, if it ends up, you know, in a situation where, you know, there is no will state intestacy rules Yeah, intestine see rules are really complicated. And then you're in probate court, you're in
probate courts, and then the family starts fighting over, you know, what's what, and then the state can can take the wealth as well. And so, so, to follow up on that, I mean, if we look at the progression of the, the revelation of the rules about inheritance, if you look at like the equity of it can be that the common mode in Torah cofina, Lucia, and then once the ayat are revealed, and so it's an ISA, then that obligation was no longer present. Right? Exactly. So now like abrogated, so for us, like because it was all well see, it was yeah, you can do. I mean, what people don't realize you can give all your money away before you die. Sure. And so if you have concerns about your
daughter, I mean, the prophet would not witness what he considered unjust like giving one son something and another son, so it's better that they understand your reasoning behind it and hopefully, if they're good and dutiful children, they won't have a problem with this
Hear about you're talking about? Yeah, like a hit that like giving giving a gift to the daughter in particular? Yeah, I think in particular, because, you know, so I mean, some women are high power, they're doing well and working and everything, but some women, a lot of our community, it's still they're taking care of kids, they're in the homes they're in, and then
they might get a divorce, and then who's gonna take care of, because a lot of times, we have deadbeat husbands, you know, that just don't fulfill their obligations. And we've seen this in our community. So it's a big problem.
And we have situations where, like, parents might know, for example, that their son is not going to take care of exactly like, ya know, your bread and butter of like Jane Austen novels, by, you know, the, the, the father begs the son to take care of the girls, his five girls, you know, and he's in, but then the, you know, they just rationalize it away, oh, he didn't, he couldn't make money, you know, like, he needs just, you know, be there to support them emotionally. And this is what the devil will do, you know, he'll just completely convinced them. I mean, this is a type of, you know, human beings.
You know, the Buddhists have this interesting concept of an existing illusion. So, like, just something that Dr. Cleary talked about, but but, you know, we don't believe in the devil, like, we don't, we don't say, you know, and to be, you know, and then and mentioned, we, he's not part of our, you know, we believe in the other fighter, he will shatter he, but we don't say, I believe in, you know, it's not part of our creed, to say that, you know, and so, in Buddhism, they call that an existing illusion. In other words, it's like you don't give it reality, even though it does exist, but you don't give it a reality. But when you obey the an existing illusion, it becomes a delusion.
And so when you're acting upon the dictates of that existing illusion, you know, because that's, that's why Allah says, Lay your Rana Kabila in horror, do not let him delude you.
Right, he wants you to, to operate on his illusion, because he creates the wahome Like, he tells you, Oh, this is good. You know, she's, you know, she's a beautiful woman, you know, and, and she's inviting you over, just go, it's good. You know, that's the that's the illusion. But once you act on it, now, you're deluded, you've entered into a whole other realm. And so I think it's really important for people to be aware, you know, that
ship on operates, and, and people can convince themselves of the most egregious things in their mind, they can create victimhood where it doesn't exist. Well, I deserve this because this and, you know, or this person, he's doesn't deserve my inheritance. You know, he's never done anything for I'm gonna make sure he doesn't get any, you know, so this this. I mean, there's a vindictiveness Absolutely, people are gonna let them know, I'm gonna write you out of my way. Yeah, it's common. Yeah. I mean, it's common in modern society. And then in, you know, among Muslims, we're not immune to the human emotions. And so, interestingly, like, this is where it comes back to, I think, a
Buddhist question about like, what, what obligation do we have to plan?
You know, some people have a noble intention, which is like my kids, either, they don't deserve it, or they don't need it. Either one, I'm gonna go ahead and make that decision. And so therefore, I'd like to give it all to charity. Like you said, Buy your ticket to do that before they buy the book, but not yet.
It's like, they want to do it. I mean, if their children are really well to do, I mean, there's a case for what for what Yeah, yeah. If the children are well to do if, if they're not, I mean, I think any, you know, it's good to leave something behind. I mean, some of those have been mitotic to Leola to come Surah waka because whoever reads that everyday will never go enter into poverty. You know, so, I mean, and also, you know, you don't have to make sure the seventh generation still well, you know, I mean, there's this obsession with just people. Wealth is something you know, the Prophet didn't fear poverty. He feared for this on my wealth, because it's not a healthy things for people.
You know, a mama Rosati says even wealthy people should not give sumptuous food to their children, because it will accustom them to luxury and it won't be good for their souls, you know, so I think that the pre moderns had a much better understanding about wealth.
So but you know,
There is great wealth in the Muslim community. And there are many very successful Muslims in this country. So I think when the wealth becomes, you know,
huge. I don't know, I, personally, if I had a lot of money, you know that there's a book of wealth by a pre pre Islamic Indian scholar. It's called the Book of wealth. It was actually translated Arabic. I think he taught what I'm loved from from that tradition. But but he said that the world has two types of people people with with too much money and not enough time, and people with time, but not enough money. Yeah. You know, I mean, a billionaire could not even if he spent like $20 million a day or something, I mean, there's just not going to exhaust their wealth, you know. So there's people that really have a lot of wealth and the prophesy, Sam said, you know, if, if, if the
son of Adam had one mountain of gold, he'd only want a second mountain, you know, you get a house and you know, I need to, you know, I need a second house, a vacation house, you get the vacation house? My you know, I need a
Yeah, exactly, exactly. And so it's just an endless kind of thing about money. So as people get older, I think they, they start to realize that and that, you know, it's not all that it's cut out to be. I mean, one of the beauties and this is something that Pope deals with, in his amazing poem, on an essay on man, is it what he argues, is the thing that God has made it equal in the world is not wealth, but access to happiness.
That's why a poor person can be happy. And a rich person can be miserable. Sure, but everybody has equal opportunity in terms of happiness. And that's why the Prophet said, that connect to candlelight ethna. Like being content is a treasure that's inexhaustible. So he put that real happiness was contentment with what you have. And I think the worst thing about our society is they've made poverty ugly, like in traditional societies, poverty was was something like when I went many years ago, in the 1970s, we visited some of the poorest people in southern Morocco. But I saw them as some of the richest people that I ever met, you know, and these are people lived in Adobe
huts, May Allah help our brothers and sisters in Marrakech, you know, that's a great tribulation, but the, you know, that their their treasure was, they would have this stack in the, in their front room of these Adobe houses, no electricity, you know, they would have a stack of blankets, for guests, you know, and the guests were just we slept on the floor with these blank, but that was like, that was like, something, you know, they had these things for their guests. And their food was beautiful, it was good, it was healthy. You know, they, they didn't have a lot of clothes, but they were beautiful clothes. You know, that's poverty with dignity. And our culture erases poverty with
dignity. And so it becomes this kind of degraded, horrible poverty. And that's why it's horrible to be poor in America. But poverty is not the cause of crime.
I've lived in the poorest countries in the world, that the crime that I'm in, I lived in twain that, you know, it's no crime and Twain, but nobody's stealing anything.
So you mentioned the possibility of oak off, and I want to just go follow that thread for a second. Because what happens a lot is, in practice, is if people learn what the shares are, and they say, you know, if I, if I go down this route,
this and this will happen, that's unjust. And so a practitioner might say, well, there's this option of a walk that you can, that you can leave for the family. And they often cite to the mannequin.
And it ends up being using the work, basically, to create an inheritance plan for the family for the family instead of
similar, but the intention there is almost we're trying to contravene the law that has been placed down by Elias, that's something that we should be I wouldn't look at it like, I mean, there are many Alkaff that were done to help families and, and to, you know, always give access to families so that they there's a lot of the Navara is a problem. So the overseers of the archive, there's Allah, I mean, you know, email, no, he wouldn't eat fruit because he thought a lot of the lands were out cough and, and they've been corrupted. And
remember, famously, wouldn't, you know, take fish from certain places.
I, you know, I've seen things about fairs where, you know, some of the alumni said that to buy something and fast was dangerous because most effects with alcohol
I mean, 1400 years, Muslims have been putting homes into Al Kahf. They've been doing all these things. So there's a lot about coffee. I mean, there's a reason why some of the most important ministries in the in the Muslim world are without a thorough cup. I mean, the Ministry of our coffee in Morocco is in the king's palace, it's actually inside the palace, because it is the richest of all the ministries in Morocco, because there's so many elk off in Rome, and these are devout people that for, you know, 1300 years had been giving endowments and and if the endowments were properly cared for in the Muslim world, though, there would be
ample money to support religious endeavors, like universities and colleges and things but the Al Kahf, in many of the Muslim countries have been really corrupted. But But if that's always a danger, my point is, is that the Nevada there's a danger in, in in in the corruption because the Nevada is based on, you know,
even any real society, America is based on trust. It's a civil society, like I'm sitting with you on an airplane and you tell me you're a nuclear physicist, I have no reason to disbelieve you This is human nature. But if you're a grifter, you know, that's what every grifter knows that people believe what they're told. And so, you know, most people just, I think religious people have a really difficult time understanding how somebody could steal from a religious walk, you know, like how they, but people do these things. I mean, there are people that don't, they just don't believe,
like,
the human Aldine. I mean, there are people that do not believe Waylon matta 15. I mean, that's about, you know, cheating people, they don't think they're going to be raised up on the day of judgment and judged by a lot. So I think that's, that's always a concern. How do you protect even this institution? I mean, I have to think about that, like, how do we protect this institution? from getting into the wrong hands? This is like, over, you know, this is, you know, since 1996, really, but, you know, since 2009, incorporating this, we, you know, this is a hefty walk, you know, and how do you protect it so that down the road, they're not teaching some of the things they're teaching in
these other religious institutions? I mean, that's, that's something I'm concerned about. Right. Yeah. So So I think the the subtle point in, I mean, everybody agrees that the establishment of a Golf I think, is necessary in America to keep our institutions I mean, we've we've built a lot as a community in America, but most of them are not self sustaining at this point. And so there's a there's a trend, there's been short sightedness. I mean, one of the Turkish models that I really appreciate is the Turks do not build a masjid without building Al Kahf around it. So it's a part of our tradition. Yeah, when you go to the masjid all the stores around, there are actually a cough for
the masjid. And so that should be factored in, when you do any type of major endeavor is really to try to ensure that there's some type of perpetuity you know, sadaqa jariya, that's really important. And that's endowment building. It's not easy. And it takes vision, it takes trust. Muslims don't trust themselves by and large, because there is a lot of corruption, but part you know, bliss, I mean, he's called the bliss because of blessa. He despaired and one of the things he wants to convince everybody of is to despair of goodness, that there aren't actually good people in the world that everybody's a crook. Everybody's trying to get something for nothing. And and that's not true.
There are a lot of good people and and and I and you know, we have to even if we fail, we have to still continue to try and in America you know, most of the wealth transfer occurs on death. I mean, the percentage if you look at the given percentage, the lifetime giving is a fraction of the of the death given Yeah, and so you know, if we incorporate the Asiya and use it for Oak off building, like that's, I think, a very important part, especially if you overlay taxes I mean, we didn't talk about taxes at all today but if you're if you're if you're going to be subject to estate taxes at 40% I mean, there's you know, there's an incredible opportunity to to get forgiving before too before of
course yeah, like I think waiting till after your death is I mean it's it's important to have a well see and everything but I think it's important also to and then it depends as you know, like liquid is not that common strike even wealthy people don't have a lot of liquid and that's why the death giving us so much more because it opens up in a word. Yeah, exactly. But you know, things are fungible and people can can, you know, can can liquidate right and and
There's a lot of ways to give, and that that's one of the blessings of our tradition. You know, there really are a lot of ways to give. So, you know, I hope people, you know, are aware of that.
That that that is a major option. We've already been the benefactors of some people's. We got we and we were in a difficult situation because this person had given the wealth
that exceeded the exemption that they know the share. Oh, okay. Yeah. And so that was a problem. So So the onus was on us to kind of, because I didn't want to take the money, or if there were people that rightful heirs that and so so it was, you know, it was a situation where they were in a good situation. And I think the father just thought they don't need it. He might not have known the rules. Sure. And so that was a situation where I just got down to donate it. Okay. Just like, even though legally voluntary, even though legally we we had by the law, because this law, yeah, to legal system. So by legally by Western law, we had every right to it, right. If we didn't take it, it
would have gone to the bank, right, which was very interesting. Yeah. And I explained that to the family, I said, Look, we I don't want to take this without your consent, consent, because it's going to be bad money for us. And then I just found out about a property that we're going to inquire that it looks like maybe the people that originally got it might have cheated a widow out of and I want to find out if the widow is alive, because I want to go talk to her, you know, I mean, I just, you know, I don't want to use words outside of our tradition, but there is a reality to bad, you know, kind of Oklahoma City. I mean, you know, that they say that was the seventh grandfather, you know,
and, and so
it's kind of a warm up body. You know, if, if some if there's bad, you know, is there something bad, and you end up getting it? I don't know, I don't feel comfortable with that. I mean, I turned down a very, you know, a couple substantial donations, because it was from money that I did not feel comfortable taking, because in a lot, they won't wait up, but it will pay you but you know, Allah is pure and only accepts the pure. And so So, you know, if you build something that's, that's not built on purity, it won't last. You know, it just it won't. So we have to be really careful about where the money comes from. I mean, Matt, and Matata, you know, as my crew to take, you know, like, if you
have a Muslim who has a 711. And maybe 10% of his money is from alcohol. Yeah, like, I mean, we could accept the donation because it's mixed. But it's my crew, you know, because because of that about inherits. I mean, like, when I pay ties, I always my knee is the post office, that it goes to the post like my Nia is post office.
No matter no matter when Yeah, I don't want it to go to cluster bombs and end up killing people in Ukraine. Sure. You know, and what if what if the parent created in the state plan?
Just take a simple example, a parent created an estate plan that left their wealth equally to their two children. One is a son one is a daughter. Yeah. Well, if the son was in agreement that no, let's assume there's no agreement. There's no agreement, like the child says, That's the plan. I'm, you know, does the child have an onus on them also to change a plan that was drawn by the parent that was not Islamic? Yeah. I mean, if they're devout Muslims, they do they do. Yeah. Okay.
Is that example, do? Anybody is saying?
What's that?
That example that you gave earlier of a person that was donating more than their 1/3 discretionary portion.
We found that sometimes that happens, for example, for tax purposes. Like, if I divided if I divided it, and gave the children or The Heirs what they should actually inherit, they would probably inherit less because of taxation so high.
I mean, if that was genuinely the case, I think there's there's a valid argument for that. Yeah, I think there was what was that? I think that's a case of his test set. You know, where you'd have to, you'd see that if we follow the letter of the law, it's actually going to end up harming everybody's gonna get less because the government's gonna take it. Yeah. Yeah. And if we that, that that would make sense to me. Alone. I mean, I you know, these things are momentous. You know, Imam Malik called the fatwa nasbla, which means more Siva, you know, it's not and whenever he was asked a question, you say in the law, he were in a garage. That's what he would say.
A like when he was asked to give a fatwa, he saw it as a masiva. Because it's such a momentous thing because your LM anamorphic. In you know, your shed Abdullah said that the most the city my era called the Mufti al Wazir, he's like the Wizard of God, he's fulfilling the, you know, he's giving the dictates from the Melek. You know, Sheikh Abdullah said, it's a not that Bismillah, you know, it's the spokesperson for God, you know, like today in modern parlance, is a spokesman. So it's a big thing, like, do you really want to say what you think God thinks about this? I mean, that's a heavy, weighty thing to do. But, you know, on the other hand, Islam is a very common sense religion.
And I always tell people, if it doesn't make sense, it's probably not Islamic. You know, if it just doesn't ring true, you know, it's probably not, you know, and, I mean, so, the tricky, the tricky part of that is that a lot of people would sort of substitute their judgment and say, you know, for example,
we get this all the time. I understand the rules, I believe in the rules, but my family is different, right? And it's like, there's this somebody did something to me, or there's, you know, like, what room does a person have to say, absent them not being Muslim, which is a different case, you know, to take their father away from them? Yeah, yeah. They can't do that. Yeah, as long as they're, you know, if they're, if they're a practicing Muslim.
And yeah, they can't do that. If they're not a Muslim. And you know, that difference, you know, it's, it's, it's the law for Dean, which is not well, Sia, by the way, right. Yeah. So so, like, I had that situation, because one of my family members who wasn't a Muslim left money. This was when I was first became Muslim. And I was told, Oh, you can't take that, because it's a question for Congress all the time. You can't take that because there's not whereas I asked him more attorney and fapy. At the time, it's like 40 years ago, he said, Lella flu and the minute, he said, take it, you know, because it's well, Sia. It's not funny about, you know, that's, that's the difference, you
know, so two, Dean's don't inherit, you know, so if Theravadin is one thing, I mean, in Hungary madhhab. If they don't pray, there, they're not considered Muslim. But the other meth hubs they do, if they're a secularists, and they're really anti Muslim, we have identity Aryans in our community. And I could see leaving that person out of the Fidella. If they're just an identitarian. If they really aren't a believing Muslim, which there are a considerable amount these days, I think of people like that. I mean, the the, the other very tricky part of that is that the last thing you want is a court battle, determining who is a Muslim, so some secular judge, to having this
discussion about like, is this person actually Muslim because well, in this culture, though, I mean, Farah Eldon considered, it would be I mean, nobody has a claim, right? In this culture. It's purely like the the original Islamic ruling of well, Sia, the whole thing as well. So yeah, absent the spouse. Yeah. So the spouse has a property rights. Yeah.
So so there's community property rights. And then on the East Coast, oftentimes, there's, which is, you know, in the Shetty as I mean, the primary ones are those key, you know, the spouse, the Quran shows, and the parent, right, yeah, I mean, those are the that is the primary elements, right. Yeah.
So So So what happens is, on the east coast, there's oftentimes a elective share, which is a statutory share, that the surviving spouse in particular, a widow is entitled to, which I think always or almost always is going to be greater than the share that the Shediac gives interest, usually a 50% Share, usually a 50%. So it depends 2% It might it's less than some cases, depending upon if they have children or not sure, but invariably, it's going to be greater than an eighth or a quarter on it. Yeah. Was it more 1/8 or 1/4 1/4? Yeah. And so there again, you have this this trying to traverse to legal systems concurrently, where the person can create their plan and say, I'm going
to leave an eighth or I'm going to leave a quarter judge determines otherwise or the surviving spouse might elect against the plan
which comes back to the fam I mean, in the end of the day, look, we don't you know,
in the Muslim world, they don't have a problem with the moon sighting, because the government just says Ramadan is tomorrow everybody fast, you know, whereas here we don't have the salt on you know, salt and you're fine.
left. So these in the end of the day, these are situations where we can't you know, this, this is between them and God, we don't have any authority. And so I think just leave people alone, you know, it's between them and God, they're gonna have to answer on the Day of Judgment like all of us. And you know, maybe Allah will overlook it. Maybe Allah will forgive them, maybe Allah actually, you know, will deem that the person did something that was necessary? Who knows? I don't know, I'm not gonna judge them in the afterlife, you know, but by you know, all for all intents and purposes by Shetty. You have to follow these these follow up? You know, I mean, I don't I don't see any way
around. So, initially, I think Abdullah was asking this question earlier, there's perhaps multiple ways to achieve the same goal. So a person wants to make sure that their wealth is left according to study our one, one option might be, you know, simply this like, good idea. And just telling your kids hey, after I'm done, I'm not here, make sure things are Islamic. Another is engaging in the legal exercise, like to do so. And by and large, the the, the system allows us to opt out of the defaults, and to create our own structures. Sure, if we if we, if we and I think we should, as much as we can, like, I really believe that we need civil courts that Muslims use arbitration, that I
think we'd solve a lot of our problems. Firstly, and this goes back a years ago, we had a situation in zaytuna, where in order to you know, we had a situation where problems some property was taken by a group, and we had a debate, and the lawyers said that it's legitimate, it's your property, if you want to take them to court, you'll get it. I told him, there's no way I'm gonna go to court, I don't want to sit in front of a non Muslim judge, and have two Muslim parties fighting over a piece of property. And my view was just leave it to them. It ended up coming back to us. Yeah, you know, but I mean, that's how I feel. But not everybody feels that way. Like I just, I don't want and what we
know, now you didn't know enough, say, you know, I just I don't want to be humiliated in front of
a judge, you know, and people feel their mother unknown. Well, that's why there's a Day of Judgment level milliohm. You know, there's no oppression on this day. And I just feel like this wait for the day of judgment, you know, and probably, you'll end up forgiving them anyway. Because all you want is forgiveness. Right? You know, so I don't know, I don't Yeah, it's not worth fighting over. You know?
Yes, it was it.
We're, I mean, we're gonna talk a lot about this, this, this series is six parts. And so we're gonna we're gonna talk Oh, wow. Yeah. So we're gonna get one six.
This inheritance is
interesting.
Because they have the most Yeah, so.
So we're going to talk a lot about community property and property law and rights of survivorship and all of the secular sort of framing that people have to understand. But the beauty of the of the system is that as long as you meet the legal requirements, with few exceptions, mostly for the spouse, yeah, you can opt out, you can create a trust, you can do whatever you want. There's a lot of flexibility. I mean, America has a very strong libertarian spirit. You know, I think California is probably the worst. It really is. It's it's a state that,
you know, I don't know, I think it's gonna, the tide will turn. They used to be a purple state, which to me, I'd much rather have a purple state. Because there's, it's a dialectic and they can never go too far. It gets pulled back. Whereas because we've been, we've got a radical element. Now in Sacramento, that's pretty strong. I mean, 12 year olds getting * changes and things like that. So it's crazy. And I think, you know, people are getting fed up with this. I'm, I'm hoping maybe there'll be some, but overall, you know, America, we do have a good legal system.
And, and we have a lot of,
you know, a lot of room to be creative, not just in in, in terms of inheritance laws, but But marriage laws, commercial laws.
Even local, local government is much more interesting than then then. Because you can outlaw gambling, you can outlaw *, you can have you out enough signatures, you know, you can do a lot of things in this country. So it's very interesting in that way, and that's part of why, you know, this
political participation has eroded so much. And I think there's a lot of people that are in power that like that, because they, they're left to do whatever they want, and there's no if you look at a lot of the oversight people
You know, they're very interesting people, you know, these people that just the consumer, you know, advocates that watch what the banks are doing, like
Lola default nurse, you know, following the Bob, the facilitator or the you know, is, I mean, some people have to stop other people and you know, the Muslim in the tough series, they say, the lowland Muslim moon, you know, if it wasn't for the Muslims to stop the kofod but I think Allah said NAS for a reason that in every society, there's, there's people that really do try to stop the wrongdoing of other people. And that dialectic is very important. So I, you know, I hope that,
you know, we do get more creative on these things. But I will say, my experience when I was an Imam, many years ago,
I did a lot of arbitration, you know, with families that were having problems. And what I found, which really troubled me, is,
if it didn't go their way, they just, I'm going somewhere else good until I had a situation where this it was a custody situation. Habana. And,
you know, it was a man from one of the Muslim countries and his wife, she was from same country and they got a divorce. And so they were, he said, I'll only accept him. I was the Imam at MC at the time. He said, only accept him. And she said, Okay, well, I accept that. So I judged for her, and they say, I don't accept that. So it's like, he thought I was going to judge for him. Right, you know, and there's a great story of Imam Malik, where, you know, he,
one of the poets was sent to him by the Emir. And for a judgement and Malik judged against him and the poet said to Malik, he said, Amir Bethany Lekha the tackle the lead, he said, You here so that you would judge for me he said, What I can say to ALEC, it doesn't work like that. So he said, wala he had one Nikka had, you know, I'm gonna, like, do an invective poem against you flay you alive. ematic said, you know, you have revealed your pettiness to me.
And he said layer as well and had a had nobody's incapable of behaving like that everybody can do that. You said what what's really difficult is modal, you know, is to have like that dignity to have that. That magnanimity, you know, a virtue, that's the hard thing is to be virtuous. And the really beautiful thing about arbitration in this country, aside of child custody really is completed. If you do it properly. It's completely enforceable in the courts. Yeah. If the parties agree, once they sign Yeah, it's People's Court. Yeah, you can I mean, yeah, those that's a fascinating. I mean, the the, you know, the fees. I mean, this, this tradition comes from Matic effect, you know, even the
jury tradition, because the Moloch is, if you have, if you have in the absence of all the in Monokuma, that you take 12 notables from the community, and they make the decision. And the idea is yet along that geomat, because in the Maliki FIP, 12 is the is the number for the Jamara. So the idea is that the dramatic can't go wrong. So there's, you know, and I've only served on on a jury once but my brother who's a lawyer in San Francisco, he told me that there's something very mystical about a jury, you know, that something happens, and I experienced it in the jury. It's a very magical experience when you when you have these people disagreeing, and like we had one holdout. And
it drove us crazy, because everybody was kind of in green. It was actually a hate crime against a Palestinian. Right. And it was, so it was a felony. So it was pretty serious. He was a christian palestinian, but no, no, the guy the guy there two men were being accused of beating this Palestinian up. And and so they were charged with a February I was a hate crime. And but what was interesting is that there was a moment where everybody realized that they were guilty. It was really amazing. And everybody, even the one guy who was like holding out, and it was based on physics, because because the he they claimed that he was running at them, but all the witnesses saw him fall
backwards. When they punched him. He claimed that he was sucker punched. And so when they when somebody pointed that out, and then he couldn't have fallen backwards, if he was charging them, and they hit him, he would have fallen backwards, because like it was there. He's there guilty. And that was the point. So that that tradition of having,
you know, people in the community in the absence of a hobby, I mean, that's a perfectly valid a Muslim position. Yeah. And I mean, we can have CODATA as well, like we can appoint, you know, like a, you know, like we need our own institutions to resolve our disputes, essentially.
Yeah, I mean, it'd be a lot better. Yeah. Yeah. Because the the probate court system is messy. It's cost a lot, it costs a lot of money. It's something that if you're not Muslim, you still want to avoid humiliating, yeah, you still want to avoid and so so that's that.
I want to shift, one question that we get a lot,
which is different than some of the themes that we've covered. And it has to do with the idea that, you know, everybody who is planning is worried about their kids, if they have kids, like that's a human concern that they have. And at the same time, there's a countervailing concern, which is to not give your children too much.
And sort of this notion of trust fund children, and Islamically is very fascinating. And the AI adds to the nisa, and this concept of rushed. Now, is this concept of rush something that's like, something when we go back to the interpretation, and he had, and looking at young people today, young people could be a great question, because traditionally, it would have been like, 50 it's very, very young, in the classical books, 1518 Malik, it says a 10 or are 15 It could be one or the other. But, ya know, that's a really good point, you know, the 10 years begins about seven similar Tamizh. But the rest is, you know, if you find in them rushed, right. Yeah. So that that is, you
know, that is an issue he had issue in and of itself, because not everybody, that to sue for her. And while, you know, we're not supposed to give the SOFIA is the one who doesn't know how to do the Tesaro like he yet or sort of will be really awkward. Like, he'll, he'll, you know, use the wealth. unintelligent, you know, lacking intelligence, it's not used wisely. Because that's a concern that, you know, you give an 18 year old a bunch of money, especially if we talk about a family with with, you know, where they're getting an inheritance that might ruin their work ethic, their, you know, so many different Muslims if they were raised properly. I don't know. I've I feel like for most, it
just depends. And that's something you have to discern for yourself. That's your hacker can man up? If you don't feel there, Rasheed? You know, because then it's, you know, it's aesthetic NAS? Like it's something there's honestly, like, it's something that you're with the challenge. And the challenge in this sort of planning is that you have to preemptively plan for when you're not there, and someone else will be making that determination. Yeah. So like, I mean, I think a good thing is maybe Trust Fund for education is a very useful thing, to have a trust on for education. So could we, in other words, restrict the share of inheritance for certain things and only certain things?
No, no, no, not to my knowledge.
Yeah.
So the trust fund for education, for example, that would be done before while they're still while they're still alive. Yeah, I wouldn't put that in a will. Okay. But I think that's a very useful, I think they could make stipulations on that. You can't go to a local school.
But that's, that's in the context of a lifetime gift that's been so I would do that as a gift. As for, you know, inheritance, inheritance, you can't do that you can't stipulate in fraud, like that. Yeah, it's there. The thing what people have to know, money is your most dollar. It's an Amana. It's not really yours, it's yours, my jasmine. But in reality, all money belongs to Allah. And so those photos are not yours. It's not your money, it's a man's money, and he's determined these people are who gets it, you don't determine that all he's giving you a right to determine is 1/3 of that the other two thirds belong to God, you know, all belongs to God in reality, but he's giving you
discretionary use of that 1/3. As long as you're alive, it's easy. It's discretionary use for all, but as long as it's halal, right. You can do whatever you want. But once you die, that money is no longer yours. It's mostly fluff. And so the 1/3 goes to whoever whomever you determine the two thirds Those are their forearm. They're not yours. They're they belong to God and he designated these people and you can't tell them how they can or cannot use that well.
Sorry, one follow up here is the those Walther those heirs can voluntarily after death, redistributed however they want exactly what about in advance? Yeah, no, they can't if they if the if the
A person who's writing the will approaches them and says, Here's what I want to do and they agree to it, then that's, that's as long as they're adults or yeah, they have to be a Rashid. I mean, they have to be somebody who's, who's so you can't do it for your young children. But if your kids are adults, or adults, and like if, if you if I have a son and a daughter,
and the sons very well off, and the daughter is, and I want to leave the money to the daughter, if the Son agrees to that, then that's, you know, he's giving up his right. It's his right, but he can relinquish that right.
Even before the death happens, yeah, I know, he asked to do it before the death happens. He has to, he has to consent to it. Because it's his right. It's the sons, right. But if he consents to relate, it's like a woman in a polygynous relationship, she can give up her rights to the other wife, their her rights, your heart is yours to give up or to demand. And that's why they don't even involve you can give up your rights when your mother known for God. Like just say, You know what, it's like LBL dum, dum. Yeah. The new clinic Bill bumbum. You know, like he used it to Kenyatta, SATA, Kobe are the people that backbite it against him, he gave it as charity to them.
So he was my loan, but he gave it back to those people. Because if you backed by to somebody, they get your house and and if you don't have any more husband, they have to take your say yet and not a good deal. So
the challenge of the pre emptive disclaimer is that you don't actually know who's going to be alive.
So you can except no good point. Yeah. Because people die before. Yeah, like a will. Yeah. So so you could what you're saying is hedge or something, something loses that. Right. Right. But but at least in the natural order of deaths type of scenario, what you're saying is that if somebody does want to
push a right, even if part of them, relinquish it, and part of them don't, then it's distributed in according to that, right. I mean, that's, you know, that's a monarchy. Again, you know, I mean, we get stuck
with the same example you gave, which is, the legal instrument has to say something, and that would be binding. And then the, you know, the the Sharia err, let's say that's vested in somebody else. Sure, at that point,
can make a claim to whom? Right And to Allah, of course, but but the so what happens by by in this, if I just wrote in my will I want my wealth to be distributed, according to Islamic law, based on a what Hanifa Smith have? Like, if I leave that, yeah. And you know, that that's going to be fulfilled, right, by cool.
So, so that that's,
that's what the that's why we're only doing a six today. So basically, there's a lot of factors that are going to come into play before we can answer that question. So for example, if the properties are owned jointly, and there's a right of survivorship attached to it, the will has no effect. So the spouse is going to get 100%, regardless of what that will, what that will says. For most people, their assets are comprised of, let's say, a home. So for a married couple, most of the time, it's jointly titled
bank accounts and retirement accounts. I mean, this is an assumption that their Muslim Muslim that they're going to follow. That's my point, right? If you if you have obviously, if you have people that contest that, then you have a problem, but I'm talking about people that accept that. So So So what I'm saying is that what happens as a matter of law in the overwhelming majority of cases, is that the surviving spouse will get 100%. At that, regardless of what the will says, just as a legal matter. Now, there's an onus would be that it's on her it's distributed. Yeah, for him or her whoever it is, but it's purely like an Amana. Yeah, in that scenario, because your will didn't do
anything. That makes sense.
Most of the time, we recommend trusts because we can actually yeah, then it's protected. You can do them you have a judiciary, like a trustee that you name to do that, but but that's usually what happens. When you act as a fiduciary, but not as a fiduciary. A trustee, not so much. Usually what we recommend is that they name most of the time people will name family members, okay. And then the family members will seek out professional help when they need it.
There are trust companies and professional fiduciaries that people appoint but you know, they they tend to charge a percentage of the estate and ends up getting expensive. In some cases. If
Someone doesn't have someone to serve in that role it makes sense to appoint a professional.
We're going to answer all those questions I think that have been coming in in those next sessions and JELA
Well, thank ya this appreciate this.
I think it's very useful and insha Allah may Allah
bless the people that want to do the right thing and give them the ability to do that and
make the wills we need to think about this that we're all passing through. is a very interesting
Hamdi, Linda and I thank you very much it's an honor so proud of our young man here hamdulillah
for homegrown mashallah
I'm gonna close the door inshallah. Alhamdulillah Subhanak, longer Hunziker Shawanda Illa Hilda antenna stop recording the food to relate. Allah hum Ajaan
cara cara Amina if he had to hit dar de la la Muhammad Rasool Allah, Allah.
Allah Allah Jana min worth an MBA or hamara mean Allama John Torah Athena Ullman Navia will Amador sila Nasir Allah subhanaw taala annual fecund
Illa Hiland or Morocco Amin was at the Gemma Colonia tembi de Nica will fit for the Metro bottarga La ilaha illa and a shadow on Elijah Muhammad Rasool Allah along oxen, oxen Lynam And Hashem to come up to how to behave in in our banner mouse ecoman Parker to come out to Bella will be genetic women in the opinion matter who will be Elena Messiah EBIT dunya one attack no smell no upside in our COVID Matthew 10 or an animal no matter what so now I'm gonna Adana whether to add a dunya Akbar Hamina when I'm in MENA, wherever it or Betina whether either Nari Masirah. Along the ledger I'm mostly within a few dinner alone Mala to select by Nina Vida novena malaria layer one over a half
waka fina Subhan or a big part of the ZT amyas ufone was ceramah animals in what hamdu Lillahi Rabbil Alameen wa salam ala magazine
Crummock Mala, thank you for coming out everybody online. Thank all of you, just like Mala Farah, and thank you for your support of the college inshallah. May Allah give us tofield.
And the next sessions, if we're still, if we're still on Inshallah, the next session, it's planned for once a month, okay, and we're going to cover
the next session is basically an introduction to the secular rules that are governed in America. So probate, property, law, all of those things. And then we're going to talk about this integration piece that we alluded to today. And then we have a session on end of life. The, you know, we're thinking only so far talking about death and dying. But what happens before so bio biomedical questions about bioethics and end of life and pulling the plug in organ donations and sort of that comes under the umbrella of estate planning? Yeah.
And so so that's going to be the fourth session.
Oh, and then and then it'll cloth historically, and how we can create that relationship, endowments to Oak off to endowments Midwest, has their own concept, right? We have to fit them into the exact instruments that exist exist. Exactly. And then the last one is, is on advanced planning. So once you have taxable estates above the, let's say, the exemption amount, the 13 million, everything above that is taxed at 40%. So we're going to do sort of the, the advanced planning the advanced Charitable Trust some of the stuff that, you know, other communities are taking advantage of that Muslims should learn about. Yeah, figure out in this country has a massive multibillion dollar
industry on avoiding taxes, right.
So we should learn death and taxes. That's what they say. Yeah.