Hamzah Wald Maqbul – 4 Ramadn 1441 Late Night Majlis Experience Discernment Addison 04262020
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We continue with our reading,
from
Ibn Raja
a commentary on the hadith of Abu Darda
and the virtues of seeking knowledge
in the subsections
subsection regarding the paths leading to
knowledge.
Ibn Rajab says
and, transduced into
English by the able
Imam Zayed.
Allah protect him and give him long life.
There is no path to experiential knowledge of
Allah
leading you to his pleasure and his nearness
in the hereafter,
except for through the beneficial knowledge which Allah
sent down to his messengers and revealed in
his scriptures.
So this is an important point,
and this is that our path is an
usuli path
which is
the usul of which are laid down by
wahi not by tajriba.
The the the principles of which are laid
down by
revelation,
not by experience.
The principles of which are laid down by
revelation,
not by experience.
There's nobody who's so smart or so,
experienced or been around the block enough times
that somehow
what they have to say is going to,
you know, add
or make perfect,
the thing that was already said by Revelation.
Rather, the things that were said by Revelation,
as is the point of Revelation,
are those things that you can't figure out
on your own through your smartness or through
your experience.
Rather, the dumbest of people, if they adopt
it as their own path correctly,
will be successful and the smartest of people
if
they turn their back on this path,
they won't have a clear way of making
it.
There is no path to experiential knowledge of
Allah leading to his pleasure
and his nearness except for through the beneficial
knowledge which Allah sent down to his messengers
and revealed in his scriptures.
This knowledge guides to the right path. With
it, clear guidance is sought out from the
darkness, ignorance,
ambiguity, and doubt.
Allah has referred to his book as a
light with which one is guided through darkness.
There has come to you from Allah a
light and a clear book. With it, Allah
guides those who pursue his pleasure to paths
of peace,
and he brings them out of darkness into
light.
The prophet
put forth a parable between the possessors of
knowledge and the stars that guide people through
the darkness.
Imam Ahmad Rahimahuwatta'ala
meaning Imam Ahmad bin Hambal
relates from Anas radiAllahu anhu that the prophet,
sallallahu alaihi wa sallam, said,
the similitude
of the ulema, the people of knowledge on
the earth is like that of the stars
in the sky, by which people are guided
through the darkness of the land and sea.
If the stars were extinguished, even the guides
might stray.
The metaphor is penetrating
for the path to understanding Allah's oneness,
experiential knowledge of Allah, his divine rulings,
and his,
rewards and punishment are not attained through empirical
knowledge,
meaning they're not attained by trial and error
and by observation.
He has made this clear in his book
and on the tongue of his messenger, sallallahu
alaihi sallam.
The scholars are the guides through the darkness
of ignorance, ambiguity, and deviation.
When these guides are lost, the travelers go
astray.
So this has to do with an approach
to the sharia,
which is what
which is that those tenets that are set
out by Wahi, by Revelation,
they aren't subject
to the
same inquiry and questioning
that,
you know, that that empirical knowledge or even
rational knowledge may be subject to.
And so, you know, you have, I guess,
a different approach to these principles.
And the issue is this, this doesn't mean
that just because alim says something or because
it's in a fiqh book or because it's
in a book that's written in Arabic with,
like, you know, multiple
volumes with a fancy title written, you know,
dashingly across,
the the the the the spine of all
of those volumes that it's beyond reproach or
beyond question.
But the idea is that those things that
come
through revelation,
we may have to admit from time to
time that we don't understand exactly what they
mean.
But whatever they do mean is beyond question
and beyond reproach.
And if you want to be a Muslim,
you kinda have to accept that
because we believe in a rationally cogent universe,
and we believe in the deen being rationally
cogent. Unlike unlike
the Sophist
traditions of
of the idol worshipers,
which are essentially, basically, philosophically as a religion,
they're philosophically
sophisticated forms of atheism.
They're philosophically sophisticated,
forms of sophistry,
which is what? You have religions, major world
religions, which will say things like
there's no such thing as absolute truth or
absolute truth is unknowable
or,
you know, each one of you has his
own
absolute truth. You live in your own truth.
I live my truth. You live your truth.
Well, look, if each of you lives your
own absolute truth, then there's no such thing
as absolute truth at all. This is a
contradiction in terms.
And if you each of you has their
own truth, then there's no such thing as
as the truth. It's just a form of
sophistry. What is sophistry? In the old days,
they used to have those people who are
trained in philosophy
and in analyzing arguments,
and in wordsmithy,
they used to hang out
in in,
whatever, Athens or whatever. And people would hire
them in order to do their PR for
them or in order to plead cases
on their behalf and word them in the
most convincing way possible even if they're failing
cases or they're on behalf of the guilty.
And so the people who occupy the niche
of sophists nowadays mostly are are attorneys.
And it's interesting that attorneys and lawyers are
the ones who end up usually becoming senators
and congresspeople and presidents.
But, you know, this is not we don't
have a we don't have that that tradition
of sophistry where
everything, you know you know, can you say
anyone's, like, really wrong? Yeah. You can. You
know, that's our that's our tradition.
And if you cannot accept that, if that
that one
linchpin
point cannot be accepted by a person,
then,
Islam is not gonna make a whole lot
of sense to you.
And further than that, Islam
claims to be right.
So if you wanna have any meaningful relation
with Islam, you have to ascertain is this
claim that Islam making correct or not. One
thing is the claim that there is such
an absolute truth, the second claim is that
Islam is that absolute truth. Until you can
come to peace with these two issues,
the rest of the rest of revelation is
not gonna, you know, be digestible to you.
Because look look, you crack the
the
the, Quran open and you read
guide us to the straight path. Okay? And
then, like, a couple of verses down, in
the next page.
And it really should be the same page,
but just because usually the first two pages
of the most have are written in a
very highly stylized format, a
very
adorned and embellished with aesthetic
embellishments and adornments.
That was a really awkward sentence.
It's been a long fast for all of
us. So otherwise, they should be on the
same page. So just a couple of verses
down, what does Allah say? You ask for
Hidayah in 1 verse and a couple do
and work for verses
which nobody knows what it means.
That's the book in which there's no doubt.
Right after saying something that you know and
I know that none of us know what
it means.
This is the guidance that you asked for
for the people who fear Allah
And
the sifa of them the first sifa of
the believers, the first attribute of the believers
that's mentioned is
That they're the ones who believe in something
that's unseen. So the issue is this, if
you cannot make peace with the Quran being
right
and the Quran bringing the the,
you know, bringing that,
that absolute truth. That the absolute truth exists,
first of all, and that the Quran is
the thing that's bringing it.
The the whole Islam thing is not gonna
work out for you.
And, this is the fitna that people have
thrown themselves in because they don't bother thinking
about these things. We definitely don't bother teaching
them or learning them.
This is one of the reasons that I
decided to spend a a, you know,
a significant portion of my time teaching is
because these simple things that used to, I
guess, be understood by people, and they used
to be part of our scholastic tradition. Back
in the days when the scholars were trained
properly, rather than going to a cafe and
saying, like, here give me a of paper
saying I know about Islam. Where back in
the days when the scholars were trained properly
and the lay people were people, who
accepted the deen as being true
through, their simple and straightforward nature
and through their love of piety rather than
their love of the material world. Between those
2, you know, key ingredients,
you know, people used to not, like, question
these things and, like, resist them as much.
Whereas nowadays, both of those ingredients are gone
and people people are talking a big game
about the Muslims need to do this and
the Muslim community needs to do that and
the Muslim Ummah needs to do that and
Saudi Arabia needs to do this and Pakistan
needs to do that and Malaysia needs to
do this and Turkey needs to do that
and the Arabs need to do Malaysia needs
to do this and Turkey needs to do
that and the Arabs need to do this
and the Iranians need to do that. And
they're they're really deeply involved in, like, having
opinions on all sorts of things.
But this one first thing that you have
to do in order to benefit from the
Quran itself. Right? The Quran is transcendent above
sectarian bickering.
You know, everyone can agree whether you're Shia,
Sunni, Wahhabi, Sufi, Irhabi, Kababi, Fulan, Ibn Quran,
in the Bustan. It doesn't matter. Like, you
know, everybody at least
even the Isma'ilis and the Bataniyah will at
least pay some sort of lip service to
the Quran. They'll say, well, yeah, you guys
don't understand the true inner secret meaning of
it and whatever. But, yeah, there is the
Quran is the absolute truth in whatever
abstract way. Everybody will accept the Quran. You're
not even you're not even prepared to read
the first, like like, whatever, 10 eyes of
the Quran,
if you can't accept this thing.
And how important is that? Someone's like, well,
I'm having crisis faith. Many of the don't
bring this stuff in public because people have
a crisis of faith. Dude, may maybe some
people need to have a crisis of faith.
You know?
Which is the first we you know, the
first,
Matan in in in in in in Islamic
learning that children used to be taught in
the in the Maghrib al Arabi, in the
Maliki lands,
the first sentence of the Matanab Akhbari is
what?
The first thing the first thing the first
thing
that is a an obligation on the person
who has reached the the state of moral
responsibility. Meaning that they're an adult, they've hit
Bulur, they they, you know, they've they've hit
puberty,
and they're sane,
is what?
Is that they have to correct their imam.
They have to correct their faith in Allah.
And out of all of these things, you
know, the idea is that, like,
means what? That there's no truth except for
the absolute truth. We have to believe in
absolute truth, you know, in order for for
to make that affirmation, you know. You have
to believe in the concept that it exists
and and then afterward you have to negate
everything else other than it. That's the whole
the whole,
you know, that's the whole sweetness of
you know, is that there's one Allah and
there's
nothing
is Allah other than that Allah.
There's no other ilaha other than that
Allah in every one of its every one
of his Asma and Sifat
and so maybe people need to have a
little, you know, a little crisis of faith
so that they can realize, you know, Am
I wasting my time and wasting other people's
time with this whole Islam thing or is
this really, like, where it's at?
I know I know what makes sense to
me and I know what I've cast my
lot in with. And, you know, someone might
say, well, Hamza's crazy. So, like,
you know, what you know, are you sure
you wanna join that group? Yeah. I agree
with you. If it was just me, then
you'd probably be best advised to move along.
But when you have, you know, Shate bin
Hazali and, like, you know, Imam Al Haramain
and, like, Ahmed Zarrub and, you know, like,
you have all these people there that have
said all of these things in, you know,
with great clarity, you know,
then maybe there is something there is something
there
to be looked at that warrants, you know,
being taken seriously. And it's very funny because
people will
hold up into esteem.
You know. Sayyid Nabila radiallahu anhu or Sayyid
Mariam alayhi salam or the prophet sallallahu alayhi
wasalam. Why? Because they feel intellectually
unthreatened by them. Because they've kind
of abstracted them into like a bunny rabbit
type niche in their mind and in their
heart. Where this person is just like a
grandfather type figure that gives me a hug
when I feel down, but their teachings don't
impinge upon my lifestyle or don't cause me
to have to change anything,
about who I am myself. I can just
think about them, like, you know, like, you
know, I can just think about them like,
you know,
like
some sort of magic bonus round character
in a video game and,
then go back to my normal life unchanged,
unexamined. But then when you bring up Ghazali,
people get upset. When you bring up the
fuqaha, you pick bring up Malik and Abu
Hanifa, they say these are the hair splitting
theologians that were, you know, arguing with each
other about, you know,
some
issues of feck when the Mongols destroyed the
ummah. We don't need these people anymore.
Actually, no. They're the ones who understood the
Wahi the best and they're the ones who
expounded it the best and they're the ones
who any of us know anything about the
Wahi because of them, because of their students,
and because of the tradition that they had.
That the generations before them, they understood what
they said the best, and the generations after
them all bore witness to that.
So you gotta, like, kinda figure out what
you think about those things. Why does this
mean anything? This means something. Why? Because it
means then thereafter, the mind you're gonna bring
the mindset you're gonna bring to these sacred
sciences has to be different than the mindset
that you bring to
chemistry. It has to be different than the
mindset that you bring to physics, to medicine,
to astronomy,
to engineering. Why?
Because those are things if you take things
as,
you know, divine revelation,
then you are going to
stint your growth. You're going to,
you're going
to, you know,
be held back from being able to understand
things.
Because you need to have your mind flexible
and nimble in order to be able to,
like, understand what's going on, what might be
going on, what's not going on, etcetera, etcetera.
And you're you're gonna have to try to
figure out those use those pieces of knowledge
that you know in order to figure out
those things that you don't know. You're gonna
have to question other you know, like, question
what's been going on before. If it's wrong,
then you'll correct it. And if it's right,
then at least you'll understand it better.
Whereas with Wahi,
you know, there's no way to empirically or
rationally verify that merediv is supposed to be
3 rakas.
There's no way of, you know, empirically or
rationally verifying that, like,
an isaab of this amount below it, a
person shouldn't pay zakat, and above it, a
person must pay zakat. Or that there's no
way of empirically verifying the azaan has to
be called 5 times a day,
and not 4 or not 6.
Otherwise, you know, this hookahum will happen on
the city or that hookahum will happen on
the city. These things are known through wahi.
They're known through what? They're known through revelation.
And it's really interesting how people have tried
to impinge on
the inviolability
of wahi
through a number of weird,
you know, weird types of,
weird types of approaches to the sacred law.
So you see everybody talking about and
is a, you know, the
is a very legitimate,
you know,
concept in
understanding the Sharia. The the first person who
talked about it, at least with this particular
nomenclature,
is Shatibi.
And if you look at Shatibi's Fatawah, I
mean, he's about as orthodox as it gets.
But why is it that those people who
talk about maqasid nowadays are bandying the word
about it in order to basically
transmute the inherited Sharia.
The Sheikh Samir Nas who, taught the Hiday
and the Mahad Fath al Islami in Damascus,
so Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala opened it up
again Anur Qarib.
He he said that he said that,
he said that
the the the the summary of where people
went wrong with their discussion about maqas nowadays
is that was talking about the
meaning you need to understand what Allah's is
from you. What does Allah want from you?
Whereas nowadays people are using the to show
what they want from from the Sharia,
rather than what Allah wants from you through
the Sharia.
And, you know, that's so you use
that
this, you know,
the the the Sharia is there to preserve
life
and going to the masjid is going to
lead to not making as much money and,
that's gonna mean you can't buy medicine and
so you're putting your life in danger so
don't go to the masjid.
You know, this type of, you know, this
type of convoluted,
convoluted
reasoning, if it seems laughable to you, there
are things far more laughable than that that
people are applying to the Sharia and the
foundational
misunderstanding
or the foundational,
stumbling block in that type of reasoning is
what?
Is that you're there to serve Allah ta'ala,
you're there to worship Allah ta'ala. He shows
you how you're supposed to do that.
And the point is that in
the pursuit
of fulfilling that goal or fulfilling
that that commandment Allah has given you.
Part of your worshiping Allah is not to
kill yourself.
So if there's like a, if there's like
a fire breathing dragon between you and the
master, then he's gonna burn you alive.
Then okay, pray your salat at home.
But this doesn't mean that, you know, you
know, anything that that's going to harm your
life in any way and, like, you know,
cut your,
you know, cut your,
your your lifespan by days or minutes or
seconds
or through possibility. You know, there's a 60%
chance or a 50% chance or a 40%
chance. That all of those things are the
same. They're not all the same.
And the the the issue is this, is
that this idea that I know better than
you because I have Tajiriba
in this field or in that field or
in the other field. Yes. That means that
you know the field that you're talking about,
but it doesn't necessarily mean anything with regards
to the ulum of the din.
And so nowadays, this thing that I hear,
people saying,
you know, with regards to, oh, these mullahs
are gonna kill us all and they're gonna
this and they're gonna that. Yes. You can
accuse them of not knowing the scope of
of of of the wabat or how it
it's transmitted or all of these other things.
But there may be some of them that
know those things that you that you feel
like they don't know and they still make
a decision different than yours.
At that point, you have to look at
them. You have to look at the sharia.
Is it really true that,
you know, the sharia is going to,
you know,
command or demand a person to come to
the masjid in such a condition or not
in such a condition?
Because there are certain situations in which the
Sharia asks you to put your life in
risk. There are certain situations in which the
Sharia asks you to
put yourself in harm's way
in order to fulfill some from the from
the or in order to fulfill
some political or economic or social,
objective from the economic, political, or social objectives
of the deen.
And
if you don't know what the lines are
with regards to those things,
that are known only not through going to
medical school or not through being a infectious
disease expert, but through reading the books of
the Sharia.
You don't know. Why? Because this knowledge is
not something that a person will understand through,
through,
what imamzid
translates as what as empirical knowledge. Rather, they
are known through divine revelation.
He has made this clear in his book
and on the tongue of his messenger, sallallahu
alaihi wa sallam. The scholars are the guides
through the darkness of ignorance, ambiguity, and deviation.
When these guides are lost, as Ibn Rajab
is saying, when these guides are lost, the
travelers go astray.
The scholars have been likened to the stars,
which provide three benefits.
They guide people through the darkness. They adorn
the sky, and they are the missiles that
repel the Satans that ascend,
the heavens, endeavoring to intercept Allah's commands to
the angels.
The scholars possess these three characteristics.
They guide through the darkness, they adorn the
earth, and they're the myth missiles that repel,
the satans who mix truth with falsehood and
introduce heretical innovations in religion.
Such innovations,
are introduced by people following their own whims.
So the stars, they do what?
The stars provide three benefits, he says. The
star stars.
They guide the people through the darkness. The
people down here can look up at the
stars. They can know what the season is.
They can know what the time of night
is, and they can know what the the
directions are,
by looking up at the stars at night.
Secondly, they adorn the sky. They make the
sky beautiful.
And the third is what? Is that they
are the missiles that repel the satans that
ascend to the heavens,
which is something that Allah
says in in his book that the,
the the
the the the shuhub,
the burning stars, the meteorites,
that when, the,
try to ascend,
that those are are are sent down upon
them and they,
hit them from ascending to the higher realm
and communing with the higher realm in order
to use the knowledge from the higher realm
in order
to in order to
in order to misguide people or in order
to get an advantage, an unfair advantage,
over, over the righteous people of the earth.
And this third point,
it's fine, you know, some smarty pants is
gonna say, well, like, this is like, see,
the Quran is wrong because,
you know, meteorite is, you know,
something that happens when, like, a a a
meteorite is, you know, like a fragment of
something, you know,
a meteor from this from from, like, space
dust or whatever that comes into the, atmosphere
and then turns into a meteorite and burns
up, you know, on its way down. And,
like, you know, we don't see any
satans or jinns or demons or whatever.
Okay. Fine.
You know, if you want to go at
it,
from that perspective,
then what will I say? I'll say that
the satans and the jinns and demons are
unseen anyway.
So how are you gonna know? As a
point of aqid, the word jinn itself means
something that's,
the you know, the from the root word,
jannah means to be obscure, to be unseeable.
So we ourselves say that you're never gonna
be able to prove this right or wrong.
It's just something that's there from Wahi.
So what is it? You're trying to use
your empirical knowledge in order to verify or
to
in order to prove wrong what's there in
the wahi. We told you from the beginning
that, you know, these are things that are
from the unseen realm. You know, what is
the shihab fact that Allah talks about in
in his book? Is it literally the meteorites
or is it something else? You don't know.
And the point is that Allah is informing
us about something. It's not the point is
not like that that some sort of, like,
a divine astronomy book or whatever.
Otherwise, instead of reading the Quran for every
night for,
you know, we should go read a a
astronomy textbook, you know, in in in in,
29 or 30 nights and make of it
and then make dua and cry or whatever.
That's you know, the point is something different.
So he's mentioning that these are the 3
usages of the stars that are mentioned. All
3 of them are mentioned in the Quran.
That from by the stars people see guidance,
and we know that that's true.
And we know that they're they're beautiful.
And then the third is
said that we
made these shooting stars as something that repels
the somehow in the way. It prevents them
from accessing the knowledge of the higher realm
to get an unfair advantage over the people
of the earth. So don't let your mind
get distracted
by
something which is very fantastic and very interesting
on the surface, but not relevant to the
deeper point.
Neither in the Quran nor in,
you know, nor in our reading right now.
And the Quran is there to give assurance
to the prophet that you have divine help
from the higher realm.
That much is that much is clear. Why?
Because you're not gonna have 1400 years of
civilization without some help from from from the
higher realm.
And here, Ibn Rajab is mentioning it. Why?
To,
make an analogy
because the prophet said that
the that the the the the scholars are
have been likened to the, to the stars.
Right? He says related Ahmed Imam Ahmed relates
from Anas that the prophet said the similitude
of the scholars on the earth are is
that of the stars in the sky by
which people are guided through darkness, of land
and sea. If the stars are extinguished, even
their guides might stray.
So he says that the religious scholars have
been likened to the stars, which provide three
benefits. They guide the people through the darkness,
they adorn the sky, and they're the missiles
that repel the satans who ascended the heavens,
endeavoring to intercept Allah's commands to the angels.
The religious scholars now we're not talking about
stars anymore. Now we're talking about the olema.
The scholars possess these characteristics as well. You
see
a meta an analogy,
to to those characteristics.
You know? Those characteristics are literally there in
the stars and they're metaphorically there in the
olema.
They guide through the darkness of ignorance.
Right? Someone calls me and, you know, says,
well, Sheykh, you know, my mother's were yelling
at me and says I shouldn't smoke weed,
and I'm like, you know, you're trying to
mess up my fun. I'm like, look, the
weed is not good for you. It's haram.
You're gonna go to jahannam, and it's also
gonna, like, you know, screw up your brain
and kill your brain cells and, like, your
mother has been so good to you and,
you know, and you
she deserves that. You respect her and you
owe it to her to listen to her,
and she only wants what's best for you
anyway
and, etcetera, etcetera. Right?
Whereas if you go to if you go
to somebody who's like a secular trained whatever,
they'll say, well, weed is now decriminalized,
and your mother is just a source of,
stress for you anyway.
And she's just,
you know, there to, like, make you feel
guilt. So stop stop listening to her and,
like, just live your life separately,
which probably will be helpful to you, in
some limited sense in this world. But in
Achera, it's gonna be a complete catastrophe and
it's questionable whether even in this world holistically
it's gonna help or not.
Right? So the ulama, they at least they
can tell, okay, fine. You know, don't
this is this is a big thing, you
know, people like, you know, like mental health,
Muslim mental health,
By and large, it's a good thing that
Muslim mental health is,
a
a topic that is getting more attention
as time goes by, and it should get
more attention, and we should have more professional
Muslim mental health providers.
But even then, the mental health providers that
are trained in providing mental health, they have
to come to the ulama in order to
to to calibrate their
their,
you know, their their treatments,
in order to be,
harmonious with the deen. Otherwise, if you're just
gonna say Muslim mental health, which just means
what? I'm gonna do whatever I want. I'm
gonna do what everyone else is doing in
the field, but just say
in the beginning and, you know, shut my
office for Eid and for Jawa.
That's not really that's not really all that
helpful.
So the ulema, they guide through the darkness
of ignorance.
They adorn the earth.
Meaning what? Is that when you have a
society based on the values that are preserved
and that are, dispensed by the, you
have
a a a society that's worth living in.
And they are the missiles that repel the
satans who mixed truth with falsehood,
introduce heretic and introduce heretical innovation in in
in religion.
Such innovations are introduced by people who are
following their own whims. That there are the
Safas of this world who are gonna take,
you know, Muslim,
and Islamic
and and and Quranic and and, you know,
Sunnah based values,
and they're going to twist them in order
to run their own shops and in order
to make their own political candidacies
viable and in order to, you know, misappropriate
misappropriate
the symbols and images of deen, like the
caliphate or like the Quran or like Medina
or like, you know, these things that the
Muslims love for the sake of Allah in
order to get their own political, economic, or
social,
gains that they wish to out of the
deen, and they're gonna leave people in the
garbage in their wake.
They're gonna trash people's din in their wake.
And so the
are there to do what?
That they're there to negate this,
spurious misappropriation
of the people of Ba'al,
from from from religion.
Ibn Rajab continues, so as long as knowledge
remains, people will be guided.
But knowledge will remain as long as the
scholars remain. When the scholars dwindle in number,
people fall into error.
The prophet
relates this meaning in a sound hadith.
Allah does not withdraw knowledge by extracting it
from the hearts of men. Rather, he takes
away scholars.
When no scholar remains, people,
take the ignorant as their leaders, and these
ignorant ones are questioned and give religious verdicts
without knowledge. They are astray, and they lead
others astray.
And this is a hadith. Usually, people will
quote it when, like, it was, you know,
someone, a person of knowledge dies.
But it's, you know, worth pondering over
more than just like a funerary note for
some mullah,
which is what Allah doesn't withdraw knowledge by
extracting it from the hearts. Rather, the scholars
are the are are the the wells from
which the water of knowledge is drawn. If
the scholars go away, then there's no more
knowledge anymore. Ignorance is going to prevail.
And if we don't have a machinery and
a pipeline to train these people
and to,
replenish the ones that are that that leave
when their,
life expectancy
expires,
then we're going to lose the knowledge. And
furthermore,
if we have people who
are reflexively
trained to curse, those people who keep the
knowledge. Right? Imagine there's a well
and, you know, like a dog falls into
the well.
Right? This is the famous story of Tony.
Thank you to Red Soleiman,
from Karachi,
who,
introduced me to this wonderful teaching story,
that there was,
you know, many of you probably have heard
the story of Tony. If not, it's worth
recounting again that, there was a village somewhere
and,
you know, when the villagers woke up to
pray fajr, they they, you know, the whole
village has one well that they make wudu
from, they wash their clothes from, they drink
from, they cook from, they clean from. So
when they put the bucket into the well
to get the water out for the wudu
fajr, they found the water is putrid and
smells horrible.
And, it was unusable.
And so when they looked inside with their
torches or whatever, they saw there's a dead
dog with the carcass of which has bloated
inside the well. So they go to the
village, Moli, to the village scholar and they
say, hey, you know, you're a smart guy.
You went to Baghdad and, you know, became
a big mullah.
You you went to Bukhara and Salan Alqand
and learned we're all illiterate villagers. You tell
us, what do we do now? He says,
well, he cracked open his muftas or quduri.
He said, well, take a 100 buckets of
water out and the water should be good
then afterward. So he took a 100 buckets
of water out.
Right?
And, they said though the the well is
still the water is still putrid. What should
we do? They said take another 100 buckets
of water out. They took another 100 buckets
of water out.
If the water is still putrid, what should
we do? They said take another 100 buckets
of water out. So they took another 100
buckets of water out. The water is still
putrid, Milana. What do we do?
He says, I have a question. Have you
guys taken the dog out yet?
I said, no. Of course not.
He said, how about this? Take the dog
out, then take out a 100 buckets of
water out. And so they took out the
dog, then they took out a 100 buckets
of water. And sure enough, the,
the water of the well was sweet again.
And so that dog was named Tony. Anyway,
this important story of Tony is very important.
Why?
Because, in the context of what we're talking
about right now, people see scholars imagine if
the scholar is like the well from which
the water of knowledge is drawn.
They sees they sees a scholar, you know,
Tony's tripped and fell into the into the
well. They see a scholar, there's some problem
with him. And so then they're like, what?
All the scholars are wrong. It's like seeing
a well in which, like, a dog fell
and the carcass bloated and it's the only
well in the in the village.
So they're like, you know what? Wells are
horrible. We're not gonna use wells anymore. Okay?
Go all of you die of thirst.
This is one of the dumbest things I've
ever heard. It doesn't mean that the water
is bad or that wells are bad. Maybe
you just need to take Tony out of
the well and everything will be right again,
you know. And it this is why it's
a fitna sometimes,
comment about things that they really need not
comment about. And I'm not talking about people
like Ghazali and Imam Al Haram. Usually they're
that, you know, that type of the Mhaptic
scholar is very good at not commenting about
things that they don't know about.
But, you know, human beings are human beings,
and even those people weren't divinely protected from
error. And a person may pass a comment
about something that they don't know about. Part
of your
your acumen as a scholar, as a student
of knowledge, is to be able to discern
what a person is an expert at and
what they're not expert at, and to take
the things that they say that are from
their expertise and reliable and to discard the
rest of them. So the Hidayah, for example,
is master book of Hanafiq.
It misreports Imam Malik's position fairly frequently,
and so we don't pick up the Hidayah
and throw it in the garbage. I remember
when I would mention this to, you know,
some of the fellow students, you know, from
the far flung areas,
of the country, and they would say,
I
said, what are you saying that, you know,
the Isaihbul Hidayah doesn't know? He's a great
alim.
How dare you mention, you know, something bad
about him. I said, no, I'm not saying
bad about him. When he reports something in
Hanafi Fit, he's a master,
If he reports something about a madame he
doesn't know about, that should be excused. It
doesn't mean that, you know, his things that
he's saying about Hanafi Fitt are wrong. As
a scholar, you can discern those things. You
know, you can understand that Darqotri, when he
says something, Radabu Hanifa,
you can take it with a grain of
salt.
You know, it doesn't mean that every hadith
that he's narrating, you know, is
a bad hadith, you know. When, you know
I don't know. Fafruddin Razi says something about,
like, bees making honey inside of their legs
or whatever. It doesn't mean that he doesn't
understand Asharikalam.
It just means
maybe he's not, like, super expert on, like,
the way bees and honey works. Right?
The problem is the Awam, they see someone,
makes a mistake, and says something that they
probably admittedly shouldn't have said because outside of
the pale of their expertise. And what do
they say? Oh, this person, everything he says
is all baqasse. It's all nonsense.
And, what is it? It's like seeing a
well in which Tony's,
deceased body is bloated and and and and
and rotting.
And so because of this, we don't need
wells anymore because I we tried this well
thing and wells just don't work.
Okay. That well, maybe the
bloat in it is so bad that that
well will never work anymore. What does that
mean? That all the other wells, you're not
gonna take water from them ever again? This
is a type of overreaction and it's there
look. There are a set of people who
have a vested interest in this type of
overreaction.
You know, and those are the people who
have a vested interest in Islam being supplanted
as, you know, the dominant paradigm by which
the world functions.
And so you're going to what? Replace the
olema with what? Modernism?
With Neil deGrasse Tyson?
And what? Are you gonna replace the the
the olema with what? With with Carl Sagan?
You're gonna replace the olema with what? Richard
Dawkins
and Sam Harris and, like, Bill Maher? Come
on. These people are I mean, they literally
they're like their entire afida is based on,
like, white supremacy
or based on, like, you know, like, just
these kinda like philosophical half baked. They're not
even philosophically trained people anyway. These half baked
assertions, many of which just have to do
with their own smugness,
and their their smugness with their super expertise
and, like, very small narrow bands of learning
and complete, like, stark ignorance and anything else
other than them. They don't even claim to
have a,
you know, a philosophical education that embraces
learning or knowledge in in any holistic sense.
But just like their empirical expertise with regards
to, like, I don't know, like, the way,
like, bodies in the sky work,
that's, you know, to be very, frank with
you, it's,
fine. You have a problem with the olama.
Your problem may or may not be legitimate.
It may be legitimate. I give I give
I I'll, you know, I'll give you I'll
throw that at least hypothetical bone. But what
are you gonna replace it with? These, train
wreck type of people?
That doesn't make any sense. And so when
someone says, yeah, all these are killing everybody
and they're gonna ruin and they're the ones
who ruined Islam and they this, that, and
then they so tell me, what's your
What is your,
you know, thing you're gonna replace them with?
And,
really upon
a fair and objective,
you know, second glance,
You have to see that, you know, even
if there is some problem in certain things,
it's just a problem. It's a particular problem.
It's not a universal problem that pervades the
system of knowledge.
Allah
give us the tawfiq to what? Allah give
us the tawfiq to a,
not
say
not talk about those things that we don't
have knowledge,
of. And it's hard it's hard for a
ego
egotistical person like myself to shut up and
say I don't know. But once you get
used to it, there's a type of sweetness
in it. You know?
And by saying I don't know, especially when
a scholar does so or someone who at
least the the poem perceives to be a
scholar, whether or not that's true.
You know, one of the benefits is by
saying I don't know,
that person then inoculates themselves and others from
fitna in case they're wrong,
whether it's about the deen or whether it's
about any sort of secular science or whatever.
But then from the other side, we also
have to see, like, what? You know?
Nobody is perfect
except for the the messenger of Allah sallallahu
alaihi wa sallam.
And because a man makes one mistake, it
doesn't mean that everything else they say is
wrong as well. Just like if a man
says 99 out of out of a 100
things that are right and one thing wrong,
the 99 things that are right doesn't make
the one thing wrong right also by, like,
the law of, like, preponderance or whatever. Allah
give us discernment.