Hamzah Wald Maqbul – Chains Of Narraration Episode 2 Shaykh Hamzah Maqbul
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Assalamu Alaikum Waqtallahu Parikatahu.
This is Shafi Ahmed and I'm the host
of the chains of narration podcast.
I am recording the 2nd episode, and I'm
very happy and excited to have,
a very dear friend of mine,
Sheikh, Hamza Makbul,
who,
I'm rerecording this right now in a study
room of, library here in Cleveland.
So, very happy that, he could take time
out of his busy schedule to,
spend a few minutes and,
kind of, talk about a few subjects, that
I think that are very pertinent right now
and are going on.
But without any further ado, I wanna welcome,
Mohan Hamza on to the podcast.
If he could just give a brief,
you know, kind of background about himself and,
you know, maybe what, maybe if you can
spend a few minutes about what, you know,
how did he end up going and studying
Islam and what kind of motivated him to
do that. I think this is something that
will be very beneficial for our listeners because
it's always interesting to hear about,
how our scholars ended up where they were
today and kind of the different paths they
took to how
not to where they got today. So I'll
turn it over now to
my name is Hamza
Mahbou. For those of you who don't know
me, I was born in California.
I grew up on the West Coast of
the United States, which seems to be somewhat
of a different part of the country than
than this Midwest I find myself in right
now.
And,
I went to middle school and high school
in a small town,
in rural Washington State.
After graduating,
from high school,
I went to the University of Washington where
I did a degree in biochemistry and another
degree in Near Eastern languages,
which meant Arabic and Uzbek.
From my Uzbek friends, khandaisis, Yashil lisizlar.
And
then afterward, I went to
study, Dean
in Mauritania.
I had 3 years of Arabic from the
university under my belt already by that point,
which sounds a lot more impressive than it
actually is.
Unfortunately,
the study of the Arabic language
in academia
is
is, you know, its charitable way of way
of saying it is it's it's it's anemic.
But at any rate,
I went and studied in Mauritania and Malekifib.
And then with our Mauritanian rasaifib in the
Emirates,
more Malekifib
and Usul Hadith and Nahu and just a
bunch of like basic subjects,
that a student of knowledge needs to read.
And then afterward I spent, I spent about
3 years in Pakistan as well.
And I went through the Darshan Azami
standardized curriculum,
the Jalalayn year, the 8 year curriculum, the
Jalalayen year, the Mishkat year, and the, Doha
Hadid. And, then after I graduated from Madrasah
in Pakistan,
I came back to,
Seattle where I lived for the next 5
years. And then in 2000
12, I moved to moved to, Chicago, and
nowadays, I'm hanging out in Cleveland. So that's
kind of a quick summary.
I do appreciate that.
Yeah. So you you, Masha'allah have already seen,
you know, I think it's a lot for
people who will say, wow, Masha'il, he's done
a lot.
Just a couple of questions I have before
we go to our main topic for today.
You mentioned you were at
at University of Washington where you had studied
biochemistry
as well as near eastern studies as well.
Do you have kind of a what was
your kind of, you know, were you in
the NMSA? What were you what were you
up to? What was what was what was
Sheikh Hamza doing? Yeah. I was pretty I
was pretty active in the MSA. I was
president also,
for some time.
And,
in that time,
we,
got
a Masjid
established.
I guess the Masjid was there from before,
but it was defunct for a number of
years. So we started praying Jannah over there,
and we started having activities. And now the
Islamic House in the University of Washington is
like a very lively hub of of activity
for them, and same for the community as
well. Like, when I go to Seattle, that's
where I try to create my du'am.
And I see a lot of the guys
who used to go from the time that
I was, president or that what I that
I was in MSA
even though they've graduated and moved on with
their lives just because it's it's really unique
and really, good,
vibe that that that that that place has,
a very healthy vibe that that place has.
When I was in MSA,
our MSA was politically very active. We were
very linked up with other student groups, Black
Student Association,
MEChA,
you know,
just a number of other student groups. We
were involved in protesting the war against Iraq.
I was in the student senate. The MSA
was very high visibility.
We used to wear traditional clothes. We used
to pray
outside. We used to, you know, we used
to, I guess, participate fully in the life
of our of our university.
And some people liked it, some people didn't.
We didn't really care. And, to
this day, I'll randomly meet somebody who I
went school with and they know me and
I don't know them, but they used to
see me. And so many of them even,
you know, a couple of them, they actually
accepted Islam later on. SubhanAllah. And I see
them in the Masjidah, like, hey, you're Muslim?
I didn't, like, I don't even know who
they are, but I'll just recognize your face.
But you're Muslim? I don't remember, you know,
I don't remember, like, you ever praying with
us. Like, no. We I accepted Islam when
you,
when you went to go study. Because then
oftentimes they'll listen to they'll listen to the
soundcloud or whatever afterward, you know. Right.
So it was good. I think it was
a good time. And, that's why
I really I really, have very positive feelings
toward the institution of MSA. Especially when it's,
when people live it to its fullest.
No. I I I really wanted you to
mention that because I think,
you know,
it's it's always interesting to hear about everyone's
background, but in particular your case, you were,
you know, you you were very much,
somebody who was very involved in not only
the MSA, like you said, but with a
lot of other student groups as well on
top of, you know, studying as well. Was
there a kind of a tipping point for
you where you said, hey, you know, after
after you were finishing your, studies at University
of Washington where you said, hey, I kinda
wanna take this thing to the next level
and I wanna go, take my Islamic studies
more seriously.
Well, I think from the time I was
a kid, I always wanted to do this.
And then I would get the standard reply
from my father that, like, oh, you know,
you're not gonna earn a living and you're
not gonna this and that.
You know, and as like when you hear
that when you're in 2nd grade, you don't
even know that means, you know. You don't
know what those things even mean. But, I
always had love of learning the DME. The
fun part is that when I was,
MSA president,
and it's actually not fun at all, in
fact. 9:11 happened, which was not a fun
time for anyone. Definitely. Not for the victims,
not for,
not for all of us who had to
deal with the aftermath. I think now it's
been long enough that people kinda laugh about
it on Saturday and live or whatever. But,
like, it was very serious at the time.
Right. And to me, it's still very serious.
And so, you know, there was so much
demand for people in America to know about
Islam,
and to know about the Muslim world at
that time because of how serious that,
that chapter in
the the history of the life of this
nation was. Right. And so
what I realized very quickly is that there
are a lot of people who talk on
behalf of Islam. Mhmm. And,
some of them know what they're talking about,
you know. Some of them don't. Some of
them do know what they're talking about, and
many of those people do not have the
best interest of the Muslims in mind.
So instead of, you know, sitting and hearing
uncles talk garbage about the olema and how,
you know, they messed up everything or whatever,
standard anti clerical rant that, the
the the kind of like semi secularized
class of,
1970 to 1990 immigrants in America that seem
to be the backbone of many of our
institutions, not all of them obviously, but many
of them.
They at least have their own segment of
the, you know, the life of Islam in
America that they they very securely,
are, you know, are running.
Instead of hearing that standard anti clerical rant,
I just told my father, I'm like, look,
this is a chance. We can either talk
crap about other people or we can, you
know,
do it ourselves and try try to do
the best job that we can.
And that was, something that, you know, he
said look I want you to go to
medical school. I want you to, you know,
get a profession. I want you to, you
know, do all these things and if you
want to study the dean as well, I
have no problem with
that. But,
you know, why don't you do both of
them? So I told him, I said let
me study the dean first because if I
die in the middle, my medical degree is
not gonna help me.
And, he acceded,
and that was my intention.
And then thereafter, you know, this, illness something
that nobody
enters into it except for except for it
overwhelms them and, causes them to lose
lose interest in really anything other than it.
So
Okay.
So, no. It's very interesting, like you said,
that, with, your,
with your daddy kinda gave you that that
that typical response, but it's something that you
said you kinda had a desire to study
it from early on. So I I think
that is something that's very interesting. In his
in his in
his,
defense and to his credit, he did support
me when I was studying, and he never
he never said anything, he never said anything,
discouraging or negative to me. He was always
happy that we're doing something good. I mean,
I think he has his his, well justified
and reasonable
concerns about how I'm gonna earn a living,
which is something that I'm kinda living through
right now. But, you know, he he was
never a hater. He was just had this
concern. That generation of people, especially the post
partition,
generation of people who were dispossessed of their
homes and their their ancestral lands
and,
had to start over again,
in countries that already were suffering from such
poverty.
You know, they he said that he said
when I after the partition, I would see
people who were in so much pain, they
would literally like scream
in in anguish and
in depression,
over the loss that they suffered and how
drastically their standard of living had, like, just
tanked to the floor.
And so, you know, I I see why
that generation of people has that fear.
But, you know, to his credit, other than
wanting what was best for me, he was
never a hater. Alhamdulillah.
No. That's great that that, you know, he
he had your back at the end of
of the day. Alhamdulillah. We'll have I just
wanna know one thing about your studies, and
then we'll go to the main topic in
Charlottesville. You you said in many places,
You mentioned, you know, Mauritania and
Pakistan. Is there any you know, and it's
always difficult to always, you know, put
to pick one particular thing. Is there any
particular,
you know, like, moment or shake or somebody
you spent time with where, you know, you
said this is, you know, like, you you
you may have been kind of like you're
living in these very difficult situations. You're in
the middle of the desert, in the middle
of nowhere, away from your family, away from
people that you know that you said, okay.
This is why I came. This this is
why I traveled halfway across the world to
a place I didn't know with, you know,
to to come in to to gain this.
You know, I I I don't know. I
don't know about that. I think that's a
very
idealized,
very, like,
glamorized way of thinking about it. People think
you're gonna have some sort of Cinderella moment
where, you know, this is where the light
shines down on you. I guess some people
have those
those things. But for me, it was very
much a daily process of slowly putting in
work,
putting an effort, and over long periods of
time getting some gains out of out of
it. You know, people say, how long does
it take to learn Arabic? I say, when
I learn Arabic, I'll let you know. But
in the meanwhile, you know, you just you
should just sit reading the books and chip
away at them with your dictionary in hand.
You know, one day will come. You may
not have to look things up so frequently,
you know. And if you sit in the
company of the Moshay, you know, it rubs
off on you. But I don't I don't
recall I actually recall the, having the feeling
the other way around is that, well, there's
if, you know, if I thought there's gonna
be some Cinderella moment, it's not happening.
You know what I mean?
But, once you embrace it as a way
of life, it helps. And the thing is
the trajectory of my life, I think, as
I deal with people and their problems, people
come to you in an imam rule or
worse yet if you're teaching something about the,
you know, aqidah or san fiqh or whatever.
People still come to you like in a
pastoral capacity because they they start to trust
you and then they tell you about their
lives.
You know, Alhamdulillah,
whenever Allah sends somebody adversity, it's for their
own good and you can see why it's
for their own good. That being said, I
feel like I've had a very easy life.
I have not had
much adversity in my life. I have had
a relatively straight line trajectory in almost everything
that I've done. And this is one of
the reasons that I feel, you know, when
I
you know, I feel like,
that not everybody has the same amount of
responsibility,
you know. People who have had, like, destructive
and catastrophic things happen to them, you know,
for them just to survive, just to wake
up in the morning and go to go
to work, go to school, provide for their
families, etcetera, etcetera. For those people, that's a
great act of piety. That's their road to
ulayat, you know, just to keep it together,
to get to the sainthood and and to
the friendship of
Allah. And somebody who's been given more Allah,
you know, one would think that Allah would
rightly expect more from them.
And so, yeah, I don't have, I don't
have this like tumultuous, like,
you know,
route. I don't see dreams. I don't
see visions. I don't have cash. I mean,
even if I do, like, I don't really
think much of them.
I'm more impressed with what a person does
when when they're awake and what, you know,
what they do through their efforts and through
their thinking and through their,
you know, sticking with the program than I
am with fantastic,
type of stuff. Not that I, you know,
deny the,
the the happenings of those things. But, you
know, I I've never really been in a
in in such a difficulty where I I
needed that.
And, you know, because you asked,
this is actually something I I asked one
of
my, one of the elders in the Hanukkah.
I asked him. I said, how come everybody
sees all these dreams and say, am I,
like, really just like a bad person that
I don't see dreams of this and dreams
of that
and whatever? All these people seem to have
all of these really deep spiritual experiences.
And,
you know, the Sheikh he said that I
had this question.
He was an elder. He wasn't our Sheikh,
but he was he was one of the
close disciples of our grand
sheikh,
a person who,
you know, if anyone has read the autobiography
of Hazrat Sheikh,
Moana Zakaria Kandillawi
he'll know that he he was a very
studious person. He said there are only 3
people's company that I I,
I would tolerate. Everybody else's company always annoyed
me. So one of them is his uncle,
Milana Elias,
was
legendary figure himself in the history of the
subcontinent.
One of them is,
Mawana Sayed Hussain Ahmad Madani
who was director of the Darul Mun De
Oband and, sitting
member of parliament
and a very
strident,
agitator for freedom from the British to the
point where they jailed him. He's a really
interesting figure. And the third is this shahab
al Qadr,
who was our grand Sheikh. So this elder
of ours, he was one of his old
disciples
and, one of his, you know, one of
the people who used to basically arrange the
way that he was taught the tradition of
how the champa is supposed to run, and
so he used to be the manager in
the champa. So I asked him this question,
he said that I had the same thought
once and I asked my Sheikh, Allah Ta'a,
have mercy on him, that, you know, you
know, why is it that, you know, some
people see dreams and some people don't? So
he says that, or have in general these
types of like,
you know, the shine the light down Cinderella
type experiences.
And,
he said he said that, Arsheif told us
there are 2 types of people, the ones
that do and the ones that don't. He
says the ones that don't are have a
higher macam. Why?
Because,
a person only
receives that supernatural help when they're about to
break,
and it's from the father of Allah
And when they see it,
and they receive it, then it doubles the
responsibility and the burden on them. Because if
you go astray after that, then you're you're
seriously,
even more deserving of of punishment.
He says, whereas there are some people who
will never see a dream in their life,
they'll never,
you know, work miracles, they'll never be able
to tell the future and no stock is
going to be expensive tomorrow or whatever, you
know, miraculous parlour tricks
that happened, which admittedly, they do happen. I'm
not I'm not discounting their
their existence. But he says that the one
who's doing what he's supposed to do without
ever having seen any of those things, he
said our understanding was that always that, that
that person has a higher maqam because they're
doing what they're supposed to be doing because
only because it's the command of the Lord,
Jallahu Alaa. And it's closer to slavehood,
in that sense. So I mean, I I
don't I don't feel like I'm,
you know, either of those two situations describe
me, but because of that, I've always just
tried to, you know, put my head down
and do whatever I can,
and not not not not wait for such
an experience. And maybe in in in in
a way, that was
that experience,
for me. SubhanAllah.
Thank you so much for sharing,
on that because it's always interesting and,
awesome to hear,
these things that happen to you and, you
know, maybe we can take some benefit and,
you know, we can give us some motivation
for us ourselves.
So just to jump to kind of the
main topic we wanted to discuss today,
you know, I think if we look kind
of at the current, situation of Muslims in
America, there's a lot of, prevalent topics that
are out there. But there's one that I
felt was, really worth mentioning and going to
discussion and love to get your standpoint and
viewpoint on it was,
there seems to be a lot of discussion
about the range of authority when it comes
to our scholars.
You know, should be should they be weighing
in on political situations
both you know domestically as well as internationally.
What should be the role in it?
As somebody who is you know just a
general Muslim you know should we be following
these you know the sheikhs opinions on these
types of things or imams or anything like
that You know, kind of, you know, how
you feel about, you know, like, that role
and, you know, like, what is that what
is that balance that needs to be struck?
Yeah. This is a this is a interesting
question.
This is an important question
to address because
we
I guess, our our
lived experience in North America, for those of
us who are of our age group and
born and raised here,
is one of what I would call new
traditionalism.
And new traditionalism means what? It means that
there is a, like, a quote unquote, like,
classical or normative experience of Islam
that that's there in the Muslim world.
And many of the elders who came here
in that whatever 70 through 90
time period,
you know, know, from overseas.
And I you know, I'm not again, this
is a very specifically
an immigrant,
experience. Obviously, people in the people in the
African American community or,
you know, other other demographics
amongst immigrants
or other, demographics amongst those who embrace Islam,
you know, this is not gonna describe them.
But,
like, you know, a person can only talk
about what their own experiences are and other
people have different experiences. That's fine.
Charles, you can interview them and I can
also benefit from what their experiences are. That,
people from that demographic,
that 70 through 90,
70 through 90, quarter of immigrants that came
as professionals and whatnot,
they I think, in general, there are some
exceptions. But by and large, what I see
amongst them is they have this kind of
brave new world attitude toward religion. Like, we're
leaving,
you know, some of them came to America
with the intention of leaving Islam and then
they had kids and it caught up with
them again. Some of them, you know, even
even though they they
clung to their Muslim identity culturally or whatever,
but they have this idea that somehow
the ulama class,
is responsible
for the backwardness of the Muslim world,
which is a narrative that was definitely fed
to them by the colonizer,
in in in in the French colonies, in,
British colonies, etcetera, which the subcontinent was a
British colony for better or worse. Allah has
a hiccupine and doing whatever he does. But
that's the the experience they came from. That
was definitely the, like, the propaganda line from
the colonizer.
And so they had this idea, now we're
gonna go to America. We're gonna have this
new Islam in which there's no, you know,
clergy the way it's supposed to be. And,
like, uncle whatever is gonna give the chutba
this week, and then the next uncle is
gonna give the chutba the other week, and
they're gonna talk about the scientific miracles of
the Quran. And they're gonna, you know, you
know, whatever. They're gonna give their brave new
world interpretation, and we're gonna live in this,
like, Utopian
Islam that's,
you know, glorious and unshackled by,
you know, the stupidity of the scholarly class
or having to eat halal or any of
the other superstitious, you know, mumbo jumbo,
type nonsense that or like, you know, hadith,
you know, or whatever. We're not gonna be
shackled by any of that, you know. We're
free of it now. And, you know, they
tried it out and it's just completely unfulfilling,
spiritually unfulfilling.
It is
intellectually,
bereft of, of any depth. It is,
culturally
bereft of content.
It is,
you know, it's just ultimately to fail, and
there are some people who still live in
that that little, fool's paradise,
you know, and you meet them every now
and again. But by and large, it seems
to have failed.
So what is new traditionalism is people like
myself and yourself,
that were born and raised on a diet
of skim milk Islam,
skim milk,
you know, like, so watered down that, you
know, that that you could make woulou from
it,
validly.
And,
now we're like, okay. I'm emaciated. It's time
to either die, which is what I think
about 80% of our our, you know,
classmates and colleagues and like peers have done.
They just kind of checked out of Islam
and in them, there's one portion of people
who are like, I'm not a Muslim anymore,
and one portion of people who, you know,
they probably would like to get married in
the Masjid and have a Janaza and then
have their own Janaza in the Masjid or
go to someone else's Janaza, but they've more
or less checked out, with Islam functionally.
And,
when you say checkout, I know you're kind
of describing it here a little bit, but,
like, what do you specifically Apostasy.
Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, there's an up
there there's there's an open apostasy and then
there's inside the heart a person who's given
up on practicing Islam, you know. So it's
like you may you might you might wear
you like, you you kinda mentioned there. You
know what? I won't mind to cut the
masjid I hope someone Yeah. And I don't
like particularly
like to eat pork or whatever. But, like,
you know, it's not it's not based on
a a conviction
that has heated fervor
that comes from iman, you know.
It's just something that a person's been doing
for long enough, you know. And sadly there
are even there are even people who pray
5 times a day who are like that
as well.
And, Allah Ta'ala help all of us, you
know. And I used to live like that.
I used to live in pain. Like, I
would be like, this deen is like, there's
so khair in it, but I just don't
like I feel so blank inside. What is
that? You know,
and Allah ta'ala, you know, help me to
resolve that, you know. Now I feel you
know I'm not trying to claim any Maqam
of iman.
Uh-uh but I just I feel like you
know
I feel I feel like Allah ta'ala is
there and he's with me and you know,
whatever good I do that it makes me
happy and whatever bad I do, it genuinely
makes me feel bad. You know, I don't
enjoy anything haram anymore.
Even if I do do it, Allah forgive
us, you know. Yeah. So,
the idea is that,
is that that we're part of that generation
that wants to return to, like, some sort
of substantive,
practice of Islam.
But we don't know how because our parents
didn't do it and we're we didn't do
it. I think we nailed it on that.
So we're we're we're like, you know, we're
like,
you know, somebody like a poser just bought
a skateboard,
and then they see all the skaters doing
like kick flips, you know, and whatever. And
they see the basketball players nailing 3 point
shots, and they see the weight lifters bench
pressing 3 £100, and then someone hands us
the bar and we can't lift it, and
somebody hands us the the the the skateboard,
and we fall and scrape our knees, and
somebody, you know, pitches the ball at us,
and we strike out. We don't hit the
home run even though it looks so easy
when, you know, someone else does it. Somebody
hands us the basketball and we can we
can't jump, you know, we can't run. We
can't, you know it's just it's just a
fail. And so some of us have been
at it for some time, so we're like,
okay. Well, I can do a free throw
now. I'm not completely inept. I know how
to dribble the ball, you know.
I can't do a kick flip, but I
can do an ollie. I can you know,
like, or whatever. We're not, like, you know,
but we're still we kinda have one foot
in the poser world and one foot in
the in the in in in in in
some sort of, like, I wouldn't even say
competence, but just like
that we've lived it for long enough. We've
been trying for so long that it has
become somewhat of a part of us.
And,
you know, Alhamdulillah, MashaAllah.
Many
of us wake up for Fajr every day.
Many of us,
you know, make it to Jum'ah. Many of
us
have started eating halal with some conscientiousness.
Many of us have taken the spiritual path,
whether formally or at least in our intentions.
Many of us have done these things, but,
like, then,
civilization is not
it's not individuals.
Right. Civilization is communities
coming together, and nations,
and governments.
It's, you know,
like, okay. Now you know how to, like,
pray Jum'ah like a Muslim. Like, do you
know how to run a grocery store like
Muslim? Yeah. Do you know how to run
a public library like a Muslim? Do you
know how to run a podcast like a
Muslim? Many of our podcasters don't know,
and they run their podcasts like Kufar,
with no
fear of Allah Ta'ala and the ridiculous and
stupid things that they say and that they
do. Maybe I'm one of them also Allah
forgive me. But the point is, we don't
know how to do these things. We didn't
see our elders doing these things, you know.
Which is, which is different than like pre
colonial or even, like, even colonial even modern
Muslim nations where most people aren't part of
this, like, Francophilic, Angophilic, super frangid out, like,
modernist class. They're still living Islam like they
received it from their fathers. They still, like,
have some connection with the their local, you
know, scholars. They still follow Madhhab without even
knowing what Madhhab are. They still have this,
like, very organic lived experience of Islam, and
so they have sensibilities
that go with those things. Now just because
a person can't write a, like, a, you
know,
a thousand page,
PhD thesis of why that's good, doesn't mean
it's not good. In fact, that's how life
is. Things are,
things are in equilibrium,
you know.
They they are where they should be,
And we have this thing as Americans where
we see other people doing things and they're
and we don't like just like a very
arrogant, like, Protestant, you know, type of mindset.
We have, like, We're just like, hey, you
know, if you cannot show me exactly which
I approve exactly every single thing you're doing,
this is culture. And then if it's culture,
it's bogus and it's nonsense and it's not
Islam. And, like, ergo, you're misguided and, like,
we're back to sitting here like orphans
in the Deen not knowing having no mother,
no father, not knowing how to do anything
properly.
So,
you know, that's a that's a I think
my my, prologue to
the discussion of
the ulama and politics
because we are we we spent most of
our formative years
not even thinking that there's such a thing
as an alim, as a scholar and deen
that has some sort of maqam or status,
you know,
in the ummah or in the eyes of
Allah and His Rasool Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam that
a student of knowledge is someone who just
went to go get, you know, get a
degree in medicine and prescribe people antibiotics for
their hemorrhoids and for their whatever, like, whatever,
toe jam between their toes and all this
other nonsense And everybody else was not sticking
something in, you know, someone's backside and doing
it endoscopy.
That person, you know, that person is, like,
somehow, like, not earning a living and, like,
doing something productive in society or whatever.
We don't even we know we we spent
most of our formative years not even knowing
what a scholar is or what a student
of knowledge is or even acknowledging that such
a thing exists in the deen.
And, we spent most of our
formative
years not thinking about,
Islam as having any role to play in
politics other than
there should be a Khalifa rah rah rah.
You know? And that's even that's even a
minority of people.
And,
okay. Fine. I agree with you, you know.
Like, we're all we're all in the same
mood. There should be a what does that
even mean? Nobody knows what that means. They
never seen a Khalifa. They have no idea
how it works, how it functions. They have
no idea about any of that stuff, you
know. What is a Khalifa? What is a
qadi? What is what is what is the
word sharia even mean? You know, most people
most forget about the forget about anyone else.
Most people who are with their pom poms
and saying, like, you know, it's a tilaf
or or you're a monafiq or whatever. Those
type of people. If they actually saw the
Khalifa, they would be the first ones to
be imprisoned and beaten and they don't understand
that, you know. So which I find very
cute. Right. But,
the point is that,
the point is that we don't even know
what any of this stuff means. And now
it's like,
it's hitting us. And we have some people
who have, you know, significant investment in trying
to live Islam as a as a, you
know, as as some sort of live tradition,
living tradition that's not completely
sanitized protestant like, you know, synthetic
type of
a life.
And
lo and behold,
someone's favorite sheikh or another person's favorite sheikh
says something
that
doesn't really make sense to most of us.
And, you know, the whole Twitter and Facebook
and everyone starts to freak out.
And then, like, some people, you know, revert
to henchman mode, which is like, Maisha is
right. No matter even if I see a
YouTube video of him,
or her for that matter,
you know, abusing a small animal on the
street corner, still I'm going to defend it.
And then on the flip side is like,
oh, look, you know, there's a someone has
a political opinion that's different than mine.
And,
they're sell out and they're dollars for scholars
and they're this and they're that and they're
the other thing. And, like, you know,
they they revert to a a really bad
place. We don't know how to deal with
that. We don't realize that. There's always when
there was a khilafa, there were always
sellouts. There were always wishy washy people. There
were always people who were taking the lesser
of 2 evils. And there were always people
who disagreed about what that was. There were
always people who kept it real come *
or high water. I mean, there's always and
these people knew how to deal with each
other. They knew who they wanted to deal
with, who they didn't wanna
deal with. People had sensibilities regarding these things,
you know. We still are in an in
an Islam where people are, like most people
are either, like, 85% of people are, like,
scholars. There's no scholars. And then 15% of
them are
like, oh, we review the olema. And Sheikh
so and so said, like, he's gonna do
personal with my, like, whatever, you know, 19
year old daughter in the room with the
door locked for 2 hours, and that's okay.
I trust him because he's a scholar. We're
still, like, at that mode. Like, we don't
we don't we don't understand the common sense
of how these things work which villagers even
understand. They're like, Yeah, Sheikh is a great
guy. He knows a lot about the Quran.
I'm not gonna let him sit in the
room alone with my daughter, you know. Okay.
So
That's a real that's a real thing and
I think that's something that, like you said,
I think our generation that's something that we're
struggling with right now because we only have
what has been presented to us and we
I think most people I think you know
from my perspective we only know who the
imam is that our local masjid
If you like you said, if you're part
of those people, maybe you attend an ISNA
conference. You might attend a, Ikhana conference or
something like that. Maybe you've seen some others,
you know, the scholars and sheikhs and stuff
as well and activists or whatever. And I
don't think people know how to compartmentalize this.
What's the difference between
imam x and sheikh y? What's the difference
between them? They find a very hard time
believing it and if they well, and I
think all of us because of kind of
the generation that we're living in and the
time and age, well, if he's said he
gives a good talk, then he must be
he must be trustworthy.
That's pretty much like the parameters that we
set for ourselves when we're inviting a speaker
or like you said in those other situations
where we will you know, give the keys
to our home to someone we don't even
know and not even thinking twice about it
that of the ramifications of that. Well, I
mean, I I would even go further. Forget
about giving a good talk, you know. People
give good talk. People don't even know what
a good talk is. Our definition of what
a good talk is, what makes us feel
better.
Generally, what makes you feel better is not
a good talk. Right. You know what I
mean? It's it's like
having a Coke. It tastes wonderful, but it's
like killing you, you know.
And so,
one of the big problems with regards to
with regards
to the entire American enterprise with,
with connection to religion is that by the
decoupling of church and state,
something very unique happened in the history of
the world,
which is that generally religion and state go
together.
I think
I think there's a lot of
theory in anthropology, sociology that
could be discussed here.
And I'm by no means, like,
you know, superstar in any of these in
any of these fields.
And I feel like, in general, Islam is
an exception to a lot of these things.
But,
religion and state go together.
The state has a,
side it's like a holy and mystical power
that allows it to do things that normal
individuals are not allowed to do. The state
is allowed to kill people. The state is
allowed to inflict violence on people. The state
is allowed to to to to change and
demon set what is right and what's wrong.
And it can literally change from day to
day. And because we believe in the sacred
powers of the state,
you know, that's,
that's something we we will accept.
And,
every state has that that that that
that
that that sacred power
and in the in the in the minds
and the hearts of all of its citizens,
except for somebody who is, you know, somebody
who is essentially a rebel
or an insurgent or whatever,
at least ideologically.
And
this is,
you know, from from the beginning of civilization,
one of the functions of the priestly cast,
of people is what?
Is that look. If ever anyone disobeys the
the the machinery of state or the the
the writ or the mandate of the state,
they're dealt with through violence.
Right? Yeah. No. That's not And it's and
and
and at some point along the line, certain
people realized it's actually cheaper to hire a
priest to get people to accept the the
the the holiness of the state.
It's cheaper to do that than to, like,
actually send someone to beat the crap out
of them and their family. Okay?
And so we can reserve we can save
some some resources
and reserve the
the the direct violent intervention of the State
for those few
cases that that that uniquely merited and warranted
or for those few cases we wish to
make an example out of. And the rest
of the people's soft power is is a
more efficient way of dealing with them. The
funny thing is, again, Islam is an exception
to this. Why? Because Islam, from all of
the traditions of the ancient world, is one
of the few that actually will
encourage everybody to learn knowledge. Everybody is encouraged
to learn as much knowledge as they're able
to while making a living. Okay. Whereas whereas,
you know, Judaism, rabbinic Judaism is kind of
like that as well.
But the difference between rabbinic Judaism
and Islam is what is that rabbinic Judaism
is like a bidai. It's
an innovation.
Otherwise, their original Israelite religion, they had a
priestly cast,
you know,
of Levites and
and Zadokites.
They had a priestly cast. It literally was
a cast, like like you have in Hinduism,
like a particular set of families that run
these things. And the rest of the normal
people were farmers and citizens. Why? Because that
was when Judaism was a state.
When they had when they had a state.
Yeah. Right? And then and then later on
in the era of diaspora,
they no they no longer have a state
and,
they maintain their culture and they maintain their
identity
through through knowledge.
Through the knowledge of the Torah, the knowledge
of the Talmud, the knowledge of,
first,
Hebrew and then Yiddish.
And through the keeping of their sacred law
in their personal customs, much like we practice
Islam today.
We as in like American Muslims. And unfortunately,
a growing class of people even in the
Muslim world.
And so,
other than that, you know, the the Catholic
church until the Protestant revolution basically forced their
hand. They cons they they considered it like
impermissible for regular people to read the Bible
directly because it's gonna cause problems,
which it did. That's why a lot of
Christians ain't Christians no more. And,
you know, you know, to this day the
Catholic Church, which is by far the largest
faction of of Christians, they they still like
canon law like the the fiqh of the
church. The books are actually,
a church secret. You know, you're not allowed
to read them. As a normal Catholic, you're
not allowed to read it. You know, only
members of the clergy have access to those
to those books and to those documents. I
know Muslim law who was involved with litigation
in the Catholic church. And so through subpoena,
like, he he had to read through, like,
canon law and, you know, they actually literally
have, like, a, like, a legal it's funny
because they accuse Muslims of trying to run
some sort of parallel whatever. And there's no
fit issue except for you're gonna find, like,
20 different opinions on it. They actually have
an opinion, which is like canon law, by
an infallible source or what they claim to
be an infallible source,
that that's ratified.
So the the idea is that that's Christianity.
Hinduism is the same thing. They have a
priestly cast of pundits, and they're not trying
to teach Sanskrit to everybody else except for
maybe a few modernist,
movements.
But much of that has to do also
with the
the influence of Islam on them because they
see the textuality and the connection with the
text that we have, and they're like, well,
we should be doing this as well. So
you have this Ayas Samaj movement. You have
all these other movements that are
that happen later on. And,
you know, whereas Islam from day 1, the
prophet
is like, look. Okay? Abu Huleyfa is the
slave and
sorry, Salim is the slave and Abu Huleyfa
is the master. Salim memorized the Quran,
and so Abu Huleyfa
learns it from his slave and in the
deen, the the slave and the freed slave
has a maqam higher than the master does.
You know, and knowledge elevates the slave to
the maqam Maqam of the master and beyond
it. You know, suleiman bin yassar from the
fuqaha sabah of Madinah,
you know, through his ilm, you know, he
becomes
he transcends
the the the rank of many noble people
of Quraysh.
And and and Islam expects everybody like if
you can, you're expected to learn Alif Batatha.
You're expected to learn the Quran. I'm telling
you whoever is listening to this, if you're
a born Muslim in America and your mommy
and daddy didn't teach you Alif Batatha, neither
did mine. I couldn't read a page from
the Mus'afan, I was 18. You need to,
like, stop giving your opinion about,
about, like, you know, all this different stuff.
You need to learn, like, how Baha'i and
Ta connect with each other and you need
to, you know, learn Tejuyu. You need to
learn how to read the Quran.
You know, if you accepted Islam and it's
been a couple of years and you haven't
learned this, you need to learn these things.
Stop wasting your time with the controversies and
all these other things that other people are
in. Stop living your Islam in somebody else's
mind and start, you know, start taking control
of it yourself because this is something that,
like, this is something that was important to
us,
even even though the state was there. And
it actually causes,
some chaos in the state because you no
longer can have an official version of Islam,
Whereas you have an official version of Catholicism.
Right. You know, you can't have an official
version of Islam. It has to be, like
a pyramid. Like, there is a class of
ulama that regulate with one another.
Gladiator matches,
gladiator matches with one another. Basically, where where
where where
where they negotiate between each other and a
no holds bars,
session. Hopefully, in a forum that's a venue
that's appropriate for that. That doesn't confuse the
masses or whatever. But even if it does
confuse the masses, that's something that has to
happen. We cannot sweep those things under the
rug because if those things don't happen, then
the water is no longer running. It will
become still and it will become putrid and
we'll see nonsense creep into the Deen.
And so,
every generation, every madhab has been proven again
and again that that it can hold its
water. And, you know, new people have come,
old ideas have left. All of these things,
they have to happen and they happen through
this clerical class and they're the top of
the pyramid. The base of the pyramid is
what? That we have to have a,
an awam, a a laity or general generality
of, of of the masses
that have familiarity with the knowledge of Dean
more than just like, oh, like, he gives
a good talk. You know, you should know
what is Aphi then, who are the people
who are experts in it. Even though you're
not an expert, you should know what is
FIP and who are the authorities in FIP.
That if somebody quotes to you, you know,
like, you know, he gives you a fatwa
and you're like, who said it? And they're
like, well, Sidir Min Sha'awi Zakari said it.
Well, that's not really an authoritative,
opinion in in in fiqh, is it? Even
though the man was a wali of Allah
and we, like, love him and ask Allah
to raise his rank amongst his and we,
you know, we consider the love of such
people in general to be sacred, but that
doesn't give a person, an opinion. And I
don't know, maybe he was a fati. I
don't know. But I'm just saying Yeah. The
point is is that that that, like, you
should know that that's not the authoritative name
that needs to be dropped when talking about
a Fiqpa issue. You need to know in
hadith, you know, if you mentioned Ghazali's opinion
about a hadith, that that's probably not authoritative,
you know.
Without any disrespect to Imam Ghazali,
Rahimullah
Ta'ala,
you know, and every dua in the book,
Ira Akhiri short of sallallahu alaihi wa sallam.
You know, like,
you know, you need to have some,
some sort of orientation with that. And the
issue is that someone might say, well, that's
too much to ask. It used to be
too much to ask. Now people go to
school for 12 years. Even a person who
who's like, who doesn't have enough skills to
get hired anywhere but McDonald's has already gone
through schools for, you know, school for 12
years. You need to you need to be
able to know this stuff.
And,
you know, if you don't,
then
good luck with navigating,
Islam other than, you know, just navigating, you
know, living in somebody else's Islam or living
in somebody else's,
either,
good dean or joke of a dean. So
you kinda hit on 2 things there and,
it kinda goes both ways there. 1 would
be the one who thinks they have the
knowledge and they feel like, hey. You gotta
listen to what I have to say, and
I can kind of sift through this myself.
That's one group. I'll I'll get back to
that in a second. The second one was
the group that says, look. I pray 5
times a day, Sheikh. I, you know, I
know how to read Quran at, you know,
basic level. Probably, you know, this other stuff
is not necessary, and then they'll quote, you
know, the quote the hadith that says, hey.
Look. If the prophet
person who came in and said, hey if
you just do these main things then, you
know, you're fine. What do you say to
people like that who, especially Muslims who live
in America, who say, look I'm taking care
of what I need to take care of.
You know, I don't need to delve into
this stuff. No. That's fine. If you if
you're if you're happy that is that Islam
is completely, like, a individual experience,
then that's fine. That's unfortunately not what the
Quran or the sunnah teach, but that's that
it makes sense in that sense. And that's
the thing is that deen in America has
become this,
like,
individual enterprise.
It's like free market competition. You know what
I mean? And,
it's become basically
non profits are, you know, religion has become
just a, like, a sector of the economy.
And, the government, you know, is like, here,
you guys go compete with one another. We
don't really care. And the reason is what?
Is that the religions the the government is
essentially what what it's turned into. Although, I
don't think originally it was this way or
it was meant to be this way or
maybe might be Allah knows best. But religion
religion, you know, the government basically has the
attitude right now that as long as you
recognize our godhood,
and our sacredness, which we will enforce with
violence if you don't,
in any in any appreciable way,
as long as you recognize
our our our holiness,
the rest of it, what what you do
in our in your time is like musta'hab,
just like, just like Imam Al Hanifa doesn't
care if you wear a green shirt or
blue shirt in most cases.
You know, the government doesn't care, you know,
which way you worship as long as you
accept their sacredness and holiness. And it's not
just America. It's like almost every government in
the world including quote unquote Muslim governments, Islamic
republics and Islamic kingdoms and whatnot.
And so,
you know, that's the thing is that if
you subscribe to that mode of thinking, I
can understand why because that's what everybody else
subscribes to. That's the deen that these people
follow, you know, and I don't follow that
deen. I don't feel like the founding fathers
even followed that deen. But that's what it's
turned into, you know. Whereas even as a
secular atheist or whatever, you don't believe in
any god, but you believe in the the
the deity of the government. And if you
don't, you will run afoul of it and
you will go to jail. And many of
these people end up in jail, even people
who are unscrupulous,
businessmen, traders, etcetera, etcetera. They break the law,
they end up in jail.
And,
but like this is in general, this is
this is the attitude that most people have.
I'm not even encouraging people disobeying the government
because I know there's so much facade that's,
that's gonna happen from that. The point is
it's not it's not it's not sacred.
And the point is that Dean is also,
you know, just because the founding document of
this country says that they're not gonna say
anything about Dean, it doesn't mean that it's
all the same. You know, just because you
have the freedom to say things on the
street corner doesn't mean that it's okay to
say whatever you want, you know, morally.
It's, you know so people have trouble,
separating these things and why wouldn't they? This
is the religion that everybody in this land
follows. Is that the government is sacred and
everything else is,
is up for negotiation.
And like as long as I feel like
I'm okay, that's fine. But you're never you're
never going to have,
institutions of community, much less institutions of state.
You're always gonna have, you know, people ripping
each other off through gambling, through riba, through,
you know, selling drugs and intoxicants. You're always
gonna have,
the rich taking,
unfair advantage of the poor. You're always gonna
have men taking unfair advantage of women or
even the other way around. Yes. That does
exist as well. And it's very rife and
our culture makes it very difficult to talk
about,
because it's also,
become like a religious issue for for us,
for Ahi the issue without saying that it's
Ahi the issue. You always have you always
have, you know, institutions taking taking advantage of
individuals if you don't have any sort of
moral,
compass that's set to you by something other
than Democrats and Republicans. You know what I
mean? Other than the house and the senate
and, like,
you know,
the the, you know, the the the orange
the orange cat stapled to the head of
this man sitting in the White House. Like,
you know, that's just that's just gonna be
the way it is, you know. If that's
that's that's the only the only, like, communal
morality or virtue that you recognize
in life,
then then that's that's gonna mean that your
version of Islam is not really Islam. It's
like Islam flavored something else, you know. And
Allah Ta'ala is Arna Shurakai and Ashirk. You
either submit to him or you don't. If
you submit 99% and then 1% you feel
like you have the the authority not to
submit, then Allah says, and, Arma Sharaka yanashirk,
you,
your worship for me, you share it with
somebody else. This is I give it give
give away whatever you give to me. I
don't accept it. Let it all go to
whoever else you give it to,
you know. And so,
you know, that's that's
that's problematic
and,
that's
part of the difficulty of this lived Islam
is that for us,
who are trying to kind of like, you
know, orphans who are trying to find a
home,
it was difficult enough. Many of us come
from situations where we didn't have even one
friend who was there to hold our hand,
or be with us or have our back
while we were on this journey toward,
you know, trying to trying to, you know,
reclaim some sort of, like, organic and authentic
Islam.
And so we're so used to thinking about
the deen in these individualistic
terms. Right. You know, other, like, you know,
cultural individualism notwithstanding.
So that's that's really problematic.
I can see that. So now, like, kind
of now kind of going back to what
we were originally talking, you know, the original
question too, which is I think, you know,
now for the people that do care, that
small percentage of people that we mentioned are
like that 15 20%,
what have you, that actually do care about
scholars in America and care about what they
have to say and everything like that. I
think especially,
you know obviously we can think of a
few examples in
our current moment but also just in the
past as well. How do we navigate, you
know, like, what kind of authority that we're
giving them? Uh-huh. You know, like, you know,
what kind of role should they be playing
in our lives, you know, considering that all
of the things that we've just discussed where
obviously we don't live in a Muslim country.
There's no government
that's you know adhering that to us. There's
no, you know there's no prevailing you know
like thought or anything that hey we have
to all follow this one particular person or
anything like that. That. How do we balance
that? And in these cases where we are
quote unquote let down by what a what
a what a imam or sheikh might say
about a particular thing and we try to
start devaluing them and what we it's called
cancel culture where you want to cancel out
everything that they've ever done in their life
because, you know, he made a unflattering,
you know, because he went and, you know,
went and talked to
a leader of a different country we don't
agree with. There's something like that. How do
we balance that? So look, there's you brought
up a couple of issues. I don't really
think we're gonna be able to treat this
topic any any reasonable amount of time. This
is maybe just like a prelude to a
longer discussion that needs to have Sure. That
we need to have, again and again in
different venues and with different sets of people.
I'm actually writing a paper on this topic
right now. So some of it, inshallah, someone's
really interested, inshallah. Hopefully, by the next, you
know, month or so, I'll have the paper
out.
But,
be sure to post it on our, channels
and social media so people can see that.
Insha'Allah.
The,
look,
there's 2 extremes.
1 is that it's like radical democratization, which
is that every individual's
opinion
is equal
in equal worth, which I
don't think any
any set of people that can actually work
with.
Because if, you know, the
carpenter and
the garbage man and the, you know, pathologist
all have an equal say in how the
table is built, you're not going to have
very good tables. So that's one extreme. And
then the other extreme is what is,
absolute submission to a particular authority in all
matters.
That exists in our deen. The only person
who has it in this Ummah is the
Rasul
nobody else.
And then after him,
you know, his khulafa rashidun said, no Abu
Bakr said, no Umar said, no Uthman said,
no They
have something that's
similar to it,
but it's because because they're recognized to be
the authorized
representatives of the Messenger of Allah. And somehow,
then the Sahaba
not as individuals but as a generality also
then,
occupies some
station which is further toward that end of
the continuum. And then, after them, the aslaf,
the tabirim, the tabah tabirim, the olamah, the
aslaf, I should say.
And, you know, in any generation, if the
olamah should have a consensus on a matter,
ijma'a on a matter, then
it inhabits the space that's closer to that
side of the continuum. But all of it
is through the authority of the prophet
So if he's the only one who intrinsically
wields that authority, Nobody else does will, and
we don't really want anybody else's authority until
the yomukriyam other than him
ask for him. That's the slavery. If, it
was here in America, we would have no
need for a civil war because nobody would
want to rebel in the first place.
The,
we consider the freedom of from from that
slavery to be a path to the hellfire.
So
the,
you know, then in the middle there, everyone
else lives somewhere in the middle.
And,
the understanding of what what
or how to navigate
the statements of the ulama,
it requires first that you define who they
are.
And this is something I think a lot
of people just don't get.
And they are the preservers
of the knowledge of revelation.
They're the ones who preserve it both in
its word
and in its practice and in its understanding
and in its spiritual states. They preserve the
knowledge of the Prophet
No one person preserves the entire thing, but
between them aggregate, they preserve enough of it
to, live Islam as individuals, as communities, as
nations, and as a as an ummah. It's
between them, it's preserved.
Just real quick for, like, a lay person,
you know, somebody who doesn't
may not know. Okay. They know all the
mama, and they don't shake their they know
who shakes their own mamas or anything like
that.
How do how does one,
you know, differ between
the real ones and the not real ones?
Well, I mean, that's the we're trying to
we're kinda trying to get to that. Right?
Which is that the the the definition is
what? It's those people who preserve
the knowledge of revelation
in theory and practice
in in the mind and in the states
of the heart.
And so that means there are a lot
of religious figures that we
allow to give the chutba and that we
put in the pedestal of the ulema who
are not really ulema.
They are religious figures, don't get me wrong,
and they're people who people benefit from. But,
like, someone like, for example,
doctor Zakir Naik
or, you know, like people so many people
I I hear this from. Oh, this guy
is, like, a really
learned scholar and, like, you know, blah blah
blah. I'm like, look. I don't have any
I don't have any particular beef with him
as a person. I don't agree with a
lot of what he says.
As when he strays into his comments with
regards to
the Aqidah or the fiqh of Islam, precisely
because he obviously hasn't studied it. You know,
if he's representing
Islam
in a debate format to Hindus or to
Christians or whatever, he seems to do actually
a really good job.
He seems to be really robust. He's not
gonna make any friends, but intellectually, I mean,
he seems to basically, you know,
be somebody,
be somebody that really nobody can, you know.
And I wouldn't say nobody, but, like,
a large segment of the population are are
are not going to be able to, you
know, say anything,
to him.
So that's fine. Right? But he's not a
scholar.
Why?
Because what he does
is not from the knowledge of revelation. You
could be an atheist and do what he
does.
He's obviously not I'm not accusing him of
being an atheist, and he's not doing it
for the reason an atheist would do it,
but you don't need to even know who
Rasool Allahu alaihi wa sallam is in order
to point out inconsistencies
in the bible or inconsistencies
in in in the trinity as a doctrine,
you know, as a foundational doctrine of Christianity
and why that's inconsistent with large tracts of
of of the text of the Torah or
even of what they were, you know, called
the New Testament and things like that. That
is not an Alem in that sense. And,
because we have not taken the preservation of
revelation to be seriously or even a thing,
people don't know who a scholar is, first
of all. The second issue is this, is
that look now, okay, fine, we know who
it is. It's the person who knows the
knowledge of Quran, Hadith, faqapida, you know.
Then after that,
you know
well, what happens when an expert on on
fiqh tells you what their opinion is on
sushi?
Just general opinion. Yeah. You know, are you
obliged to you know, can are you are
you gonna say that, like, you know, Imam
al Hanifa used to like the tuna roll
better than the salmon roll, and for that
reason it's more Islamic?
No. I mean, there might be a reason.
But, like, if you investigate into it, also
there might not be a reason. There's not
a reason.
Okay.
The issue the reason the reason is in
the middle then that that,
that that I think people the reason they
get
kind of,
psyched, you know, kinda kinda like taken for
a spin with with politics is because
politics
is the practical implementation
of
ideals, many of which are religious.
And people
misconstrue the
misconstrue the,
the fact that the ideals come from the
din,
with the the fact that the implementation doesn't.
Okay? So we want to, for example,
outlaw,
*.
You know? What is the way to do
it? Should we throw people in jail for
using it? Should we beat them? Should we
give them a grace period? Should we, you
know,
punish the should the punishment come down on
the purveyors of it more,
than the performers or the users more than
the consumers more than the producers? How is
that all supposed to work? And there there
may be some guidelines that are
to place. And so people, what happens is
that somebody will have an opinion that they
find very odious.
And,
you know, and they'll and and and it
will offend their sensibilities that are rooted in
wahit. But what they don't realize is that
the other person's sensibilities are also rooted in
wahit. And they may be way off base,
in fact. They may be like if they
were to be implemented, it would be really
destructive and really bad. Mhmm.
However,
you cannot say that that person did it
out
of hatred or disrespect of deen. They're just
respecting the deen in a way that doesn't
make sense to you.
And this is one one thing that happened,
you know, between the Sahaba
which was the fitna that occurred after the
assassination of Sedna Uthman
and what to do with the killers of
Saidna Uthman and how to deal with
that. And, that
was exactly, that's what it was, is that
everybody agreed that Saina Uthman's killers deserved to
be,
deserved to be,
killed in retribution and retaliation
ijtihad, and al al sunnah in general say
that
was the one that we considered to be
more correct. But it was ijtihad. It wasn't
an open and shut case. You know, you
can't just say that they they broke into
his house and they killed him for for
for no crime, with no judge, with no
due process,
even though he was the the one that
all the Muslims by Ijma' had
taken pay out with, including Sayna Ali and
the Ahlulbaytah the Prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam.
So, you know, certain, you know, particular individuals
from the Ummah didn't have the right to
just jump in and kill him much less
remove him from office without without,
you know,
without paying respect to the fact that literally
Jama'at Ummah considered him to be leader.
And so nobody disagrees about that. But like
now what do we do? You know, we
don't know exactly who these people are. We
can go door to door looking for them.
It's going to cause a civil war. Is
that worth, you know,
And this is the this is the genius
of the messenger of Allah salallahu alayhi wa
sallam is that they had such a harsh,
difference of opinion that a person can see
the merit in both sides and the both
sides. You say to Maui, it's like, this
guy this was my uncle.
You know, they killed him. I want justice.
You know, if your uncle was killed or
if your near relative that you loved,
was killed, then you're gonna be like, to
* with any of these people. I wanna,
like, whatever. Right? It was a it was
a political difference of opinion and even if
the Al Asuna
they they,
in general,
say that, say that
Istihad seems to be closer to the Haqq.
Still, it was it was a it was
an issue in which there was a very,
very harsh difference of opinion on how
to implement
the,
the those mandated goals and principles that are
set forth by Wahid, by
Revelation and by the Deen of Islam.
They literally took the battlefield against one another,
but the Prophet
trained them so well
that they understood that this is a political
political,
dispute and they didn't allow the dimensions of
that dispute to
exceed those boundaries to the point where,
Sayidina Muawiyah respected
and the not just the maqam, Sayidina Ali
who has been more knowledgeable nadeen than him,
but he actually would ask him fit questions,
even in the breaks between battle,
during the Battle of Siffin
and,
you know, this is a sensibility that they
had back then. So when your favorite Sheikh
Fulan pals with tyrants or,
you know, says something that seems really insensitive
or horrible, you know, maybe I agree with
you. Maybe I agree with you and I'm
like disgusted and taken aback. Right? But first
of all,
one of the things that I feel like
why people have this, like, over visceral overreactions
is they're like, you can't do this.
Supposed to be you're supposed to be perfect.
Like, how are you doing this? Yeah. You
know? And it's like, well
And by admitting that and then by admitting
he made a mistake, it somehow, like, lessens
his, like, role in their lives or his
level. Or or or whatever. Right? Yeah. And
so, like, you know, some people we make
them into make them into the Muztahid Muklukkan
despite the fact that they're just like
really eloquent creatures.
Yeah. You know. Or they're really,
you know, they may have like some significant
amount of knowledge in certain things. But they're
not they're not the
protectors and the preservers of Waihi and and
the din. And then people say, well, if
this guy could say something to them, we
ergo we can't trust any of the. And
it's like, go right ahead and, you know,
like, you know, go back to the brave
new world that that that, you know, Allah
SWT saved us from. MashaAllah.
You know, Why why is it that you
can't just be like, this person made a
mistake, I disagree with them and just move
on, you know. Nobody said you have to
learn from that person if you don't want
to, you know. If you don't nobody said
you have to like,
you know, go to their programs or pay
money to their institute or whatever. If you
don't want to, don't do it, You know,
I'm not saying not to, but I'm just
saying if you if you disagree with us,
go right ahead. Right? But, like, why is
it that you can't be like, I think
this person politically is way off base without
being their sell out, their dollars, their dollars,
their dollars, and blah blah blah. You know,
I mean, the thing is that the prophet
himself chastised who? He chastised
Osama bin Zayd
for what? Because somebody
took shahadah on the battlefield in order to
save himself from being killed. I want everyone
to know this probably why he took it.
And the prophet was aware of that.
But he but he was illustrating to what
the Hebrew Rasulullah, alaihis salaam, it's literally the
hadith of the prophet
that it's mentioned that he was like the
love of the prophet Like, you know, like
when you say to like like a little
kid, like my love come here. Right? Like
literally that's that's what that expression means. That
they used to call him my love because
he was like his grandson,
His mother his mother was the wet nurse
of the Prophet,
Ayman Barakatul Habashiya. The Prophet
said, if anyone wants to see a woman
who is a woman of Jannah, or marry
a woman who's a woman of Jannah, let
him marry her. Say it as Say it
bin Haritha, who is Injahiliyah,
the adopted son of the Prophet son of
the prophet married her. So imagine he loves
the the the the father
of that boy and loves the mother. His
father, Zayid bin Haritha
was shaheed in the path
Khalifa before Sayidna Umar, maybe even before Sayidna
Abu Bakr
except for he gave his life in the
path of Allah Ta'a in the battle of
Mu'ta.
This person was someone that the Prophet loved,
you know, and, the Prophet chastised him for
that. Why? Because somebody
took the Shahada
again from our, like,
worldly point of view. Under duress. Not under
duress. I mean, just to save his life.
I mean,
you know, if, if okay. We're like, okay.
You're not allowed to judge. But, like, you
know, if you were to judge, you know,
you know,
what would you think? It seems pretty clear
that the person did it just to save
their own life. Yeah. There's no, like, convincing.
They're like, oh, I thought about Suratul Furkan
and they're like, one minute where your sword
was above my head and it's like just
the eloquence moved me. No. Yeah. Not in
that moment. Even then even then when it's
so nakedly obvious Yeah. The prophet says you
don't have the right to judge.
And so,
you know, if you don't want to learn
from that person, don't learn from them. If
you don't want to support the institutions, don't
support them. If you don't want to listen
to their biennials, don't
to why you just turned the person into
Iblis all of a sudden, you know. And
the funny thing is that some of these
people some of these some of these people
where people go crazy on them, like, you
know. I actually personally
have issues with them anyway, you know. Sure.
But, like, I'm like, why? Like, what what
in the dean gives you the right to,
like, just go so full blast on
on them. It's one thing if the person
were to be like, yeah. Well, you know,
father of An Nas is not part of
Quran or whatever. Right? That's like a clear,
violation of kufra. I know people who say
stupid things like that and you're still more
willing to respect them than you are with
this person who, you know and this isn't
one person. There's so many of them. There's
so many people like Unfortunately, a lot of
examples.
Examples that gotta kinda go after that. And
it's like, that's not see, that's not the
way Deen works. That's why we can't have
nice things as Muslims. Like, that's why we
can't have ulema. Because everybody is so ready
to, like, you know, burn someone at the
stake because of these things. That's not the
sifa of our forefathers. That's the sifa of
the yahud and nasa'ah that they used to
do things like this, to their to their
olamah and to their ambia We don't we
don't subscribe to that. Do you think there's
a group of people who want that? There's
a group of people who they wanna like
you said, there there's a group of whom
may be born and raised here who they
want to kind of have that quote, unquote
impediment out of the way. I don't want
these callers There are definitely there are definitely
there's the old old faction of the Brave
New World crowd that, wanted to do away
with, Ulama
that are still around and that are definitely
cherry pick cherry picking these opportunities in order
to tell people that there's no such thing
as elm and there's no such thing as
ulama. So join me and take bayah with
me and we'll restore the caliphate through, like,
whatever,
magic, lucky charms, or whatever method.
I'm not I mean, you know, that's a
good example of it too, but I'm thinking
of people even my age who they say,
look, man. I just wanna go out of
politics, man. I just wanna be I just
I just wanna be a boy you know,
I just wanna be, you know, instrumental voice
for whatever. I don't know, like, you know,
human rights or whatever. I don't Look. That's
also politics. Yeah. In fact, avoiding politics is
itself a political position.
You can't you can't you can't and it's
I think, you know, I think it's a
dumb political position.
That being said, do I think there's much
profit in most people talking about
about about, you know, who should be president
of what country? Probably not. But like politics,
you know, politics is everything. Politics is what?
Like, you know, what is politics? Politics is,
you know, when you want to be kissed
by your wife or you want to be
kissed by your husband.
Right? That's FICC. They should kiss you. Yeah.
Right. Okay? They should kiss you. Maybe they
they're required to depending on the circumstance.
Okay? What is politics?
Now that you have that knowledge, how are
you gonna get that kiss? Are you gonna
walk in and quote a thick book or
are you gonna be like, hey, look, you
know, I cooked dinner for you. I bought
you flowers.
You know, like that favorite thing of yours
that you always, like, you know, drop hints
about or whatever. Yeah. You know, like, I
brought it and whatever. And like, you look
so beautiful today. Oh, you look so handsome
today. Whatever. Right? They're 2 very different things.
Okay?
And so and so if you're if the
point of your politics is to, you know,
play Game of Thrones and, like, you know,
but, you know, get your opinion of who
should be king, the Sahaba
really didn't care about that all that much,
you know.
But if your politics is like, yeah. Gee,
I wish, like, you know, they would stop
dealing drugs on the street corner.
Then that type of politics is what people
should be dealing with. And whether it's like,
Yamah Suraj's community take, you know, that literally
forced the drug dealers out of their out
of their neighborhood and now it's like a
beautiful neighborhood, Masha'Allah.
Or whether it's through, you know, giving free
school lunch to kids so that they can
stay in school. Or whether it's working with
the police which
it's almost never working with the police. But
anyway, you know, if that's your thing, I'm
not gonna see your catheter if that's your
idea or whatever.
Everybody has their has their,
their area that they think they could potentially
be of some help. But, like, that that's
the politics that that that that that people
should have priority with. But what is it
people like, well, the dean, you should be,
like, you know, you should implement your values.
Therefore, whoever doesn't vote for the candidate for,
like, the senator of Nebraska that I like,
that person is, like, whatever. And those things
are half a world away. You don't even
know what the * you're talking about. And
you may even be right, but it's not
relevant to you that you're gonna, like, break
the bonds with those people who you need
to work with in order to get what
you need done done locally,
because of their aberrant
seemingly aberrant opinions that I even agree with
you seem aberrant to me. Yeah.
You know, that they have half a world
away. If you're gonna have that, you know,
cancel culture like you you called it and,
you know, I'm a That's a Medieval cleric.
That's what people consider it because I'm a
medieval cleric that has a medieval education so
I'm not quite up to date on people,
like, you know,
nowadays their whatever,
slang and and, their
vocabulary or whatever. But if you do that
and you just cancel everybody, and it's just
you and Allah, chances are you don't have
Allah either, you know. You're just on your
own and that's a very Iblisian state to
be in, you know. So, yeah,
You don't agree with that? I probably don't
agree with it either. You don't like it?
I probably don't like it either. But, like,
this whole thing about, you know, feeling now
I have the I have the right to
cuss people out. I have the right to
this. I have the right to that, you
know,
in terms of, like, you know, sitting in
judgment over another person.
Good luck. Let me let me know how
that turns out. Right.
What do you think and we we can
close with this,
hopefully. What do you think is kind of
some practical advice you could give to them?
I'll give practical advice. Yeah. What is a
practical advice? Join whatever group you think is,
like, doing good work.
And,
and then afterward, like, be part of the
team. Don't just be like, okay, I'm gonna
do work with these people as long as
they agree with what I have to say.
Rather, say I'm gonna work with them as
long as they don't disobey what Allah and
His Rasulullah
have to say. And there's a zero step
to that, which is you have to actually
learn what that is. Learn your basic aqidah,
learn your basic, tasawaf, learn your basic fiqh.
And so you know what that is and
work with them. And then when whoever is
Amir with you,
you know, says something you don't like but
you you know you know it's within the
parameters of what's permissible,
then do what the Sahaba
who needs to do which is step on
your nafs and
and keep going forward.
Because you know that following even in those
situations is still the sunnah of the prophet
sallallahu alaihi wa sallam, some khair will come
from it. And what is the daleel for
this? Right? The daleel for this is Abu
Ayyub Al Ansari
is buried in the walls of Constantinople,
in a siege of,
of that city.
And the army that sieged that city was
under the caliphate of who, Yazid bin Wahawiya,
who is probably one of the most hated,
if not the most hated figure of the
history of Islam,
because of his
assassination of the grandson of the Messenger of
Allah sallallahu alaihi wa sallam,
and because of his sacrilege and sacking of
Madinah Munawala, which I don't know anyone else
who ever did that in the history of
Islam.
He's just not a good dude, you know,
and people who try to defend him. God
help us from whatever sin that, that's the
punishment of. And, as far as I'm concerned,
if someone were to miktak fear of the
man, you know,
like,
let's just say that I wouldn't emotionally would
my heart wouldn't be in defending him. However,
however,
however, look,
and a number of the companions who were
very old at that time. He himself was
in his nineties. He's the flag bearer of
the sanjakdar,
the flag bearer of the Prophet
and in his old age he still went
out. And what's the potent lesson for the
Ummah?
Is that even if your leader is like
completely a scumbag to the point where you
wonder inside of your heart whether this person
is a Muslim or not.
If he's doing something for the sake of
Allah and he's doing something which is a
commandment of Allah and His Rasul
and he's doing something like out of that
100 things he did wrong, 99 things he
did wrong, this is the one thing that
he's doing right. Because we're all part of
this.
Whoever the nasty mustard board president is or
isn't, whoever the nasty MSA president is or
isn't, whoever the nasty disgusting,
like, you know, a conference chair is or
isn't or whatever.
Right? And then, I mean, they're not all
like that. But like, you know, even some
we've all been through situations where where they've
been like that. Where you even wonder whether
this person cares about the dean or not,
you know.
That one time they do something right, all
of us put hands in hands and we,
close ranks and we do this not because
of that person's leadership or glory, but because
of what? Because this is what the Messenger
of Allah
taught us. And because we'll keep wafaa, we'll
keep loyalty and sincerity to him
and to Allah until our last breath.
And that's how stuff got done. You know,
you think that companions
didn't dislike each other and didn't disagree with
each other? They used to get into fights.
They used to be, they used to offend
one another. They used to, you know, and
they forgave each other for the sake of
Allah. They would look at Rasulullah
how much it hurt him. That they that
they would have enmity for one another and
that was that love, like, you know, it
caused them to forgive one another and move
on. And surprise, surprise, after doing stepping on
the knuffs for years years, one day they
actually loved
one another.
You know? If you read the the the
the the hadith, they used to dig some
of the altercations and spats they got into
in the beginning, you know. They had
the potential of devolving to blood feuds
like like the days of Jahiliyyah and the
prophet
is just their love for him that that
that that and their love for Allah and
the love for the prophet
and their inability
to see him hurt by their actions that
caused them to forgive one another, you know.
And that we have to that's a tradition.
That wasn't just them. That's something every generation
of people look down inside and say, is
this worth ripping apart,
ripping apart what the Prophet sallallahu alaihi wa
sallam's tears, you know, put together?
And, you know, is it worth it? Because
some of these things, once they're broken and
tell Yomu Piyama, they'll never be put put
put back together again. Do we want to
be the ones under our watch that we're
the ones who ripped it apart? Do we
want to be the ones who broke the
Kaaba stone from stone? If not literally, then
at least in meaning,
to the point where everybody now faces a
different pibla and nobody talks to one another,
you know.
And the person who has spent their life
trying to build something,
you know, that person understands what that pain
is. The person who's never made anything before,
which is unfortunately most people, and they think
that the dean is like Walmart and they
expect customer service when they come to it,
those people will never understand. I remember this
this happened in our in our in our
madrasa.
One of the teachers got upset and said,
if so and so, like, you know,
and so and so is late again to
my class. I'm gonna kick him out of
class, you know. And one of the students,
he he said to me, he said, you
know that person that he said that about?
He says that person's life was a wreck.
And I remember
our Ustad's
Mu'an,
Ustadji Mu'an Hassan, like, you know, literally,
took this, took this boy and, like, gave
him food, gave him clothes, gave him this,
promised him money, promised him everything.
And with so much care, and so much
love, he brought him into the madrasa. Now
this person has studied for so many years.
And, yeah, sure his habits aren't, aren't reformed,
you know, yet. But the Sustad is new.
He doesn't know that, that, you know. So
don't ask the one who's trying to kick
him out. Ask the one who's, you know,
like, who sacrificed from his own, you know,
from his own liver and from his own
heart in order to bring the person in.
And I was like, you know, how sometimes
how nonchalantly
you know, I'm guilty of it. Just I'm
guilty of it more more than anybody else,
you know. But how nonchalantly we can just
dismiss people sometimes. You don't know what, you
know, what whose du'a and whose efforts brought
that person in. You know, it doesn't make
what's wrong. Right? They said something wrong. You
don't have to agree with it. In fact,
I don't want you to agree with it.
I I don't wanna agree with it either.
But, like, you know, this idea of just,
like, you know, breaking the the bonds of
with another person. The only person who would
do that is the one who doesn't know
what the what the value of
is. And if we've done that, just make
tawba to Allah to Allah. You know? And
sometimes you say sorry to a person and
you know they're wrong. Right. But you're not
doing it for their sake,
you know. So,
you know, and and that's
a that's a a lesson when we learn
it, you know. China can destroy Pakistan's economy
if they're the only ones who say something
about the Uighurs. They can destroy Turkey's economy
if they're the only ones who say something
about if all the Muslim world says something
though, they can't do they can't do a
damn thing. You know? Kashmir,
India can't do a damn thing if every
single Muslim country says something. But what is
it? The cancel culture, we've been like we've,
you know, it was we were doing it
before it was even cool. And, situation of
the Muslims are. Is it? Yeah.
And
If you want to do that, you know,
look look around you what the situation of
the Muslims are is is here,
and, abroad. Forget about spiritually because most people
don't even think about things on the spiritual
level. Think about it politically. You you love
politics so much and you hate so and
so's opinion
politically so much. Okay. Think about it politically.
How how how it's completely like how it's
completely like, you know, snow shoveled
Muslims
out of relevance, out of the driveway of
relevance, Masha'Allah, both locally,
and around the world. And tell me, you
know, like, what political objective are you gonna
gain by making this your way of dealing
with people?
Thank you so much for taking time out
of your schedule to be able to, you
know, share on these very difficult topics. I
know they're not easy to talk about and,
you know, you know, a lot of, a
lot of people don't want to, especially, go
on the right period and share publicly.
But, you know, with so much of the
talk that's happening in in their public and
private forums, I feel like it was something
that was worthwhile to talk.
Little shameless plug inshallah. If anybody does want
to learn,
basic apti, the they can hear, the dars
of the entire tahawiyah,
at soundcloud.com/hmakbul.
All of the recordings are there. You'll find
a playlist for the Api Dahawiya. You'll find
a playlist for, what I refer to as
remedial tasawaf. Don't worry, you don't have to
take Bea with me. I'm not gonna make
you buy the same topias I wear, the
same hat as I wear. You don't have
to like pledge your allegiance to me and
like wash my clothes. You can just listen
to the Durus about, you know, basic topics
of spirituality and Islam and do it do
with it what you will.
There's Maliki Fik classes there, and there are
other kuttabat and things of interest if you
find benefit in it, inshaAllah. And if you
don't find it from me, insha Allah, you'll
have an easy time finding someone more
knowledgeable than me to learn these things from.
But like without understanding the basics of what
Islam is,
then taking it as a tradition rather than
quote unquote figuring it out on your own
or making it up as you go along.
You know, like, someone else. Yeah. Relying on
someone else's deemed to fill in for yours.
You know, none a lot of these things
we discussed are not gonna make sense.
So okay. I was gonna I was gonna
have you mention that as well. So, definitely
check out Mahomes' SoundCloud. It's very beneficial. And,
if you're in the Cleveland area, do you
have any, like, weekly duels? Oh, yeah, man.
We have Fikthurs tonight between and
then we have a majlis where people come
ask questions on always in one day, sir?
Well, I'm here. Yeah. Okay. And then and
then Thursdays, we just I make green tea
and people come ask her general questions. We
have a youth halapa. We have hukba. We
have rial salaikin after isha every day. It's
mashallah. The Masjid is a lively
a lively and a fun place
And,
we will, be signing off for now. We
look forward to,
more episodes of James and Narration.
You can follow us on Instagram and on
Twitter, and, hopefully, we'll be posting this up
in the next week inshallah.