This is a Jumah Khutbah dedicated to the life of Imam Malik (RA), extracting various lessons from his life.
Ismail Kamdar – Imam Malik 1
AI: Summary ©
The importance of humility and humility in Islam is the third largest largest largest Muslim culture in the world. The success of Hadees in the Hades is also highlighted, as it is the third largest largest largest Muslim culture in the world. The importance of humility and humility in learning about Islam is emphasized, along with the importance of time management and humility in writing a motto. The speakers emphasize the need for personal commitment and productivity in Islam, while also acknowledging the cultural differences between countries' cultures.
AI: Summary ©
Salam aleikum wa Rahmatullahi wa barakaatuh
100 Lillahi Rabbil alameen
wa Salatu was Salam ala Karim, Allah Allah He was happy archmagi
we give up freedom Allah subhanho wa Taala and asking Allah to send his peace and blessings upon the final prophet, Muhammad even Abdullah sallallahu alayhi wa sallam and all those who follow his way with righteousness until the end of time.
Today inshallah we begin Part Two in our series on the lives of the great scholars of Islam.
Previously, two weeks ago, we spoke about Imam Abu hanifa Rahim Allah, the founder of the Hanafi madhhab. Right who is allowed to be accepted his work so much that the majority of people in this community follow his understanding of
today we move on to the next great scholar in the history of someone who who lived at the same time as Mr. Abu hanifa, but in a different part of the world. Right. And that is Imam Malik Imam Malik Rahim Allah.
So why do we cover among our NEPA before Mr. Malik, the reason being he was born first. Right? We're doing it in chronological order. Imam Abu hanifa was from the tabea in the second generation of Islam. Mr. Malik was from the third generation of Islam. Right. So Mr. Malik lived during the end of the omiya era and the beginning of the Abbasid era, just like Imam Abu hanifa. And he was a scholar from Medina. Right, and there's a few similarities between him and Abu hanifa. When there's a few big differences as well. Some of the differences. Imam Abu hanifa traveled to many parts of the world to study Islam.
Mr. Malik never left Medina unless he was going for Hajj or Umrah. Right, and he didn't need to need Medina because all of the scholars of the world whenever they went for Hajj or Umrah, which are the city do they visit as well, Medina, so when they used to come to Medina, he would go and spend time with him and study under them. So he had no reason to leave Medina, because all the olema of the world would come there eventually, even if it's just for a few days. So Mr. Malik was from a family of Allah,
his grandfather, his uncle's, his mother, his older brother, all of them were the always scholars of Islam. Right, even his daughter became a great scholar of Islam. So he comes from a family that is accustomed to the study and teaching of Islam. Because he came from this kind of background, studying Islam came naturally to him, it was something very easy for him. It's something he started at a very young age. Some of the historian see as young as nine or 10 years old, he was sitting in Hades circles. So he started his study of Islam at a very young age. What's interesting about him is that
his scholarship as a teacher seems to begin in his late 30s or early 40s. So it seems that he spent about 20 to 40 years just studying Islam, before he gave himself before he allowed himself to teach. And I say allowed himself to teach because his teachers gave him permission to teach many years before that, but he felt he wasn't ready yet. Now, I want you to think about this. Nowadays. We study for seven years. And we want to teach everybody and we feel like we know we taught Mr. Malik studied for over 20 years and still didn't feel he was ready to start teaching. It is one of the lessons we're going to come to overlay today on humility, the importance of orlimar to have
humility. Mr. Malik is one of the best examples of that in our history.
So your mother began teaching. I love listening with a long life. He lived right into his 90s he lived an extremely long life. And in this long life, he taught many many great scholars from amongst his students. Mr. Mohammed, even Muhammad even has an ashtray Barney, the student of Mr. Abu hanifa, one of the founders of the honeybee Mata, right.
One amongst the students, Mr. Mohammed Idris, a sharpie, the founder of the Sharpie method. So these are some of the big names in the history of Islam. And they were students of Imam Malik. So he was the dominant scholar of Medina for almost half a century. And he lived a long life he had died a natural death in his 90s. And his scholarship reaches us today in many ways. One of the ways in which it reaches us is that his Muslim is the third largest Muslim in the world today.
I now remember this at the time of Imam Malik, they were between 20 to 40 mile hubs in the world
like 20 to 40. Today, there's about we know four but it's actually about five or six. Right That's still around for that.
Major the others have maybe less than 1% of the oma following them, right? But they're still around. But at the time of remember, they were like 40 Muslims. Allah bless these work so much that today he must have is the third largest in the world. If you go to North Africa, if you go to East Africa, West Africa, many of the countries they follow the Maliki Mata, as well as certain parts of Arabia. And when when Spain was an Islamic country in the height of the Golden Age of Andalusia, of Islamic Spain, it also was a Maliki country. So the Maliki Muslim Allah put a lot of Baraka into it. The other way in which his legacy reaches us today is in his book, the mortar. The mortar is the oldest
surviving Hadees compilation in the world.
Right, the oldest surviving Hadees compilation in the world is not the oldest Hadees compilation the world, some of your mileage, teachers compiled Hadees. But those crutches did not reach us. Do we lost over time. The first one to actually survive from that time until now is the motor of America. So his legacy has reached us in two ways. One, the amount of people that follow him in fake number two, the contributions he made to Hades. So when we look at Mr. Malik, we look at him as a scholar of two major fields, fake and Hades.
So today, I want us to focus on a few lessons from his life. I'll try to go to all of them. I have about six lessons I want us to extract from the life of Mr. Malik. And these six lessons are number one, the importance of effortless sincerity. Number two, the importance of humility, right. Number three, the importance of courage. And we spoke about this with hanifa as well. Number four, the deep knowledge Alana should have. And on the topic we have time we'll go into as well, why there are differences of opinion, right? This is a very important topic. We did an entire Juma clip about it last year was it the year before, I can't remember, but just for five minutes, we'll recap that
because it's important to understand his story. Then we look at his other his manners, very, very important the manners that a Muslim is supposed to have. And finally, I wanted to cover this last time, we didn't get time to do it. So hopefully, I covered in the demonic
part today, and that is time management. Something that Mama, Deepa Malik they had different systems of time management, but they both were extremely efficient in how they manage their time. So we'll take a look at that as well inshallah. So let's look at the first lesson, his sincerity. We said that the Hadees book, compiled by Mr. Malik is the oldest surviving Hadith scripture, the motto, what you might not be aware of? Is at that point in time when Mr. Malik was alive, they will literally dozens of people compiling waters. It was like the thing to do at that time. Think of it nowadays, how many people are making our YouTube videos? Right? Everybody's making the our YouTube
videos, right? But which ones are having the biggest impact on the oma? The ones done with your class, not the ones done for fame, not the ones done for subscribers, the ones done with the class. So in those days, the thing to do was to write a motto. A motto was a compilation of hobbies, according to fake topics, right? So the combination of IDs into book form started around the year 100 H 100 years after the heater during the reign of Omar even Abdul Aziz inshallah we do a full lecture on his life later. We actually did one a few years ago, but nonetheless, we'll do it again. So Omar, even Abdul Aziz, when he was the halifa. He wanted to emulate the legacy of his great
grandfather, Omar,
Omar, Al Fatah, what is his legacy? He was the one who came up with the idea of compiling the Quran into one book, so it will be preserved until the end of time. So Emma, also his great grandson, Omar Abdulaziz did the same thing for hobbies. He came up with the idea of compiling his thesis into books, so they can be preserved until the end of time. And he gave this project to the alama of his time.
Those will Amar began the project, and Mr. Malik was their student. So it was in the students generation that we get the first major work of Hades, the mortar. So at that point in time, this is a project going on across the Muslim world, the compiled nation of mortars right. And so someone asked him on Molokai and he said in so many people are writing waters, you know what's going to make your stand out? Well, why would people choose your job anybody else's? Mr. Molly gave a very profound statement. He said, Whatever is for Allah will remain, whatever it is, for sure will disappear. Today, there's only one more time in the world and that's the motto Maalik. All the other
ones, we don't know what happened to them. They may have disappeared during that time. They may have been destroyed in the Mongol invasion. They may have been destroyed in the sacking of Andalusia. We don't know, but they don't they haven't reached us.
The only one to have survived is the motto economic. Why? Because of his class, he said whatever is for Allah will remain, what remained his book, his book remain. And so this is a reminder to every single one of us. We live in a time where so many people are involved in Islamic work for the wrong reasons. You know, when I first started studying Islam, you know, people say you study Islam, you're gonna be poor, you live a miserable life, you know, things like that. Now, when people go to study Islam, you ask them, why are you studying Islam? You know, back then, because that was what people were saying. If somebody went to study Islam, you're doing it sincerely, right? Nowadays, you ask
young people why would you study Islam want to be famous like Mufti menk.
bad intention, Muslim and then become famous, because he wants to be famous, became famous, well accepted his work, right? If your intention to study Islam, if you want to be famous, then you are starting it on the wrong foot, you're, you're heading down the path of jahannam. That's what you're doing. Because you're amongst the first people to be thrown into jahannam, on the day of judgment of the people who taught Islam for the first people,
the Mujahideen, the people who gave charity, and Allah who did it for fame,
very important that we do things for Allah, and we don't do things for our ego. Nowadays, it's so easy to boost our ego with Facebook, with YouTube. With Instagram, it's so easy to go online and start a Facebook page and get 100,000 likes to have a YouTube channel with 100,000 subscribers and to make yourself feel like unimportant. But all of that doesn't matter if you're doing it for ego. On the day of judgment, all of that dow would become considered a sin when it's done for ego. So whatever we doing, whatever it is, make sure we do it for Allah. That is most important.
Lesson number two, the importance of humility
for everybody, particularly for the students of knowledge, but for everybody. humility, how humble was Mr. Malik? I'll give you two examples. Right? Mr. Malik once was sitting with a teacher of his and another chef came and asked the teacher a question. So the teacher answer the question, Mr. Malik sat quietly. So the person who asked the question other share, he asked mmamoloko his opinion, and what Malik said, it's not befitting that I speak in front of my teacher in front of my elder. So his teacher said, I want to hear your opinion as well. So he gave the opposite opinion of his teacher.
And the other scholar agreed with him.
Right? Now notice, right? Imagine nowadays, you're sitting with your teacher. And your teacher says an opinion that you don't agree with, how many of us will sit quietly out of respect for the teacher.
You know, many of us do, as soon as we have one opinion from our teacher that we don't agree with. We go on Facebook, we make a clip of it. We put it up all over the internet, so and so TJ is a coffee, he's a deviant. He's a monarchy. He's making opinions I don't agree with don't take knowledge from him, boycott him.
Over one thing.
The other of the early Muslims, they understood differences of opinion are naturally going to exist. It's not the end of the world. So they dealt with it with others, especially when it comes from their own teachers.
My teachers and I have a lot of differences of opinion, but never lose respect for them. Never lose respect for your teachers.
And other people example of his humility, not as the student that was his humility as a student. Now let's look at the humility as a teacher many years later, Mr. Malik becomes the most famous scholar in Medina. Right now he's in he's probably in his 50s or 60s. He's now the senior scholar of Medina. The main person teaching in the masjid, by the way, normally used to sit in the master of Nabi sallallahu alayhi wa sallam in the same spot that Omar Emil photogra Angela, who used to sit and used to teach Hadees and flip over there. So imagine this is his status teaching in the masjid of Nabi sallallahu, alayhi wa sallam, Muslims all over the world know him as the leading scholar.
Someone comes from Morocco. They come from Morocco, and there's different versions of the Indonesian but the one nation, he comes, this is gamma Moloch. I traveled all the way from Morocco. With 40 questions from my people fit questions. Can you answer them for us? Malik looks at the coolest. He answered about three or four questions. And for all the others about 36 or 37 questions. He says, I don't know.
This guy, he looks at your mileage all confused? What do I tell my people?
I traveled all the way from Morocco to ask you some questions. What do I tell my people? My Malik said, Tell them Molly doesn't know.
This is humility. Tell them Moloch doesn't know. Again, this is missing nowadays in all of us. I noticed some
You know, someone will go on Facebook and they'll post a fifth question. Leave alone alama answering they don't know what they're talking about people who are not answering them don't know what they're talking about. And they're giving 25 different opinions and they're confusing the guy. How about we stay quiet until you actually understand the topic? How about we stay quiet unless we're experts in that topic? Because we are responsible and answerable to Allah when we talk about his Deen. So why are we so quick to defer to us? Why are we so quick to give our opinion on things which we don't understand.
Understand this? Well, you know, Malik, he was a master and absolute master of Hades effect of fasudil. he mastered all of these things. But still for more than 30 questions in one sitting? He said, I don't know.
Many of us, we just can't bring ourselves to say I don't know for even a single question.
This is this is a very important part of humility. It will save us from saying things that we will be responsible for the Day of Judgment. Now, that brings me to the topic of is deep knowledge and why we have differences of opinion. Why do you think Mr. Malik said he doesn't know the answer those questions, is one of the reasons mentioned by some of the biographers is that Morocco at that time, had a completely different culture from Medina. And those issues were culturally sensitive. Right. So the first one needed for Morocco had to come from Allah who were familiar with their culture. So Mr. Malik felt it was not appropriate for him to give a fatwa to someone from Morocco based on the
culture of Medina. I'm not sure if you're following this, this this principle, in fact, particularly in the Maliki and Hanafi madhhab. Right, it's only an older man house, but these two Muslims they hold the like on a high level. And that principle of Vic is either hakama local culture is the deciding factor, right, so in the Maliki and Hanafi madhhab. When you have diverse cultures, the olema within those cultures must make the fatwas according to their culture. Meaning, nowadays we have this problem. Someone in South Africa seeks a fatwa from someone in Saudi Arabia or India, and the fatwa they give is completely impractical in South Africa. The problem here is that there is a
huge gap between their culture and our culture. To get a fatwa that suitable to our environment, we have to ask Allah who are part of this culture, who understand this culture. And this brings us to our Malik's deep knowledge. Why did the old ama have differences of opinion? A lot of people ask me, especially young people, why are they different jobs? Why are they all these different opinions? Why which one Quran? What Hadees? Why is it different opinions? There's different opinions, for many reasons, but the main reason being, that human beings will understand the same thing in different ways. Human beings will understand the same thing in different ways. And people have different
approaches to these things. So for example, in the case of fake Mr. Molly's approach to fake was very, very different from Abu hanifa or Mr. shopping, right Mr. Abu hanifa, he would only follow a Hadees if it reached a certain level of authenticity, while Imam Shafi would follow any authentic Hadees while Mr. Malik he had a unique principle, if an authentic Hadees went against the practice of the people of Medina, he would follow the practice of the people of Medina. Why? Because the people of Medina at the time of mmamoloko who sahabas children,
so he considered their practice to be distant, meaning those people who learned from who the parents the Sahaba who did they learned from the Prophet sallallahu wasallam. So he says this Hadees one person saying it, this Shana, everybody, Medina is practicing it, which one's more authentic? So to see how we got differences of opinion, different approaches to how these different approaches to issues which require deep thought. So Imam Abu hanifa had the principle of, you know, there we go with the local culture. You know, Malik had a similar principle, but he had two more additions to it. One of those additions to it was that we look at the concept of muscle when we look at the
harms, and the benefits, if the benefits outweigh the harms we go with if the harms outweigh the benefits, we don't go with it. So very important principle in the Maliki method. Right? He has another principle, closing the doors to fit now, closing the doors to fit now, if something was going to lead to sin, even if it wasn't a sin in of itself, he would declare it not to be good. Right? So because of these different intellectual approaches, we end up with different understandings of Islam. Does that make any of these understandings of Islam good or bad? They're all good. They're all good because the Prophet Muhammad sallallahu alayhi wa sallam said when the
Allah make the Etihad, when they
Try to find the right opinion, sincerely, if they are wrong, Allah will reward them. If they are right Allah will give them double the meaning when it comes to issues of fic. Allah is going to accept it from all of us, whether you following Hanafi, Maliki sharpy, humbly, or even some alum that you are following who doesn't follow a specific method, whether you're following even taymiyah you're following shower, Lila, you're following a Shogun? You're whoever it is. You're following Ali. And Ali made HD heart. Allah will accept it from him, he'll accept it from you. So let's not fight over these differences. one's gonna accept you from everybody. Right? The only time it becomes
a problem is when the following what suits our knifes. That's when it becomes a problem. If you ask 10 different Olimar and we follow the one who agrees with our knifes. That's when it becomes a problem because now we're not following sincerely. We're looking for shortcuts.
So the humility and the deep knowledge of embolic is something we can all take lessons from. What about the courage of Imam Malik? What's amazing about the 40 moms is that all of them spend time in prison.
All four of them Abu hanifa Malik, Shafi, Ahmed, even humble, all of them spend time in prison. Now you say well, my BA hanifa, he passed away in prison. Well, Malik his case or Hamdulillah, he wasn't imprisoned for that long. So what happened was, there was a rebellion taking place against the Abbas's, right. And the Abbas it's the governor of Medina at a time he tried to censor certain hobbies. He told him a Maalik stop narrating that Hades, because our enemies are using that Hadees to justify the rebellion.
So I'm Alex, I can't hide the Hadees It is my duty to Allah that people ask me for Hadees I have to see it exactly as it is. If they interpret it differently, that's their business. But I have to integrate the Hadees. So because he refused to hide that one Hadees he was put in prison, and he was tortured, and some olema even say his his shoulder was dislocated during the torture.
Eventually, the Khalifa learned about this, he forced the governor to free Mr. Malik, he personally apologized to Mr. Malik, he increased Mr. Malik salary, and he left him to teach whatever you want for the rest of his life. complete freedom.
So look at the carnage of Mr. Malik, the people paying his salary. The governor is telling him don't teach this. And he knows if he teaches it, he can be imprisoned, he can be tortured. But out of his love of Allah and he sincerely towards the truth and his courage for the sake of Allah, he still went ahead and he taught it. Now you are Maliki homeboy, honey. But this is another big difference between the two of them in the approaches. And as I said, these differences of opinion are like acceptable site. We said Imam Abu hanifa, refused to take a salary from the government. Instead, he opened up a business, right because he didn't want to be in anybody's pocket.
Even Malik took a salary from the government and taught in the masjid of the other prophets, lawyers don't because he said the olema are deserving of their salary. Allah deserved that money more than caminito giving it to us to the almighty gonna give it to the soldiers and to the governor's into somebody else. They had to give it to the Lama. So he would take the salary, and he would live off their salary. But he didn't allow it to compromise his integrity. When the time came in a trolling, say this and don't say that. He said, No, I want to see the truth. So both of them had different approaches, both of them had the integrity that they're not going to compromise the church. But the
two different approaches towards realizing it. In mamajuana first approach, don't take a salary from the government. You're Malik's approach. I'll take a salary from the government but I still only tiempo de,
I'll still see what I want to say. So this was the courage of Mr. Malik to stand up to the people paying your salary.
How many people can do that today?
The next beautiful thing about Mr. Malik is his other his manners. And we saw we saw an example of this earlier in front of his teacher, how he did not speak up when he disagreed with his teacher,
Mr. Malik, when he was young, his mother dressed him up very well and sent him to the masjid to attend the Hadith circles of the Illuminati because in those days, if you wanted to seek knowledge you go to the masjid is this is the practice of some Muslim countries. You go to the masjid. And in each corner, there's a different alum teaching, and you just sit there and you learn to join whichever teacher you want. And you learn from there, right today, many Muslim countries, they still practices. So even Maliki was around nine or 10 years old when this happened. His mother dressed him up, sent him to the masjid and she gave him some advice before sending him right. Her advice was
learn from the manners before you learn from the knowledge. Learn from the manners before you learn from the knowledge Why?
Because without manners, a teacher is going to be ineffective. I've seen this so many times in my life. I have met teachers of Islam who have in depth knowledge of the religion extreme
In the knowledge of the religion, but nobody wants to attend the classes because of their bad manners.
Right people get put off when the Islamic teacher is rude when he's vulgar when he's arrogant when he makes inappropriate jokes. And when he bullies people, when he shouts people when he loses his temper, these things chase people awaken the teacher. So this is why the early Muslims, they will first train the students in manners. Once they had the right o'clock and adopt the right character and manners, then only they teach them fitted hotties. And once they mastered all of these things, then they would make them teachers, they give them permission to teach. But the manners came first, we see the manager, the other of mmamoloko, not just towards people, but towards his books.
Whenever Mr. Malik would teach Hadees he will put on his best clothes, his most expensive clothes, and wear his most expensive perfume. And then he would go and teach. And people will ask him, why are you dressing up to teach Hadees he would reply that this is the words of Rasulullah sallallahu wasallam, out of respect for the Prophet sallallahu wasallam. I'm going to dress like this when teaching his words that other for your books. Again, something which many of us haven't even thought about, that even a book of knowledge should be treated with respect leave alone a person of knowledge that was the other and the mandates of family.
Since we have time we'll add in the sixth point which I wanted to mention last time, which is time management. Right? So I myself I wrote a book on time management a lot of people see this got nothing to do with Islam. No, it's got everything to do with Islam. Many of the great Allah minor history master time management. what's beautiful about Mr. Baba hanifa Malik is they had completely different systems of time management. Your magic system was dividing his day into hours. Mr. Malik hanifa would divide his week into different days for different things. Right. So Mr. Abu hanifa, would have one day for one day for Hadees one day for studying one day for family. And he would have
a full day like this is my family day. You see how DC This is AAA. So you have a very powerful system of time management, where each day is dedicated to a specific task. Mr. Malik, within one day, he will divide his hours. So certain time of the day, he teaches how these different times of the day he teaches different time of the day, he revises his work different time of the day, he attends the study circles of other scholars. So he would have set times during the day to do these things.
We often wonder how the great scholars of the past were able to accomplish so much with their lives. One of the reasons was they had the self discipline, they had this, you know this concern about their time, that this is one of the things I was going to ask us about in the detachment. He's going to ask us about what we do have free time. So we asked what we do with our lives. How are we going to answer that, when the day comes? Allah subhanaw taala asked us that you have so much free time What did you do with it? And you see I just binge watch Netflix all day. Not there's not gonna look good on your on your scale the last day, there has to be some good deeds in there. I'm not saying
don't have any fun. I'm saying is you need to prioritize equities. You need to make time to worship Allah. You need to make time for things that you can be happy to show along the DOJ last year, what did you do in your free time all I spend my time volunteering, I spend my time in charity work, I spend my time in humanitarian work, I spend my time helping my neighbor I spend my time taking care of my family good deeds that you can show on the Day of Judgment.
He's grateful scholars like Mr. Malik, a member of hanifa they did not waste time. They did not waste time, right until the very end. There's something amazing about all of these great scholars in our history. They never retired.
They never retired. They never had this concept of retiring from serving allegedly right into his 90s right until the very end. Mr. Malik never stopped teaching Islam. He never stopped. There is no retiring from serving Allah can retire from work, we got enough money saved up. But then what you do with the rest of your life divided. Dawa teaching Islam humanitarian work, you don't retire from serving Allah and
so this is time management. And this is something that you know, Malik is that you want to hanifa Headmaster. So to end up and to recap, today we look briefly at the life of Mr. Malik, the founder of the Maliki mud hub and the author of the Mata and we learnt six important lessons from his life. We learned the importance of being sincere in everything that we do. If lasagna, without sincerity, a good deed becomes a sin by standing in front of you and I talk like this and my intentions are not sincere and this is a
it's actually a sin. right because it's it's boosting one's ego, which is a sin. The second is humility. That no matter how much you know
knowledge you have no matter how much experience you have, no matter who you think you are,
we must be humble. A Muslim must be humble because the prophets lie. Some stated a person with an atom's worth of arrogance in his heart will not enter Paradise. So we must stay humble. Number three courage. The Prophet Muhammad sallallahu alayhi wa sallam said, the greatest form of jihad is to speak the truth in front of a tyrant ruler. The greatest form of jihad is to speak a truth in front of a tyrant
to be able to stand up for yourself to stand up for what's right and to speak the truth. This is one of the great qualities of Mr. Malik.
Now, number four, the importance of being as deep in your knowledge as possible. Not everyone can be a scholar. But those of us who are not scholars, we should have humility. And we should spend time with the scholars and we should learn from them. And we should appreciate their knowledge. We shouldn't speak about things that we don't have knowledge of, and we shouldn't censor someone because they have a difference of opinion from us. Number five, our manners. Our manners are the best form of power, and the worst form of power. When we have bad manners and bad character, people run away from Islam. Youngsters leave Islam. People who are considering converting to Islam aren't
far far away from our community. When we are people of adapt, and when we are people who represent the beautiful models and manage about religion, without saying a single word, we will attract people to Alaska, because the beauty is there for people to see. And finally, your time, we will be asked on the Day of Judgment. What do we do with our spare time? So make sure that you manage your time Well, we ended that may Allah accept this from us. She's asked for a favor and rafidah Juana and your hamdulillah