Ismail Kamdar – Rediscover Muslim History – Muslim Life Hackers
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AI: Transcript ©
Many people don't know that World War 1
is one of the most important events in
Muslim history. It directly impacts how the Muslim
world is today in many different ways.
But because we are so ignorant of our
history, we think of it as as a
European event that had nothing to do with
Muslims.
Assalamu alaikum everyone and welcome to the show.
I'm your host, Mifram Haruf. And in today's
episode, we have on Sheikh Ismail Kamda. So
a bit about our guest today, Sheikh Ismail
is the graduate of a traditional alim program
and also holds a bachelor's in Islamic Studies.
He has
studied Islam in both traditional and modern setting,
and has been a student of knowledge over
2 decades.
He has served as a faculty manager at
the Islamic Open University for 10 years, has
written over 25 books, and is currently the
researcher and project manager at Yaqeen Institute.
So I hope you enjoyed this episode. And
without further ado, let's get started.
Welcome to the show.
Well, thank you so much for coming on.
So you were one of our guests that
we had back in the days with Muslim
Life Hackers. I think it was, like, 2015.
So it's a pleasure to have you back
on again, and this time
doing Muslim Lifehackers 2 point zero. So what
actually has changed since then? I know it's
been a very long time.
Yeah. It's been a almost a full decade.
So I think
in many ways, everything's changed. Right? When I
first came on with some life hackers, I
was a young man starting my first online
business
and,
self publishing my first books
and, alhamdulillah,
a lot a lot has changed since then.
Back then, I was working for the International
Open University. Now I'm with Yaqeen Institute as
a researcher. And
the website that I started around the same
time as Muslim Life Hackers, Islamic self help
is still going strong.
That's really nice. It's good that you continue
because one big difference. We forced.
Yeah. Most people forced. I think the one
big difference for me is that when we
started,
I had just started homeschooling my kids, and
they were all small children.
And now I've,
I've got all teenagers.
And they're actually working for me at Islamic
Self Help, and they've already started doing behind
the scenes work on video editing and things
like that. So it's very different stage of
life for me. Oh, that's really nice because
I'm just studying.
I am where you were 10 years back.
Now I have my own daughter, and now
I'm thinking about different schooling options, what's out
there, and it's gonna be an interesting decade
ahead, insha'Allah,
still alive. Yeah. I know. When my eldest
son was born, I spent, like, 4 or
5 years researching every type of school system
and speaking to different people Yeah. Before making
the decision to homeschool him. It's a big
decision to make. Yeah. 100%. And I know,
like, you have so many interests. So you
had the homeschooling, you have the personal development,
and now recently, you also told me how
you got into the whole Islamic masculinity
around all those especially with all the discussions
that are happening these days online. But in
today's podcast, I would really love to go
deeper on
another passion that you have of Islamic history.
So where did that all begin? Islamic history
has always been a passion of mine. One
of my earliest memories as a child when
I first started reading
was that my mom bought me the biographies
of the Sahaba collection, and I read all
of them as a as a child. Maybe
when I was, like, 7 or 8 years
old. I've always had a passion for history
from a very young age. I've always noticed
it as a gap in our curriculum.
Like, even when I did my Alimiya program
Yeah. There was no history component to it.
That's a major gap. Okay. Apparently, many Alimiya
programs don't teach history.
And it was so bad that, some of
my teachers would actually rely on me for
historical information, like, they'd ask me the name
of the Sahabi or that king or when
did this happen when that happened. I was,
like, 14 or 15 years old, and my
teachers were in their thirties and forties.
But, history just wasn't taught. It wasn't something
that was commonly taught. And I always found
that to be problematic because
we are living in such a strange time.
Mhmm. And if you'll know history, you just
think that this is the way it's always
been. Yes. That's what we in most people's
minds. What we think. They think we've had
the prophet,
then we had the,
and then we have the mess we're in
today. It's like a 1,300
year gap Yeah. That's completely blank in many
people's minds.
And what happened was when I was working
at the International Open University, which I worked
at for over 10 years, I was the
Islamic history teacher there. Mhmm. And every year,
I would be taking a different group of
students through Islamic history,
and I would notice certain trends amongst them.
Okay. Right? Islamic history was a shocker for
them. Many of them thought that it's just
going to be stories of the Sahaba Yeah.
And it's gonna be motivational
Yeah. And it's gonna be all nice things
that happen. At the end, they they learn
about these civil wars and these brutal kings
and murders and,
the Mongols and the Crusaders
and the conquestsa and some of them actually
used to get overwhelmed. They were like, this
is not what we thought our history was.
Because,
again, we have such a gap in our
history
that for us, when we think of history
for many people, all they think about is
stories of the Sahaba Mhmm. And stories of
the oliya. And for me, I've always had
this attitude of being as transparent and open
about our history as possible. Mhmm. Not leaving
anything
to the books. Like, if something happened, I
talk about it. Like, I just did a
4 part Jumakutba series on the aftermath of
Karbala,
the 14 year civil war that took place
after Karbala. Mhmm. And that's like a topic
nobody talks about because it's a very dark
part of our history. Yeah.
But I realized that there was no real
resource
in the English language
on Muslim history
that was comprehensive from the time of the
prophet
until today. And And what happened was in
2020,
during a lockdown, I was stuck at home.
I was bored. I said, you know what?
Let me record
it. So once a week, over a 10
month period, I recorded its 30 part series.
That's amazing. I put it up on my
website. That's what I'll get maybe 30 or
40 people to sign up. I was surprised.
Right now, we have 1,900
sales. So it Well, it really shows the
demand of it. The most successful thing I
I published. Yeah. Yeah. So if you were
to take a few steps back, why do
you think it's so important that we know
our history? Because the thing is, if you
know the prophet
time, you know the sahaba's time, then you
have your framework, your role models.
Then
what happened in between that? What's the point
of everything else? The point, Yeah. That's a
good question. It's a good starting point for
a discussion.
I think one of the best ways to
start off is
to make a distinction, and I make this
distinction in all my history courses and books.
A distinction between Islamic history and Muslim history.
Okay. Right?
So Islamic history is the stories of the
prophets in the Sahaba. Right. That's where we
learn Islam from. That's where we get our
role models from. Yeah.
Everything that happens after that is Muslim history.
Basically, after the time of the Sahaba,
it's normal people like you and me. Mhmm.
They have their good. They have their bad.
They have their ups. They have their downs.
They have their faults. They have their victories.
They're not necessarily role models.
And, if you understand that this is Muslim
history, not Islamic history, you now have a
distinction. Okay. I'm not studying this to learn
Islam. I'm just studying this to learn
what happened in the world. Right? Do what
did Muslims ever do or accomplish, or how
did we get to where we are? That's
the most important question to me. How did
we get to where we are? So, for
example, I spent a lot of this year
specifically
studying and teaching
the history of the past 200 years, the,
colonialism and World War 1, and how these
two events affected the Muslim world. Many people
don't know that World War 1 is one
of the most important events in Muslim history.
It directly impacts how the Muslim world is
today in many different ways.
But because we are so ignorant of our
history, we think of it as as a
European event that had nothing to do with
Muslims.
Right? So why is that important, World War
1? Well, simply put, the Ottoman Empire lost
World War 1, and the Khilafat was abolished,
and the Muslim lands were taken over by
the British and the French and divided into
the countries that we have today. So the
Ottoman Empire was an Islamic a Muslim Empire?
It was the last caliphate, the last Darul
Islam, the last Sharia land, and it was
still a superpower in the world right until
World War 1 started. Okay. It just so
happened that it was on the losing side
of that war. So it was actually a
superpower up until that time? Right till that
time. In fact, one of the interesting things
about the Ottoman Empire is they spent the
18th
century
restructuring
to be a modern khilafat.
So, they had changed a lot of their
policies and administration
to basically make the khilafat work in the
new world in 20th century. Mhmm. But they
never got a chance to test all of
that because they lost the war and they
lost all their lands. Oh, wow.
Yeah. So this is a part of our
history people don't know about at all. It
is very difficult to even find books on
these topics. I had to put together 20
different books, each with little pieces of it,
and read all 20 books to put the
pieces together in my mind to understand properly
what exactly happened
because
just 300 or 400 years ago, the Ottoman
Empire
was the largest and most powerful empire in
the world.
It was the world's superpower.
Right? It was the most powerful empire in
the world.
So how did we go in 400 years
from being the most powerful empire in the
world to being in the mess that the
Muslim world is in today? Yeah. Right? Because
we don't study history, we don't know. And
because we don't write enough about history, it's
very hard to access this information.
The main point of studying all of this
is to understand
how did we end up where we are.
Right? Yeah. The other main reason to study
history is the common saying, those who don't
learn history are doomed to repeat it.
Right? History is cyclical. It goes through cycles.
There is, ups and downs of history. When
I study history, I notice trends. Things that
happened in the past
that kind of are happening again today. And
when you study history, it makes a lot
more sense. Right? I'll give you two examples.
Okay. Number 1, about 800 years ago or
700 years ago, Palestine was conquered by the
Christians, the Crusaders.
And for about 90 years, the Muslims of
that land were oppressed. 90 years. And then
a new Muslim power rose up. Yeah. Mhmm.
So a new Muslim power rose up.
And reconquered that land and became a Muslim
land again until World War 1. And how
long was that? So after it got re
That was another 700 years. Wow. Another 700
years. So well, for what 700 years, he
was a Muslim. He wasn't under one Khalifa.
I kept Yeah. Of course. Power, but there's
always Muslim powers. Right?
Yeah. Because it was the Eubies, then the
Mamluks, then the Ottomans, but he was a
Muslim man. And right till the end so
for example, Zionism started in the 1800,
and they spent a lot of time trying
to buy off Palestine from the Ottoman Empire.
And the Ottomans told him, as long as
we are around, you cannot have that land.
So the Zionists conspired with the British in
World War 1 and gave them weapons, advanced
weapons, not in exchange for any money, but
in exchange for a promise that if they
win that war, they will give that land
to the Zionists.
Alright. And that's really how Israel started.
Right? The the foundations of Israel were also
again in world war one. That's why I
say we're still living in the aftermath of
world war one. Everything from the Israel Palestine
conflict to not having a hilafat, to being
divided into nation states, to be living as
minorities in non Muslim lands, all of these
are still ripple effects of what happened in
World War 1. So there there's repeated events
here in history. Right? Muslims ruled Jerusalem for
the bulk of our history. At one point,
the Christians took over for a while, oppressed
everyone. Muslims got it back. Now, the Jews
have taken over for a while, are oppressing
everyone. Inshallah, Muslims will get it back as
well.
Second example,
about 800 years ago,
the Arab khilafat collapsed.
Right? We had Arab Khalifas for the first
600 years of our history, the Umayyads and
the Abbasids. And then the Mongols invaded, and
the Khalafat collapsed, and people thought it was
the end times. They thought it's the end
of the world. There's never gonna be a
Khalafat again. It was a very dark period
for the Muslims. Right? How long was that?
200 years later. 200 years. This is 800
years ago. Right? 200 years later, the Ottoman
Empire rises.
And now we have a Turkish falafat that
goes on for another 500 years.
Wow.
Right? And then that collapses exactly 100 years
ago in 1924.
Yeah. Like So a lot of people think
that this is our first time in our
history without the Khalifa. There's actually a 200
year gap where there was no clear Khalifa.
Some people say there was a prophet Abbasid,
some say the Mamluk, some say the Safaviyi.
But the fact is, for those 200 years,
the Muslims were divided into many smaller lands,
each with their own king, each of whom
were fighting each other, and none of whom
really had the power to to call themselves
the Khalifa.
Right? Even the Ottomans in the early years
were just a small state. Right? Just a
few cities. Yeah. It took them 200 to
300 years to reach the level of power
where they felt confident to start calling themselves
Khalifas. They didn't call themselves Khalifas straight away.
I see. The it was only after they
had conquered Constantinople,
which is Istanbul today,
Palestine, Jerusalem,
Mecca, and Medina. Once they were ruling these
4
capital cities, then only they had the confidence
to say we are the Khalifas of the
Muslim world. That's interesting. So it makes me
think, like, if you were to speak to
someone who was in those down periods, like
that 200 year or that 80 year down
period before Jerusalem was conquered Yeah. There might
have been a very bleak conversation
with whoever was alive. Would have been. In
fact, if you read the books written in
that
period, the books that's in that period can
be very depressing. So many of the olema
that lived during that period, they actively describe
the Mongols
as Yajud and Marjud, as Gog and Magog.
Like, they actually thought they were living in
the end times, and this is Gog and
Magog, and it's over. Right? We now the
world is ending. Yeah. But the world's still
around over 800 years later. And the thing
is many people today have that same mindset.
Right?
And all the best, the world could go
on for another 1,000 years. That's an interesting
one because those people now who think that,
hey. We're at the end of times. It's
because some people feel that, hey. All of
these minor signs have happened, and we're at
the peak of such all of these
shameless deeds and stuff that are happening. So
they feel that, okay. This is it. This
is the end of times. I'm curious to
know what are your thoughts on that. So
as a historian, I noticed every generation thinks
they're living in the end times.
Starting right with the Sahaba.
The Sahaba, many of them thought that JAL
might come in their lifetime.
Right? Then that's how some people have been
feeling this generation too.
Like, it's
Yeah. Every generation thinks that because every generation
is definitely closer to the end times than
generation before them. Of course. Right? And there's
always crazy things happening in the world. Like,
right now, there's a lot of things going
on in the world that are quite depressing
and scary. There are many actual signs of
the day of judgement that are happening at
the moment, but those are the minor signs,
not the major signs.
And there's a hadith where the prophet sallallahu
alaihi wasallam was asked when will the day
of judgement happen, and he replied, what have
you prepared for it?
Mhmm. Right? Meaning,
it's not our job to speculate whether it's
the end times or not. It's our job
to prepare for Jannah. Mhmm. That's a good
point. Because we don't know. It could happen
in our lifetime. It could happen in a
100 years' time. It could happen in a
1000 years' time.
There is no way to know for sure
until the actual major signs start rolling in
that we are living in the end times.
And I feel a lot of people use
this as a crutch not to do anything
with their lives. That's what I've noticed as
well. They sit back. Yeah. It's like, okay.
Well They sit back. They complain. The world
is doomed. Only Mahdi can fix it. Only
Jesus can
fix
it.
Yeah.
So what do you say about that? Strange
is when you actually study the signs of
the end times,
it's very clear
that when the Mahdi comes or when Dajjal
comes, there will be a khilafat already. Muslims
will be ruling a large portion of the
world. Interesting. And and there will actually be,
like, a world war between Europeans and Muslims
before Mahdi comes and before Dajjal comes.
So we're still very far away from any
of that. I guess it means that we
need to get back to actually looking at
what we're preparing for that day of judgement.
Yeah. Everyone should focus on what they are
doing to prepare for the afterlife.
And going back to your question about why
we should study history, two more points about
why I like to study history. Number 1
is it humanizes
people.
Like, we tend to think that, oh, we're
not like the people of the past. We
can't be as pious as them. Yeah. So
what's the point of trying?
When you study history, you realize the majority
of Muslims were never pious.
The majority of Muslims were average. Mhmm. They
struggled. They had their sins. They had their
good deeds. We were people like us and
you don't have to be from the old
year to get to Jannah. The average person
can get to Jannah if Allah forgives them
for their sins. And that's what we make
du'a for the people of the past. Allah
forgives them for their sins and for the
people of today that Allah forgives us for
our sins. So, it's very humbling when you
read, for example, the travels of the great
Muslim travelers throughout history. People like Oliya Cholebi
or
even Batuta,
even Jubeir, all of their travelogues have been
translated into English. And you realize that the
Muslims of their time were just as messed
up as the Muslims today. Right? And, they
saw even crazier and wilder things than what
happens in the Muslim world today.
And you realize that there's always going to
be, at every point in time, some sins
that are
predominant
and some people who are weak and some
people who are pious and the average person
in between who is just average.
And it gives more hope to the average
person that we can still get to Jannah.
Right? Because we lose this mitt of everybody
being pious to our history. That kind of,
thinking that have happened. And you can relate
better to the people of history. Right? You
can actually relate better to the people of
history when you realize that they are
human. And I think that to me is
one of the most humbling things about studying
history. The other point is that it gets
you over this feeling that we are living
in the worst point in time in history.
We're not living in the worst point in
time in our history. The Ummah has lived
through and survived much darker times than what
we're going through right now. Even just 50
years ago, even just a 100 years ago,
the Ummah was in a much more devastating
state than it is in today. We are
actually living through a revival phase.
Like, the devastation came from World War 1,
and now we're a 100 years later, we
are now in a revival phase. We're actually
in a much better place than we were
even just 30 years ago. Very good. But
if you don't study history, you can't see
all this. Yeah. Yeah. Because you see the
You can't really see all this if you
don't study beyond your own life. Yeah.
It definitely puts a lot of things in
perspective because it shows that there's so much
that's happened before and this is how history
moves on and this is just one part
of history. I wonder though. You see how
you are saying about those travel logs of
about those Muslim travelers, how they saw things
that were, like, even worse than today. Do
you think that, like, how everyone's online today
and social media, and we see more
all of those haram things are highlighted more,
and then we think that, oh, the world
is really bad
because it's actually broadcasted those things. Whereas in
those days, it wasn't
as broadcasted, but it still happened. Yeah. I've
got a very shaky relationship with social media.
Yeah. On one hand, social media has helped
me to reach many people and is also
been very good for my business.
On the other hand, part of me feels
like social media should be haram. Like, there's
more harm than good for the average person
on social media.
But one of the biggest harms is that
it has made sin public and normalized.
Mhmm. Right? Throughout history, you will find, for
example,
in almost any era of our history you
study, you will find Muslims drank alcohol. There
were Muslims who were alcoholics.
Mhmm. But they recognized it as a sin,
and they did it in private.
And they were ashamed of their sin. And
if they tried to do it publicly, others
would have shamed them, they would have been
lashed, there would have been repercussions for publicly
sinning.
Right? It's the same with homosexuals, same with
sina,
same with any major sin. It existed
but in the shadows.
And
what happens with social media is that sin
is not just normalized,
it's moralized. Like, there's now a moral justification
for sinning.
It's become such that social media is all
about being you and going viral
and getting people to praise you, and it's
much easier to do that to rescind into
the good deeds.
If someone goes online, if a Muslim goes
online for example, Muslim goes online and she
takes off a hijab,
she will have thousands of people praising her
for getting rid of oppression and freeing herself
from the patriarchy. For people who are looking
for attention,
for people who
want that praise, who want that fame,
it's very easy to not just get caught
up in this world of publicly sinning. This
is the big problem with social media. It's
not only
publicized sin, it's moralized it. It's we've become
completely desensitized. To it. Just think about, for
example,
just 20 years ago,
how shocking it would be to see an
image of a naked woman,
right, and how normal it is today because
it's all over the Internet. Even if you
don't want to see it, it pops up
on social media without you because the algorithm
just puts it up there. People advertise to
it. Bots just throw it out there. It's
become so normalized
that
you actually meet young Muslims who don't even
really think of it as a sin anymore
to look at such pictures.
So it sounds like the sins were there,
but because it's broadcasted out, it's become more
normalized. So people have an impression that, oh,
this time is really bad. We're in a
the worst time in history, and then it
just makes them go back and feel like
only the Mahdi can save this. Right? It's
like, it's not my responsibility. Like, I'm helpless.
It's interesting. Yeah. This idea that it's not
my responsibility.
This is us running away from being an
Ummah.
Right? Because
Allah
tells us in the Quran
that the believing men and women are allies
to each other. They command what is good
and they forbid what is evil,
which means that we are supposed to be
holding each other to account. We are supposed
to be correcting each other. Right?
This is going away. For example, if a
Muslim woman
displays her beauty online and a Muslim man
corrects her, she'll say, you have no right
to correct me. It's none of your business.
Or you're being misogynistic or being pay, patriarchal.
But it is his business. The Quran says
we are supposed to correct each other. We
are supposed to hold each other to account.
We have to hold the line somewhere. Otherwise,
everything comes through, one after the other. So
there has to be this accountability between Muslims,
and there also has to be this working
to improve. Look at the issue of social
media. We can just have a defeatist attitude
and say social media is here. Nothing we
can do about it. Let's just embrace it,
or
we could try and brainstorm solutions.
So, for example, one of the things I
do with younger people is I try to
help them cut down on their social media
time
Yeah. Because
a lot of them are just online
247.
It's very unhealthy
to be online all the time. So, I
try to help them have healthier habits when
it comes to social media. Number 1, to
cut down on what they are following and
who they are following.
Number 2, to just log in once or
twice a day
and maybe to have an hour a day
where you check all your social media because
it is not healthy to be constantly connected
with other people in this way. It's not
it's not even what I'm realizing now is
that this generation doesn't even have time to
think anymore
because we're just feeding ourselves.
The these algorithm feeds 247.
No one actually has time to just sit
back and think. It's like we have to
be constantly
absorbing something, and so people don't have time
to form their own thoughts. They don't have
time to even think about their own life,
to have a vision, to have a goal,
to do some self reflection, to improve on
themselves, because we're just constantly connected, and we're
constantly absorbing other things. These days.
Yeah. Can't have that space. And boredom is
important. Right? Yeah. Very important. Boredom is important.
It's something I do for myself. I try
to be offline as much as possible.
I don't have social media notifications on any
of my devices.
I log in once or twice a day
just to post something beneficial or to advertise
for one of my courses or books
and to check my notifications.
And that's it. For the rest of the
day, I'm not on social media because it
is a dangerous place to be, and we
are the 1st generation
to be exposed to it. We actually don't
really know the long term harms of it
until our generation gets old. Then we look
back and say, oh, wow. This really messed
up our generation. Yes, ma'am. We, the guinea
pigs. Yeah. Going back to the topic of
Islamic history, though, I'm curious to know what
kind of things were in the Ottoman Empire
or at least our recent caliphate
that you don't see in the western world
today that the average Muslim would be surprised
hearing about?
One of the things that frustrates me about
history is the Ottoman Empire is perhaps the
least studied Muslim Empire
in the English language.
It's very hard to find English resources about
the Ottoman Empire. Mhmm. And some people know
about the Umayyads, some people know about the
Abbasids,
not many people know about the Ottomans. There
are actually a lot of research into the
Ottoman Empire this year
because after I finished teaching the history course,
what I'm currently teaching is a course on
Sharia
Mhmm. And more specifically, the history of how
the Sharia was applied.
And a lot of it focuses on the
Ottoman Empire. So I'll give you a few
of the interesting things that I noticed about
the Ottoman Empire,
from the study. Number 1, I think humanity
may have achieved peak freedom
under the Ottoman Empire. Interesting. It may sound
like a strange thing to say. Yeah. Right?
Peak freedom. What do I mean by this?
Freedom. So under the Ottoman Empire, they had
the Milat system, the religion system. And what
that meant is you would have a Christian
village or a Christian town or a Christian
neighborhood, similarly Jewish towns, Jewish neighborhoods,
and they would entirely
self govern according to their religion. The only
interaction with the government
was once a year, they pay their taxes,
which is, like, 2 to 5%.
Just yeah. Just 2 to 5% taxes per
year. To up to, like, 40%,
50, 45% in time. Yeah?
That was actually the only obligation to the
government Mhmm. To pay the tax.
Other than that, the only other interaction with
the government
is that the Khalifa or his representatives
would meet with the priests and rabbis and
ask them, do you need anything?
Do you have any problems that we can
solve? Is there anything we can do for
you? And other than that, all of these
Christian towns and villages and Jewish towns and
villages were completely self governed. They would be
run according to the Torah or the bible,
and they would have full freedom to just
live their lives as they wanted. Muslims would
not interfere
in their lifestyles at all and it it
was very similar for Muslims as well. People
think of Sharia as
the strict enforcement of every
small rule using
violence.
That's not what Sharia is.
Under Sharia, there's only, like, 10 sins
that carry a capital punishment or, like, a
violent punishment,
and the conditions to apply the violent punishment
are so strict that they rarely ever carried
out. So, for example, people bring up the
issue of stoning the adulterer. Yeah. In the
500 years of the Ottoman history, how many
people do you think were stoned for adultery?
In 500 years. I don't think there's any
even in Islamic history. Right?
In 500 years, he was one person. One
person. Okay.
Wow. One incident in 500 years from what
I've been able to find. That's amazing. That's
how rare it was for these punishments to
actually be taken. So it sounds like these
punishments were a victim. More as to scare
away people from public sin. Yeah.
I see. So these laws tend to exist
more as a way of scaring people away
from public sin. But in Islam, you're not
allowed to violate people's privacy. You're not allowed
to look into people's private sins. You're not
allowed to
spy on people, right?
So, what people did in private was they
owned business.
So, there's actually a lot of freedom under
Sharia.
The only restriction that the Sharia has, that
modernity does not have, is that in Sharia,
public sin is a law. If you see
somebody sinning publicly, you will call them out
for it, you will advise them, you will
shame them for it. Right? So does that
mean that those the non
Muslims living in those lands can't say consume
alcohol, for example?
Yeah. So, like, the non Muslims, for example,
the Christians in their neighborhoods
would have their pig farms, they'll have their
bars, they'll have their churches, they'll have their
alcohol,
but they wouldn't be allowed to be drunk
in a Muslim area. That would become public,
sir. Right. Right.
Right?
So as long as they're not showing up
drunk in a Muslim area and causing a
public disturbance, Muslims didn't care whether they're eating
pork or drinking alcohol or going to the
church. If they're paying their dues here, they
have their freedom of religion. But that wouldn't
stop, like, a Muslim from going into the
non Muslim neighborhood if he wanted to drink.
Yeah. And that's exactly what happened. Right? As
I said, throughout every phase in our history,
there were Muslims who drank alcohol, and they
always got it from the Christians. Right?
I see. So that's like And again, if
if you did it privately, that's a private
sin that's between them and Allah. May Allah
forgive them. Yeah. Yeah. Of course. Okay. So
you have those amylat systems by religion, but
then what about with today's time where people
don't ascribe to a religion?
You have your atheist. I don't know what
they believe in
spirituality and difference. Would there also be No.
Not following a religion is a is an
anomaly. Right? This isn't something
that has been common at any point in
our history. And I actually think it's dying
out.
Especially since COVID,
since the past 5 years,
there has been a decline in actual atheism.
People are starting to believe in the unseen
again. People are starting to believe in life
after death again. It's just coming in stages.
There are a lot more people in the
world today who actually believe in angels and
in demons than they were 10 years ago.
There is a return to an idea that
things exist that we can't see.
So the idea of atheists is an anomaly
in our history that it wasn't common
at any point in our history. But what
you will find is that atheists did exist
in the Muslim empire just like any other
non Muslim. They were left to their
business. They never had communities. They would be
individuals. So they'd be considered, like, mad individuals,
and people wouldn't live in the future. Would
they live within
the greater society? More likely to find them
in the Christian areas or in the Jewish
areas because, I mean, they would still be
Christian by culture or Jewish by culture as
many of them are today. Many of them
today still culturally identify with these groups even
if they don't really believe in them eternally.
Right. I see. But in this Islamic world,
if we were to be transported there right
now, would you only see these Millet systems
with people
of the book religion? So the Christians, the
Jews, or would you also have, like, other
communities as well, other faith? This this is
something that, the scholars of today actually have
to discuss and figure out because
there haven't been
communities of atheists in history as far as
I know. But not just atheists like atheists.
Well, obviously, some some modern I was wondering
that that some
modern religions like satanism would not have a
place under Sharia at all. There is limits
to our freedom of religion in in Islam.
Right? Mhmm. The Quran mentions specifically
Jews and Christians,
but, historically,
Muslims extended that to any religious community.
So, historically,
Zoroastrians,
Hindus,
Buddhist, they all lived under Sharia and paid
the jizyah and had their own communities.
And that same thing may apply today.
It's just that today, there are some weird
and bizarre beliefs out there that never existed
at that time. So
if Sharia land had to come about today,
the ulama of that land will have to
make a decision of how do we deal
with these kinds of people. Yeah. Until then,
it's just a hypothetical discussion. Yeah. I see.
That's very interesting. So there were, like, different
like, people lived within their neighborhoods, but they
still had the opportunity to mingle with each
other and still had the opportunity to travel
out to different lands Yes. And not be
restricted because the area was at a different
level compared to today because Of course. There
were no passports.
There were no borders, there were no visas.
If you're living in the Ottoman Empire was
the size of what's today 25 countries.
You could be living anywhere in that land
and decide you're gonna move somewhere else in
that land, and it was perfectly fine. No
one's monitoring you. No one's keeping an eye
on you. No one's forcing you even if
you're moving between empires.
So, with the Ottoman Empire, the Safavid Empire,
the Mughal Empire, the Mamluk Empire, all of
these existed at the same time. But as
a Muslim,
an average Muslim, you could live in any
of these empires
without having to think about things like citizenship
or passports or visas.
It's just you had freedom of movement
which is very much restricted today. Yeah. The
modern nation state system has restricted it so
much that there's very few countries in the
world where you can actually get citizenship as
a Muslim.
Even most Muslim countries would have to live
off visas for life.
That puts you at the mercy of people
deciding they don't wanna read you a visa
anymore, kicking you out at any time. So,
you can't really settle anywhere.
That didn't exist under Sharia. That's actually, in
my view, that's haram. It's haram for Muslim
governments to treat people like that. If someone's
a Muslim, you're supposed to let them if
they want to live in your land, let
them live in your land. That's what the
Sharia teaches.
So there was a lot more freedom
in that sense under the Sharia
for religious communities in terms of low taxes,
in terms of freedom to travel and to
move and to settle anywhere in the land.
Also,
there was freedom in terms of whatever business
you wanted to run. The the government didn't
barely pay attention to the average person's life.
In general, under Sharia,
people and communities self governed.
And only if there's a problem, they would
go to the local judge, the local kodi.
And the local judge, yes, he's paid by
the khalifa,
but he's someone who grew up in that
town, who went to madrasa. He knows everyone,
he knows the culture, he knows the families,
and his primary goal is to keep the
peace and to make sure that everyone
gets along with each other. So, it's again,
the government wouldn't even really interfere.
The only time the khalifa would interfere is
if somebody complained that the judge is being
unfair or the judge is taking bribes, then
they would fire him and replace him with
someone else. And the interesting point is they
actually reached a level of accountability
where under the Ottoman Empire, the highest position
a scholar could get was that of the
Sheikh ul Islam. So the sheikh ul Islam
was like the grand mufti
and the chief qadi of the Ottoman Empire.
Right? He's, like, the main judge and the
main mufti of the Ottoman Empire. And he
actually had the power
where if the Ottoman Khalifa was an alcoholic
or someone who's trying to change the sharia,
he could pass a fatwa saying this person's
no more fit to be Khalifa, and the
army would remove that person and put one
of the his brothers or cousins in place
of him at the new Khalifa. Wow. So
So there were checks and balances even on
the Khalifa himself. So that means that even
the Khalifa himself wasn't above the law? That's
the key difference between Sharia
and the modern state system. Right? In a
modern state system, the government makes the law.
The government's above the law. The government enforces
the law.
Under Sharia, it is God's law.
The ulama interpret the law. The judges enforce
the law. The Khalifa's job is to protect
the borders and to keep people safe
and to handle administration.
He's not involved in lawmaking at all. That's
actually an interesting point. You know, he's besides
the khulafa or Rashidin Yeah. Who were ulama
themselves,
after that time, it became 2 separate power
structures. You had the ulama,
the people of knowledge, the fuqaha, the muftis,
the qadis,
they interpreted the law, they wrote the books
of law, they judged between the people, they
dealt with new situations.
The law was entirely in the hands of
the ulama.
And they ran completely as a completely separate
power structure.
They actually had more social influence on the
average person than the Khalifa. The Khalifa is
in his palace. He's commanding the armies. He's
collecting and distributing the taxes, and he's paying
the salaries of the ulama and the governors,
and he's really not involved in the day
to day lives of the average person. There's
no state control the way there is under
modern state system. This is something new, especially
in the Muslim world. What we have in
the past 100 years where they control
almost every aspect of a person's life and
even what the ulama say, this is very
new to Muslim history. It's an anomaly in
Muslim history.
Historically, ulama had a lot more freedom, and
they were actually the leaders of the communities
on the ground, and they were the ones
who shaped the communities on the ground. This
is why we tend to study more biographies
of scholars than we do biographies of kings.
That's very interesting.
One question I am curious about though, when
you said about taxes though, were there taxed
on
their income? Was it an income taxed or
was it what their own taxed, like an
asset taxed? And what was the difference between
So Muslims and non Muslims? Were the non
Muslims, like, treated unfairly in the way they
were taxed and the Muslims
were favored? What was the understanding of that?
Again, it depends on which point in history.
K. Well, look. Let's just go back to
the other one again since it was, like,
the recent one. This
what we would consider the legitimate taxes and
the disputed taxes. Yeah. So legitimately, the taxes
that the government would collect
would be the jizya from the non Muslims
and the zakah from the Muslims.
And along with that, they did institute other
taxes. There were farm taxes. There was property
taxes
to some extent
on the Benin, agricultural land, not on other
types of land. Yeah. There was a specific
type of agricultural tax that had to be
paid to the government as well. And that
was more or less it. There wasn't an
income tax. There wasn't a VAT. There wasn't
all these
high levels of taxing we have today where
every little thing we are
doing is taxed to debt.
This didn't exist before modernity. Yeah. Taxing was
actually very low.
Not to say that there weren't points in
our history where people invented other taxes to
exploit people. That did happen. Mhmm. So, for
example, some of the early Umayyads,
they would double tax converts,
meaning
people were paying the jizyah
and then they converted to Islam. They would
now charge them the zakat and the jizya.
Right? So they would double tax. So this
was wrong. This was simple on their behalf.
And the zakat, when you should look at,
like, the cost of it. Yes. So due
to the 2 taxes that existed under Islam,
jizya is basically
what non Muslims pay to the Sharia government.
It's like a protection tax. Yeah. In exchange
for jizya, they have full freedom of religion.
They have no military service. In fact, it
is the duty of the Muslims to protect
them and keep them safe. So if they
are attacked, the Muslim army has to protect
them and the Muslim army has to keep
them safe. So it's like a protection tax,
and they pay it, like, once a year.
Similarly, the Muslims had zakah. Yeah. And zakah
is basically
2 and a half percent. Yes. Zakah. Today,
we treat it as a charity.
Under the sharia, it will actually more of
a tax. Alright. So the government would send
tax collectors
to collect the Zakah from you, and it
would be used by the government for a
variety of services.
For helping the poor, yes, but also for
funding military expeditions,
for paying the salaries for the tax collectors
themselves,
and for a variety of other things as
well. So these were
the two types of taxes as as well
as the a agriculture tax. Was it just,
like, varied according? Is is there a set
kind of, Oh, you mean, like, a set
amount? Yeah. How much was the GZR tax?
There's not really a set amount. Mhmm. The
few points in history I was able to
find numbers for,
it was actually lower than the zakar.
So zakar is 2 a half percent and
yeah. For many places at many points in
time, Jizia was, like, 2%. 2%. And that's
only
charged on the people who can afford it.
Yeah. Exactly. And then, like, in the time
of Omar Radilah Anu, for example.
Yeah. So, like, in the time of Omar
Radilah Anu, when he found the old Jewish
man begging because he couldn't pay the jizya,
he changed the law, and he said that,
we won't charge jizya to to the elders.
We will actually provide for them because they're
elderly. They can't work. They can't pay taxes.
You know what really makes me sad? When
I actually go out to the shops and
I, like, go buy stuff. Like, I feel
very sad when I see elderly behind the
cashier,
like, scanning my items. And I was like
It breaks my heart. It breaks my heart
so much because I was like, they spent
their youth
working, paying taxes, and putting it into their
what here in Australia is called, it's a
superannuation. But I know in different countries, it's
their retirement fund. Then that retirement fund is
taxed, and then that retirement fund loses its
worth, like, that value because there's inflation,
because governments print money. So their value actually
gets less and less, and then they end
up, like, driving
or they're in the checkout, and they're, like,
elderly men and women.
And I feel so bad, and I think
to myself, this wouldn't be allowed in an
Islamic
Sharia ruled world. No. In the Islamic land,
what's amazing is not only where
elders taken care of, but, for example, I
read recently
that even for horses that were grown old,
they would be, like, old age homes, retirement
homes for horses. Horses. Yeah. So instead of
people
shooting their horses when they go old, they
leave them in this place where they could
relax and live out their old days. And
even there was, like, a house for cats
and dogs too. Right? I heard about that
one. Yeah. For cats and dogs as well.
There were animal shelters where they would be
treated. They're pampered really, you know, treated very
well, which is still the culture in some
Muslim countries like Turkey. That's amazing. Like, we
don't hear these things as commonly. I guess
it's
now, like, as things, especially in these western
lands, they just get more and more expensive
that even to just live, pay the rent,
pay your food, which keeps increasing. And, like,
people are getting homeless in these countries, but
it's all, like, covered. It's like they're hidden
away
so that it doesn't make the society look
bad. It's like they might be in, like,
a slum, which is, like, somewhere else or
something. So people don't even know that there
are poor people in these western lands that
are, like, have all this money and stuff.
So It's one of the biggest scary things
about modernity is that people are more oppressed
and controlled than ever before with the illusion
of having freedom. Yes. So they give them
the freedom to sin,
but through these sins, they control them. So
for example,
make drugs publicly available, maybe even make them
legal. Mhmm. Well, now you have a bunch
of drug addicts. They're not going to know
that the government's oppressing them. They're not going
to know what the government policy said. They're
not even gonna be able to to function
properly.
So, in this way, they're able to control
people.
And this is the sad reality of the
modern world that through many things, whether it's
drug addiction or * addiction or just keeping
the cost of living so high that people
can't think about anything else besides work and
paying bills. In all these ways, they're able
to keep people under control. Yeah. I wonder,
though. You see how all of these prices
and all of these living costs is very
high, so it doesn't give people free time
at the end because, like, you obviously have
to be working all the time.
And
because they don't have free time, we won't
have time to pursue things that will help
human flourishing,
invent things. And so do you Is is
is the key difference between how life was
under Sharia compared to current life? Because under
Sharia, you'll find in many cultures,
Muslims will just work enough. Firstly, it's just
a man would work because the cost of
living was low.
Right? So you didn't need 2 incomes. So
just a man would work, and the man
would just work enough to make enough money
for the day. And then he would go
hang out with his friends, go to the
masjid, go spend time with his family, engage
in his hobbies, be part of the community.
It wasn't all about work. There was much
more to life than just working. Yeah. And
in today's society, it's all about work. Like,
you just
you commute for 1 hour,
you get there to the office, then you
commute back and you don't see your kids.
It really is like a way modern day
slavery. It is. It is a form of
modern day slavery, especially minimum wage work.
Mhmm.
That plus the debts and interest based debt
system, it keeps people enslaved for life.
Yeah. Because whichever way you go, you're just
paying extra tax here and there. And it's
like what remains at the end
to just eat food and kiss. I guess
the thing that, like, That's what I said
earlier. Tax to debt. That's the modern world.
People are taxed to debt. There's no way
out of it, and there's no room to
even breathe and have a normal life if
you're stuck in that system. I think the
thing is very sad. Like you were saying
earlier, it's the illusion that the system we're
in is the best system. We have freedom.
We can do anything we like. And then
when you think about Sharia law or the
thief gets their hand cut off and all
of these things. So it's like this thing
people have this impression that it's a barbaric
law, and we're at the best time because
we're in the modern world. But it's not
really the case. But we're now living in
a time where crime is out of control.
And under Sharia,
we had the highest levels of safety. And
even something as simple as as what you
mentioned now, okay, cut off the hands of
the thief. Actually,
you amputate the hand of the professional thief.
That's a better way or, a more correct
way of wording it. Because the average thief
under Sharia does not get their hands chopped
off. They may get even just shouting,
right, or it's cold. So if they were
poor, hungry, they may actually just give them
charity instead. That's actually how Sharia would work.
If somebody stole an apple and they were
taken to the judge and they told the
judge that they're hungry and they're poor, the
judge will tell the shop owner, forgive him
and give it to him as charity. That's
Sharia. Right? It's only the professional big boss
type of thief who's who's dedicated his life
to crime when he's finally caught then they'll
make an example of him, and that would
completely reduce crime in the community. It sounds
like
the big corporations, the banks. People don't realize
that
Sharia law
was always effective
compared to any of the systems people have
invented afterwards.
Sharia
is the most effective law system for reducing
public immorality, for reducing crime, for creating a
God conscious community,
for having family systems that work, for having
charity systems that work, for having a low
cost of living. In all these areas, sharia
works effectively.
The problem is there's no land on earth
today that actually has sharia that you can
point to as an example.
Yeah. Of course. But I think it's like
you were saying, right now is the time
of revival, and right now it's very important
that we learn this because if we don't
know that there is a better way
for the world to function,
then we would think that this is the
best way. And this is why history is
important. Mhmm. Because
right now, history is our only
reference point for sharia.
Right? And, how it worked. That's why I'm
teaching this course. So, I had the course
on history, 30 videos.
Currently, I'm teaching a course on Sharia. That's
also 30 videos. I only got 3 left
to record. Very important. And, again, it's the
same thing that I'm trying to show, historically,
this is how the sharia functioned. And it's
not as people think. It's not what people
imagine.
So, for example, some people imagine under sharia
that the khalifas going around chopping women's heads
off if they're not wearing hijab. Right?
I cannot find any historical
reference
of the government ever enforcing hijab. Like, it's
not something the government gets involved with. Yeah.
Maybe a woman's husband or father would enforce
hijab as the head of the household, or
maybe some aunties in the community may shame
them if they leave the house without hijab,
but that's as far as it goes.
Right? Or maybe the local will give them
a lecture about the importance of hijab. There's
no government involvement. There's no state punishment.
There's nothing like that. It was on a
family level. It wasn't on the government level.
Under Sharia, there's levels of power and one
of those levels of power is the family.
So, hijab was a family thing. It wasn't
something the government got involved in. Furthermore, under
Sharia, non Muslim women and the slave women
wouldn't wear hijab.
So if you see a woman walking around
in the city without hijab, you're not going
to assume that she's a Muslim woman sitting.
You might just assume it's not a Muslim
or something. Right? And you lower your gaze
and carry on. It's so interesting. It's like,
it goes back to that I don't know
if it's saying or a quote or some
something, but it's like you can't decolonize our
lands until we decolonize our minds.
And I think we have this impression of
this that's a big one here.
Barbaricness and, like, oh, that won't work. But
it's because there's a lack of information and
we don't know any better.
This is again one of the reasons why
I'm so against the school system and,
radical anti schooler and homeschooler. Oh, we need
to discuss further on that. You have the
purpose. Yeah. The school system we have today
was designed
by the colonizers,
and it is used to colonize our minds.
And I see people come out of school
with
absolutely
un Islamic ideas, and they don't even know
they have un Islamic ideas because you spent
13 years in that system being indoctrinated with
all these ideas. So when we're educating people,
we have to deschool their brains. We have
to decolonize their brains, because there's so much
wrong information in there.
Mhmm. I definitely have to get you on
another episode to dive deep about that and
your lessons you learned over homeschooling your own
children.
It's been so interesting to get deep into
this topic, but we're actually getting close to
the end of our time. So I would
love to ask you the questions that we
ask all our guests. What's one life hack
that's improved your life? A life hack that's
improved my life. Well, you know, I've written
books on time management that's filled with dozens
of life hacks.
I've had to choose one of them. My
favorite one is, you know, taking a major
project Mhmm. And just breaking it down into
small workable chunks.
And then just focusing on the next step
and then the next step and then the
next step. So,
for example, writing a book sounds like such
a mind boggling task to most people, but
I just focus on writing 1,000 words a
day, which takes me about 30 minutes. Yeah.
True. I write 1,000 words a day. At
the age of 38, I've written over 20
books.
Right? So it's really about breaking things down
into a workable chunk. Like, someone asked me,
like, okay. My sharia course, 30 videos I'm
recording.
I actually record 1 video a week. It's
a very workable chunk to do 1 video
a week. So you could think to yourself
that I'm going to do
this large project, and it feels overwhelming. Or
you could think to yourself, I just need
to do this much for the week. And
you do that consistently
every week for a year and the work
gets done. So for me, taking a large
project and breaking it down into manageable chunks
Yes. Has been one of the most important
life hacks that has made every aspect of
my life easier,
and I applied across the board to everything
I do.
That's awesome. And what about your book that's
helped you level up in your life? Same
thing, books. I read 60 books a year.
Sixty books a year. How do I even
choose 1? So which which one stands out
to you this year? This year, there'd been
a lot of books I read that really
stood out, but mostly doctor Wilde Hallaq's books
on sharia.
Right? I've been talking a lot about sharia
today. Yeah.
I actually only discovered doctor Wilde Hallaq's books
on the topic a year ago,
and I've read all these books in this
one on
the on the topic.
I actually read one of them twice,
because he's the only western academic author who's
writing honestly about the topic.
Others have their biases, and they're trying to
portray the sharia as barbaric and they're lying,
And he just gives such a honest and
beautiful description of what life was like under
sharia. Wow. And those books were mind blowing
for me,
and I used them as a basis for
for my course on sharia.
And a lot of discussion I have today
is based on his books as well. So
the first book of his I read 1
year ago, The Impossible State,
I just finished reading it for a second
time last week.
It basically shows how sharia wouldn't work in
the nation state system,
but it shows in a way that proved
the nation state system to be oppressive and
Sharia to be superior. Oh, yeah. I actually
I heard a podcast series about that with
imam Tom
Yeah. Based on that form. Yes. Imam Tom's
podcast was my introduction to to the book
and to the author. Very very eye opening.
That's really
a yeah. That's a book and author that's
made a huge impression on me this year.
If I had to go to self help
books that made a big difference in my
life, when I was very young, the first
self help book to really make a difference
in my life was 7 Habits of Highly
Effective People by Stephen Covey. Yeah. And I
remember back then, I used to recommend it
to everyone. Yeah. That's cool. At that point
in my time, that was what I needed
to read. Mhmm. Now there's many other books
that came afterwards that that built upon that.
But, yeah, for young people, that's always a
good starting point. Yeah. Yeah. True.
Awesome. And, where can,
our listeners find you online? Well,
my website is islamic self help dot com,
and my second website
is isaacademy.com.
Islamic self help has been around for 10
years, so there's a lot of things there,
online courses, ebooks,
blog posts. Iza Academy is just about a
year old, so there's not as much content
there. Islamic self help focuses on personal development.
ISA Academy focuses on marriage, parenting,
masculinity,
femininity,
reviving the traditional Muslim home. That's the goal
of ISA Academy. And those are my 2
main websites. Otherwise, I'm active on Twitter
and on YouTube. Recently, I have been working
with Yaqeen Institute, so you may find some
of my stuff there as well. And and
you also have that very comprehensive course on
Islamic history as well? Yes. So I have
my online course on Islamic history
and my newer one on history of Sharia.
Is that the history of your Hebrew courses?
More purpose. It's it's still in the making.
The new course is currently labeled an introduction
to Islamic law. But once I'm completed with
it, I might end up changing the name
because it ended up being more of a
history course. Oh, nice. Thank you so much
for coming on. I've learned a lot in
today's session. I really hope that listeners have
also learned, and it actually sparked that interest
and planted that seed to learn more about
our history and learn about how the world
was before how things were today.
Thank you so much.
Thank you for having me.
Hey, everyone. That wraps up another episode from
the Muslim Life Hackers podcast. I really hope
you enjoyed our chat today and got some
great takeaways.
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