Jonathan Brown – Critically Engaging With Hadith
AI: Summary ©
The speaker discusses the "arepticism" of Islam, which is a problem that needs to be addressed. They stress the importance of finding out who is truly authentic in Islam and verifying their views on the world. The transcript discusses various narratives of the Prophet's actions, including his praying recitation and the use of "ocean" in the context of travel. They also touch on the history of the Prophet's actions and the use of "verbal mess" in Islam, where individuals try to do good deeds and believe in a certain way.
AI: Summary ©
It's not a matter of him, this is a first I want to apologize. There's some that are the topic that you picked for me, is very similar to a talk I gave recently. So there's, I mean, I added new material, I tried to add as much new material that could but there's nothing I could do to overlap with existing material, which is the fourth also recorded online, it's very difficult to speak on these things. You know, you can't make the same jokes really hard. Okay, so I'm going to try my best to make new jokes. And to give you new material, but this will there will be some overlap. Unfortunately, that's just the nature of
I did not
suggest the topic. So you don't think I will put the lazy person who goes around talking about the same stuff like some stupid politician? Okay.
Did the topic gauging was something that is? No, as the artist says, it's sort of a, it definitely is a scarlet Scarlet issue. And there would be no need to talk about it with a general audience. I'm not saying you're not all intelligent, educated people. Some of you may be very educated, but you know, this kind of audience would probably not exists in for this topic for most of Islamic history. Because this was not the type of job that normal people would do it is a job that specialist scholars would do. This would be the the main job of Muslim scholars throughout history is to try and access the sources of Revelation and understand what God wants from us at any time in place. But
as I've also said, very productively, this is become an issue today, because this material was so widely available. And even if you didn't want to go and not find it, some islamophobe is going to throw it in your face, right. So I mean, the the the, the, the Hadith that is powerful to come up with your salon, I mean, they find the they look in collections that you know, I've never even heard of. And they find things that are I mean, they're not not reliable Hadees, which is things that are totally wild, insane things. And then, but it's very interesting, I found some fascinating stuff over the years from these people. So they have a lot of energy, and a lot of funding behind them. So
you know, I benefit from from them. But the point is that this we have that we normal people have to be able to deal with this because it is part of our life today. So one of the things in fact, I thinking about writing like a short book about this or something online or something to this effect, kind of how you how you deal with the Heidi's had youth is a normal person. And so I'll try and go through some of these I these principles now with you and trauma. So the first thing
I'm very comfortable saying is I've Nope. If
anyone thinks I make mistakes, you can feel free to challenge me or correct me, I have no problem with that. But the first is that edits are pieces of a puzzle. They're just they are just data, they are data. I'm not trying to say this, some of the properties that's not obviously I'm not belittling the son of the Prophet, I'm trying to say is the son of the Prophet is is his authoritative precedent. Her deeds are just little pieces of data that help us understand that authoritative precedent.
But like any data, or data, you have to look at in a larger scope and the scope of it's a larger data set and the scope of the system in which it fits. So the very important thing to keep in mind anytime you come across any, this is just a piece of data. And you have to ask yourself what bigger system that fits into. And
nor are they data that can be trusted automatically, right? The default assumption is as Muslims, our default assumption is that especially when things involve statements about the nature of God, the nature of faith, what people should believe what's right and wrong, the default assumption is skepticism. If someone comes in says to you, you have to do this or you have to believe that as a Muslim, the first thing you say is, where is your what is what basis do you have to make this claim? It's an admin to do that without it's now the call manager that nyesha has I've done it no robotic died. 181 797 companies said, the snad as part of their religion, whoever said other if it weren't
for the snad whoever wanted to say whatever they want, we know from afar and how superhawk woman Clinton saw the pain, bring your proof. If you are truthful, this is the basic principle Muslims should be skeptical people.
You know, if someone says,
you know there's a car coming at you right now, please move then in that case, I'm not going to be skeptical I'm going to move. But the point is when it comes to things about the nature of morality, about the nature of metaphysics, the nature of God afterlife, our belief, we have to demand evidence. That's the difference between the revealed tradition of Islam and other traditions and what the Quran constantly reveals Muslims constantly remind Muslims to do is not to take their own who are their own wishes desires, their own speculations.
sources for truth rather than turn to the intact revelation of God for these things. So first thing about Hadees they have to be authenticated.
It's very important to remember
skepticism of Hadith is though, is the default setting of Muslim scholars. The whole reason we have Muslim scholars came up with science of any verification is because hundreds and hundreds of dozens and dozens of 1000s of edits were forged. In the earliest time period, as the famous heady scholarship I have not had judge who died route 161 or so 773 of the common year is dead.
three fourths of the Hadees I have found are forged. three fourths, he's, you know, two generations before Bukhari and Muslim. three fourths of the hit hit eetzi came across her forgeries
the massive forgery of Hades for various political, cultural, religious, legal, racist reasons, whatever. That was, what motivated Muslims to to try and figure out how to sort out wheat from for so that that when you come across it, the first thing you do is this is this authenticator now
you know, for example, a lot of people might have heard that he
was in Alliance for the general diet food agenda what is Xena the child born of Xena will not enter Paradise
Hey you could before we start saying all out himself is so unjust How can you say hi before we get you get so worked up? I'll help him
We are honored to have booked right so you don't don't engage in interpretation until you have established the authenticity of the text you're interpreting otherwise just wasting your time Okay in this case this is in main version of his in margin with a puppet on he died 369 71 of the Common Era who his books are full full full full of unreliable Eddie's fortunately Of course, there's also reliable ones as well but these are massive books some of them and there's a lot of unreliable by decent them and scholars like even ojos even claimed to be 190 as to how we as well all advanced decline either they insist or they they they suggest strongly this Hadeeth is very unreliable or
forged.
It also of course violates central Quranic principle, which is
that says otherwise it often wizard Oprah no bearer burdens bears the burdens of another.
So first things things have to be authenticated.
This is I remember when I this is, you know, a lot of these things, they go back to my memories that have when I first became Muslim, when I first went around when I first became Muslim, there was a friend of mine, who, you know, we're talking about traveling overseas, and you know, you shouldn't travel overseas because there's, you know, there's a fire under the ocean. And then there's an ocean under the fire and EMS.
I mean, I didn't know what to say you're like, oh, okay, I
guess I I'll reconsider traveling overseas. But I mean, that said, this is the type of thing where you really have to Sorry, I have to go to the next slide.
my mouse.
Here we go. So this is the kind of thing you really have to be careful about. Now. What color is that for you? Is that gray and red?
Brown Brown. This is brown.
Wow. Okay. So gray and brown. Okay, so the
Yeah, the basically this is an ad this isn't so it's the main place you come across it the son of Abu Dhabi. Very important thing to remember, the six books are not authentic books of authentic.
The war and Muslims books are so hated books. None of the other six books is a book of reliable * tirmidhi his book is full of unreliable Hadees that he himself says are unreliable because he's collecting Hadees that are used by different schools of law and he will point even if he doesn't agree with them, he'll say this hadith is unreliable. It's used by certain such people. So someone says this it is determinate that means nothing. Someone says I didn't even magia imagines book according to happen to the heavy diet that 1342 to come near one quarter of the book is unreliable. One quarter of the book of magic is unreliable. So when people cite these six books be fair a couple
that doesn't that doesn't mean anything. Bukhari and Muslim. These books are very reliable obviously. But so this is in Abu Dhabi, you might first think okay, well that it's true, something The Prophet said. First of all, that's not true. Second was definitely not true for this heady. There's two versions of it.
liat, Baba Illa had had you know multimedia
allows it to be that
that's the main part no one should travel. This is the one in our dough. No one should travel by sea except those going for hikes are already fighting God's path.
beneath the sea is a fire and beneath that fires and other sea
that's what you'd find if you read certain about widowed Okay. Now there's another version of this, you find in the Occupy Mecca the fact that he This is a scholar who died around 270 to 80 of the history about 898 92 of the common hero
bar Mecca history report to a mecca. It's a and this version says no one should travel by sea, except there was one for pirates four or five in fatica. No mention of this ocean and fire under the ocean, things like that. Now, the version that includes this fire under the ocean here, this
this is a totally unreliable pity. These two people Bishop and me have the line but Chevron was our unknown, no one knows who they are. That's two unknown links. And if that this is thrown out the window history, in addition, you have another version of it another trend narration which also goes through it on person. Now the other version.
It doesn't mention the ocean and fire that this guy is also unreliable. By the way it might have been Ibiza executory. And Nathan, obviously is problematic. But you could say that there's a sort of reliable version that doesn't include this ocean and sea underneath it. So this is a very, very unreliable heading. So before you get exercised about or concerned, you have to try and find out if it's reliable. Now you might say how do I do that?
Difficult to tell. I mean, it's very difficult to do. I've been hydrolyze, Kalani had a book called
A Simon mathy a sermon about the what is to hear from the fourth sentence, but the book didn't survive. So there's a couple of other books, a jam in the mail. Later, besides asahina Minh had the advisory, they will see on the Saturday 2001. But this book is sizable. It's in Arabic. And again, it's just one scholars opinion. So the basic answer is, if you have if you want to know if it is reliable, we have to ask her a good scholar. And
right now I'm the head of this project to translate the six books and to provide rulings for the authenticity of books that are not he's not in Bukhari Muslim. That's one of the things we're trying to remedy is this problem? Okay? By the way, Second thing, no one should travel with less. So this version, we got rid of no one to travel by sea, except those one for hearts for murder fighting the path of God? Does anyone have a problem with that? They don't have the meat problem with the meaning of this video.
What's your problem?
Well, it's it's a very total prohibition
goes along, speaks about people traveling
kolomna Benny, Adena our hamanako albery will, right we have no bold, the sons of children of Adam and we carry them across the land and feet. And other verses, you have to want to make up the law, they seek out the boundaries of God. So the Quran actually speak positively about merchant travel on the oceans. So when you look, for example, the Hanafi scholar or just sauce, he died about 369 70, commonly or 367 977. Around that time. You know, he talks about this if this had eaten, what it probably means is it's emphasizing the benefit of traveling for Hjelm RA and for fighting in the path of God. Because if you die doing in, if you die at sea doing these things, you're going to be a
martyr, right? Actually, when he died in general, you're a martyr. But the point is, this can't be interpreted as a prohibition on any other reason for traveling across the sea. Because we know the Quran actually praises traveling for mercantile purposes. And also you learning purposes of learning is also emphasized in the Sunnah. So this gets back to the other issues, even if you've authenticated something, it doesn't necessarily mean that you understand it as it seems. So the lesson here is, beware what you hear what you read. Before you get Yes, I was gonna ask you about that. They'll be contextualized maybe information regarding certain circumstances with civil war
activity.
I mean, there's you could, you could, but you have to have some evidence for that. Yeah. I mean, you can come up with lots of interpretations. But no, you have to have some kind of so we just getting ahead of ourselves that we don't interpret that heavy literally, because we know that it contradicts more reliable sources. So it's the fact that Prophet said it. It has to be interpreted in light of those other sources. So we know this can't be a prohibition on all other types of travel by sea, because other types of travel I see are praised by the God. Therefore it has to be understood perhaps as an emphasis of the value of these particular reasons, genre and fighting by the gut, or
perhaps its emphasize the seriousness of traveling by sea traveling by sea is not a joke.
Traveling both movies remember traveling internationally by air is not a joke is this it's it's has an effect on your health. It's stressful, it takes you away from your family. And of course, you know, you can die and horrendous plane crashes, God forbid. Okay, so beware what you hear or read.
And in my own advice to you is, if you account if you encounter a deity you don't understand or that concerns you just withhold judgment on it. You don't.
You don't constantly have to be act, you know, manifesting your moral worldview on everything that comes in here. surroundings, you know, you can even just be like, I'm sorry, I just don't know how to react to this. That's completely legitimate thing to say, if you don't know how to deal with something, or you don't know what your reaction should be, you can withhold judgment on it until you can ask someone who's qualified.
Okay, a very important thing to keep in mind is that, and this is a bit obscure in Arabic because in Arabic, oftentimes the word Hadith is used to refer both to a general story, let's say, you know, the prophet said,
Allah says that Mohammed said, like,
he prohibited selling, the way that the patronage of a freed slave.
But the general story. Now, there's lots of different variations of that. We'll get into this. So you can have a general story about an episode of the Prophet's life. But there might be lots of different narrations of that story. And sometimes those narrations have big differences from one another. For example, there's over 100 companions of the Prophet narrated the Hadees whoever, like whoever misrepresents me intentionally, that didn't prepare for themselves, deceit and hellfire.
Whoever misrepresents me intentionally let them prepare for themselves to see it hellfire. Now, one version of this hideous chart transmitted by the companion admin, as the bill says, Whoever misrepresents me Let him prepare for himself to see how far does anyone know the difference between what I just said and the version I gave before intentions? That's a big go if I made a mistake in a Hadeeth in this class today, in theory, court determines a bearish version, I'm going to * no. I mean, that so you these are these are some of these differences can be big. Most of the time, they're not important. So you have to keep in mind, there's different narration. And in order to
really understand even one indeed, you have to collect all the narrations and look at them together, because they're giving different pieces of a puzzle, and I'll give some examples of that right now. Okay, this is one. I hope you can read it. I'll read it out loud to you. Anyway. So this is from playing a recording. I'll leave it alone, Eric, saying I've been reprimanded in the US for Malik bananas from McCullum have been to the man from clay from if not bass, drop the Allahu taala and her ma Who said I slept the whole of my onto my Muna with mango, Luna.
She just some random person. She's the wife of the province. I said, I want to watch the prayer of the Messenger of God as a thumb. So Cushing was laid out for him, the messenger God and messenger Gods slept on it lengthwise, and he awoke at night and started to wipe the sleep from his face, and then read the last 10 verses from it and Ron, until he finished the chapter, then he went to a waterskin it was hung up and started performing his ablution then he went to pray so I got up and did as he did, then I went and stood at his side but the Messenger of God lays off saddam placed his hand on my head and took my ear and started twisting it
then he prayed to prayer units then two more than two more than two more than two more than two more and then you pray just one unit. So basically, what do we have here? The Prophet gets a little light to pray, like tell us about and apparently randomly decides to twist even ambassadors here.
That's what it says. Right? So here Islamophobia is
being mean to children. Okay, let's look this is another narration. I didn't have the binary Dr. St. Getting Maddie from soufiane. From cinema from Craig, you're not bad. By the way. That's it's not as mostly the same as snad is one different person but clearly this both versions are being transmitted.
But then I've asked that I slept at the home of my aunt Mae Mona away for the Prophet and the prophet Isaiah Psalm rose to relieve himself and then wash this patient has and then went to sleep again. Then he rose and went to the waterskin untie it and performing his abortions, a bit more than usual, but not like doing it twice. Then he prayed and I rushed over not wanting to think that I was hesitant to pray and was just watching him and I perform my ablutions. Then he stood up, he stood up in his prayer. So I went instead of his left, but he took me by the ear and turn me around to his right and then completed his prayers, 13 cycles, and then he went back to sleep until he's snoring
and he's normally slept. Then we allow calls into the dawn prayer and he prayed without performing solutions. And he used to say, that finishes the hoodies with a dual profit, mailers and so on. So here we have the information. Why was he pulling he wasn't twisting even ambassadors here. They've been asking for
Behind him on his left that correct?
So he goes like this, he takes him around to the right side.
Well, why didn't even I bet why wasn't that mentioned the other narration? Because what do people care? What are they when can guess what are Muslim scholars caring about? What are they interested in when they're studying the studies, they're not just sitting there reciting this hadith in some kind of public performance. This is taking place in the context of discussions about law and doctrine.
So they're, they're obviously interested in the number of cycles. They're interested in the draw that he made.
A year ago, something very interesting. He went to bed he snored. He got up. He prayed without doing ablutions.
Is this allowed? No.
So this is a special ruling for the Prophet alayhi wa sallam because his heart never sleeps with heart only remembering God. So the issue of even imagined ear getting pulled is not this is not important.
To the for the southern Muslim scholars are talking about when they're discussing city, you have to look at the different versions together to understand it. So this is what I mean, you saw the first version on its own. You say, Well, what the heck is going on here? This is Cruelty to Children for no reason.
Okay.
Some other examples of this,
the prophet Allah so this hadith Did you find in one of the chapter titles of Bukhari, you see the Hadith, this Hadith, specifically in the most innovative in Hanbal, that
the Prophet Muhammad Ali Salaam that Amitabh Bachchan
would have been he sold and would devastate and we diverse slave is a slave who has been manumitted effective on the owners death. So the owner says, When I die, you will be free.
Now, what is the problem? What might be a problem with selling that slave who can guess?
Sorry, what?
Yeah, I mean, so your, your, your phrase, your slave was Ben Ted beard. And then your honor says, I'm going to sell you like
he does that mean, I'm not gonna get free anymore when you die. That's kind of putting this at risk. So if you saw this and say, Oh, well, the prophet didn't care about that you have no concern for the slaves, promised freedom. But when you look at the other, this is a very This is a very restricted version of a larger Hadid. We take the different narrations together, this is what you get. I'll collapse them all together. And these are all from settings Buhari. All the narrations I've given you, the prophet, there's a guy with one of the OnStar he had a slave. And he gave that he manumitted that slave intend to be our way so that slaves can be free when he dies. That man had no
other assets. He was he was totally impoverished. And he had debts. You had debts upon it.
Now so what did the Prophet do? The Prophet heard about this? He calls the man he called the slave and he says, who will buy the slave from me? Of course, no one's gonna turn down the command from the Prophet God. So one of the companions buys a slave for 800 gearheads, which is 800, silver coins a lot of money. Okay, that's about three fourths of the amount that you would pay if you accidentally murdered somebody.
And so that's what a huge amount of money accidentally killed somebody.
Then he gives the money to the guy to the poor man.
Now, we don't know exactly what happened with the slave. We know the slave died later on. But we don't know it. What happened. Now? What's the one?
So the Prophet is basically trying to help this man to get money.
And so he sells the asset, he has it for a high value. Now, what does that tell? What does this tell us? If you're a Muslim scholar trying to derive law, you know, it's permissible to sell and whatever slave because otherwise the Prophet wouldn't have done it. So that's what this version is telling us.
Question jerk. Muslim jurists asked, Can you sell whatever slave or not? Yes, we can. Now they have to start thinking about other issues. Is that an absolute permissibility? Or is it restricted? permissibility? Well, in the Hanafi, in the Maliki school, they say it's restricted. They'd say, especially in the Maliki school, or also in the Hanafi school.
It should only be done if the person who's telling them is in a state of need.
So if you are impoverished, and you need money, you can sell your whatever say otherwise you shouldn't do it.
And then the early jurists late have been sad, who's a famous jurist from Egypt. He died in 175 history
and he said
You can only sell them whatever slave if the new owner honors the 10 year contract. So if we're thinking about how we, you know, if Muslims were to if slavery were around today, what rulings would we take to take demote them? In my opinion, the most, the ruling that is most sensitive to the slave need is the ruling of placement side. So you can see that there's a Muslim card, they're taking this ruling of the this Hadith of the Prophet with this discussion of what he did the statement about something he did, and they're putting into the context of what are the other sensitivities, the prophets and the Quran are constantly urging Muslims to free slaves is a tremendous good deed. It's
good for the slave, it's good for the person who frees them. So we know that's an important principle and important emphasis. But we know you're also allowed to sell whatever you're selling. So how do you put these together? That's the question what some scholars are answering. Okay.
Another one I love the teddy this fascinates me. First time I read it, I was really intrigued. So if you look in the sidebar, you'll find Hadees it says narrations from Yvan Omar and honestly Malik the Prophet forbade a settled person from selling to a Bedouin. Naha.
And Airbnb, Dr. Hardy only that the problem for beta settle person or town person or secrets from selling to a Bedouin.
I can seem kind of unfair, right? Why would you? Why would you prohibit a veteran from townsperson from selling to a veteran? You have to look at the
F. So this comes from several different iterations. scenarios are given by bass. If an ambassador student says Why is this? And he says or what did this mean if an ambassador is the person should not be a same Assad?
You live in Egypt know what some stars are. Some stars are broke brokers, not just the broker. It's a middleman. a middleman who's getting a markup. So what does this mean? I call this Cairo airport syndrome. Right? So you show up in an airport in Cairo and you have no idea how much it costs to go downtown. So you taxicab driver comes as I'll take you downtown for 200 pounds didn't sounds good to me. You get in the airport you paying 200 pounds you get downtown you find out that it was only 25 pounds, you had no idea because you're basically a Bedouin coming from outside going to the town.
And then so when another explanation of this had deep in the center of our code, the companions have been afraid a lot the senior companion sort of integrate a lot says that the person the Bedouin go into the market and see the prices for things then you can sell stuff to him. You can't sell things to someone who hasn't been to the market they have no idea how much an axe cost or blush bushel of grain costs, do you sit at the gate of the town and you sell things at an overpriced rate this is abusing the people from out of town this is what this means okay?
Three
Do you have to fit into a larger system have to be hit fit into a large system we've kind of already gone over that but it's important to go to emphasize that over and over again. And the best example of this is the Hadeeth in you know Buhari and other collections Hades, the Prophet says Omitsu and ricotta nasality Ooh, la la la la,
la la, WA Yukimura.
In salad inside a delicacy my main home often are many them at home while while assemble several mobile law. So I have been commanded to fight the people until they say there is no god but God and Muhammad is the Messenger of God and establish the prayer and it pays the cat if they do so their wealth and their blood is prohibited for me I can't kill them or take their money except for a reason legitimated by Islam. So this idea obviously we all
know from a lot of reasons, but if you didn't know it already, you probably heard it from some Islamophobic website. So it seems to basically say Muslims should fight are commanded to fight non Muslims until they become Muslim, convert or die.
And Felipe is still here. There's no debate about that. But again, you have to take into the context not just our brother, Hadith, the Sunnah of the prophet overall but also the Quran Of course. So the Quranic verse,
this study seems to say if you come across a non Muslim, you have to fight them until they become Muslim or you kill them.
But we know that's not true because the Quran says article Athena like we know to be La Jolla, la Yama city. Will I have heard Ramona Mahara ma la hora Sula, who will is the Nuna Deena hoc
min admin Allah been also keytab hat
up to Jesus, I will go home, right. fight those. The Quran says in verse nine fight those people
who do not believe in God or nor the day of judgment? And did you not forbid what God and His Messenger have forbidden. And they do not believe in the true religion.
The ones who come from the people who book fight them until they give the jizya
in and are subordinate themselves to you. So we know actually from the grant that people who are from the people in the book, they don't have to become Muslim, they can just they can live under Muslim rule and pages. Yeah.
So right away, we know that that you can't be absolute. And then
we start looking at the stone of the Prophet more generally, we see that the Prophet did not force the Christians of Nigeria to convert he allowed him to continue as Christians. In fact, he says in a letter to them, we will not met molest any of your bishops or your priests or your monks. He just said you can't do you can't do River. You can't do River. The Christians have a law office. Now he lives in Israel, the Jews in high bar, they're all allowed to continue practicing their religion and to remain under what's the rule as long as they pay tax to the Muslim. So we know this isn't true. And then we see from other narrations that, for example, in the the Southern Nevada study, the
version of this from Anna's been Malik, where it says,
not cotton Omitsu no cotton, and NASS. I've been commanded to fight people but it says Instead, we're meant to a new continent which Sikkim I've been commanded to fight the machine.
And but then he starts saying, Okay, so what it really means is, I've been commanded to fight the polytheists. So, let's say I want some general I invade India and I have all these polytheist Hindus now. So I should fight them. Ah, we have to again look at the how did how did Muslims understand what mostly gives
Muslim scholars in the very beginning understood mushriks as being the mostly Kuhn of Arabia, because they did not treat the Hindus, the Muslims in invaded India and 711 of the Common Era. They didn't immediately treated Hindus as people who vote,
they immediately treated as equal to book. So the bush reclone are polytheists of Arabia. And those are the college grades are the only group that Muslims were commanded to fight until they became Muslim, every other group of people as far as I know every other group of people that Muslims have ever been encountered, have ever encountered or have been told about. Their options are, they can become Muslim. Or they can continue practicing their religion pages. Yep.
So we know that we look at other narrations, we see Ah, this NASS is substituted with mystery coin. polytheist.
Any questions so far?
Yes.
Yeah. How does that fit in?
Well, no, no compulsion in religion. This is? Well, this is actually a great question. So
the light Rafi Dean was generally understood by Muslims, pre modern Muslim scholars as a qualified command. So
you know what, I feel kind of bad saying this. But, you know, sometimes, like Muslim scholars today will get upset if you try and say that something was historically specific. They know this ruling was preserved and say, No, you can't do that. That's right, exactly what Muslim scholars did or that verse. They said, If you there's lots of reports,
most of them are in testier. collections, which are there like early books with a surname. There's reports from successors and sometimes companions about the circumstances of Revelation. And what happened was there was a child of written Medina, who was raised in a lot of the Medina and they wanted to teach their children to read they sent them to the only schools were Jewish schools, like David Babbitt, learn how to read write Hebrew and Aramaic in Syriac in Jewish school. So this kid basically identifies as Jewish and when the one of the Jewish hair which tribe it was, I think it's better novia when they get expelled from Medina after the Battle of
the child goes with them. And the mother basically comes to the prophet and says,
you know, I'll force him to stay with me. And the Quranic rule then comes down saying, There's no compulsion you can't compel this person to choose to be your religion and not identify as Jewish. So that
that piece of data led many Muslim scholars to say this is not an absolute statement. This is actually a historically qualified statement. Now, of course, what Muslim scholars
The vast majority is certainly in the modern period is that that? Well, that's actually a complete misunderstanding. The Quranic emphasis, which is clearly thing that people can't be compelled to make religious choices. So this is actually an instance where, and there's I think, you know, I think there are some instances where modern Muslim scholars and Muslim scholars who live in the modern period, have looked back on majority opinions from the past and seeing that those majority opinions were culturally influenced. Now, just to be I want to be very clear about this. I think.
Sometimes lots of sometimes most Muslim scholars got things wrong.
A lot of times some Muslim scholars got things wrong. But I don't know of any instance that I did. I don't know of any instance where all Muslim scholars got something wrong. So sometimes we'll see issues which, you know, we, because of our cultural cultural input on us, we might actually be sensitive to you and say, Hey, for example, you know, women speaking in public, you know, for met much of Islamic history, and many is like in the Hanafi School of Law, or even the Shafi School of Law, you know, women shouldn't be speaking in public or either it's either mcru or haraam. Right?
And they're, you know, they're not participants in public life. They're not participants in leadership. And then you know, that that goes unquestioned. And then suddenly, you might you know, you You see,
Theresa May or something and you say, Hey, what about women in public life? And then you look back and find Well, actually, in the time of the Prophet the wives of the Prophet Ayesha, was very public expense in political life. In the the Mr. Sharp 90 and a thought about the how we are the story of it during Omar Mazel Tov football woman gets up incorrect, says, and then he doesn't, that's a reliable report according to get there and he doesn't no one says, oh, why are you talking? No, first of all, they don't say Why are you talking to the football? Second, they don't say Why are you talking because you're a woman. So we can, you know, sometimes, outside influence can lead us to
remind us of ways in which we have gotten our heritage wrong. But I want to stress in my it's my belief, in my opinion that I don't think all Muslim scholars got anything wrong. I want to make that very clear.
My point about listening to treating
is that sort of
one thing is that the sort of the Arab Muslims that came or the Muslims from India, so the Muhammad Al Qasim, the Arab Muslim under the umayyads, who invaded sand that establish the capital amongst Dora, and then basically Muslims kind of get cut off from there's Muslims there, but they sort of,
you know, they're like the last colony or something and no one hears about them for a while. By the way, I'm really excited about this new Tom Hardy TV show taboo.
I just want to say that hopefully, there's not a lot of *, I think there probably will be
the anyway, the
but then when, of course, the next significant contact, at least seek contact is during the cosmetic period. But we know from this, you know, early collection, I forget what's called the
shish What is it called? It's this really weird book just been translated in English actually, in from Persian, it's the early history of the conquest of India by Muslims. And we know when they go to this place called Brahman avadh, they do what's called the bra monopod compact, and they basically just want to see that they treat all the Hindus all the people were their native Indian religions as people to book and the Brahmins are exempted from the jizya. And they collect the jizya and give it to the Muslim world. And so that's it, that's Arab Muslims, and then later on the Turkic different Turkic dynasties do the same thing. Is that a willful
ignorance kind of thing? Is that just a politician making a ruling? Or is it?
Well, at first we don't we just know, it's, for all we know, they had, you know, that was their religious opinion, too. We know the political settlement. But then, in the Hanafi School of Law, the people the book can be anybody. I mean, there's no there's not an exclusive list. The Quranic list is not exclusive. So anybody who come across who has any degree of some original revealed content and elements of their religion is treated as people the book and the hand is clearly different Hindu, different faiths are different traditions within the Hindu religious family clearly did have some originally, monotheistic scripture. So those listeners are actually looking for excuses to
include. Well, I think what I mean, this is interesting topic. You know, the, one of the things you find pretty consistently in Muslim history from our history of Muslim states in South Asia and also from religious scholars like zazie and
About Bharani, who was very conservative in the time of the like, was in the 1100s time of
no sorry, the 1300s of time of Pharaoh shop is that
he sees repeated even in mobile period, they constantly will say,
we, there's is not possible for us to convert this population to Islam. Like, we basically we can't control these people, there are way too many of them, we need to figure out how to deal with them. So even if, if you came, if you believe that Muslims could not all Hindus, except if those Muslims converted those Hindus by force, you were not going to function you're not going to make a donation. Because you're Muslim. At most, we're 20 at the very maximum population, South Asia, we're 25% of the population. And before you know, prior to the mobile period, you're talking about very, very small Muslim ruling castes that could not possibly emphasize that kind of influence over the
population. Okay, the women as last one this is I this is a great example in Sahih Bukhari and Muslim you have you have a hadith where the
the Prophet says, a show him that Arthur and first one Mara, what dog
the show him is like, bad omen. So like the bad three things are bad omens, women, horses and houses. This is one of these things from pre Islamic Arabia where you're just
who knows with this stuff just comes out of
some other universe, right?
Do you want to give a lecture?
No, no, because that's exactly what I was gonna say. So in in, in one version of that idea I should get no, you're you're very right. I think it's funny that
he says
the one of the companions is quoting the Prophet is saying that the Prophet did say that. But he says he said this to show that this is a belief that was practiced in the time of Jeopardy, that doesn't have any basis.
So it would be like, you know, someone saying if I said, some people say that, you know, daisies have a tendency to use really bad sauces on their food. Some people say that I don't agree with that. Someone could say Jonathan Brown said this thing that sure I didn't say that, but I said it for the purposes of refuting. So this is a very good example of something can be said by the prophet it doesn't necessarily mean that as a normative statement, and many of the corrections of Ayesha
there's a whole book of that in amazonica, she died round 1392 1394 the Common Era, the meme is ARCA, she has a whole book called is to do that is to the Roccat die shot right the whole corrections of Ayesha, which these are found in the sixth books and and some of them are even earlier and like the most out of the shadows at the end, things like that. They are transmitted along with Hades, the vast majority of them are not heard telling another companion the Prophet didn't say this. It's the companion let's say like even Omar Abu huraira, citing Hadith of the Prophet in order to make a point, and I should pointing out, you misunderstood the context in which
he said that he didn't say that in this way. You think he didn't mean what you thinking that?
Okay, how much more time do I have? Okay, but I completely lost track of time. This is an interesting study. One of my testers, testers, Yvonne, he's not here, I guess, to the students.
Where is it somewhere in the UK? I can't keep all the different scripts. But he's, he said he, he emailed me recently about this article, questioning its validity. But I think it's a I mean, it's interesting article, this is an article that we're in computational linguistics, where some scholar ran the kind of language of the crank, I think so he Bokhari through analysis, and he found they come from different speakers big surprise. I don't find that interesting, because I already knew that. What I find interesting is the idea of the nature of the Prophet speech. And this is what I think is fascinating.
One of the reasons that I think that the taken as a whole, the Hadeeth corpus is generally reliable, right? Especially like, well, well sifted through books like Bukhari and Muslim that they really do represent the speech of the Prophet it is because their style is extremely consistent. There is clearly a prophetic style of speech, the prophet spoken a certain way. Now, you might not like that way, or somebody might not like that way, but it certainly was his way of speaking.
He's certainly had a specific way of speaking. And it doesn't take too much exposure to Hadeeth reading before you get a sense of what that way of speaking, one of the one of the features of his speeches is hi
embolic
it is not the speech of a lawyer.
Probably because nobody ever listens to lawyers. You know, no one's ever inspired by lawyers. Even when lawyers are inspirational, it's because they become like a religious figure like Gandhi or something like that. They don't know lawyers talking like lawyers talk, don't inspire anybody.
So his
his speech, like the core, and a lot of it is, over hortatory, it's trying to inspire people and advise them, and move them in it to do good deeds or to believe in a certain way. And one of the challenges that Muslim scholars have always had is to take speech that is decidedly not legal in nature, and try and see if there's any legal rulings embedded in that speech.
So one of the things about the Prophet speech is that it is incredibly hyperbolic, a lot of the time. And so I, I like this idea. I don't, I don't know if anyone else has come up with it before. I think in terms of filters, one of the the key the key, I think, to having a really understanding of each when you come across, and it's just have a set of filters in your mind. I don't know of any Muslim scholar ever came up with these filters, I sort of tried to collect them as I see them. And I'll just give you a couple of them. Now, first, severity generally means discouragement.
So that, again, the province language is hyperbolic. He doesn't say things like,
it's not always the best thing to do this. Well, sometimes he does. For example, when a Bedouin is urinating in the mosque, he says, you know, the mosque is for prayer, which is a very subtle way of dealing with that. So he could be very soft. But when he's trying to make a point, he's very clear about that point. Things aren't sort of bad, they're really bad.
And, for example, this is a logical mess. And you know, Sahih Bukhari and other books, it is still not hadoken illa Illa Satan yester who, for our other had to come and judge Tasmania day he fell yet fat, who, while in other value, cotton hoof, no shape on what does this mean? If one of you is doing your prayer, and you put something in front of you to create kind of a blocker barrier in front of you, and someone's still trying to pass in front of you.
Then press them push them.
And if they refuse to stop, they keep trying to push you then it literally says then fight them. Because they are this they are the devil.
Now what that means that early is okay, I'm praying, this
guy keeps trying to pass in front of me, literally, it means I then say okay,
sign for me fine. Because now think about,
first of all this, are Muslims legally required to do that. That was the son of the Prophet. No, we know that because there's no record of any companion ever advocating, nor have this ever been done.
Second of all,
we know we're not supposed to break our prayers for no for no reason. And one, in order for me to fight this guy, I have to break my prayer. So him passing by the way, him passing in front of me is not going to vibrate my prayer. It doesn't break my heart. What would break my prayer is me dropping my prayer in order to punch it.
So for a couple of reasons, both from the son of the Prophet, the companions, and from kind of legal reasoning, we know we're not going to take this a beat, literally. So what does it mean?
Well, think about this, and
it took me a while. For this to dawn on me. If I put my arm out, let's say I'm in the mall, sometimes you do this, you walk across, and you pass in front of you put their arms and put your arm out, what do you do? Usually?
What happens if I just said, I don't care, I'm gonna walk in front of you. What is manifesting itself in my What am I at that moment? I actually am a shaytaan. I mean, what am I my lower self has completely dominated me. And I'm, in fact, a manifest vehicle of satanic impulses in that moment. I mean, if you think about it, that's exactly what other what would lead you to force your way in front of someone, even after they've already reminded you not to pass in front of them. So what do they How do scholars understand is that if, if the person keeps trying to push past you, then really forcefully keep them away?
This was the second one. It's a I remember, I was sitting in a speech of the university in the US and a student came up to me beforehand and told me he had heard this in a football and he stated that completely, you know, shaken by it. And so this is, again from Sahil Bukhari. It's not in there. It's saying madikeri to me from Abuja, denied from an outage from
the Messenger of God sallallahu alayhi wa sallam said, by the one who holds my soul in his hand Indeed, I would like to order far
would gather and then issue that command of prayer, and then command demand to be the people in prayer, then I would follow up on those men who were not present and burn down their houses on top of them. By the one who holds my stolen his hand, if any of you knew what that key would find a fatty bone or to, or to tender lamb leg, he would be present at the dinner.
So what is this talking about? The call to prayer happens that people don't go to the mosque and pray. And the Prophet is he's, that's for him. He's analogy. He's making the analogy of people who are invited to a dinner and they know there's going to be delicious food there, and they still don't go, it doesn't make sense. Now, that's, that's a playful analogy.
And if you're really saying I want to burn people's houses down and don't put a prayer in the mosque, he's probably not gonna follow it up with a play of playful analogy. Again, this is hyperbolic language. This upset is this upsets me so much that I want to burn their houses down. That's what he's saying. How do we know that's not actually what Muslims are supposed to do? Because there's no record ever of the Prophet doing this or any of the companions ever doing this. And in addition, it completely violates other rules like you can't destroy someone's property without legal costs. And we know of no evidence that this is just cost.
So again, the son of the Prophet taken as a whole shows us this is not to be taken literally This is the prophets hyperbolic language saying this is this doesn't make sense to me. Why would you not go to the to the mosque to pray, why would you not go to the dinner where you're going to find delicious food?
Okay.
And shelter number two, Lisa Mina, a lot of times you find a decent day.
They submitted them and fatica the person who does such and such a thing is not from amongst
men across shuffled them in whoever cheats is not from amongst us, men, how many men how many Elena sila, believe them in whoever carries arms against us is not for amongst us. Now, technically, what that means is that they're not multiple, they're cool. They have left the Muslim community. But that's not what it means. And this is a, this is just a filter. You see,
even early, very early scholars, before the collection of had eetzi video taken place. You'll see for example, what big rock and other scholars say, ie Lisa mithuna, least a minute later, mithuna not from amongst us, they're not like us, this is not the type of thing I'm Muslim does cheating, whoever cheats, this is not the type of thing and most of us whoever carries arms against other Muslims, this is not the type of thing and Muslims do. So that doesn't literally mean that someone has left the community it means they are engaged in action that is not befitting of a Muslim.
There's corporate and then there's big prefer later scholars that tend to get to a Bintang even claim a jersey will talk about corporate Aqua with corporate America, the greater copper and electrical foot. So there's Cooper with a capital K is when you see steam Muslim, like you decide, you know, I renounce Islam, I'm going to become Buddhist or something like that, that's you left this off. Now, if I, let's say if I drink alcohol,
the Prophet says the person, the person who's drinking alcohol, what in that moment, they're drinking alcohol, they're not Muslim.
They don't believe they don't have faith. That's thing. But when you're engaged, the moment you engage in that actual incident, you're engaging in that sin, you are denying God, that doesn't mean you cease to be Muslim, it means that you have denied God in that moment. So people can engage in little micro acts of cooker all the time. That doesn't actually mean they're a categorize it. They don't fit into that legal category. And we of course, we have Heidi's for example.
cursing a Muslim is the soup or in equity and fire and fighting other Muslims is preferred. This is a
well known IV, but in our bass explains that this Cofer is it is this is preferred. That is it's less than the real corporate.
When you fight other Muslims, you are denying God in this sense, but you don't you're not actually becoming a Kaffir How do we know this is true not only because of it not as a statement, because before and talks about it affects the autonomy meaning if two groups within the believers fight each other, they literally fight each other with weapons and you're supposed to reconcile them. Now, if Muslims fighting other Muslims made them unbelievers, then there wouldn't be two parties for amongst the believers. So the Quran also shows us that we can't understand that literally. Finally, almost Finally,
you often find had at law you know, I had to come home. None of you believed until I'm, let's say more dear to them than their parents of children and all people. What this doesn't mean the person doesn't believe means their belief is not complete. They do not have perfect Eman until they do this. And that
Such a thing.
Similarly, like, for example, how do you take Muslim?
And say Buhari, no one will enter Howdy, Jen, not if they have even a mustard green weight of pride in their hearts. That's rough. That's a tall order. Right? I have a lot more than I have, you know, a couple of giant jars of mustard grain, probably my heart. So basically no one I mean, Bailey, no one's going to get into paradise. That's technically what that means. But we know that's not the case from numerous other Quranic verses. And so what this means is that
you won't enter heaven immediately. So your sins have to be, you know, you can be forgiven for many sins and even forgiven by all for all your sin. But it's also possible for God to punish you for the sins you've committed. So lots of people will be punished for the sins they committed in life, and then they'll enter the garden in the afternoon. So if you have pride in your heart, even a little bit, you will not enter preK paradise immediately. Maybe it would take you know, whatever a microsecond of, of other world time. I'm not sure even sure how we could talk about that. Okay, so those are some of the filters. There's other ones we can talk about. Hopefully I'll write a book on
it soon or something like that, but probably already gone over time. So if you have any questions or comments, I'll be happy to take them