Mohammed Hijab – How Can You Justify Tv Series
AI: Summary ©
AI: Transcript ©
There contains
elements Mhmm. In your movie.
Mhmm. For example,
music
and women.
What is your rationale behind that? And what
is the justification for containing these elements? Because
in the Islamic space, a lot of people
get criticized
for having this stuff in their content. A
lot of people get dragged for having music,
for example, in their Instagram reels, and you
see it all the time.
What is your thoughts behind this?
First thing I'd say is that, to be
honest with you,
first of all, it's not it's not the
first time this has been done. So we
have series like the Omar series. We have
like the Risela series and these kind of
series which have all those elements. In fact,
I think in both of us, two sides
of burning hands, we tried our best to
create machines
even though some of them sound like music
and we have no problem mentioning that. Okay,
you could misinterpret this as music, but we
both put a lot of work into making
these into machines. It's not easy. It's not
easy to do that.
However,
just on the point, so there are fetters
that have been given by legenders and big
scholars and stuff like that on these series,
on the Amar series and the Othoral series
and these kind of things.
And,
in many ways, the fetters are there. This
is to head. That's been done by big
scholars, and people can refer to that.
But I would just say, look, I mean,
I think that people who posit these kinds
of arguments could fall into what you refer
to as self defeating arguments.
Okay? I'm not here to say this is
halalu haram because that's not my job. I'm
not mushtahed here. As I mentioned, the ishtahed
has already been done
by lots of scholars. Like, for example, Sheikh
Adadu Shankiti,
he actually doesn't believe
that looking at a woman's hair who's a
non believer without shaha, without desire, is sinful
because he does qiyas on the emma or
the slave in the past. This is like
back in the days, the companions
used to be around certain marketplaces and they
used to see women with hair. So he
says the Ayla is not this and this
is a fatwa that's in the public record.
And he also mentions that this is Amun
al Belwa.
So this is Sheikh Dadad, who is considered
to be one of the greatest scholars of
the day. And frankly like you know his
his markas
for you to go into the markas you
have to have memorized Quran in 2 different
ruayas.
Like you have to have memorised the Quran
in 2 different qiraas and ruayas as well.
And it's 17 years to finish his markaz.
So we're talking about scholarship on a very
high level.
His stances on, for example, Gaza and the
political space are much
more acceptable to us than other other scholars,
for example. So that's
Abbedo. He's made threats with us already. It's
on the public record. We've consulted him. We've
spoken to him. He wanted to see all
the episodes. All the episodes haven't come out
yet.
But on the issues of Tilat and the
issues of looking at women,
he's a bit more lenient on these issues,
and he's considered to be a very traditional
scholar, very traditional conservative scholar. Right?
Mauritanian.
So that's one thing. That's a.
B is
the reason why I said I'm not here
to say something as haral al haram,
but that if you make this argument and
you make
it vociferously and vehemently,
you're likely to fall into a self defeating
position is for the following reason.
There are many fatwas out there that people
from all traditional circles
have put out
that rely on issues to do with Maslaha
and Darura and
ideas of the common good and let me
give you an example.
Sheik bin Bas, for example.
Sheik bin Bas, who is considered to be
one of
the most
praised
Salafi scholars in the last 50 years and
accepted Salafi scholars in the last 50 years.
He made a fatwa very famous in 1990
that the Americans can come into Saudi Arabia,
okay,
and do tamarikos there and stay there,
in response to, for example,
the, aggression of Saddam Hussein.
Okay? Now how many things does that from
a textual perspective, go against? Sorry to put
it this way, but it goes against the
idea that a Muslim cannot do a siyana
of a kafir,
that a Muslim cannot seek help from a
disbeliever.
It goes against the fact that Jews and
Christians should not be in jazir al Arab.
It goes against multiple different things. Right?
What could be the only Mubasher justification
for a factor like this? Darura,
Maslaha,
Haja, whether you like akhafudarain,
worthless of the evils. So it's not
like in the Salafi space, for example. I'm
using Salafi as an example. It's not just
Salafi. It's Diobandism in all of them. Yeah?
But it's not like in those spaces
that Maslah has not been used. It's been
used in a more severe matter, in fact.
Like, politics is way more severe here. Like,
I'm sorry to say what This is Aqadi
matter. This is Aqidah matter because it connects
to Tawali and Alliance and all these things
that Le'at Takhat al Mu'min,
Auliat Madul Mu'min and so on. Right? That's
number 1.
Number 2 is
look at the Fataw of Ibn Athaymin.
Ibn Athaymin made the Fataw famously another one
important scholar of the last 50 years, one
of the most important scholars of the last
50 years in Saliqsala,
that voting is acceptable.
Voting in the parliamentary
elections
is acceptable because of Achaftaraym,
lesser of 2 evils. Now consider the following.
According to the principles that are put in
all of the books of these scholars.
Whoever does not rule by what Allah has
revealed to this believer.
Okay. How can you say this? Oh, it
has to be because of lesser of 2
evils. So the reason why I'm bringing to
your attention is not to say this fatwa
is right, this fatwa is wrong. It's just
to bring to your attention
that it's not alien to us to use
principles of Maslaha and nahafadarayin, lesser of 2
evils,
even though there seems to be a Mas
which clearly textual evidence which clearly goes against
these things because the situation has changed at
a very high level.
But
in all the examples I'm giving you, these
are political examples.
And Maslah has been used in certain circles
on political examples
quite often. But when it comes to transactional
examples,
like Mohammed so you have CSR here. But
then Muhammad,
which is interactions. Why are we so strict?
Like, here's the point. So what is what
is more severe? Like, for example,
what we're witnessing in Gaza today, the killing
and genocide and all of this,
this is a political matter.
Silence of the scholars is justified on akhafud
arayn. The silence of the scholars, like the
scholars across the Arab world now, they are
not saying a word about Gaza and we
give them other because we say it's a
hafadarayin and maslahan and all this kind of
stuff. Even though there's a genocide and there's
left wing homosexuals in this country who has
the ability to say what's happening in Gaza
is wrong. But on the basis of Maslah
and Hafadarei and all this kind of stuff,
we say these callers are madhu. No problem.
Yeah? Which means that they are excused.
So
it's not foreign to use these concepts even
for the if you want to call them
hardliners, the most hard line of the hardliners,
they would use these fat words in the
in the context of politics. But it's taboo
to use them in the context of Muhammad
even though it's so less so much less.
There's no repeated implications and there's no implications
on being a major sin. There's no major
sin here being discussed.
This is Muhammad, frankly.
And
I I won't take it further and say
there's difference opinion on these matters. I could
say that. I see and a lot of
these matters are being discussed as difference opinion
on where the lines are drawn anyway.
But what I will say is this. So
this is exhibit a. Exhibit b is this.
If you say, well, the issue is, brother,
you are
In your in your series, in your stuff
like that, you've got, like, females, you've got,
you know, whatever.
And you've got these things that sound like
music, even though it's not music. But let's
just say
I say fine, I understand where you're coming
from and you can you have all the
right. I mean, I haven't got a problem
with anyone doing that in Muncah, if you
think it's, actual Muncah.
I I don't even blame you for that.
I think you're right. Maybe you'll get rewarded
for saying this stuff. All that a problem.
But my issue is this. My question is
this. Let's look at social media as an
example. YouTube itself.
YouTube
or Facebook or Instagram.
What is the likelihood that if you go
on YouTube that you'll see a woman without
headscarf?
100%. A 100% actually because this these adverts
are running and they're it's barely they are
actually,
obligatory. It's not in your control. It's not
in your control. So if you go on
YouTube and it's it's the likelihood is a
100% that you're gonna see a woman without
a headscarf, and the likelihood is a 100%
that you're gonna hear music.
And then you have a scholar, let's say,
from whatever
traditional school you want who's on YouTube.
Yes? Who's on YouTube? Then then what you're
effectively doing is that for me to watch
that scholar, I have to watch I have
to watch a woman without headscarf.
Now you could say, well, that's because it's
not they haven't chosen to put it there.
It's they're not putting it in their video.
Okay. But they could create a website
that is completely deplete of these elements
and direct all of the followers to go
to that website.
There is basically an alternative. So what's the
what's the reason for you putting yourself on
YouTube when you know music and women are
on YouTube itself?
Oh, because the mustlha is greater here because
many people the algorithm is there and people
will watch it. So you're making a mustlha
argument then. You see the point? So Okay.
No problem. If you're making a mustlehar argument
and you're making a nusuli argument, I'm I'm
not saying your argument is right. My argument
is so, Abba, it's different, brother, and your
one is different because you're putting it in
the video itself. No problem. You're right. It
is different. Everything that is compared is different.
Otherwise, it would be the same thing, which
means because when you do an analogy and
say, well, this versus this, When someone says,
well, but it's different because
Everything compared has to be different, by the
way. Why is there no comparison? There's no
comparison. Otherwise, we're talking about 2thologies here, here,
actually. Of course, it's different. I mean, there's
different aspects. The main difference is
they're being passive about this. So they're not
putting actively the women into the video. And
in example b, there's there's a passive reality.
But in both cases,
if you agree that sometimes inaction can be
an action.
For example, if I'm driving if I'm steering
a train
and there is a human being on the
tracks like this
And it's it's in my ability to go
right and divert, not kill this human being.
And I stay
as I am would
I be would I be and I've chosen
to do this.
Would I be murdering this individual? Yes, I
would be. If it's my ability to turn
it this way. Do you see it? But
it's inaction, but the inaction here is actually
action. And this is something that Shewara recognizes.
So going back to the point,
even though it's inaction,
they're not putting women in the videos. These
great masha'ih who's got these,
YouTube channels, they're not putting women in the
videos. But the inaction here is still an
action
because you are diverting your followers to seeing
something by force that they wouldn't otherwise see
if you had your own personal website, which
means
that you in order to avoid this, you
have to make a Maslaha argument.
You have to say, well, the Maslaha on
YouTube is so great
that this these Haram elements
yes?
They are,
we have to overlook them because the greater
good is
yeah now they will say someone
may respond and say
in Usul Fikht there is something called
which is a principle.
Which is that,
you know,
that to avert a consequence is better than
to,
to get
good.
And so you cannot justify the means, don't
justify the ends.
But that's not actually true. Darul Mafasid Maqaddamra
Ajayb Al Masarah is not Al Athalakih.
And the one who's wrote interestingly a whole
Risala on this Ributemia.
Which basically
long story short in this, he says this
is
not generalized
and that sometimes they must have
which means the following. It means that you
you got to look, going back to the
YouTube example, at the overall benefit for the
Muslim community.
So if YouTube was a platform of 10,000
subscribers, only 10,000 people in it, maybe you
could make an argument that putting yourself as
a Sheikh on YouTube
would be unjustified because there's only 10,000 people
gonna watch it. But because it's got 1,000,000,000
people clear so that shows you that the
more maslahada there is, the more justification there
is.
But then we're stuck in a catch 22
situation because, if we become pragmatic and say,
we're gonna go into the this creative industry,
and we can't tell a story about, for
example,
Muslim people in Britain
without bringing removing 50% of the population
becomes an incomplete story,
in my opinion. Because look, we're trying to
tell stories here. Right? You want to remove
women from storytelling, which means you you're trying
to tell a complete story
without women. If that was possible, why didn't
the Quran do that?
Every single
nabi in the Quran,
there's a woman connected to him somehow in
the stories of the Quran, Yusuf alaihis salam.
The antagonist was a woman. There was many
women. His mother was in the story as
well. Yeah. For
example.
Moses, his wives were in the stories,
for instance.
Muhammad sallallahu alaihi wasallam, Khadija,
Fatima, etcetera. So to remove women from the
story, you can't really have a complete you
cannot do the job. It's it's a handicap
already trying to, you know, trying to do
something in the creative industry.
You're creating an additional handicap if you try
and remove women from the reality. So
the issue is one of Maslaha.
That it's really as simple as that. And
I know it's difficult for people to understand,
but 10, 20 years ago, we were having
a conversation as whether the mashaikh should be
using
YouTube. Yeah. Now that conversation's obsolete. No one's
speaking about that because the Maslach has so
great, no one talks about it. It may
be the case that 20 or 30 years
from now,
we'll be having the same conversation, and we'll
say we should have joined the creative industry
before
because the Maslah is so great, and we're
not dealing with Ka'er. We're not dealing with
Aqaid. We should have done this before.
So
the criticisms are fine so long as they
don't impact someone's pragmatic ability to do 2
things.
Raising Allah's word and number 2, tamkeel muslimeen
to make Muslims in a better position and
involving ourselves in the creative industry
are an attempt to fulfill those two objectives.
Have you received that criticism and how you
how you how you dealt with that?
I mean, of course, we receive that criticism.
But the thing is, almost at every level
when I was doing Dawah, there was a
point where someone was criticizing something that I
was doing. Like, when we first went to
speaker school now, I think 10 years ago
or 9 years ago, we used to try
and blur a woman in the background. That's
what we tried to do.
I remember the first time I've done a
video, I told my wife, listen, blur this
woman. She's got no headscarf in the background.
That's what I told her.
We've done it and it took too long.
It took 3 hours, 4 hours. Inconvenience. Great
inconvenience for everybody. Yeah? And so after that,
we didn't blur
blur them anymore because the the it was
just too hard to do that. Yeah?
That was the first thing, and so people
got used to that, so to say.
You've got some people who are strict, very
strict salafis or strict diobanis, whatever. They'll go
to speaker's corner and they'll be speaker to
them. Sometimes her cleavage will be showing up
and they'll post the video. No problem. I'm
not saying that's a good thing. Sometimes you
can, you know, blur anything like that. I'm
not saying that's a good thing. But I'm
saying
but
no. No. I'm I'm saying that that there's
a realization that when something proliferates at a
certain level This is called the Amul Bilwa.
This is There's a name for it in
Surfikh.
You can't you can't control it, Halas, now
that The onus is upon the person to
look away if they're finding Shawwa. Do you
know what I mean? No one talks about
that now. No one criticizes the point. If
I go to speaker's corner right now and
do free mixing in speaker's corner with 3
women, homosexuals, lesbian,
and I start speaking even about some, maybe
some some issues, you know.
No, honestly. And they're all there and they
look beautiful. Yes? Better than anybody in the
show. Any anything you like. Yeah? And I'm
speaking to them, madamah, no one's gonna say
anything.
It's free. No one's gonna say this is
free mixing. It's a dilution then. Has it
just been diluted?
Is that an issue? Is that it's because
we've become desensitized to it. No. It's not.
It's it's
and desensitized. But, you know, burning hands is
a is a is a name it's named
after the Hadith, if not that.
In the, you know, Jamrat al Munnar. Jamrat
is the jimar, like the the coals from
you. In the end of days, you'll be
holding onto the religion like you hold onto
coals.
Mahmoud Sheffai mentioned the following. He said that
when the situation gets difficult, the Sharia should
become more linear.
And when the situation becomes easier, the Sharia
can become more restrictive.
What I'm trying to say is that
we are living in the end of times
and it's hard for us to maintain our
religion.
The job of the army is to be
strong and have patience and have resilience. In
my understanding, the job of the Mufti and
the Mushta'id
is to do takfeef
of the
or to to cool down
the heat of the burning coals,
to make Islam
more easy for somebody
to live
throughout all their lives,
especially on the interaction matters. Now that doesn't
mean we're gonna just open up the floodgates.
You can do whatever you like, but don't
make things too difficult. Let me give you
an example, bro.
Do you drive a car? Yeah. Okay. Everyone
here drives a car. Most of us drive
a car. What's the hockam of car insurance?
Haram. It's haram.
Bro, okay. So why have they made a
halal?
Mandatory.
It's not well, it's not mandatory. Okay. But
it's but my question is Makes it impractical
to live a life Yeah. But the point
is this is Aki. No one's gonna die
if they don't drive a car. We have
the best transportation in the world in in
London. You can go on a underground.
You can go in a A heart shape.
Yeah. So so here here here's the thing.
You have some harar, aslam is haram. Harar
is car insurance, tahmin. Okay. It's harar.
You've made it every single school of thought
that I know of. They've made it halal,
not based on darua because you cannot argue
that someone's gonna die if they don't drive
a car. There's alternatives.
It's just based on Maslaha and based on
hardship and Hajjah.
Okay? So why are you allowed to do
it like this?
Why are you allowed to do this?
Oh, because things reach There's a critical point
where things become too difficult for the population
where the scholars come in and say: Okay.
Well, you know what? Driving cars
is a pretty practical thing to have. So
each scholar is going to have their own
area, like their own limits on that.
All I'm saying is that in terms of
interactions,
some scholars are going to be a bit
more lenient about that.
Some scholars are going to be a bit
more strict about that. In terms of interactions
in the West,
I'm sorry to say, okay, I follow scholars
who are a little bit more lenient on
these issues because I can't be true to
myself
and be consistent
and,
and live a life like that. For example,
if I were to say,
I believe that every time I look at
a woman's face, who's non Muslim,
I'm committing a sin.
I don't believe that, by the way. That's
not the opinion that I follow. I follow
the opinion that if I look at her
face and I feel shakwa,
I feel desire, if I look at her
body and I feel desire, that's haram. That's
where Lauren is. If I'm interacting with her,
for example, I'm giving her money, whatever. If
I'm looking at her for that reason, and
there's no shahua going on, I don't that
the opinion that I follow, which is a
classical opinion in the books
of
I don't think I'm committing a sin. Now
if I did believe
that even if I looked at one strand
of hair of a woman who's a non
Muslim that I'll be committing a sin, frankly,
I wouldn't know what to do with myself
because everybody Do you know what I mean?
I'd be walking the street, and that accumulating
I wouldn't even leave the house.
Why are you leaving the
house? Do you know what I mean? I
wouldn't That's It makes life not just impossible
to live. It makes it like
It's too difficult. It goes it falls into
what the prophet in my opinion says.
You're going too far now.
This Amu Bulbul Belwa thing is a big
thing. Amobu Belewa is when things become so
proliferated that it's difficult
to do without. If you can apply it
for car insurance I'm sorry to say the
existence of women with a with a headscarf
is way more proliferative than car insurance.
And hara is worse than this by the
way.
It's hara is a it's a major it's
not major sin but it's a more severe
sin than look at it one time. You
could argue
because you're selling it's it's a it's an
invalid type of it's an invalid contract in
Buiar, actually. It's invalid contract.
So all I'm trying to say is that
try and be true to yourself, whatever your
views if your views are and I respect
it. If your views are, for example, that,
yeah, I believe that looking at one strand
of a woman from even from muscle harpah
is haram,
and don't go on social media. Why are
you coming on YouTube to comment about this?
Because YouTube itself has too many things like
this.
You can't be true to yourself like that.
If you're true to yourself because there are
some people who are true to themselves.
They say I have not one screen in
my house.
I do this, this, that and the other.
And, you know, I think this is haram,
wallahi. I take it from them. I respect
those guys.
But if you're if you're going to say
it, if you're going to go down this
route, be be ready to be consistent.
And it's going to be very difficult to
be that level of consistent in in living
in in the London or or Luton or
the West in general. It's going to be
very difficult. So there has to be a
level of leniency.
Because otherwise we see we see this all
the time. You you come into the religion
all hard like that, then you come out
of the religion all hard like that. That's
how I see it. Thank you.
So I spoke a lot then.