The Revival #22
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Channel: Muhammad West
Series: Muhammad West - Ramadan 2024 - The Revival
File Size: 20.86MB
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AI Generated Summary ©
The history of the European Empire, including the rise and fall of the Empire, the rise and fall of the Ottoman Empire, and the Iranian Empire, is discussed. The Mughal Empire had a democratic culture, with a focus on religion and cultural leanages, and a military force of hundreds of women and hundreds of men. The British Empire had a military force of hundreds of men and the Iranian Empire had a military force of hundreds of women. Jesus Christ claims to have been the first man to translate the Quran and is working on creating a new book.AI Generated Transcript ©
Hope you're well.
So
yesterday, we concluded the very sad chapter of
the fall of Andalusia.
Before that we spoke about the the Mongolian
devastation of Persia,
of Baghdad,
of Sham. So one might ask who's left
on the map? Who's who's running the show?
Who's in charge of the Ummah?
And we will see now 3 kingdoms basically
form
about 5 we're going now 500 years ago,
the 1500, the 1500, 16 100, what we
call the pre modern Islamic kingdoms.
And some of these kingdoms you would know,
like the Ottoman Empire. And there were 3
kingdoms that formed and they're called the gunpowder
empires. This is a time when cannons were
were available and, in fact, the Ottoman Empire
would have been of the first to have
military infantry that used cannons and used, muskets.
So we had those three kingdoms, which would
be we'll speak of the first one, which
is known and, very prominent is the Ottoman
Empire.
And the Ottoman Empire, they were in the
land. They were as we as we said
before, there's this massive area in Central Asia,
the Turkic people. They were nomadic, and they
moved westwards. The Mongolians pushed them further and
further west, and they basically settled in what
is modern day Turkey. That area was Constantinople
was a Christian the homeland of the Byzantine
Empire.
And it has always been the the dream
that one day Constantinople will be in the
hands of the Muslims. In fact, there's a
hadith about that. And the Ottomans,
these tribal people, they unified, they solidified,
they formed a a a a nation, and
with the advent of gunpowder,
the 1,000
year, you know, walls of Constantinople that nobody
could penetrate. And anyone who's traveled to Constantinople
and you see the Hagia Sophia, that was
built that church was built before the was
born. So you can imagine the technology of
the Byzantines,
and it was impossible for any no army
could ever have, conquered Constantinople until the Ottomans
with their cannons and they basically conquered Constantinople
and that became their capital. And now this
rising empire,
becomes the seat of the Khalifa. Remember the
Khalifa was destroyed in Baghdad, and he basically
gets saved by the Mamluks, the the well,
the the caliphate the the title of Khalifa
moves to Egypt, and eventually it moves now
to Constantinople.
The Ottoman Sultan
is also the Khalifa.
It's very strange.
The concept of the Khalifa is usually Qurashi
of the Nabi al Salam's family,
but, subhanallah, now you have an Persian, wait,
Turkish person who is the Khalifa and will
remain there until, basically, till World War 1.
The other and we'll talk more of the
Ottomans as we as we move along. We
we we then move to the 2nd big
kingdom
and second gunpowder
empire, which filled the vacuum of Persia, Afghanistan,
Azerbaijan. This this area that was destroyed by
the Mongolians,
this became
this fell under a kingdom called the Safavid
Empire. Now the Safavids
were a Shia or a sufi tariqa a
sufi tariqa
that became
basically a a nation, and then they converted
to Shi'ism. And that is why today, if
you ask, why is Iran
the home of Shi'ism? It was never the
case. Imam Ghazali, Abu Hanifa, all the great
Sunni scholars in fact, the Ottomans
did not have ulama. The Ottomans would bring
ulama,
Sunni ulama, from Persia, from Iran.
That is where was the home of Sunni
Sunni intellectual thought. But this Shia group basically
takes over Iran, and it converts it into
a a Shia 12 ish Shia state and
it's called the Safavid Empire.
They were also they were there. And then
you have the 3rd Gunpowder Empire
and one of the few kingdoms that survived
the Mongolians,
and this is the Mughals
the Mughals of India.
Now, whenever, you know, most of you would
be looking I've never heard of this group
before. I heard of the term, but you
basically know them when you watch Aladdin.
That's
Agra and, you know, that whole that's not
Arab. That is it's like India. How is
this camels and and elephants and altogether?
This is basically the concept of of, it
was the Mughals of India,
extremely wealthy. And as we said before, that
India for a 1000 years was ruled by
a Muslim elite. The majority of India is
Hindu, as we know, but there was this
elite group of Muslims
that ruled and this last kingdom, it changed
hands over time, The last kingdom was another
gunpowder empire, the Mughal Empire, and I think
our basic our discussion tonight is the rise
and fall of the Mughal
Empire. And if you look at the map,
if you go to the map, you'll see
the 3 gunpowder
empires. The Ottomans were in the red. They
ruled basically
the Middle East, North Africa a little bit,
and Turkey, and their focus was more advancing
into Europe. The Ottoman Empire looked to march
further into Europe. They focused on so much
the Middle East. The Safavids are there in
Persia and and and Iran, Afghanistan, and then
the Mughals,
the Indian subcon when I say India, it
means Pakistan, it means India, Bangladesh,
parts of Nepal, even massive, empire in the
the Mughal Empire. So the Mughals, let's talk
about them, and this is the tonight's talk
about 2 great reformers. And I said anybody
that comes from an Indian subcontinent background, in
fact, all of us, these 2 men I'm
gonna talk about,
every single Muslim on earth basically has some
debt to them to them in how they
preserve. Because if we look at our intellectual
Islam, how much comes from India now? India
at this time is not a center of
Islamic learning. There are no Darul Ulms. You
look at the books, there's no great scholarly
work from the Indian Muslims. The in India
didn't really exist much, but there'll be 2
men that changes this, and they will bring
about a a revival to to till today
now we have sort of major Islamic movements
come from India. So the Indian Mughals, the
princes, the kings, the sultans,
they lived a very lavish, decadent lifestyle.
You know, harams of hundreds of women, they,
indulge in all kinds of vices. They ruled
over the the the the Hindus of of
India with, you know, with with the armies
and the and the and and the and
the might. But with
time, one of the the the the Mughals
of India, his name was Akbar the Great.
He was probably the greatest in terms of
development and building and architecture.
He
wanted to merge
between Islam and Hinduism.
You see, when you're ruling a people that
is not of the same religion, you wanna
make sure that you balance this. And for
political reasons and, of course, he also it's
mentioned that he he married a number of
Hindu wives, which the ulama were were not
happy about, but he looked to merge Islam
with Hinduism, and he would have a court
of many scholars, Christians and and and and
Sikhs and different,
religious leaders, and they would debate and discuss.
And eventually, towards the end of his life,
he said, I have come to the conclusion
that we are all basically 1 and the
same, and there is a universal religion. He's
gonna he he invents this religion called dini
ilahi,
the divine way.
And we will take the best of all
religions, and this will be the default of
Islam. This will be rather the religion of
India.
And some things in this religion, for example,
you have to make to the to the
ruler.
Your, names like Muhammad and Ahmed sort of
became a taboo. Circumcision,
was not allowed. You couldn't slaughter cows anymore.
Many of the, of of, the Sharia rules
became abrogated,
intermarriages, which were obviously, you know, Muslim women
cannot marry non Muslim men. This became almost
permissible. And so
many of the ulama at the time did
not have the intellectual capacity to debate this,
and in fact, many of them were afraid
to stand up and it became
the default. And it appeared India was gonna
go that way. A country which is basically
Islamic rule, Sharia, would become abrogated by this.
And so arose a scholar called Ahmed Sirhindi
Ahmed Sirhindi,
one of the first ulama of of that
time in India
who would take on this challenge.
And one of the reasons one of the
and this is a bit deep now. One
of the intellectual arguments made that, look, you'd
find
extreme, extreme Sufism mysticism
delves into many things which almost aligns with
Hindu practices.
And Hinduism. It's all the same. You know,
we worship many things. We make different kinds
of dhikrs with music involved. You go through
saints and
and graves. What's the difference? We have images
of you have in pictures there. We have
our statues here. It's all one and the
same. And so it required a person, and
this Ahmed said, Hindi was a a a
deeply Sufi man, and he had to bring
about a reformation to say what is permissible
in terms
of and what is not permissible.
And he wrote to the ruling class, and
he didn't raise up an army. All he
did was he wrote letters and he wrote
pamphlets and he gave and sermons. Eventually, he
was locked up, but it resonated with a
lot of the ruling class of the Muslims.
And
Akbar passes away. His son Jahangir takes on
and continues that same steps, and 1 by
1, eventually eventually, the teachings of Ahmed al
Sendhindi resonates with a prince of the Mughals.
So long story, we cut it short. The
one of the princes of the Mughals was
a student of Ahmed al Sadhindi's son. He
he grew up in the madrasa learning from
Ahmed al Sirhindi. His name is Oranzeb. And
when he becomes now the Mughal emperor, he
removes a lot of what his great grandfather
Akbar had done and he he reestablishes
orthodox Islam. And so the alim, the sheikh,
you know, he wrote the the books. No
one read it. No one looked at it.
It took 2 generations later for someone to
really, you know, benefit from this. And so
the seed was planted,
Mughal emperors because he was able to conquer
the whole one of the few people in
the history of India that ruled the entire
subcontinent,
and he ruled for almost 50 years, and
he was very much a staunch,
you know, advocate of of of reestablishing Islam
and orthodoxy,
open Madaris.
One of the things that he did was
he wanted to compile
a massive encyclopedia
of all the, fatawah, which would be the
law of the it's, Hanafi law, and this
would be the government's standard position in in
in in how to run a country. It's
called fatawah al Hindiya, and he collected the
greatest ulama
in the in the country to participate in
writing. This will be our qanun, our law.
In fact, the Ottomans would later try to
replicate this this effort. So this is a
great achievement. Unfortunately, when Oranze passed away,
the kingdom
collapses.
His sons kill one another, and we fall
into that same old trend of civil war.
And with that, many factions start to to
to take over India. You have a rising
group
of of of, in the South, a Hindu
revivalist movement movement trying to push out, Islam.
You also have the British who just arrived
now in India. You have invasions of the
Safavids, the the Shia, a group, you know,
invading. So the India is in a difficult
state. The 1700
the 1700
is where really the decline begins. The Ottomans
go through a decline. The Mughal is going
to a decline. The Safavids going to a
decline. This is where you're gonna see our
problem that we have as a ummah is
what happened through the 1700, the 1800.
So the next person we're gonna talk about
and this man, subhanallah, perhaps the greatest
you know, look at his books and what
he
wrote. For the last 300 years, I don't
think there was a scholar of his of
his caliber.
They are very, uncompromising.
You know, if you're a Braulvi, you are
like a paka Braulvi. You don't even wanna
talk to a Dio Bandi. If you're Dio
Bandi, Hanafi staunch, they are very partisan on
their groups. But all of them, if you
look at who is the original founder,
even though they hate one another, they can't
agree, they all say. We all take from
This one man inspired,
like, millions and mill 100 of millions of
people,
this scholar.
Means from Delhi. So,
his father was one of the jurists, one
of the ulama, the Hanafi ulama was asked
by Aurangzeb
to compile this, and you might say this,
this law
of India. His dad was a Hanafi scholar
who was part of that panel. And so
he grows up in a a family of
ulama, of learning. He stays in his dad's
madrasa
and he learns the Hanafi madhab very, very
well. He learns Quran, hadith, and he's a
a solid Hanafi scholar. As a young age,
he's already, mastered a lot of the the
fatawa
and then he did something which very few
people at that time would do. He decided,
I I wanna go for Hajj, but I
also want to learn
from the rest of the Muslim world. And
so he leaves, India and he goes to
Mecca,
and for the first time, he really encounters
other schools of thought. He encounters,
you know, Shafi'i the Shafi'i madhhab. He encounters
the humble imadhab. He really falls in love
with
In fact, for him, he said Imam Malik's
is greater than Buhari. I mean, this is
his personal feeling. And, he also becomes,
very much in favor of even Taymiyyah.
We spoke about even Taymiyyah, this idea of
reviving, going back to the original sources because
in the Indian subcontinent,
where they didn't have a culture of intellectual
discussion, it was you learn it like this,
and that's how it is, and you don't
discuss it, and we stick to our mad
hub even I don't care what the Quran
says, said so, you stick to it. So
now you have the scholar
looking at challenging,
the thoughts, what you know, and and and
growing learning about different maday. He also what
is great about
is
he was inspired by many figures
who are not really, you would say, almost
are gay not against one another, but he
he he loves Ghazali,
and he also loves Ibtaimiyyah, and yet you'd
find there's an intellectual debate between
them. He loves
Tasawwuf,
but he's also finds those who who who
not condemn Tasawwuf, who had issues Tasawwuf. So
he said, is there a way we can
synergize? Can we bring all these thoughts together?
Can we find common ground? And if you
look at his books, this is what he
really strove to do. He tried to bring
different strands of thought together and find what
is the kernel that we can unite under
without compromising
Islamic,
thought. He he spent almost 2 years in
in in in in Mecca. He didn't wanna
leave, but his alim, his sheikh told him,
you need to go back to your people
in India, and you need to bring about
you need to share this knowledge. So he
goes back to India. And as he goes
back to India, we said this is where
India is falling apart.
The Mughals are on the verge of collapse.
Hindu the the Maratha Hindus have almost reached
Delhi,
and, socially, the fabric of India is unraveling.
And so,
he now begins his work of the things
he's done,
the first person in Islam to translate the
Quran into Persian,
Persian for so long and the Indians, Urdu
didn't exist that time. Urdu was an official
language yet. He was the first man to
translate the Quran into Persian. In fact, he
almost got killed by his fellow. Said, what
bida are you doing? How can you translate
the Quran in a foreign language? He said,
there are 100 of millions of people who
read the Quran, but they don't understand. And
so he he translates it into Persian. And,
masha Allah, his grandson who translate the Quran
into Urdu as well. What a legacy of
of of of Ulama.
Of the things that he he he wrote
extensively on now was if you look at
one of the books, he speaks about
the Hujatul Bariqa. He writes about how do
we know Islam to be true? What is
the reasoning, the reasons behind why we make
salah, why we fast? Because now everything gets
debated and challenged in the modern world. What
is the hikmah behind all of these things?
And he brings about the rational arguments,
within within Islam. He also writes amazing book
about the of Iqthilaf.
How do we disagree without
breaking the unity? He writes a book on
this. So you can really see the the
forward thinking of this man. And he goes
into he realized me sitting in my and
writing books is not gonna happen. It's not
enough. I need to go to the to
the on the grassroots level and speak to
the men on the street. And so he
starts with very basic, so he's debating academia
at the highest level, but he's also speaking
out against the social ills, the oppression of
women,
you know, alcohol, prostitution, that girls not being
educated. He's speaking out against a lot of
the things that became commonplace in the in
the in society, and then he also has
to take on the political landscape. And he
sees his country politically,
different rulers and sultans and leaders in India
and says, guys, get your act together. We
need to unite while we are fighting against
ourselves. We are going to be overthrown by
a wave of Hinduism.
Islam is not gonna survive here. There could
be a genocide here if you guys don't
get your act together.
This falls on deaf ears and he does
something extremely controversial. He writes to the king
of
Afghanistan. At that time, Afghanistan was stronger than
India. He wrote to the king of Afghanistan
and he basically said, please invade India and
protect us. Protect us because there's this army
called the Maratha army. They're coming from the
south. They're about to invade Delhi. Remove the
the last Mughal emperor is basically a puppet.
There's no power. And this army from the
south is coming to take over Delhi
and Shah Waliullah appeals to the king of
of of of Kabul of of of of
Afghanistan.
As a sheikh, as a maulana, as someone
that is respected, bring your army and defend
us. And the king of Afghanistan
responds, and he sends his army, and he
actually saves,
Delhi from being overthrown.
And one would seem like you'd say, oh,
happy ending, not happy ending. Obviously, the the
Mughal Empire at this point collapses. The fighting
between the Muslims and the Hindus depletes everybody,
and this opens the way for a shipping
company from England
to rule the whole of India. A company,
not the army. The queen of England didn't
send her army. Just a shipping company, the
the Dutch the East Indian company of England.
They land in India. They see that the
whole country is exhausted through civil war. They
took take over Bengal and
not even 50,000
England never had more than about 50,000 troops
on the ground. They rule a country of
half a 1000000000 people,
500,000,000
people, just a small tiny army, and, this
would, of course, begin what we call the
British Raj. The British Raj would now rule
India. And as I said, when
when Aurangzeb ruled India, it was the richest
country in the world. 25% of the world's
economy was in India. The time the British
leave
the few decades ago, India economies feed its
people, mass starvation.
England
depleted India completely, and so a lot of
turmoil is gonna go through India over the
next 2, 300 years, but these movements that
will try to revive itself, many of them,
the Diobandi movement, the the Bralvii movement, the
Tabligh movement, all of them will say their
founding ideologue. The guy that really gave the
idea of reviving Islam.
What a great alim.
We'll talk, tomorrow inshallah
the fall of the other,
gun pounder empires. How did we lose the
plot? How did we go from being such
a mighty empire, a mighty ummah, to losing
the plot? Where did you go wrong? We'll
talk about that tomorrow.
Last night, we asked,
what was the name that we identified mus
that the Muslims were identified with who converted
to Christianity? In Spain, what were they called?
They were called the Moriscos, the Moriscos.
And
we have brother Ya'akub Roman.
Brother Yaacob Roman. No?
Roman's pizza.
Nasir Basir.
Nasirnatia,
siraj?
Siraj
wacky? Wacky. Wacky?
No. Okay. Now who is here?
Zayid Rekha.
Zayid Rekha?
No.
Tariq Jacobs?
Oh, yeah, Allah. If this one If if
this one isn't there, my moon is for
you. Right? It's written for you.
Adam Basir.
No. My moon is for you.
Alright.
Maruf. Okay.
Alright. That's it. Shukran.
For but it's pink. I don't know the
I don't know why Maruf wrote pink, for
that for the girls. Anyway.
Imra?
Imra.
Both here. Maruf Al Fino and Imra Al
Fino. So alright. It's meant to be. That
was meant to be.
Okay. Alright.
Oh, tonight's question. Was
the first in the subcontinent translate the Quran
into which language? From which language did he
Easy one. Alright.
Easy one. Alright.