Mustafa Khattab – AdabulKhilaf Etiquittes of Disagreement in Islam 1

In the name of Allah, the most gracious,

most merciful.

All praise is due to Allah

We praise him, and we seek his forgiveness

and assistance.

And we take refuge in him from the

evils of ourselves

and our shortcomings.

Whomever Allah guides, there is none to misguide

him. And whomever Allah leaves to go astray,

there is none to guide him.

We bear witness that there is none worthy

of our worship except Allah

the creator,

the sustainer, and the cherisher of this universe.

And we bear witness that Muhammad

is the seal of the prophets

and the final messenger to all humanity.

I greet you with the greeting of Islam.

Assalamu alaikum.

I'm honored and pleased to be here in

the city of Durham.

I like to be here. I like your

masjid. I like your sound system.

There's a lot of Islamic heritage and Arabic

heritage in this, city.

On the way I say, I I saw

the city of Salem, and Salem is an

Arabic word, which means safe,

and secure.

The word Durham,

some say, is taken from the Arabic word

dirham.

Dinar and dirham.

The word

is the plural of the word deek in

Arabic which is rooster.

So it's an Arabic word.

So the list can go on and on.

Why do we talk about

the concept of khilaf or disagreement

or difference in Islam?

In less than 2 weeks, we will have

the month of Ramadan. And Alhamdulillah, this is

the month of blessings and favors and grace

of of

Allah The month of the Quran, the month

of forgiveness, and so on and so forth.

But it is also the month

of disunity

amongst the Muslims.

You see some brothers in some masajid, and

I've heard about this. 1 One of the

brothers was visiting a masjid in Texas.

He's a member of our community. When he

came back, he said,

you know, brother, he went to bread to

pray tarawih and one of the masajid in

the first night of Ramadan.

But there was literally

a fight between the people and the Masjid.

Some say, Brother, we pray 20 rakats. Some

say, No. No. We pray 11. Brother, bitter

bitter, bitter. 20 is bit They had a

big

fight. They agreed to pray live in rakas.

No problem.

Then, they had another disagreement.

Some say, we need to finish the Quran

in Ramadan. Some say, no. No. No. No.

No. We just need to pray for rakas.

Aqaas, go home and call it a day,

take it easy.

There are differences.

In this situation,

the imam the only thing the imam, you

know, can do is to ask the people

by their love for our love,

their love for the Prophet,

their respect for the Masjid,

not to to bleed on the carpet of

the masjid, when they fight.

Because the imam can't do anything.

He will keep citing verses from the Quran,

Hadith from the Prophet, to respect the masjid,

and so on and so forth. Nobody is

listening.

Linguistically,

the word ishtilaf and khilaf are related. They

mean difference,

disagreement,

variation, and diversity.

We will not be talking about the difference

between what is right and what is wrong,

what is halal and what is haram, because

this is very clear to sound minds.

People of understanding would know this very easily.

So we'll not be talking, for example, if

Allah exists or doesn't exist.

Allah is 1 or Allah is 3.

We don't want to talk about this because

it is very clear.

We will be talking about,

you know, diversity

or variation in opinion,

and both opinions are acceptable in Islam.

We would not talk

for long about differences among scholars because this

needs a different, you know, lecture.

We will be basically be talking about, you

know, differences, like, everyday, you know, life differences.

Like, differences between a husband and wife, a

friend and his friend,

differences within the community

regarding different different issues.

But first, we start by citing a verse

from the Quran that talks

about variation

and diversity as being a blessing

from Allah.

In the variation,

the diversity of your tongues

and the diversity of your colors

is a sign from God. Indeed, in this,

there is a sign. This is a blessing

for the people who have sound understanding.

This is a blessing.

Imagine

if the whole world was uniform.

The people have the same color,

the people eat the same food every day,

the people have the same culture, they speak

the same language, and so on and so

forth. So there's no white, there's no black,

there is no

lovely Indian Pakistani food. You know, nothing. It's

only one culture.

Don't you think it will be a boring

world?

Alhamdulillah, it's a blessing that we have differences,

variations, diversity.

And Allah says in the Quran that the

differences of colors you have, the differences in

tongues, that you speak English, Arabic, German, French,

This is a blessing from Allah. We have

to cherish. We have to respect.

And also,

if you have one color, one food, one

language, you know, people eat, you know, Dunkin

Donuts every day, One culture.

Some businesses will run out of business, like

tourism, for example.

Translation,

money exchange,

and of course, tourism, go where, see what.

There's nothing to say, there's only one kashr.

So again, variation is something,

good. It's a blessing from Allah

We read in the books of Fird, for

example, if you read the introduction to, the

book of fiqh sunnah by Sheikh Saeed Saba.

He will say, for example, that at some

point in the Muslim history,

some scholars,

you know, used to focus

on fine details of fiqh, and they used

to have a lot of differences. All the

way

I mean, it got so ugly. At some

point,

some of the scholars say that it is

not allowed

for someone who follows the Shafi'i Mazha

to marry a sister who follows the Hanafi

Madha.

Allah, it's in the in the book of

Sayed Saba. They say because the it is

acceptable in the Madha of Imam Shafi'i to

say,

ana muminun insha'allah. Whereas,

in the opinion of Abu Hanifa, you know,

Shafi'i, you know, in the Shafi'i opinion, he

can say, I will be a believer insha'allah.

Whereas, this is not acceptable in the Hanafi

school, so they should not get married.

This is nonsense.

So people should not be, you know, stooping

to this level of thinking and understanding.

Of course, we see brothers, you know, bro

this brother who's sitting next to me in

the salaat

is, you know, is making me lose my

focus in the salaat. Why? He is moving

his finger too much in the the shahood.

I can't focus.

He will have to do something about his

finger.

Okay.

Don't move your finger too much.

Brother, you know,

I I ain't gonna I'm not gonna pray

in this message again. Why? You know, the

brother, when after the salah, he raises his

hand in the dua'a like this. I can't

focus with people's hands raised up like this

in Dua'a.

What do you want him to do? To

put down his hands and pray, you know,

to make Dua'a in his heart?

Okay.

SubhanAllah.

When we read the sunnah of the Prophet

sallallahu alaihi wa sallam, we see

that some of the Sahaba had different opinions,

you know, from one another. There was an

opinion, one Sahabi would say something different, and

both of them were acceptable.

And And even the prophet

himself

would have an opinion,

and one of the sahaba would come with

a different opinion,

and the prophet

would leave his own opinion and take the

opinion of the sahaba.