Mustafa Umar – Islamic History 101 #2 Life Of The Prophet
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Alright.
Bismillah Alhamdulillah Wassalaahu Wa Salamu Ala Rasuulillah Waban.
So
what is the second reason? After evidence of
prophethood,
we understand that the Prophet is a role
model for us.
He is a role model for each and
every single person,
Muslim and non Muslim actually.
So we if we wanna try to follow
in his footsteps, and we wanna try and
do exactly what he's doing, we need to
actually know about his life. So what does
the Quran say? The Quran says in translation,
indeed, you have an excellent example in the
messenger of Allah.
Alright? And the verse reference is there, in
in your notes. So what does that mean?
I want you to seriously think about this,
that Allah, the creator of everything,
is actually vouching
for the Prophet and saying to every single
person
that you have an excellent example,
an excellent role model in the messenger of
Allah.
Now, there's no one else you can that
that can vouch for you. I want think
about this. If somebody comes and tells you,
you know what? I want to
attend the class which is a good class
to attend. Or someone tells you, I wanna,
you know, talk to a professor who is
really knowledgeable about this subject.
Which one which one should I go to?
And this person will vouch for them and
say, you know what? I had this awesome
class or I've known them for 17 years,
and, you know, they really know their subject
or whatever. When you vouch for somebody,
right, you can have a 1000000 people
saying that you know something, or saying that
you have good character, or saying that, you
know, you're something special or whatever it is.
But in the end of the day, those
people can equally be wrong. Those people can
be completely wrong. But when you have Allah
vouching for you and saying
to everyone
that you have an excellent example in the
messenger of Allah, in the prophet Muhammad,
then what does that tell you? It tells
you that this is absolute. This is something
that people need to take very seriously. They
need to realize that, you know what? This
is coming from on high. This is something
above and beyond. This is something that cannot
be mistaken. So that's one thing. That's why
we should take him as a role model.
Number 2, there's another,
verse. It says, indeed you stand on an
exalted character speaking to the Prophet. Allah in
the Quran speaking directly to the Prophet, saying,
indeed you stand on an exalted character, an
exalted standard of character. So that's that's that's
an attestation
that's being given to the prophet directly in
the Quran from Allah.
Who else is gonna get that? Who else
is gonna get that? No one. No one
is gonna get that level of, you know,
that that standard. So
it's very important that when we read verses
like this in the Quran,
that we reflect upon them and we say,
subhanAllah,
why are we taking other people as a
standard of character when the first person we
should be taking is actually the prophet? If
you take another person who has good character,
whatever it is, they're a supplementary
role model.
If they're emulating the prophet. If they're doing
exactly, you know, the same kind of character
or the same kind of things that he
was doing. Now, this is the thing. Every
single person in every single society needs a
role a role model. It's just natural. Everyone
takes a role model, whether they put a
poster of some person on their, you know,
wall, or whether they just, kind of have
an affinity towards someone.
Everyone has this natural thing because human beings
are social creatures in a sense, essentially.
They're social. Whether or not you're antisocial,
whether or you're whether or not you don't
like to talk to other people, there's a
level or there's a sense
of connecting with other people that you have.
If not if not 99% of the people
out there, then it's there's still a 1%
that you have a connection with. And that
naturally leads us to, you know, try and,
you know, emulate other people, try and look
up to other people, try and respect other
people. And that's kind of where the, you
know, kind of idol worship,
originates. We won't talk about that in detail
right now. But today, what's happening?
Today,
when it comes to Muslims, they're being indoctrinated
with pop stars,
you know, celebrities,
politicians,
you know,
sports stars, all of these things. And what
ends up happening it's not that you can't
follow politics, or you can't follow sports, or
you can't follow something else. What ends up
happening is, when you,
you know, get so used to,
there's this one guy, and you're so amazed,
and you're you're you're overawed
by the way that, you know, they can
jump
and place a ball into a ring, a
hoop. Right? All of a sudden what ends
up happening is you start taking this person
as a role model in other things. So
this person, they like to stick their tongue
out when they go ahead and jump. You
start walking around, you start sticking your tongue
out. You know, you're randomly on the court
because, oh, that guy stuck his tongue, I'm
gonna stick my tongue out. Why did he
stick his tongue out? Maybe he needed more
oxygen or whatever it is, but you didn't
need that. You didn't need that level of
oxygen when you stick your tongue out anyways.
There are people, they wear they wear armbands.
They They wear, like, you know, those wristbands
and stuff like that. So why are you
wearing the wristband? You don't even use it
to wipe your sweat. No. No. I use
it because that other cool guy, he wears
it as well. It goes beyond that even.
Some guy the some guy wearing a knee
brace. I had a friend of mine, he
wears a knee brace,
like his knee is messed up.
Right? But his knee was not messed up.
There was nothing wrong with his knee. The
reason why was that you?
No. Okay.
No.
Yes.
Yes. So this happens. So when they're doing
it because they think that guy is cool.
Right? Even though you don't have that injury,
were you gonna start wearing a cast and
everything? I mean, this is what happens. So
it's natural. People have this. It's the way
it is. Same thing with actresses and actors
and all of these things. Now, the thing
is this,
these people who are starting to emulate
okay. Watching them is nice because they can
do some certain feats. That's that's that's okay
to watch them. It's cool that they can
do certain things. But
starting to emulate them when they actually are
immoral people or they have a very bad
character,
that becomes a problem.
And that's affecting Muslim society, particularly young Muslims.
It's affecting them the most. And that's what's
causing so many of the problems that we
actually have in our in our social issues
that we have. It's affecting them, and not
just Muslim, it's affecting non it's affecting everyone.
Because the people who are taken as role
models now are not worthy of being taken
as role models. And this is a major
problem that we face. So the example that
I gave and the example that just one
thing that comes to my mind,
it's literally to an extent
where it's like, imagine you just took a
cup, small little cup, and it's empty.
There's nothing inside of it. And you put
it underneath a waterfall, how quickly is it
gonna get full?
It's just gonna fill up immediately.
That's exactly the way these celebrities
are being marketed to people. They're being pushed
because all the technology that's being used, all
the psychological tactics that are being used people
just saw the Super Bowl the other day.
How much does it cost? Raise your hand
if you know. How much does it cost
to get a 32nd or 60 second commercial,
on prime time? Yeah. I'm sorry. 3,000,000. 3,000,000.
Right? That's for sure?
4,000,000.
4,000,000. Yeah. We have 8,000,000. It's like an
auction. Right?
It's sold.
8,000,000.
So So so it's in the millions. Right?
It's in the millions. Why would someone pay
that much?
Alright? Why would someone pay that much?
Because
they know the effect that those few seconds
can have on an individual.
And all that's being used, all that's being
marketed.
And what ends up happening if Muslims
don't have a role model, a proper role
model to follow, like the role model of
the prophet? What is they're they're like empty
cups,
and they're gonna get filled with whatever it
is. They're like imagine a child.
The first thing if you teach them is
about the prophets, and about the prophet, and
about great role models, the companions of the
prophet, and all of that. They're gonna get
their empty cups, they're gonna get filled up
with that.
Most people now in today's society, we've already
been filled up with all these other things,
so there's some damage control that needs to
take place. And it's a very long process,
it's a very slow process,
but it can happen.
It can happen. And we can readjust ourselves
to start thinking that, you know what? These
people are not necessarily the best role models.
Just because they can dance around, you know,
in a garden or something, some Bollywood flick
or whatever it is, that doesn't necessarily make
the best role model or even the best
spouse or whatever it may be, if that's
what you you're inclined towards. So it's something
that we need to understand. We should take
the prophet as a standard, but the only
way you can do that the only way
you can do that is if you know
about his life.
You can't take him as a role model
if you don't know anything about him. What
you can do is you can sing some
songs about him. I'm not trying to belittle
singing songs and, you know, loving the prophet,
but sing like singing a few songs or,
you know, making a few gestures or whatever
it is. You know, clicking a like button
on a Facebook website which says, you know,
I love the prophet. Someone starts a Facebook
page or something like that, and you click
the like button. You say, I I I
love the prophet, or I wanna be like
the prophet. You click you click the button,
something like that. That's one manifestation
of you're trying to be you're really you
know, I wanna be like the prophet. But
the real manifestation, if you know what he's
actually doing, you know how he responds to
events, you know how he talks to people,
you know what decisions he makes, that makes
a world of difference. And the only way
you can do it is with knowledge. So
we're gonna try and
and understand
that we need to know this is a
question because people are gonna ask you.
Why you gotta take the class on the
life of the prophet? You know, there's so
many classes. Muslims will ask you this. So
many classes, you know, you can why don't
you just take a class on Quran?
Just take a class about tafsir, you know,
explanation of the Quran. Why you gotta learn
this, you know? Or why don't you just,
you know, why don't you just learn Arabic
first? Very common. Why don't you just study
Arabic instead and you everything will just click
into place? No. We have to understand, we
can't follow the prophet unless you we know
who the prophet is.
So hopefully that's clear. Moving on to the
next one. Any questions before on this slide
before we move on?
Yeah. Do non Muslims,
praise the prophet because they're unknowingly
praising the characteristics that he has? In a
sense, yes.
You can say that in a sense, because
from our perspective, we believe
the prophet is perfect and that he's been
given that, you know, perfection by Allah. So
anytime they're praising a great quality, that quality
is probably in him in the correct balance,
and therefore, they're unknowingly
praising the prophet. Right? Now how do how
how do you,
how do you capitalize on this observation?
It just depends on the person. You know,
you can explain it to someone and maybe
have a conversation with them and explain to
them what it means. Any other questions?
Okay. So,
a balanced picture. Right?
Where did balanced picture come from? Okay. There's
actually one more thing in here, which was
in the reading, I believe. It's grounded love.
Okay? Grounded love, which didn't make it into
the slide. So the thing is same thing
when it comes to love. Now like I
said about the songs and all of that,
we we are commanded,
right, we are taught that we are supposed
to love the prophet,
sallallahu alaihi wa sallam. We're supposed to love
him more than our own family,
more than our own parents, more than our
own brothers, more than our own children, and
more than our own selves.
That's the level of love as Muslims we're
supposed to have for the Prophet.
Now how can you have that deep level
of love if you don't know somebody?
See, this is what happens when it comes
to, like, when it comes to these celebrities
and all of that. People kind of fall
in love with them, and some things are
amazing and all of that.
And when you learn a little bit more
about their life, when you learn about their
personal life, or the things that they've been
doing, or some, you know, tabloid, you know,
reporter took a picture of them at some
place and you're like, I can't believe they
went there, you know, I didn't I thought
this person was better than this or whatever.
That love starts to decrease
by knowing more and more about what their
real character is. But with the prophet, it's
the exact opposite.
The more and more you learn, the more
and more you begin to increase in appreciation
and love for him, and you begin to
connect and you realize, subhanAllah, you really you
really think, you know, I mean, how could
he have forgiven that person? You put yourself
in the shoes and say, I would never
have forgiven that person. I would never have,
you know,
been been patient
when, you know,
if if my wife took that pot and
she threw it down and broke it right
in front, I I wouldn't be able to
control myself. But when you see that the
prophet did, subhan'Allah, you have such an admiration,
such a respect, such a love for him,
something undescribable.
Now, why do people love others?
They love people for mainly two reasons.
K. Mainly two reasons. Number 1, is because
of certain intrinsic qualities that that person has.
It's like admiration, but admiration comes higher to
a level of love. So you admire a
person, you really respect the person, you get
to a level of love because of certain
qualities that they have. Their generosity, their kindness,
their, you know, their just amazing character. All
of these things that they have, that's one
That's one aspect or one underlying reason. Most
people can't explain love. If you had to
explain it, it's a poor explanation, but it's
partly some of the reason. That's intrinsic qualities
that they have. The second
is for something that they've done for you,
some benefit that they've given you, this person
always helps you out, this person always got
your back, this person always doing something for
you. You're like, Subhanu, I you know, this
person whenever I need this person, they're here.
Whenever I need to talk to them, they're
always here to listen to me. They're always
here for this. You develop this affection, and
you develop this attachment, and you increase in
love for this person because of that. Now,
if you think about it from these two
perspectives, and perhaps there are more, that if
you think about this,
when we love the prophet shawl alaihi wa
sallam, or how much we should love the
prophet shawl alaihi wa sallam, his characteristics and
his qualities are absolutely amazing. When you read
about his character, and you read about the
things that he the way he actually was,
you can't help but to have intense deep
love for him. And when you look at
what he did for other people as well
as for us, the sacrifices that he had,
that he went through to get the message
to us, this was his mission. To fulfill
his mission, the sacrifices that he went through.
He wasn't sitting chilling back. Have you ever
have you ever heard you're not gonna trust
me, when you study his life, you're not
gonna see a section on vacations of the
prophet.
Right? Yeah. You're not gonna find that. It
does does not he's chilling out, you know,
sitting back there, and he had a rest
or something like that. No. He wasn't chilling
out. He had a few times in his
life where he had few enjoyments in his
life. He was not 100%,
like, you know, ascetic, but at the same
time,
you will not find him, you know, just
enjoying life. He was undergoing many sacrifices.
For what? To get the message to us,
to fulfill his mission, and how much care
he had even about us before he never
even knew us. So many statements and reports,
which we will get into probably in another
class, talking about that. And that's why Allah
says in the Quran
that says,
say, meaning you speaking Allah is speaking to
the prophet. K? And he's saying, say, tell
prophet, tell the people, if you love Allah,
then follow me, and Allah will love you,
and he'll forgive you for your sins.
Right? So if if you really love Allah,
then you should follow me.
Part of that following is to loving loving
the prophet as well. You love me as
well, Allah will also love you, and I
will love you, and you will love me,
and then Allah will forgive your sins, and
you will move on the right path of
life. This is this is there in the
Quran about the importance, and there's a statement
of the prophet where he says, you're supposed
to love him more than any member of
your family, more than more than any member
of your family. So how can we do
this if we don't have
a correct, proper, detailed understanding about his life?
Very important.
Number okay. Balance picture. Is that contextualized?
Yeah. Here we go. Balance picture. The next
category is that his life actually shows
a a general understanding of how the prophet
was. Right? So
when it comes to Muslims, here's an example,
which I've mentioned in the reading for those
of you who read it. If you take
a thousand reports,
right, if you read a thousand reports
about the prophet, some of his sayings
that are specifically on one topic,
specifically on one topic. You read you know,
there are literally a 1,000 hadith, a 1,000
of the reports about his life or his
statements or his actions,
which are on the way that he prayed.
There are literally a you could actually study
a 1,000 if you study it, right, in
detail. There's a 1,000, more than a 1,000.
And when you go and you look at
all of these reports, if you were to
go through a 1,000,
right, you would you may think you may
think that I know the prophet.
I went through a 1,000 reports, 1,000 hadith,
right, 1,000 ahadith, 1,000 statements or reports about
what he did and all of that. That's
a lot. Most people have not actually read
a 1,000 hadith.
Most people have not.
Just as a show of hands, who's who
who has actually read about 500 hadith, you
think? It's not arrogance if you raise your
hand. Nothing arrogant about it. Who's read 500
hadith properly, like the entire thing, 500?
Anyone got a 1,000?
Or 5 no one got 500 either. Right?
So the thing is, if you had and
you met someone who read 500 or a
1,000, you say, wow. You know, that person
read a lot. But if they read about
a lot about one specific topic or one
specific category,
would you think that they have a correct
balanced picture about the life of the prophet?
No. Not necessarily.
Not necessarily. They may know a lot about
that subject, and there's nothing wrong with that.
That's great. But at the same time, it
doesn't mean that they have a balanced picture.
And this is a major problem in the
Muslim community,
is that we don't have a balanced picture
of the mission of Islam, and we don't
have a balanced picture of what the Prophet
was really like. So if you go and
you read just 10 statements or 15 statements
about how the Prophet used to, you know,
used to brush his teeth in the morning,
he brush his teeth at night, and he
brush his teeth when he walked home, and
he recommended that before you pray you should
brush your teeth, and he recommended this. They
think that you know what? The most important
thing in their life for them is brushing
the teeth.
No. No. I'm serious. Not that it's anything
wrong, this is great that they're learning.
But when you say that Islam
is about brushing your teeth, and about the
way that you wear your clothes, and about
the way that you walk, and you don't
understand the general context, and you're look what
you what you start doing
is you start looking around and you see
Muslims who are not focusing on the same
thing as you.
There's no emphasis on the way that they're
brushing their teeth.
No. Seriously. Right? There's no emphasis on the
way that they're brushing their teeth. There's no
emphasis on the way that they're, you know,
following dress or the way that they're, you
know, utilizing their hand or the way that
they're eating or whatever it is. And this
is something that the prophet was doing. He
said, these guys,
where where is Islam? The prophet was doing
this, and look what they're doing. They're doing
exactly the opposite of what the prophet was
doing. Because they didn't understand
the entire thing in a proper balanced picture.
They couldn't zoom out and see what the
overall message is. Not to belittle any of
these things. And brushing your teeth is very
important, by the way. If you attend Islamic
law class on Sunday, you'll understand how important
it is. But
but that's not
the crux, you know, the core of Islam.
There's something beyond that. So that will help
us to zoom out if other people only
focus on the way the prophet the prophet's
battles, and the way he prepared for battle,
and the way he trained, and the way
he did this, and the way he did
that, and they're going around, they're seeing, you
know, these people, you know, holding up peace
signs.
You know, what's
I just read a 1,000 reports about battle,
and about, you know, about warfare, and how
we need to fight for the truth, and
we need to do this, and these guys,
you know, talking about it's it's
you you understand how the understanding becomes lopsided.
Understanding is not a zoomed out picture. That's
exactly what the life of the prophet is,
and that's exactly what the life of the
prophet does. So what we see and what
we understand
is something beyond a few actions of his,
or something beyond a few days of his
life. Had you studied just a one day
of his life,
you would get a lot, But at the
same time, if you study just one day
of his life, you would not understand the
entire picture.
And yet you could read 5 books
about one day of his life,
and think that you read 5 books or
the other guy, he read only one book.
Because there's only one book assigned mandatory in
this class. You say, well, this guy read
5, you read 1, so therefore this guy
has more knowledge. This guy has more detailed
knowledge, you would have more zoomed out knowledge.
So it is a methodology that we're talking
about. How we're going to approach
the way to study the life of the
Prophet. And the other thing is that you
have to realize there are some things in
his statements,
what's called hadith, in his statements, in his
actions, that you cannot
he did not explicitly say.
He did not explicitly explain the rationale for
certain things. Until you look at the entire
history of his mission, you will not be
able to understand certain motives behind certain actions
that he did. So for example,
when they were putting up with persecution
in Makkah, you're gonna see that when they
were putting up with persecution,
when did they transition
over to fighting back?
And when do you that that teaches us
a lesson.
When do you put up with persecution?
When do you compromise to an extent? And
when do you start back and to what
extent, and how?
That's not gonna be one statement about the
prophet explaining this is the way you do
it, and this is the way you do
it. You're not gonna get it until you
see the entire thing. When you look at
every single strategy that he utilized
in trying to spread the message and the
mission and all of these things, you can
only see those strategies when you have a
complete comprehensive picture about, what his his life
was really about.
The next one,
to contextualize
the sources of Islam.
Very, very important. So contextualizing the sources of
Islam.
The sources of Islam are mainly 2, and
we hear this a lot. Right? We hear
Quran and Sunnah. Quran and Sunnah, or you
can say Quran and Hadith. The Quran is
the Quran.
Everyone should know pretty much what the Quran
is. The word of Allah, the book of
Allah has been directly revealed. The Sunnah
is the way of the Prophet,
and we know of the sunnah generally through
the hadith. Hadith are statements or actions of
the prophet, peace and blessings be upon him.
So statements or actions, and there's wider definitions,
but we're not gonna get into those detailed
things. So statements and actions, the reports that
we have, this is the second source of
Islam. Now these are the two sources of
Islam, and everyone
who's Muslim generally claims
to ascribe or, you know, you know,
follow the Quran and the Sunnah. Everyone will
claim that. But how do you contextualize
those sources? How do you understand them? That's
going to determine the way you're actually practicing
Islam, and it makes a world of difference.
So
if you take some isolated verses,
or you take some isolated statements from the
hadith, what you will find is that you
can misinterpret them, you can twist them, you
may
sincerely
misunderstand them because you don't understand the context,
or you don't understand what they're actually saying.
Now does that mean that Islam is vague?
Does that mean that, you know, people can't
understand it? No. The main
primary
beliefs
and all the main, main things that we
need to know generally are quite clear.
They're very clear in the Quran and all
of that, and most people cannot even twist
them around. But there are other things which
are supplementary to that, and there are details
which can be twisted, they can be modified,
they can be changed, and they can be
understood completely out of context. So we need
to have a proper background history
of how these events took place. We need
to know about certain events. Otherwise, we can't
understand things. So I'll give you a few
examples. Number 1. One example is patience during
persecution.
There are verses in the Quran, several verses,
which talks about having sabr,
having patience.
Be patient in this time, they're gonna speak
this, they're gonna say this. K? If you
are master of the Arabic language,
absolute master, you're like Sibwe. Right? You have
the grammar down, you have the poetry down
and everything,
but you don't know anything else about Islam
generally.
And you say, well, because my I'm the
grand master of Arabic.
I'm gonna pick up the Quran and have
a better understanding than anyone else because I'm
such a high level, masha Allah. I can
deconstruct
every single sentence in its full grammatical form.
Right? But
you won't be able to even understand the
context
of what it means had you had nothing
besides this. You won't understand the context of
what is patience in persecution.
What is the Quran talking about? If you
don't understand that a prophet was even persecuted,
or the Muslims are being persecuted, how are
you gonna even understand a basic verse like
patience during persecution? That's something very basic. Right?
Number 2.
I'll just have an example. The prophet was
accused of many things, accused of being a
sorcerer, accused of being a poet.
Now just think about that, you read in
the Quran, it says that, you know what,
they're they're saying that he's a poet.
So what is that supposed to mean? Like,
if someone doesn't understand any context about Arabian
society,
doesn't understand what it means to be a
poet, doesn't understand the importance of the Arabic
language in Arabia,
what is what what what is so bad
about being a poet? Right? Why why is
this accusation something big? You can't contextualize it.
You can't understand it. You can't relate to
it. And if you can't relate to it,
you can't draw the lessons that you're supposed
to draw from the Quran in the first
place.
Even though you may, you know, have a
beautiful translation in front of you, or you
may be a master of the Arabic language.
Sorry, but you're not gonna get the correct
understanding, and you're not gonna be able to
extract lessons from it. A third example.
3rd example is
certain incidents in the Quran are by name,
mentioned by name. Right? So for example, when
it talks about the battle of Badr,
it talks about in Badr, this and this
happened. When the 2 armies met and this
and this happened. If you don't know what
what is Badr, you go and you look
into a dictionary, you're gonna find, you know,
Badr means moon, or it means this, or
what it's some area. You have no context.
So we have to have a context when
it comes to the sources of Islam. If
we have no context,
you you know, we have a major problem.
And this is a major problem that we're
facing today in society.
Because, see, we think
that now that all of the sort remember
I so I said in the beginning,
one of the problems of
modernism
or postmodernism
and, you know, being highly educated and all
of that, which most of us generally are,
quote, unquote highly I mean, it's to extenics
that highly educated, is that we tend to
think that our ability
to think things out is amazing. It's higher
than it should be, and we pride ourselves
on that. So now with the with the
advent of the printing press,
and you have the Quran, and you have
the hadith as well disseminated with translations as
well as in Arabic for people who know
Arabic, and it's it's in your hands.
You don't need
an authority
figure to help you understand that anymore, and
that's a perception that people have. So you
pick up Bukhari on your own, and you
pick up Muslim on your own, and you
pick up Muslim Ahmed or whatever book it
is on your own, and you try to
understand
it for what, you know, your understanding is.
And you say,
if some scholar gives me an explanation,
you know, he better have some proof for
that. He better have some evidence to back
it up. The problem is this.
The problem is this. If you were to
take any other book, you were to take
a book on medical science,
right, and you open it up from the
beginning and you start reading some of it,
You can understand quite a bit. It's not
that you can't understand, you can understand.
But what ends up happening is, you say,
well, you know what? I don't agree with
this.
This this thing seems wrong.
Now you go to someone, you say, you
know what? You you studied medicine. You think
you, you know, you're you're the triple PhD,
you think you know something. Okay. Explain to
me, you know, explain to me why this
is wrong.
And I can tell you that person is
very unlikely
gonna be able to either explain it to
you in a few minutes,
or even if they sat down with you
for an hour, maybe they still won't be
able to convince you. Why? Because you don't
know the subject. I can speak for computer
science. Right? If you come and you start
telling me that, you know what, I think
that the, you know, the c programming language
is superior to Java,
and then you go, you read a book
on Java for dummies, and you read c
for dummies. And then you come and you
say, you know what? I don't agree with
this. I think it's the other way around,
to be honest with you. And I can
sit there for 30 minutes trying to convince
you. You're you may not be convinced.
Right? Even if you let's say there's no
actually one that's better, but even if I'm
trying to make my point, you've never used
it, you don't understand the subject, you don't
understand the theory behind it, you don't understand
how it works, you don't understand anything.
Right? But you think
that you are in a position to make
a firm decision on something that's highly technical.
And some ahadith, quite a few of them,
can be highly technical in a sense. So
this is a major problem that we find,
and what we can do by knowing this
the life of the prophet, we can help
contextualize
the sources that we actually have, so we
have a better, proper, more balanced understanding
of what,
what Islam really is.
Any questions?
Not having questions can mean either one of
2 things. Either
it's going over
or it's just very clear,
and I hope insha'allah it's the latter, insha'allah.
So,
okay, methodology.
Yes? Question.
We didn't have a lot of other people
in the week after. Yes. Yes. We will
talk about the entire life of the Prophet,
all the major So methodology. So what is
the methodology that we're gonna use? Okay?
What does methodology mean in the first place
again?
Right? So how many of you have read
a book on the life of the prophet
before? Raise your hand.
I'm sure most of you. How many have
read 2?
3? 4?
Many fours? 4? 3 generally 3 most people
have read 1, 2, or 3. Right? And
a lot of people, and I'm telling you
very openly, a lot of people say and
I'm I had the same opinion.
A lot of people say that, you know,
I already read a book on the life
of the prophet, so why would I need
to take a class? Some people only came
for the certification.
Alright. They say, I'm just coming, so I'm
gonna get the test, I'm gonna get a
certificate, and it proves that I read something.
Can how much can we actually learn that's
new? You will find that every book you
read about, you know, as long as they're
a little bit different, you will learn something
different, you will learn something new, because each
and every single one of those books had
a different methodology.
So it depends on what the way that
that book was written. It had a specific
audience.
The author had a specific mindset.
He was thinking specific things. He had a
target audience that he wanted to write for.
He wrote in a specific time to address
the needs of his time or her time.
All of these things make a difference. So
therefore, we wanna define. Most people don't define
what is their methodology, but in in an
academic setting, we have to define what methodology
are we using
to determine how we should study the subject
and to determine,
you know, whether or not we're actually meeting
this criteria or not in the first place.
So the first methodology we're gonna use, the
method we're gonna use is a comprehensive approach.
So we're gonna try and focus on the
most significant events,
about the life of the prophet.
The most significant events,
and and avoid kind of the minute details.
You know, there was a person,
it reached me, that one person was just
having a a talk about this the other
day. They were just talking and, the information
came to me. Says, you know what? This
class is nothing special because I saw the
reading. The reading is, you know,
the primary book, and then there's a book
by Tariq Ramadan, and then there's a book
by,
Adil Salahi. And they're like, you know, that's
not that's not a real intensive class. That's
kind of a joke. You know, if you
wanted to have a real sierra class, then
you'd be teaching Ibn Ishaq, you know, the
the the heavy hitting books. Or someone else
knows, the main main books, the main primary
sources, Ibn Ishaq. Ibn Hisham is a summary
of Ibn Ishaq. You don't need to know
this by the way. It's just supplementary information
if you if you need it. Alright? It's
not gonna be on the test or something.
Ibn Ishaq is one of them. Ibn Hisham
came and did a summary of Ibn Ishaq.
Another one is,
Ibn Saad.
Ibn Saad wrote another book.
His student, Al Waqidi, wrote another book. Alright?
And you have Tabari. Imam al Tabari is
one of the so there's 4 main books
where people go to the life of the
prophet as a genre. And people sometimes will
say, well, you know, you're gonna use these
modern books or whatever it is. You're not,
you know,
you're not using the real stuff. I wanna
see I wanna see the real stuff. And
I'm telling you, I had this mentality over
time. We've all anyone who's really studied in
detail, they've had this mentality as well. Why
don't we get into the, you know, the
hard stuff, the real stuff, where the scholars
get in on all that stuff? I guarantee
you, when you go and you open up
Ibn Ishaq, if you were to go and
read it, there's Arabic version, not the summarized
one, not the real Ibn Ishaq.
Most of it has been,
most of it has been recovered in manuscript
form, some of it has been lost.
And there's a translation by Guiam or Gilam
or whatever, however you pronounce his name, he's
orientalist, he did a translation. Try and read
25 pages to see how far you get.
Seriously, try has anyone read it by the
way? Anyone read Ibn Ishaq? Not Ibn Ishaq?
Ibn Ishaq.
One person in the back. Did you finish
the entire thing? You finished the whole thing?
Alhamdulillah,
masha'Allah.
Okay. So one person did it, telling you
if you read 25, 30 pages,
you're not going to get that far, because
it's going off on details about Arab tribes
and about this and I'm talking about beyond
above and beyond, and it's talking about how
the guy, you know, the king in Yemen,
how he was captured by 1 guy, and
there's a story I'd rather not mention. It's
a it's an explicit story that's mentioned in
there, and how he got, you know, knife
from his shoe when he killed the guy,
and, you know, he was being raped, and
all of this stuff, you know. And the
thing is you're like, okay, what does this
have to do with the life of the
prophet? Right? This has
it has something to do with it because
knowing history is important, knowing history is important,
but at the same time, it's not necessarily
that relevant
to the actual subject.
Right? So the point is, our comprehensive approach,
we're gonna try and focus on the most
significant events. Now the criteria of what is
most significant has some, you know, has some,
relativity to it. Right? It's it's relative to
an extent. You say, well, that's what you
think is important.
I thought that story in Ibn Ishaq was
really interesting. You know? Interesting is one thing,
but how relevant is it? You have to
have a criteria.
Otherwise, it's just my word versus your word
versus somebody else's word. So what is the
criteria that we're gonna use in this class?
Criteria number 1 is if the incident is
mentioned in the Quran, it's considered significant.
Very simple. My my understanding is that if
Allah decided to mention this event in the
Quran, it's very significant because he mentioned it.
Doesn't mean that something that's not mentioned in
the Quran is not significant. That's not what
it means. Doesn't work the other way around.
But if Allah mentioned it, it's very significant.
Number 2,
if most biographers mentioned it. So pea if
people like Ibn Ishaq, Tabari,
Waqidi Waqidi is actually deemed a liar by
the majority of scholars. That's why actually non
Muslims, they love reading his book
be because it's full of some strange things.
There's interesting things in there, some good things,
some really bad things. Vast majority of Muslim
scholars labeled Al Wakidi as an absolute liar,
like kazab, like straight up. This guy don't
believe what he says when it comes to
religion, when it comes to Islam.
So, Tabari ibn Sa'ed. So
why are we gonna take this approach?
Right? Why why would we take this approach?
Because
these books that had been written about the
life of the prophet actually
create some kind of, you know, a,
you know, like
a unity
among the Muslim ummah.
Because the books that most people are reading
are kind of, you know, passed on. Some
of the incidents which they thought to be
important, sometimes we think, well, I I may
think it's not so important, but it's not
always what I think because I know that
my understanding, and you should know that your
understanding is sometimes colored by the environment that
you live in. It's colored by your own
life experiences.
So therefore, it's not just about what I
feel now, because what I felt was important
last year, it was different from what I
feel is important now. What I felt was
important 3 years ago when I first started
studying or 5 years ago
is different now, and it's gonna keep changing.
Therefore, we shouldn't always think what what I
think is important. I don't think this is
relevant. Okay. That's nice at at the moment.
You may think it's relevant later. So what
we think is relevant is if most biographers
mention it, we're probably gonna put the, the
incident inside the book. And number
3, if it's relevant to our times to
learn lessons from. So basically, something that we
feel that we can really, really relate to.
So something that we kind of, you know,
are are experiencing generally, we're gonna try and
focus on those things as well.
The next precedent the next precedent or the
next meth method we're gonna use is precedents
for authority.
Now what does that mean? We're gonna utilize
authentic sources over less authentic sources.
K? So there are
authentic sources, and there are less authentic ones,
and there are
fabricated ones. There are different levels
based upon certain narrations that have reached us.
We're gonna try and focus on the most
authentic, but there's a there's a caveat. There's
a warning here. Right?
There is
a movement
right now,
and one of my teachers, he he explained
the Sheikh Musa Sharif, from Jidda. He explained
this very nicely. He said there's a movement
now where we're trying to apply
the principles of hadith,
the science of hadith, the statements of the
prophet, onto the life of the prophet. It's
called the sirrah, this genre. We're trying to
apply those principles,
and this is resulting in some problems. Because
what's end up what's what's happening is, when
you make the criteria too strict
and too strong,
you're not left
with some of the details of the stories,
or you're not left with that many incidents.
And you say, if you make that criteria
so harsh in history,
then you're left with very little. And it's
very difficult to find the chronology actually, because
life of the prophet is a chronology. You're
trying to put things in chronological order. So
therefore, that may not be the best method
or the best methodology to adopt. So what
do we do instead?
We try to take
a
middle approach.
The middle approach is where you kind of
When it comes to something that is very
very important to the beliefs in Islam,
beliefs or what's called Islamic law,
you focus on the most authentic things because
there you don't wanna go wrong. You don't
wanna mess up. And when it comes to
something that's really not that important, like, you
know, this incident happened in year 2, and
another narration says, no. It it it happened
in year 4.
And they're they're both unauthentic, so you say,
well, we can never know when it happened.
No. That's not the approach to take. Or
this person was this many years old. Some
people say that, you know, Ayesha was 40
years old when she married the prophet. And
I'm just saying, oh, no. She was 28
years old when she married the prophet. Some
people listen to there's 3 narrations.
All of them are weak, technically. So how
do you determine which one is going to
be, you know, accepted or whatever it is?
You just use your best judgment. The reason
is if you made a mistake
concerning some event in history, like a year,
or like a date, or like a place,
or something like that, what's the big big
deal? It's not gonna be like the end
of the world. Right? But if you make
a mistake in something that's connected to the
religion, and it's very important, something in your
beliefs, something in,
you know, the the way that you practice
Islam, that's gonna make a big difference. So
having this balanced approach,
I found it, I found this approach to
be actually
summarized very well in the statement of the
famous Imam Ahmad ibn Hambah. Imam Ahmed is
one of the founders of one of the
schools of thought, the 4 4 Islamic schools
of thought which are very popular. When you
take Islamic law on Sunday, if you come
to that, you'll you'll learn more a little
bit more about him.
He has a statement, and his statement was
he was talking about Ibn Ishaq.
K? And, just so you know, this, understanding
this statement may be one of your test
questions. So,
he's talking about Ibn Ishaq who had already
written his book and who had already been
teaching the, you know, the subject of Sira,
the life of the prophet. And he said
about Ibn Ishaq, he said, we may report
the life of the prophet
and other things from a man like Ibn
Ishaq. Ibn Ishaq was a scholar, but Imam
Ahmad is very strict on who he takes
from. He says, we may report the life
of the prophet and other things from a
man like Ibn Ishaq. However, when we come
to the lawful and the unlawful, the halal
and the haram,
we need strong people like this.
We need strong people. We're not just gonna
take it from a person like him because
he was he was an imam. He was
known,
but he wasn't up there. Imam Ahmed had
very strong criteria. So he says, even when
it comes to something like him, when he's
relating something about the life of the prophet,
we can take, you know, some things from
him, but when it comes to Islamic law,
we need people who are even stronger. What
what does that mean? Why am I mentioning
this? I'm mentioning this, and I'm I'm almost
out of time, so I'm gonna summarize this
quickly. I'm mentioning this because you will find
that many Muslims are engaging in debates.
Many Muslims are trying to respond to people
coming up with accusations against the prophet. And
I've heard so many times people, masha Allah,
who have a lot of knowledge. They're even
scholars, but they're not specialists in this field.
And they're going and saying, please don't quote
to me on authentic things. I want authentic
statements, from, for example, from books like Ibn
Ishaq. If you can find it in there,
then I'll go ahead and accept it.
And Imam Ahmed is coming and saying,
be careful even of him.
Be careful of, taking something even from him
because you have to be careful. So what
we're gonna do
is we're gonna have a more lax criteria
when it comes to historical events, and a
more strict criteria
when it comes to something that's related to
beliefs, or something that's related to Islamic law.
Why? Because sometimes people will read something about
the life of the prophet, and they say,
man, that's just, I can't believe this is
happening, you know, this cannot really be true.
I mean that was mentioned in the book
and it just doesn't seem to make sense.
It makes sense for a lot of people,
but for you it may not make sense.
Do you have to necessarily say well no,
you have to believe that because it was
mentioned in the all of the books of
the biographies? No, not necessarily.
So we have to be very careful about
the methodology that we use in all of
these things. Lastly,
the,
we're gonna indicate causes I'll take a question
after, inshallah. We're gonna indicate causes behind events.
So causes behind events, we're gonna try our
best
to try to explain why the prophet did
certain things. Like for example, example I gave
here, the prophet attacked the city.
Ibn Saad, ibn Ishaq, and Tabari. They say
that you'll find a line straight like this
in their book. The prophet
attacked this city in this month,
and then this is what happened, and this
is the kind of things that took place.
And as someone who doesn't understand Islamic law,
someone who doesn't understand context, they're like,
okay,
prophet just decided all of a sudden one
day we just get up together, and let's
go and attack the city. Why did they
attack the city? What was happening?
What was the context behind it? These things
may not be mentioned in certain books of
Sira. So what ends up happening is you
find certain non Muslim authors,
and like bias authors, even some Muslims may
even buy some Muslim authors bought into this,
and they say there you don't need a
precedent to attack a city because he was
the prophet. And some Muslims buy into it
and say, yeah, yeah, because he was the
prophet, just go ahead and attack a city,
no problem, anytime. Because he's the messenger of
Allah, you can't question him. You can try
and understand the rationale.
You can try and under because he's a
lesson for us to learn from. So we
have to be very careful. In fact, I
had to write
a research paper on this because it was
such a major problem. So when we study
the battle of Badr in particular, and when
we study the battle of Khaybar, these are
the 2 main battles where we have a
lot of misconception.
There are other battles as well, Bani Khureyid,
all of that, but when it comes to
Badr and when it comes to Khaybar,
most books of Sira
don't give a proper analysis, unfortunately.
The one Tariq Ramadan,
it's not a criticism against him or anything
like that, but I feel his book could
have done a lot better on this. Adil
Salahi,
the second book that's recommended for reading, he's
done a much much better job in trying
to explain, but part of the problem with
these other two books that I've mentioned is
that they're heavily reliant upon these early sources
that I mentioned without trying to figure out
the detailed,
you know, where we should be a little
bit more critical in certain certain events, certain
sources, and certain things like that. So we
just have to, you know, be aware of
that. These are bizarre stories we may read
in a seerah, in a book of life
of the prophet or somewhere that can cause
some issues.
Lastly, we're gonna indicate, causes behind events. I
I mentioned that. We're gonna highlight lessons from
the past. So it's very important that we
learn lessons so that we can actually build
the future and understand our present situation. And
lastly,
the life of the prophet as a separate
genre. So we have to understand how was
this knowledge transmitted.
Right? Was this in your notes, by the
way? Did everyone get this, in their notes?
Did anyone get this in their notes?
So I I I apologize. I didn't, send
this out. It's,
we'll try and send it out to you,
inshallah. Remind me, inshallah. It's gonna be uploaded.
I sent the wrong file. So I had
added this recently, but we sent out the
other file. So
2 minutes, InshaAllah.
So what happened was, how did the life
of the prophet
become a separate genre? What's called the Sira.
There's Sira and then there's Hadith.
Right? There's 2 things you have to understand.
So the companions
of the prophet who are eyewitnesses, who lived
with them, they began to teach their students,
and they established schools to teach, you know,
people about what he was really like. So
there was this, you know, there was this
movement that was going on about an educational
movement.
Scholars were produced later on, and these scholars
took all of this knowledge and they turned
it into the science called Sira.
Sira which means the way or the light.
It's Sira basically refers to the life of
the prophet. Generally, when you say sira can
be a life of anyone, a biography. But
generally, when you say as sira, the sira,
it means the life of the prophet. Why
am I mentioning this? Again, I'm mentioning this
because
some of you have heard of the accusation
that hadith
or all hadith statements of the prophet, they
all originated 200 years later with Bukhari, or
they originated 150 years or 100 years later
or something like that. The same accusation is
mentioned in Sira, and unfortunately, even some Muslim
authors have bought into this idea.
Some profess I don't wanna mention the name
of professors, you know? They may go into
Princeton University in the graduate department or something
like that, but it's better it's better that
they should not buy into some of these
ideas, and they should not be propagating these
type of things.
So the difference between hadith and Sira. Okay?
A hadith is a saying, an action, or
a description about the prophet. The Sira is
the life of the prophet, generally in chronological
order. What that means is that every single
hadith
can actually be incorporated
into Sira,
but not everything in Sira can go into
hadith. Because Sira, the life of the prophet,
talks about the geographical area. It talks about
the Arab life.
It talks about, poetry. It talks about ancient
Arabs. To give you a general context and
framework about the life of the prophet gives
you the setting.
That cannot somehow be transferred and say, oh,
that's a statement of the prophet or a
description of the prophet. No. But anything in
hadith can actually go over. So these 2
can overlap very much,
and we need to make them overlap more
and more, and that's what professor Tarek Ramadan
has done an amazing job of helping combine
the 2 together, if you if you decide
to read his book. It's not required. But
keeping these 2 separate as 2 separate genres
is something that's very common. It's something that,
you know, most Muslim scholars have done. And
like I said, Sira can include history of
Arab tribes, it can include geography, it can
include all of that. So quick review, we've
studied the importance of accurate portrayal, the need
why Muslims need to know the life of
the prophet methodology,
and the life of the prophet as a
separate genre. Can I take one question? One
question, inshallah.
Yeah. Okay. So let me explain that right
now. So,
textbooks.
The book that we're sending out is a
book that's
a draft that I'm I'm in the process
of writing right now. That's gonna be your
primary source.
The all your testing,
all your, you know, quizzes and essays and
all of that stuff is gonna be from
that book. So you you have to make
sure to read that book that we're sending
out,
that's where everything is gonna be. The other
two books are references for you. If you
want to read them, it'll increase your knowledge,
it'll give you a better understanding, you may
be able to answer the essay questions a
little bit better, It'll make life easier for
you, but they're not absolutely required, so you
know exactly what you're gonna be tested on.
And when you know what you're gonna be
tested on, that anxiety and test anxiety and
stuff is is hopefully gonna go away a
little bit. Yeah. Last question, and then we
have to do housekeeping. Yeah.
No. No. No. Primary sore I mean, prime
primary reference, not primary source. Yeah.
For attending.