Mustafa Umar – Why Are There Different Opinions in Islam and What Should I Follow
AI: Summary ©
The speakers discuss the differences of opinion on Islam, including the lack of clarity and authenticity in written and audio verses, the importance of intentions and intentions in politics, and the need for sincerity and understanding of the Prophet Muhammad sallavi wa wa wa wa wa. They stress the importance of following a mithhab and consulting with a scholar, as well as the use of scholarships and the history of the term "AP" in Islam, including the confusion surrounding "hasn't been met" label in the title of the book "AP". They emphasize the importance of learning from the past and building upon their own methods, as well as the history of the term "AP" in Islam, including the confusion surrounding "hasn't been met" label in the title of the book "AP."
AI: Summary ©
Alright, Salam Aleykum everyone.
Alright, Salam Aleykum everyone.
Alright, I hope you know where to get
started inshallah.
Today we have Chickens to Palmer.
If you guys remember, this topic was requested
by Chicka Hick for like a month ago.
We're going to talk about Medahik.
That's the rest of the title.
Navigating the differences of opinion.
And so, I hope you guys prepared your
questions.
You've had a whole month to do so.
So, without further ado, Chickens to Palmer will
get us started.
So, my first question was going to be,
you know, who recommended this topic?
You've announced that already, Dr. Hazel.
Alhamdulillah.
And the second correction is the title itself.
This was actually a lecture I gave at
MSA West about a year ago.
So, they came up with Navigating Differences of
Opinion.
Was there another title, *, for this topic?
No?
That's fine.
It works.
It does the job.
Huh?
That's exactly what she wanted.
She wanted that?
Oh, perfect.
Alhamdulillah.
So, I'm going to get started immediately, as
is my habit.
So, the first point to remember is that
the fundamentals of Islam are very clear.
You need to make wudu before you pray.
No difference of opinion about it.
You need to pray five times a day.
The number of rakahs, of units in prayer.
Two for Fajr, four for Zohr.
How many for Asr?
Four.
Asr, Maghrib is three, and then Nafsha is?
Four.
Four.
Good.
I'm starting to trip some people up.
The amount of zakah is how much on
money?
2.5%. The basics of marriage and a
marriage contract.
The basics of divorce and a divorce contract.
The rules of inheritance.
The economic principles, which are what's allowed, what's
not allowed.
These things are clear cut in Islam.
It's black and white.
It's halal and haram.
There's no room for any difference of opinion.
But then, there's this other aspect.
Sometimes when you ask a question to a
scholar or to someone, and they answer with,
Well, there's a difference of opinion on that.
And what happens is, there's going to be
many people, when they hear that answer, there's
an emotional response.
And it's very important to differentiate between an
emotional response and an intellectual rational response.
The emotional response that's going to be triggered,
often times can be a trauma response.
Because it's something that bothers you.
You hear a difference of opinion, and you're
like, I've heard this before.
Or what is that supposed to mean?
Or why is this?
So let me ask you, honestly.
How many of you, when you heard, when
you asked a question about Islam, even once
in your life.
You asked a question about Islam, and the
answer that you got was, there's a difference
of opinion, and you had an emotional response.
And you're like, whatever it was, you're like,
am I the only one?
I'm raising my hand.
So some of you have had that response.
Now, it's very important for us to understand
ourselves.
It's important for us to understand that when
we react to something, is it an emotional
response?
Is it a rational response?
If it's an emotional response, and the idea
of difference of opinion bothers us, then we
have to ask ourselves, why does it bother
us?
What's concerning about it, when we hear something
like that?
What's confusing about it?
So, this will happen sometimes.
So for example, if you see somebody praying
differently.
You can walk over to them, and you're
like, you were taught how to pray, so
you hold your hands like this.
You go to somebody else, and you don't
know that there's a difference of opinion.
You go to tell the other person, you
say, you know what, you're not supposed to
hold your hands like that.
They're holding their hands in the wrong way.
So there can be two potential scenarios.
The first scenario is that the person doesn't
know what they're doing.
Maybe they're holding their hands on top of
their head.
Or maybe they're holding their hands behind their
back.
And you're like, what are you doing, man?
That's not how you pray.
Like, I know how to pray, that's not
the way you're supposed to be praying.
That could be one of the things.
The second response, the second scenario could be,
they're praying with their hands above their navel.
Or on their chest.
Or below their navel.
Or maybe even with their hands at their
sides.
And they're following a different opinion.
And when some people say, what do you
mean, there's two different ways to pray?
There's three different ways to hold your hands
when you're praying.
There's four different ways to hold your hands
when you're praying.
And all of them are like valid.
It's going to bother some people.
Sometimes you may read in a book.
It says Imam Shafi, he said this.
Imam Malik said this.
You go and ask one shaykh in one
masjid, they'll give you one answer.
You go and ask another shaykh in another
masjid, he gives you a different answer.
And the reason why this bothers us, part
of the reason, is because we're used to
learning everything as being black and white in
school.
So when you study something, 1 plus 1
is 2.
There's no difference of opinion.
There's no, well, according to Newton it was
2.
And according to, you know, Javed Ibn Hayyan,
the inventor of algebra, it was, there's no
two opinions.
Right?
When you learn scientific facts, you don't get,
usually, I mean unless you get into the
higher levels of science, you don't get difference
of opinion.
So if you ask somebody, right?
You're in school.
How many planets are there in our solar
system?
What's the answer?
I heard 9.
I heard 8.
Whoa, there's a difference of opinion on the
number of planets in our solar system.
There is.
Because what happened was, when I was in
high school, or I was in elementary school,
we were taught that there were 9 planets
in the solar system.
And now, they've changed that up, and they
said that there's 8 planets, and there's how
many dwarf planets?
I heard a question, I heard a question.
Well, we need to, I'm recommending a topic
for next month.
It's going to be astronomy.
There's 3 dwarf planets that we know about
until now.
Right?
So that means there's at least 8 planets
in our solar system that we've identified.
There could be other smaller ones or whatever.
And Pluto got delisted as being a planet
to being a dwarf planet, etc., etc.
But when we're taught things, especially in your
high school textbook, in your middle school textbook,
it's all black and white.
It's all clear cut.
It's one way.
When you study history, take an American history
class, you take a Roman, ancient Roman history
class, you get one story, and that's it.
There's no, well, according to this historian, this
is what happened.
According to this, the battle took place in
a different way, and the numbers were different.
You get that in university.
You don't get that in elementary, middle school,
and high school.
So many of us, we have a very
elementary or middle school understanding and way of
viewing the complexity of Islamic sciences.
And that's part of the problem.
So we end up getting confused when we
hear difference of opinion.
And we end up in two extremes.
And I'm going to mention this because you
need to avoid both of these extremes.
And it's very easy to fall into it.
And I've been in both of them.
I can tell you, everyone who starts studying
Islam, they end up going, drifting into one
way, depending on who you hang out with
and which books you read.
And then you realize, well, that's a little
cultish, or that's a little bit, that's not
the right way.
So then you go and you flip, and
the pendulum swings the other way, and you
go to the other thing.
So the two extremes you should be wary
of is that the view that on every
issue in Islam, there's only one way on
everything.
There's only one correct answer on everything.
So I heard that this issue came up
when it came to keeping a dog.
So Dr. Hayford mentioned to me.
She gave an answer.
I wasn't there.
She didn't tell me what her answer was.
But then she said something about difference of
opinion.
And people are like, what do you mean?
It's one answer.
If you grew up hating dogs, and you're
afraid of dogs, and your mom and your
brothers, they all climb up a tree when
they see a dog, you know which view
you're going to lean towards.
How many of you have those parents?
One parent is super scared of dogs.
She's like, out of there.
I had one too.
And then if you're like someone who grew
up, and you're like, I just love dogs,
and they're the nicest thing, and I remember
something happened in my life, and some people,
they love their dogs more than their children.
And they're like, these children, they're disobedient.
Sometimes these dogs, they always do what I
say.
You can see, naturally, your inclination is going
to lean towards a different opinion of you.
You're going to be leaning a different way.
So this is one extreme.
Is that on everything, there's only one way.
There's only one way to hold your hands.
Anybody who holds their hands differently at the
wrong spot that you don't hold your hands
exactly like that, your job is to go
and correct the entire world and bring them
on the real sunnah of the Prophet ﷺ.
There are several people who fall into this
extreme because they don't understand why there's a
difference of opinion, what's the legitimacy behind difference
of opinion.
So avoid that.
Be cautious about that.
And we're not talking about that there's five
prayers in a day.
We're not talking about that five prayers is
two rakahs.
That's only one.
There's only one way on that.
But on some things, there's not only one
way.
The second extreme is that everything is relative.
There is no truth.
You become a postmodernist and you're like, anyone's
interpretation is valid.
If I read the Qur'an and I
come up with my own understanding, Allah should
accept it because everybody's view is equal to
everyone else's view and Allah has made everything
flexible and there's no truth.
None of these opinions are right or wrong
or anything like that.
This is another extreme.
Be careful of both extremes.
So then, the second part.
Why are there differences of opinion?
I might give you some examples, but why
are there differences of opinion?
Well, in Islam, we have two sources.
We have the Qur'an and we have
the sunnah.
Qur'an is the revelation to the Prophet,
peace be upon him, 6236 verses revealed directly
to the Prophet and preserved.
The sunnah is the teachings of the Prophet,
peace be upon him, in the way in
which he wanted other people to follow.
So it's the...
Hadith is different than sunnah.
Hadith, something the Prophet said, something the Prophet
did, or something the Prophet was described as
being.
Sunnah means something the Prophet wanted you to
do.
It's called sunnah.
So you have Qur'an and you have
sunnah and that's the two main sources of
Islam.
Now, when you have a question and you're
like, if there's something very specific that you
want answered and the Prophet in the Qur
'an did not give a direct answer, you
can't just go back and ask the Prophet.
You can't go back and ask Allah directly
and be like, Oh Allah, I want to
know what you said about dogs in the
Qur'an.
You can use AI and you can go
and get every single verse about dogs in
the Qur'an and it can give you
back every single hadith, a saying of the
Prophet about dogs and it can give you
the grading of all those hadiths.
It's almost there, not there yet, but it's
almost there.
And still you're not going to get a
clear cut answer because the Prophet didn't clearly
say, you are not allowed to have a
dog in your house under any circumstance.
He didn't say something like that.
Use different language.
So there's a level of interpretation that needs
to happen in order for you to arrive
at an answer.
And if you're going to arrive at a
correct answer on something where the Qur'an
or the sunnah is not completely clear, you
need to know four things to get a
proper answer.
And that's where AI cannot help you automatically.
So if you put in AI's artificial intelligence,
I'm sure everyone knows that by now, but
artificial intelligence, if you put it, take an
artificial intelligence engine, whichever one it is, and
you put every single verse in the Qur
'an in there, you put every single hadith
that you can find, take about 50,000
mostly authentic hadith, and you put it into
an engine.
And then you ask it certain questions that
were not directly answered by the Qur'an
or sunnah, but indirectly, it's not going to
be able to figure out an answer for
you, no matter how intelligent AI is, because
it needs to know four other things.
It's not enough data.
The four things that you need to know
is the language that was used, the language
in the Qur'an, how it was used.
You need to know the style of the
language that was being used because it's not
literal.
It's a specific language.
Number three, you need to know the historical
context of that verse or that hadith.
And number four, you need to understand how
other people understood it.
How did the sahaba, how did the companions
understand this verse, understand this hadith?
These are, I mean, these are just a
smaller number, it's more than that, but about
four important things you need to know to
be able to answer it.
So what ends up happening is that this
gives us a hint to what are the
main reasons for why there are differences of
opinion on some questions when we ask about
Islam.
So the two main reasons for the difference,
these are things you need to know to
understand correctly.
The two main reasons why there are differences
of opinion in Islam is the lack of
clarity on some texts and the lack of
authenticity in some texts.
What does that mean?
Clarity means that there's some level of ambiguity
in a text, in the Quran, or in
a hadith, where it's not 100% clear
cut and it could be read in a
different way.
And the second was authenticity.
All verses of Quran are authentic, equal.
All hadith are not equally authentic.
Some people will grade them as authentic, some
scholars will grade them as not being highly
authentic.
So these are the two reasons that cause
differences of opinion because there's a different way
of looking at a verse, understanding what it
was supposed to mean, and I'm going to
give you an example in a moment.
Let me give you an example right now
so we don't get too much into theory
and then you're like, give me some examples.
Alright, take one example.
One example is when you wipe over your
head.
You're making wudu.
When you make wudu, you wash your hands
three times, you rinse your mouth three times.
What do you do next?
I do this with my kids, it's like
a song.
You do what?
Your nose three times.
And then?
Face three times.
And then?
Right arm three times.
And then?
Left arm three times.
And then?
Your head.
Do you wash your head or do you
wipe your head?
You wipe your head.
The difference between washing and wiping is you
don't use as much water.
So you're going to wipe your head.
How much of your head do you wipe?
How much of your head do you have
to wipe?
Now the guys, they're like, who cares?
This is not an important issue for the
guys.
But this is a very important issue for
the girls.
Because when they go into a public bathroom
and they got their hijab on, and they're
like, I gotta make wudu, and they're like,
I gotta take off this whole hijab, and
I have to reach underneath, and then my
whole under hijab, and everything is all messed
up.
It would be so nice if I didn't
have to wipe the entire head when I'm
already wearing hijab, and I'm not at home,
and I have to retie the hijab again.
So for the girls, this is a really
important question.
And guys are like, yeah, whatever, man.
It's not a big deal.
It takes like one second.
For the girls, it can't take much longer.
So this becomes now an important question.
Say, you know what?
Do you always have to wipe your whole
head?
Or can you sometimes get away with just
wiping part of your head?
Okay?
So now, to complicate things, you have several
differences of opinion on this.
So some of you have heard of the
four main schools of thought in Islam.
Like the well-known schools of thought in
Islamic law.
How many of you have heard of the
four schools of thought?
Almost everybody.
So you have the Hanafi, Maliki, Shafi'i,
and Hanbali school.
The Hanafi school says you have to wipe
part of your head.
The Shafi'i school says you have to
wipe part of your head.
The Maliki school says you have to wipe
your entire head.
Sorry, sister.
And the Hanbali school says you have to
wipe your entire head.
So what's the ratio of split so far?
50-50.
You got two madhabs here, and then you
got two madhabs over here.
And then you take the two that say
you only got to wipe part of your
head.
And they don't say the same thing.
Imam Abu Hanifa says you have to wipe
one-fourth of your head.
Imam Shafi'i says you have to wipe
one little tiny touch.
That's it.
Three hairs.
They go like that.
You take a little drop of water.
You go under your hijab.
And you just go like that.
And you're like, I wipe my head.
Because technically Allah said in the Quran to
wipe your head.
But He didn't say how much to wipe
your head.
So Imam Shafi'i took this literally.
And he goes, you can just go get
some water.
And you can just go like anywhere.
You go to here.
You reach from the back underneath the hijab.
You just go like right there.
And you're good.
And that's the fight.
Now you shouldn't do this normally.
It's recommended to wipe your entire head according
to everybody.
But what's the absolute minimum?
Massive difference of opinion.
Now I want you to think about how
serious this is.
The difference of opinion.
The Hanbalis and the Maliki scholars.
They're looking at the other two scholars.
And they're like, you guys are doing this?
And you're allowing this?
If you don't wipe your head, it's a
requirement of wudu.
If your wudu is not valid, your prayer
is not valid.
If your prayer is not valid, this is
like the second pillar of Islam after la
ilaha illallah.
This is a really big deal.
But where did it originate?
It originated from an ambiguity in the Quran
that Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala allowed to
exist.
Because he said, وَمْسَحُوا بِرُؤُسِكُمْ He says, and
wipe your heads.
And this Ba, B.
The letter Ba with the kasra.
This B has several different meanings in the
Arabic language.
I'm not going to get into breaking down
and all of that stuff.
But basically, this could be known as Ba
al-Isaq or this could be Ba al
-Zahidah.
Depending on what you think about the Ba,
and depending on the other hadiths about how
the Prophet peace be upon him, when he
wiped over his turban, he wiped over the
front part of his head, why did he
do that?
Is that hadith authentic?
If it's authentic, did he already have wudu
when he was making wudu?
Because sometimes he already had wudu and then
he would make wudu again.
Or is this an evidence to show that
the Ba in the Quran was intended and
understood by the Prophet as being something else.
That's just one example of a difference of
opinion.
That's on a major issue, on the one
hand you're like, man, the validity of wudu,
that's huge.
It is huge.
But at the same time, are any of
these people saying that you don't need to
make wudu when you pray?
No.
Are any of them saying, you know what,
you can skip your head for wudu.
If you have a hijab on, it's not
a difficult thing to take it off.
Just skip the head and do the rest
of the wudu.
Do your best.
Wash everything else.
Are there anybody saying that?
No.
So, there is a difference of opinion for
a rational reason.
Not for an emotional reason.
For a good reason, which Allah subhanahu wa
ta'ala allowed to exist.
So then somebody will come along.
Someone a little skeptical will come along and
be like, why did Allah leave those ambiguous
things in there?
Like, why is there ambiguity in the Quran?
He could have made everything 100% solid
without allowing for any difference of opinion whatsoever.
Why not close the door so that we,
as people who have had a bad experience
in our life, don't have emotional responses to
the phrase difference of opinion anymore.
That's the thought that some people are going
to have.
He could have done it.
But he didn't do it.
So there's got to be some wisdom behind
why Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala didn't close
that door.
And he didn't tell us directly.
Look, if we're intelligent enough, we can think
it out a little bit.
We can realize that there's probably two reasons.
Reason number one is that when Allah allows
some level of ambiguity to exist, people need
to think and they need to figure it
out.
When they need to think and figure it
out, what kind of society are you going
to produce when you're encouraging people that when
they approach their book, they need to put
some effort and time and reflection to think
and figure it out?
You can produce an amazingly intelligent society.
So if you look at these scholars that
I just mentioned, Imam Shafi'i, Abu Hanifa,
Malik, Imam Ahmed and Muhammad, they lived in
an era that was known as the golden
age of Islam.
The Muslims were at the top.
They were the top scientists in the world.
They were the top astronomers in the world.
Whether they identified dwarf planets or they didn't
identify dwarfs, they had the most advanced mathematics.
They had the most everything.
So they were really highly advanced.
And part of the reason for their advancement,
when did this start?
This started when Islam came.
What sciences and what civilization did the Arabs
have before the Quran was revealed?
Desert dwelling people with no civilization.
They were nowhere in anything.
So the Quran and the Sunnah actually made
them think and caused them to excel in
all of these other fields.
So that's one of the reasons why Allah
Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala may have left some
of these ambiguities.
The second is that the Quran is a
beautiful book.
It's not poetry.
It's not prose either.
But it's to be recited.
The Quran is a very beautiful book.
And if you take a book like that
and you turn it into a very literal
law textbook where it reads like, if you
do this, then you wipe your head this
way.
And if you do this, then you do
this.
Can you imagine listening to that, reciting it
for Taraweeh, memorizing those verses?
It'll become an extremely dry, boring book.
I guarantee you.
You ever try to memorize an Islamic law
book written by Abu Hanif or Ashraf?
Any Muslim.
Try to read it and memorize it and
recite it.
The most boring thing you've ever heard.
I know because I've had to memorize some
of those books in my studies.
They make you memorize a lot of stuff.
So it's horrible.
But then you look at the Quran.
It has stories and it has rhetoric and
it has ellipses and it has palindromes in
there.
It has so many different aesthetic devices in
the language.
You're not going to find that.
You're going to naturally find some level of
ambiguity.
Metaphors and similes and things like that are
going to be in there.
You don't find them in a legal textbook.
So there's a wisdom behind why Allah subhanahu
wa ta'ala allowed these things to exist.
So if we start with that and we
say, okay, the reason for difference of opinion
are two main things.
Look at some of the two main things.
What's one?
Yes, ambiguity or lack of clarity.
Exactly.
And what's the second reason?
Authenticity or lack of authenticity.
Very good.
These are two reasons.
So they exist in the Quran whether you
know it or you don't know it.
Whether you like it or you don't like
it and whenever Allah allows something to exist
or happen, there's always some wisdom behind it.
So some people, again, part of their emotional
response is, why do these scholars have to
disagree with one another?
Why can't they just get along?
It's not that they're not getting along.
It's that they're seeing something different.
Why can't someone just give me a black
and white answer, a clear-cut answer?
And I'm going to talk a little bit
more about that.
But they could.
But they're trying to be more transparent with
you, letting you know that this is an
issue that's black and white and this is
an issue where there is some room for
difference of opinion because of ambiguity and authenticity
in one of the texts that talked about
that particular issue.
So I'm going to start with three stories
to show that these differences of opinion existed
during the lifetime of the Prophet Muhammad sallallahu
alayhi wa sallam, peace and blessings be upon
him.
So the first story is that these are
all authentic hadith, by the way.
Just to clarify the authenticity part.
It was a group of Muslims and they
were on a journey and they were traveling
and the Messenger of Allah was not with
them.
So they were nearby, they were like near
a mountain, like maybe a hill or a
mountain or something.
And if you've ever...
How many of you have been to Big
Bear?
Like driven up the hill or something?
You see those signs?
It says watch for falling rocks, right?
So like little pieces of rock can...
If you're like near the edge of the
mountain because you're going up the mountain, you're
like driving up, a little piece of rock
could potentially come and fall on your car
or fall in the way because it's a
mountain.
So the Sahaba, the companions, they were riding
on a journey and they were near one
of these mountains and there's potential falling rocks
that can come because they were next to
the edge of the mountain.
And what happened was a piece of rock
fell from the mountain and hit one of
the companions in the head and he was
pretty badly injured.
But he didn't die.
So they wrapped a bandage around him, you
know, around his head and they continued on
their journey.
The next morning, he woke up and he
discovered horrible timing, but not his fault.
He had a *.
He had a nocturnal emission.
You guys hopefully understand what that means.
And now, he needs to do what before
he can pray?
He needs to make ghusl.
He needs to take a bath.
It's a requirement in Islam.
It's mentioned in the Qur'an.
If you're in a state of janada, meaning
you're in a state where you have climaxed,
you need to make ghusl.
You have to take a full shower, a
full bath.
So, he goes and he's like, this is
not going to go well.
He's injured, he's got a bad, you know,
bad injury, the rock hit him.
So he goes to his Muslims, fellow Muslims.
And these are sahaba, these are companions who
live with the Messenger of Allah.
And they say, the Messenger of Allah was
not there.
You can't text message him.
They didn't have, you know, pigeons that they
could send the message and then get a
message back quickly or something like that.
So they said, you know what guys?
Is there any exception for me because I'm
injured?
And all the people he went around and
asked them, they're like, amen.
The Qur'an says you got to make
wudu or you got to make ghusl before
you pray.
It's a requirement.
If you're a good Muslim, you should fear
Allah.
You should do what Allah subhanahu wa ta
'ala wants you to do.
He said, no, there's no exception for you.
The guy said, okay, whatever Allah wants me
to do, I'm going to do it.
So he went in the bathroom.
There's no bathroom because they're traveling in the
middle of the desert.
So he went behind some rock or something
like that, or maybe someone was shielding him
or whatever and took off his clothes.
And he got his water bucket because that's
how they showered in the thing.
It had like a bucket of water.
And he poured the water over his head.
The water seeped into his wound and he
fell down.
And he died.
He's dead.
They buried him.
They went back to the city of Medina.
Somebody told the Prophet, peace be upon him,
what happened.
Said, this companion of yours, he died.
The Prophet, peace be upon him, very rarely,
very rarely would he ever get mad.
He was a very calm and composed person.
You can count the number of times on
your fingers how many times he got mad.
This was one of those occasions.
He became furious.
And he said, they killed him.
He said, Allah might kill them because of
what they said.
He said, if they don't know, why don't
they ask?
And who is he talking about?
He's talking about the people who gave the
answer and said, you know what, there's no
exception for you.
You got to do it because he asked.
He said, no.
So he got really mad.
And then he said, asking is the cure
for ignorance.
He said, if you don't know, if these
people don't know, these people were not very
knowledgeable companions.
These are not like, these are not Abu
Bakr and Omar and Ali and Ibn Mas
'ud and Ibn Habbas.
These are not the knowledgeable companions.
These are like people who've met the Prophet,
peace be upon him.
So they didn't really know, but they kind
of just gave an answer.
And he knew that they didn't know because
any knowledgeable, knowledgeable companion would have known that,
you know what, there's going to be an
exception when it comes to things like this.
So he got very upset.
And then he said, the guy didn't need
to wash his head because of his injury.
He could have just wiped over the bandage
and that's enough.
Some of you have learned that in like
a fifth class or something like that.
This is part of Islamic law.
So what do we learn?
We learn something about differences of opinion from
this story.
What do we learn about differences of opinion?
Who can tell me?
What is the moral of the story when
it comes to differences of opinion?
Because one person had one opinion, another person
had a different opinion, and another guy was
asking about, hey, is there another opinion that
I can follow that may be correct or
something like that?
Answer this for me.
Who has the two differences of opinion and
what does it teach us about the value
of each one of them?
Did he think there was a difference of
opinion?
No, he was asking.
So he didn't know.
He was hoping.
He was hoping, right?
Yes.
Yeah, he had felt probably.
The people who have the differences, who had
told them, in essence, like, you know, harm.
Like, if there's harm being done, that's greater.
If there's greater harm that's being done, then
another...
So who had the differences of opinion?
The sahaba and the prophets of Allah.
Yeah, exactly.
The ones who gave the wrong answer.
And the prophet.
Okay?
So there's two opinions.
The prophet's opinion is obviously always right, right?
So you got one opinion here, and you
got these people who are completely wrong in
their view.
And so the first thing that we learn
is that there's gonna be a situation where
somebody has a different opinion, and their different
opinion can be completely wrong.
There are some people who've said, you know
what?
I think it's okay to drink alcohol.
Because the verse in the Quran, it says,
you know what?
If you...
Just don't approach prayer when you're intoxicated until
you can understand what you're saying.
They say, you know what?
I always drink after I finish my prayer.
Mashallah.
Difference of opinion.
No, it's not a difference of opinion.
Like, this is your view, but it's not
a valid difference of opinion.
For reasons which maybe we'll talk about later.
So this is story number one.
Story number two.
Two Muslims were traveling through the desert.
See, there's only gonna be a difference of
opinion usually when they're traveling.
The Prophet's not there.
Because if the Prophet's there, there's no difference
of opinion.
Right?
Immediately resolved.
So two Muslims are traveling through the desert.
It's time for them to pray.
They have no water with them.
So they both went and performed tayammum.
Tayammum is wudu, dry wudu.
Wudu is dirt, basically.
Now later on, and this is valid, and
you can do that, because they didn't have
enough water.
So later on, they found some water.
And there was still time left for the
prayer which they've already performed.
So the first guy goes, I'm gonna repeat
my prayer, because I have to.
Because we found water, and there's enough time
for that prayer.
Our prayer is not valid.
We have to perform that prayer again.
The second guy, he said, at the time
we had no water, it was time for
prayer.
I made my tayammum.
I finished my prayer.
I did everything that I was supposed to
do.
Now that we found water, why do I
have to repeat it?
My prayer is already finished.
I don't need to repeat my prayer a
second time.
So they kind of discussed it, and they
said, okay, you do your prayer.
You repeat your prayer.
I'm not gonna repeat my prayer.
None of them probably got into an argument.
Never gonna talk to you again.
Don't come to my masjid.
Some Muslims, you know, they just be like,
I don't hate this guy.
Who does he think he is?
These are companions.
They were fine.
Okay, you gonna repray?
Go.
I'm not gonna repray.
They left it.
They went back to Medina.
They asked the Prophet, which one of us
is correct?
They looked at the first guy.
They looked at the second guy who did
not repeat his prayer.
And he said, you have followed my sunnah.
You followed my true teachings, and your prayer
is valid, and it counts.
None of the other guys like.
Prophet looks at the second guy, and he
goes, and you get double reward.
Now, question is, what do you learn from
this story about differences of opinion?
Yes, go ahead.
That both are right, as long as they're,
I guess, as long as they're already right.
So they weren't, as long as it's valid.
You think as long as it's valid, then
they're both right?
Yes.
You're close.
A little bit different in the back.
It's based on their intention.
Okay.
Which one of them had a bad intention?
Okay.
So because they both had good intentions, both
of them are equally right, and we believe
in postmodernism, and there is no truth.
Now, what are you trying to say?
Neither of them skip prayer, and therefore, neither
of them disobey Allah.
What do we learn from this story about
differences of opinion specifically?
Let me tell you this.
Differences of opinion, the intention, I know, I
always hear, I hear this a lot.
Intention.
Intention is very, very important.
Intention is important, but it's less important than
the second thing we're going to talk about.
But I'll get to it in a moment.
Kind of like what you said, like there's
no wrong answer, but maybe there's like something
more mustahab and you get like more hasanat
for doing it.
Hmm.
Okay.
Let me ask you this question.
Before I ask anyone else.
How many of you would have followed the
second guy and not repeated your prayer?
And you'd be like, I already prayed.
How many of you would have prayed again?
And said, you know what?
I'm going to do it again.
Thinking that you have to do it again.
So now you know the answer.
So what do we learn about difference of
opinion?
Who can tell me?
See, I keep hearing both can be right.
And this is what's bothering me.
Yes.
Yeah, exactly.
It's not that they're both right.
One guy was right and one guy was
wrong.
Who was wrong?
The guy who insisted that we have to
pray again.
He was wrong, but just straight up.
He's wrong.
I know it doesn't feel nice to say
that, you know, but that's what it is.
It's what the prophet is saying.
You see the first guy, the guy who
didn't repeat his prayer.
He said, you're right.
The second guy, he's making him feel better.
And he's like, even though you're wrong, each
of like counts as nothing for you, but
let's not forget.
He's wrong.
So there's a right and there's a wrong,
but the wrong is not so bad because
nobody died.
Like in the first story, right?
The wrong was like, even though you were
wrong, it was, it actually just give you
more reward.
Like you being wrong, actually helped you a
little bit rather than harmed you.
That's what we learn from the second story.
Now the third story, the last story.
One time, the prophet, peace be upon him,
told his companions, he said, you're going to,
this is right after the battle of the
trench.
He said, go to the tribe of Khorezla,
which is a Jewish tribe.
Go to Banu Khorezla.
And he says, when you're going, do not
pray Asr until you reach Banu Khorezla, the
village where they are.
He said, don't pray Asr until you get
there.
So when they got there, they're traveling, they're
traveling.
Time for Asr.
It's almost done.
What's the ending time for Asr?
Raise your hand.
At sunset.
Okay.
So you can pray Asr.
You're not supposed to delay, but you can
pray Asr anytime before sunset comes in.
So sunset is coming.
It's almost getting time for Asr.
And they're still far from Banu Khorezla.
So now they stop.
And one group on the side, there's a
lot of companions.
So half of them, they're like, hey guys,
time for prayer is almost going.
We need to pray Asr.
And then the other group says, wait, didn't
you hear what the Prophet said?
The Prophet said, don't pray Asr until you
get to Khorezla.
And we're not there yet.
So the first group responds, probably, again they
don't go into details, but they probably responded,
like it is a verse in the Quran.
وَإِنَّ صُلَاتِكَ الْمُؤْمِنِينَ كِتَابٌ مَوْقُوتًا That prayers have
been prescribed at specific times.
We have to pray on time.
And the other one will say, don't you
know that Allah says in the Quran, وَوَلَا
أَتَاكُمُ اللَّهُ وَرَسُولُهُ فَأَخْذُهُ That whatever Allah and
His Messenger give you, you take it.
And whatever they tell you not to do,
you don't do it.
The Prophet told us, don't pray until you
reach Khorezla.
So you can imagine the first group going
like, you know what, that's not what he
meant.
Like he didn't want us to not pray
on time.
He thought we'd make it in time or
he was trying to tell us to speed
up or something like that.
And the other one said, no, we take
the Prophet and exactly what he said and
his wording was, do not pray until you
reach Khorezla.
Doesn't matter what time that's going to be.
I always ask, always ask my audience this
question.
If you were there, how many of you
would have delayed your prayer and prayed only
once you reach Bano Khorezla?
Even if it's at night time, raise your
hand.
How many of you would have prayed on
time in the Asr prayer saying that that's
not what the Prophet meant?
Raise your hand.
Some are debating, I know.
It's almost always a 50-50 or 60
-40 split.
Wherever I go, it's almost always.
And just a little hint, the ones who
raised their hands for, wait, which one was
the first one?
Praying late, right?
The ones who raised their hands on praying
late, you lean more towards the Shafi'i
and humbly school of Zikr.
And you don't even know it.
And the ones who would have prayed on
time, you lean more towards the Hanafi and
the Maliki school of Zikr.
In general, this is a generalization, but I'll
ask you a question in a moment.
So, what happened?
So, after they arrived, some of them prayed.
Some of them delayed and they prayed at
night time because they got there very, very
late.
So they were praying like at Isha time.
And then the two Sahaba, the two groups,
because they had a difference of opinion, they
got into a big fight with each other.
No, I'm just kidding.
That's what would have happened if they were
here in Southern California.
I'm not going to mention much, but that's
what would have happened here.
You said it, Nami.
You have the right to say it because
she knows what happens in the back office
and other stuff.
Nothing happened.
The Sahaba, they didn't get into an argument.
They didn't go, I'm not going to talk
to you anymore because you have difference of
opinion.
They went to the Prophet, peace be upon
him, and they asked him, see, this is
what happened.
Which one of us was right?
Just like he said last time, he told
the other guy, you're right and you get
double reward.
Nice way to respond.
So they asked the Messenger of Allah, which
one of us is right?
And you know what his response was?
Who can tell me what his response was?
Hmm?
Yeah.
No, I didn't say both.
Close, you're close.
He smiled and...
Exactly.
He just smiled and he's good.
I'm not even going to answer you.
You don't even get an answer.
You get nothing.
The answer is like, what does that mean?
What lesson do we learn from the Prophet,
peace be upon him, about difference of opinion
from this story?
Tell me.
Who has not answered anything?
Go ahead.
In what sense?
Exactly.
That's why, so the Messenger of Allah, when
he said like this, what he's basically saying
is that both of them are acceptable to
Allah.
Both of them are going to be accepted
and I'm not even going to tell you
guys anything more than this.
So there's a difference though.
Yeah, there's one subtle difference.
When we say both of them are correct,
that can sometimes be confusing.
How can both be correct?
So when the Prophet, peace be upon him,
said, don't pray until you reach Bani Qurayla,
was he using like double speak?
He meant like this and that.
He meant two things in one?
It's not possible.
He meant one thing.
He had one intention in his mind.
It was either this or it was that.
And which one was it?
We don't know because he didn't tell us.
And he said, I'm not even going to
tell you now.
I'm not even going to let you know
which one.
And why would he do something like that?
Because he wanted to leave the door open
sometimes that in something like this, both of
them are acceptable to Allah and he wanted
to set that precedent.
But sometimes he's not going to be around.
He's not going to be around now.
We can't go back and double check.
But the reason why both of them were
acceptable to Allah is because they met both
conditions.
Condition number one is intention.
They both had the intention.
They're not trying to skip prayer.
None of them came up with an argument
and said, well, the verse in the Quran
says you have to pray on time.
And the Prophet told us not to pray
until we reach Banu Qurayza.
And since it's not on time, we can
skip after prayer.
Four prayers today only.
No, none of them were trying to get
out of prayer.
So they had the intention of pleasing Allah
and not trying to just skip prayer.
And number two, they were both using the
correct four principles that I mentioned.
They were using the correct language.
They were looking at the context in which
the Prophet peace be upon him said it.
They were trying to figure out what he
actually meant.
And they applied all those principles.
So they applied the right principles.
They had the right intention.
But they arrived at different conclusions.
Even though the Prophet only meant one thing,
he wanted to leave that door open to
say sometimes there's going to be a case
where two groups of intelligent people are both
going to look at something and they may
disagree on how this should be understood because
of, in this case, the ambiguity of what
he said.
There was some ambiguity in what he said.
It's pretty normal.
He said, don't pray until you reach Banu
Qurayza.
But then there's a level of ambiguity.
And we don't realize that there's ambiguity in
our language that we use every single day.
We don't speak like robots.
We use ambiguity in our own language when
we tell someone to do something.
So the Prophet did that as well and
he wanted to leave that open for people.
So in this case, we learned that two
different opinions can be acceptable in the sight
of Allah, but it doesn't mean that the
truth is relative.
There was one actual correct thing the Prophet
intended.
We're going to find out what that is
on the Day of Judgment.
So having sincerity to find the truth and
having knowledge, correct knowledge, to understand what the
person's saying or what the Prophet was actually
saying.
Authenticity is not an issue here because they
heard it directly from his mouth.
It's 100% authentic hadith.
So what do we do with this situation?
Now that we understand what happens with differences
of opinion, what do we do about it?
How should we deal with differences of opinion?
So I was specifically asked to address this
one question and that is, should we follow
a school of thought Why are there schools
of thought?
I guess we're kind of out of time.
Why do schools of thought exist?
Why not?
So let me summarize the answer.
I'll answer both of these questions.
Why do schools of thought exist?
Who is Abu Hanifa and Malik and Shafi
'i and these people?
Well, what happened was the sahaba, the companions,
as you can see, sometimes they differed during
the lifetime of the Prophet, peace be upon
him.
After the Prophet passed away, they differed on
some issues and some companions were specialized in
interpreting things.
They were more knowledgeable.
They had more knowledge of Quran and among
those people were, for example, Aisha, Abdullah ibn
Abbas, Abdullah ibn Mas'ud, and Abdullah ibn
Omar and a few others, Ubaid ibn Ka
'b and others.
So what ended up happening was they kind
of settled.
Eventually, because the companions were moving around and
most of them were conquering lands, they ended
up settling in different regions.
So Ibn Abbas was in Makkah, Ibn Mas
'ud was in Kufa, and then people were
settling in different places.
So now they have their students and they're
teaching and they become the most prominent teachers
in that city because the means of communication
were slower and restricted.
So people would go to their classes and
they would say, well, my local scholar, my
top scholar is Abdullah ibn Mas'ud.
And someone within Kufa is like, well, my
top scholar is Abdullah ibn Mas'ud.
And in Makkah, it's Abdullah ibn Abbas.
And somewhere else in Medina, it's a different
scholar, Ubaid ibn Ka'b.
So they're going to now all of a
sudden start ascribing and saying, you know what,
well, I have a question.
I go to the top scholar in our
entire city because it doesn't make sense to
write a letter and send it like all
the way, one week away by camel, and
then the answer is going to come back
like two weeks.
Why not ask your local scholar that's there?
So what happens is now that generation of
companions who lived after the Prophet, they had
students and their students remained in those regions
and they became the top scholars.
Some of them moved, but most of them
remained in the same area.
And then those students ended up having students
and people were asking more sophisticated questions.
Within 100 years after the Prophet peace be
upon him passed away, Muslims had conquered most
of the Byzantine Empire and they conquered the
entire Persian Empire.
So now you've got all these people with
new religions, new philosophies.
Islam starts to become like a major civilization.
People are dealing in complex economic transactions.
So many people are getting married.
So they're asking all these questions.
Thousands and thousands of questions.
What happens if you say divorce like this
to your wife?
What happens if you get an economic transaction
and this guy wants to transfer the debt
from this partner to the other partner and
he asks you to pay a portion of
that transfer of the debt.
So they list thousands and thousands of questions
and they start compiling answers to that.
So Imam Abu Hanifa was one of those
people who pioneered this project.
Imam Shafi'i is another person who pioneered
the project.
Giving all these thousands of answers to commonly
asked questions and all of this becomes documented.
And then eventually people are like we can't
just keep on having you know, we can't
keep on teaching every single time there's a
difference of opinion.
Imam Abu Hanifa and his top two students,
Imam Muhammad and Imam Muhammad bin Hassan Shaybani
and Imam Abu Yusuf, they differed on one
third of their answers and they're like Hanafi
school, same school there's this student, his top
students disagreed with him on about one third
of issues we're talking about one third of
like 15 to 20 thousand issues, right?
Some of them are so minor, some of
them are hypothetical right?
So what do you do?
They said well for the purpose of systematization
for the purpose of training you know, in
a law school new scholars that come, let's
stop adding more schools and just stick with
these developed frameworks now and we teach them
that way.
And they do this in every single field.
In linguistics you do that.
If you study Arabic you'll know that there's
two main schools, I mean there's many schools
but two main schools of Arabic grammar, there's
a Kufa school and there's a Basran school
and you're like what?
There's difference of opinion in Arabic language?
Yes, there's difference of opinion in the grammar
of the Arabic language there's difference of opinion
in the sciences there's difference of opinion in
medicine.
You need a surgery you go to one
doctor, the surgeon is going to cut like
this.
Go to another surgeon oh well I like
to do it like this and I do
extra stitches and all that.
It's a different school of thought.
It's a different way of doing things.
So you find that in every single field.
You find it in philosophy you find it
in sociology whatever it may be.
So this is the reason why these schools
exist.
Now the question is do you need to
follow a school?
Should you?
Are the schools a big burden?
Should they not exist anymore?
Do we even need to know about these
things?
The simple general rule is that there's a
difference between someone who's specialized in something and
someone who's not specialized in something so you
should, when it comes to Islamic rules, it's
very similar to medicine like medicine is a
perfect analogy when you're sick or you have
like a very very important question that you
really need to know and your spiritual health
is more important than your physical health.
If you have a question that you need
to know and you don't want it to
do wrong right?
You go to someone who has been trained
someone who's a doctor, someone who's licensed someone
who's really been through medical schooling and understands
these things if it's something very minor you
can go on Mayo Clinic, you can go
on WebMD and you can get some pretty
good knowledge there right?
But you shouldn't be, that shouldn't be like
your number one and only source for going
to like acquiring your Islamic knowledge and you
don't just go to your random friend you
don't just go to your uncle, you go
to your friend and be, hey man, you
know I've been sick for many days and
I've been coughing and I have phlegm and
my leg is hurting and this and that.
What do you think I should do?
Just walk it off man just take a,
just take a coke and just walk it
off.
Someone's going to give you a ridiculous answer.
You don't go and ask any random person
who doesn't know anything about medicine, what are
your thoughts on this?
What do you think I should do about
my, you know, inflamed I don't know, whatever.
You go and you see, hey, rich people
know something about medicine, who actually studied something,
they seem like they really know what they're
talking about and that's the way you're going
to do when it comes to Islamic law
you do the exact same thing so the
last thing is that you know, there are
people who fall into one of two extremes
one extreme is that they will go and
they will ask a scholar and say, you
know what is let me think of a
question that I want to share I should
have thought of this in advance so there,
good, thank you is soy sauce halal to
consume?
okay, and you're like and you really like
soy sauce so you go to your local
teacher and you say is it allowed to
consume soy sauce and he says no it's
got alcohol in it the Japanese one for
sure so it's not allowed, therefore it's haram
you cannot consume it, and then you go
man I really like soy sauce let me
go ask the other sheikh you go to
the other sheikh and you ask him hey,
is soy sauce haram?
and the second sheikh tells you yes, it's
haram man, it's got to be someone else
so you go to like another masjid and
you keep on asking and then you ask
like five people and you're like, man, I
really want that soy sauce, and you find
the sixth person and the sixth person finally
tells you you know what, yeah, it's okay
you're like, yes, that's exactly what I wanted
to hear you were not interested in the
evidence behind the answer you were not interested
in the qualifications of the person that you
were asking you didn't go and ask the
sheikh hey, by the way have you researched
soy sauce quite a bit?
I know you have credentials, you graduated from
Islamic University is your specialization in fiqh, or
is it in hadith or is it in,
you know debate, debating Christians or something like
that, what's your specialization are you specialized in
Islamic law and do you understand like what
soy sauce is and how it's fermented and
the process and all that stuff you didn't
check the background care about the expertise of
that person and you didn't even ask for
the evidence or anything like that, you were
just looking for a specific answer and this
is what they call sometimes fatwa shopping this
is not good, because you're kind of making
a joke out of the deep, you just
go around you already have the answer in
your mind I gotta find someone who can
sign off this for me this is what
like some Muslim tyrants do, like when they
torture these guys, the shaykh said it's not
allowed let's go kill that shaykh, let's go
find another one or we let him torture
these guys, eventually you're gonna find someone who
can sign off and be like yeah, you
can annex that country it's not a big
deal, whatever it may be you don't wanna
deal with Islam that way the second extreme
is that you stick to one person or
one school, and you say I can never
ever ask anyone from any other school of
thought or this particular scholar you almost become
like in a cult you say you know
what, I will only accept what this person
says, because I'm so afraid of falling into
the fatwa shopping like some of my friends
are doing, I don't wanna go down that
path so how do you get out of
that?
the way you get out of that is
that you have to understand you should be
sincere and you have to use your best
judgment of two things well one thing actually
is that picking the right person to ask
based on their credentials based upon the specialization
of the topic that they have and also
based on kind of how somewhat convincing the
answer that they give you is if you're
confused about it, so let's say someone gives
you an answer and you're like that's just
a really weird answer like Omar who's heard
of this game called Ludo?
you ever heard of a game called Ludo?
it's like a monopoly ok, so we just
read someone showed me the other day someone
showed me on a website and there's a
shaykh and this is an opinion but anyways
there's a shaykh that said any game that
involves dice is haram monopoly is haram anything
that involves throwing dice is going to be
haram, it's prohibited in Islam and this is
a well known website well I'm not gonna
list who it is but when you hear
an answer like that, even if it's from
somebody that you trust or somebody that you
see that just sounds very strange it doesn't
seem something seems to not be right in
that case it's not because you're like I'm
addicted to monopoly I just have to play
it's because something doesn't seem right about that
answer because there's no gambling involved maybe the
person didn't understand the question maybe the person's
misunderstanding or looking at the hadith in a
different way which they are, they thought the
hadith about dice is for dice not connected
to gambling and there's a difference of opinion
on this so what you do is you
say okay I'm asking, not just because I
want to play this game and I want
to have someone do it but the answer
itself seems to be poorly researched or poorly
presented I want to go and ask someone
else who's specialized more in this and give
me a better answer because this is not
making sense to me is that a valid
reason for asking a different person?
yes, it's a valid reason for asking a
different person the first person that you ask,
they're not available you're calling them like I
need a follow up on my question you
go and you say I'm going to ask
another person that's available, is that a valid
reason for asking a different scholar?
it's a valid reason so it's valid reasons
for switching schools or asking somebody else and
there's invalid reasons for asking different so I'll
end with that and open up for questions
do you want to field the questions or
should I just call people?
okay, so I'm going to go by numbers,
okay so go with 1 2, remember your
number 1, 2, 3 4 5 6 7
8, 9 10 you've got to remember your
number 11 11 so so our
faith was also case by case so for
example Allah He prohibited Sariba and He says
the people who take Sariba are going to
go to war like basically the person who
has Sariba is going to pick their weapon
to go to war against the Prophet and
Allah so our faith was case by case
like is there exceptions for people even though
that's not the overall rule okay I'll answer
your question before I forget my view is
that soy sauce is halal I just want
to clarify that and my view I'm very
strongly convinced of that and my view is
that dice as long as there's no gambling
involved is halal as well let me clarify
before I forget okay, our fatwa is case
by case many fatwas are case by case
so yeah I'm going to define fatwa, so
fatwa is so there's a word, it's mentioned
in the Quran it's called istifda, basically when
somebody asks a specialist a question it's called
asking for fatwa, and fatwa is basically an
answer an answer about something connected to Islam,
that's what fatwa means, but it means you're
asking a specialist, and the specialist is giving
you an is giving you an official answer
right, the difference between an official answer and
like an unofficial answer is like you go
to your friend who happens to be let's
say your friend is a mufti and you
say hey what do you think I should
do on this and he goes oh you
should you know just wipe over the bandage,
it's not a big deal just wipe over
the bandage, this is known as like this
is my advice or this is what you
should do or whatever a fatwa is there's
actually a term, there's a more legal term
for it, I forgot what it was, but
it's called responsa, this came from Roman law,
so it's basically when a person in an
official capacity is giving you an official answer,
which is also going to be a public
answer and which means that it's going to
be a peer reviewed answer, so other people
are going to find out that this is
the fatwa they gave, if somebody else looks
at that fatwa and they're like hey what
in the world did you just do you
could like lose your license, it's kind of
like giving a professional medical opinion versus just
talking to your friend on the side right,
if you give wrong medical advice and you're
a trained medical professional you can lose your
license so that's what a fatwa means, it's
an official answer to a question about Islam
by someone who's officially trained in being able
to answer these questions so the question Omar
has is are fatwa case by case specific
and the answer is sometimes they are, so
if somebody says you know what do I
when's the end time for asr prayer we
gave the answer to that, that's not a
specific fatwa, that's a general answer is what
Islam says but sometimes if somebody says you
know what I have a headache and my
headache is impairing me from functioning at work
specialists in Islamic law may ask and say
okay are you not able to perform your
job at all or is it slightly disturbing
you, oh I'm not able to perform my
job at all I'm going to lose my
job because I'm making mistakes in what I'm
doing and people's life are in danger and
it's Ramadan and I can't take the vacation
I don't have any more vacation left the
fatwa will be in your circumstance you're allowed
to break your fast and you're going to
make up this fast later so that's a
fatwa to a specific case now somebody else
comes along and says yeah I have a
headache too, they can't just take that fatwa
and be like oh so if you have
a headache you can break your fast because
the mufti said you can break your fast
no well your headache is because you used
to drink 4 cups of coffee everyday and
you didn't start detoxing before Ramadan it's natural
to have caffeine headaches in the first week
of Ramadan that's not a reason for you
to break your fast in the month of
Ramadan the first one is, the second one
is not, so sometimes fatwas are case specific,
okay, number 2 number 3 no no no,
the soy sauce was 0 this guy's excited
I asked this last time but I want
to ask it again, if you weren't raised
on a madhab and you were just raised
with like different opinions on different things and
whatever made sense, how do you figure out
what exactly you're going to follow for the
rest of your life when you start making
decisions?
so the general principle is supposed to be
people have already encountered so much confusion because
they encountered too many teachers the general principle
is you usually have one main source of
Islamic knowledge that's if you take a class
then your teacher is your main source of
Islamic knowledge if it's your mom or if
it's your dad who's teaching you most of
the stuff that you know you're following the
madhab of your mom or your dad because
that's where your main source is coming from
so that's generally the principle so there's a
principle called al-anni la madhabal that a
lay person who is not specialized in this
field they don't actually have a school the
madhab is the madhab of the person that
they ask or they go to regularly so
that's generally how it should be so whoever
is your main teacher that you would generally
go to that becomes the person you should
be following and that's why it's good you
don't always have to go to the same
person you should have one person that is
your general go-to person to ask questions
when you don't have anyone else next number
three so
in my community there's like a Sunday school
and there's a youth group so I want
to know what should I do about someone
who I see normally I would just let
it go but this person has influence because
they're able to teach the kids with fringe
opinions that are like these issues are contemporary
mostly that this person is being asked about
and they have good intentions but they say
oh this is the Quran and Sunnah but
then they give no data this person is
giving very un-based opinions like the other
assistant teachers are all looking at each other
like how do you handle someone like that
so the best thing is to ask what
their reference is so first ask them where
are you getting this from we've asked him
a couple of times he says I'll give
you the reference and then later on he
just never gets it so meaning is there
any other person in the world that is
following the same opinions or this is the
first person that came up with these ideas
that's usually a very good filter where are
you getting your knowledge from or who agrees
with you among the people who are specialized
in Islamic knowledge if the answer is I
read the Quran myself it's in the Hadith
it's clear that's a really bad sign that
just means that they're giving their own interpretation
to whatever they want they have no base
so if that's what's going on that person
shouldn't be teaching Islamic school no I'm serious
I'm very serious so what should happen is
that person should be sat down with a
specialist, a scholar and have the scholar talk
to them say where are you getting this
from you can't just come up with ideas
out of thin air on your own what
did you study try to put the person
in their place nicely and tell them they
should stop doing that if they insist they
should be removed from their position of authority
the leadership should step in remove them from
their position of authority now if it's a
different situation where they do follow a certain
scholar that's recognized but they happen to have
some rare opinions or something like that it's
a different way to handle that because even
in that situation the leadership of that Sunday
school or that mosque or whatever it is
they still have a responsibility of teaching a
subset of things to not confuse the community
so they have the authority to kind of
put some parameters in place.
If the person doesn't want to respect the
rules don't let authority get in the way
I mean I'm nicer than that that's the
policy you gotta have.
Number four some folks are not sure if
they should pick a mithhab because maybe they
live in Southern California and their imam or
their sheikh changes or their parents didn't have
a mithhab maybe and they're not quite sure
which one to go with so they're more
comfortable with doing their own research and going
with opinions that make the most sense to
them what's the appropriate response for that?
Is that a valid approach to figuring out
the best practices if you don't die hard
follow a certain mithhab or is it not?
so we're talking about two things the difference
between following a mithhab and consulting with a
scholar or a person of knowledge so my
view is that the average person doesn't need
to follow a mithhab but the average person
needs to consult with scholars and people of
knowledge when they're getting this thing so if
you say for example you look at the
evidence and kind of go with what makes
sense the problem with that approach is it
works sometimes and it completely fails sometimes because
basically what it's going to do it's going
to put the average person in the role
of evaluating the evidence and evidence is not
that easy to evaluate so that's why the
solution would be is that if you're getting
an answer like I've almost learned over time
even after I did my mufti course and
stuff like that my personal view is I
give precedence when I come across some new
issue or something I research a lot I
give more precedence to a ruling of a
scholar than I do if I find a
hadith on the exact same subject now that
may seem completely inverted to people some people
may be like you're not giving the prophet
precedence you're giving another human being precedence over
the prophet and actually no that's not what's
happening is the difference is when a scholar
is giving a verdict on a topic they've
studied every single verse and hadith on that
topic whereas this hadith isolated by itself is
not giving me and this one has taken
into consideration 30 pieces of evidence this one
is one piece of evidence in potentially 10
20 or 30 pieces of evidence I'm more
likely to arrive at the right answer from
the first one and less likely from the
second one so that my point in saying
that is if you find an answer and
the answer is coming from a scholar that
is giving a clear cut answer on a
question that's more valuable than a hadith that's
somewhat connected to this topic but could be
potentially read in different ways so you should
always try to find the first one as
well when you're doing your research okay what
are we on?
Salam alaikum my question is about culture we
know the hadith of the prophet when when
we're celebrating in the masjid Surah the prophet
stood up and was like what are you
doing dancing during this masjid and the prophet
motioned to them take it easy so much
so that they stabbed the prophet until she
got tired and she left today we see
culture in Islam hand in hand almost sometimes
even people take precedence of culture over Islam
and we see this a lot personally in
terms of an institution in the form of
Islam QA or these institutions where people teach
themselves the religion and then become like personal
so can you talk a little bit about
what place culture has in Islam and also
can you please address Islam QA just like
the prophet okay so the question of what
place culture has in Islam and that's a
whole topic in and of itself but basically
in a nutshell culture is what people do
and Islam teaches you what you're supposed to
do and when there's no conflict between the
two perfectly fine to follow your culture when
there's a conflict between the two as Muslims
we're supposed to always give precedence to Islam
over culture that's in a nutshell Islam QA
there's islamqa.info there's islamqa.org and they're
both rival websites and one stole the domain
of the other one and I want to
get into the history of it and one
of them says you should not follow a
madhab and the other one says you have
to follow a madhab so so what do
you want me to say about them?
a lot of people I know what you
want me to say I'll kind of get
to the crux of it which is that
people follow these people follow in the sense
of oh he taught himself fatwa signs, I
can too and then they use Islam QA
as a basis for that I kind of
touched on it with the principles of a
fatwa is a certain time and place so
let me put it this way I respect
both Islam QAs and I regularly read their
fatwas and their articles even though I disagree
with some of them most of them are
great so let me clarify a few things
islamqa.info is what's called the Salafi version
of giving fatwa don't follow a madhab it's
run by Sheikh Mohammed bin Salih al-Munajid
he generally quotes scholars from Saudia like Mohammed
bin Salih al-Uthaymeen Sheikh Bin Baz quotes
Sheikh Albani for hadith things and stuff like
that so but Sheikh Munajid is actually a
trained scholar Sheikh bin Uthaymeen for the most
part is a pretty trained scholar and so
is Sheikh Bin Baz humbly trained but they're
trained scholars and so there's a lot of
good on their website but again I think
what you're hinting at is that there's culture
so if you live in Saudia you have
a little bit different perception of the world,
you have different norms sometimes the answers will
come out in a way where some of
the answers will seem to slightly lean towards
something that may work in a very or
formerly traditional culture formerly very ultra conservative culture
but it may not be the most suitable
or even from our perspective the most correct
view of the other answers then islamqa.org
is the rival website it includes all the
people who follow madhabs basically they archive every
single one there's a lot of good scholars
and they're mostly Hanafi, Shafi'i scholars I
mentioned and there's a diversity of opinion in
those scholars the majority of those scholars live
outside the United States they live in Muslim
majority lands, they have a different context they
have a way different way of viewing things
so their culture does influence the way in
which they give answers and we should be
aware of that so I would say maybe
10% of the answers on each website
can be potentially culturally influenced such that we
would need a second opinion on that, on
those issues but 90% of them are
pretty solid right?
since we don't have anything else to consult
there's still good reference websites until we're able
to produce something better right?
which is why I launched my own flexible
website here comes a little plug askthescholars.com
but it takes a lot of time to
invest and have enough answers so I have
like I don't even know, I have like
a thousand answers islamqa.info has like 250
,000 answers sadly so many duplicates, it's a
headache one of my things, I wanted to
have no duplicates right?
so it's a headache to go through their
website but they've been doing this for years
and this is their full time job right?
they dedicate their time to just answering these
things so there's good in there but we
should also be a little bit skeptical and
ask them questions on at least 10%
of the stuff next I forgot who it
was was it you?
one or two we're at six, number six
with all due respect I'm getting even more
confused on what?
well I think I can summarize it easily
by two questions now I think a lot
of people have asked parts throughout these questions
but for example, Dr. Haifan, she said that
we have to pick a matlam and I
think that's where that's where the confusion so
sometimes my first question is if you were
not raised with a matlam, like was said
many times if you were not raised with
a matlam is it N?
you are choosing to study at a level
where you wish to really just solidify your
understanding of Islam, can you pick which teacher,
which scholar to follow based on their matlam?
so for example if I chose that I
want to go on the path of following
Maliki matlam, can I specifically, if I wasn't
raised on a matlam, can I say okay
I'm going to pick this one?
if you decide you want to do that
absolutely why not?
it was a little bit difficult to come
to a conclusion based on what Dr. Haifan
said because she said it's based on the
people that surround you like you said, but
if you weren't really raised on that, then
where do you go?
would you be picking the Maliki matlam because
of the dog issue?
the answer is yes okay to be honest
in that specific one no I mean that's
a whole other situation and I will talk
about that for days when it comes to
actual dogs, but I don't follow let me
clarify this this is a cause of confusion
even if you take the view that you
should pick a matlam okay does it mean
that you can never take any opinion outside
of the matlam that you've chosen?
the answer is no you're allowed to take
another opinion if you have a good reason
for taking that other opinion I've explained this
in my book, I have an introduction that
explains all of these things my book is
called Gaya the Believer, it's outdated but it's
there the scholars have mentioned this always, the
scholars themselves have done this, so when you
study a little bit more you find like
Imam Ghazali follows the Shafi'i matlam, but
he goes outside of his own matlam and
he picks sometimes on other issues Ibn Abdu
'l-Bahr is a Maliki scholar, one of
the top Maliki scholars, he leaves the Maliki
matlam on some issues, Ibn Rushd one of
the guys we studied his book with for
three years in France in my school he
goes outside of the matlam and he picks
other opinions sometimes on some issues, so there
are many scholars that go outside of their
own matlam, and that's for scholars and if
that's a scholar we respect, why can't we
follow that opinion that the other scholars why
is it only a top scholar is allowed
to leave their own matlam but everyone else
has to stay exactly that wouldn't make sense,
so that's not a very strong view and
I can recommend more reading on it and
stuff, but it's advanced reading do you read
Arabic?
ok, then but there's a lot of other
books out there but anyways so that you
can do what you're supposed to do, ok,
this is what the average person is going
to do you decide I want to study
Islam more, you're in Southern California or you're
going to go online, some people like online
studies I can choose between these institutes, your
number one priority is to pick an institute
that is suitable for you you trust the
teaching style of the teachers it's affordable, it
fits in your schedule, you're going to go
with that you don't have that many options
so if you're like, well, and I want
all four of these and I want to
pick whichever one of the four months they're
going to offer, you're never going to find
a school that meets those criteria and they
offer all four different schools you're never going
to find it so if you're so stuck
on just like I need to do this
particular thing how are you going to learn
Islam so you the simple thing is you
need to learn Islam from qualified people, the
reason why Dr. Haifa is saying that you
should pick a method is what she's actually
trying to say hopefully I'm quoting her correctly
what she's trying to say is take knowledge
from people who are specialized in the field,
and people who are specialized in the field
are usually ones that have studied at least
one school and sometimes they ascribe themselves to
a school, when they ascribe themselves to a
school, it doesn't mean that they limit themselves
only to that school it means that they're
ascribing themselves to that school, so if somebody
says well I'm a Maliki they'll still give
a fatwa on some issues outside of the
Maliki school like you'll find people who follow
the Shafi'i school when they go to
Mecca to do Umrah nobody follows the Shafi
'i school because in the Shafi'i school
you have to have wudu when you're making
Umrah when you're going around the Kaaba and
if a woman touches you, you lose wudu
and women are bumping into you because it's
Mecca, everyone is right next to each other,
so you're gonna lose your wudu, you have
to walk half an hour back to your
hotel, make wudu and then come back, and
you're gonna get bumped again within 10 minutes,
and then you go half an hour again,
nobody's in the Shafi'i anymore when you're
in front of the Kaaba and this happens
on some issues all over the place, so
the most important thing is to follow qualified
scholarship pick the scholarship that's available to you
and that's usually what it means to follow
a method, it means following qualified scholarship Thank
you, that's basically I think, maybe I'm looking
too closely into it, but for example I
mostly follow the Hanafi school, but for example,
very strict Hanafi will not combine prayers when
they're traveling one very random scenario a lot
of people who are Hanafi will ignore that
and combine prayers while they're traveling in my
head, I'm saying if you're Hanafi, why are
you breaking that?
why are you following the Shafi'i or
something like this how do you know when
it's okay to do that I mean, it's
not okay, it almost feels like you're cherry
picking in this sense and that's why I
get a lot of questions I understand, when
you find a scholar who follows the Hanafi
school and yet still believes that the view
of combining is wrong now you're following that
qualified scholar in when they leave the school
as well, and I can give you the
answer, Sheikh Mohammed, I'll turn that to you
he leaves, so there's your answer you find
him, and you see a Hanafi scholar there's
many, there are many who do that next
question, and you can always email me for
more details, Inshallah, my email is mustafayouhmail.com
you said something called Al-Ammi Al-Ammi
I don't teach Arabic do you speak Arabic?
no, oh okay then don't worry about the
Arabic so Al-Ammi means a lay person
so it's like someone's a doctor someone has
not done one year of medical school so
when it comes to medicine we're all lay
people someone's a lawyer, someone's a lay person
they're not in the legal field so Al
-Ammi means a common person or a lay
person who's not specialized in that field he
does not have a school or a madhhab
that's the statement Al-Ammi has no actual
madhhab, because you can say, you can be
like there's a lot of people go to
Turkey, go to Pakistan you go to India,
you go to Afghanistan everyone's like, I'm Hanafi
and you ask them 10 questions about Hanafi
they never read a book in their life
so they can't even tell you so you
identify, you ascribe to the school you go
to North Africa, everyone's like, I'm Maliki you
ask them 10 questions, they don't know anything
it's like, if you don't know anything what
do you mean that you ascribe you're like,
well, historically the people in this region, what
you mean is the people in this region
follow the school of thought the scholars in
this region follow the school of thought, that's
what it means that you identify as being
Maliki or Hanafi or something like that it
doesn't mean you actually have the knowledge so
this statement basically means a lay person has
no real madhhab, because they don't actually have
the deep knowledge to be able to know
the madhhab, if they've never studied a madhhab,
how can you have a madhhab that's kind
of what it means and my second question
is what is the difference between Salafi and
Wahhabi I can give the long answer I'm
only trying to keep it a shorter answer
so Wahhabi is a term that refers to
somebody who follows the school or the movement
of Muhammad ibn Abdul Wahhab who was around
1700s in Saudi Arabia his emphasis was there's
lots of shrines and people are doing grave
worship so they broke a lot of buildings
and graves and he quoted Sheikh Ibn Taymi
a lot, he said we should not follow
any school of thought, any madhhab so sometimes
people who are followers of his, many of
his followers are in Saudi Arabia today, mostly
in the central part of the next area
like Riyadh and those places they're kind of
known as Wahhabis and it's a pejorative term
because they don't call themselves that but they
respect Muhammad ibn Abdul Wahhab so that's kind
of like a Wahhabi and you find that
they emphasize over emphasize the importance of Aqidah
or theology and certain specific issues following the
Asabi school of thought as taught by Ibn
Taymiyya and then when it comes to Fiqh,
they don't follow a madhhab and they believe
following a madhhab is like just go back
directly to the Quran and Hadith and interpret
it directly and they have their own subset
of scholars so that's what Wahhabis are known
as Wahhabiyya.
Salafiyya the word Salaf literally means the early
predecessors or the early Muslims so Salafi has
many different potential means, there's been three main
groups in history that define themselves as Salafis
so Salafi means that your thought, you are
the people who are truly following the early
generation of Muslims, even though you're not part
of the early generation of Muslims, you're a
later part of the generation of Muslims.
So Salafi in a nutshell can mean two
things depending on which part of the world
you live in.
Salafi can mean Salafi in Aqidah and Salafi
can mean Salafi in Fiqh Salafi in Aqidah
means that you follow the Asabi school.
The Asabi school is basically like Imam Ibn
Hanbal's school of Aqidah of how he stood
and he basically said we should not we
should not ask questions about how things happen,
we should interpret the attributes of Allah more
literally and not take them and dismiss them
as metaphors.
So when you say for example there's a
hand of Allah and Allah has a face
and Allah has a place and he's above
the Arsh and all that stuff, we should
take those things literally.
So that's what it means to be Salafi
in Aqidah and you don't accept the other
interpretations of the Masuridi and the Ashari schools
in particular.
Salafi in Fiqh basically means that you don't
follow a Madhhab, you don't believe there's benefit
in Madhhabs and basically all of these schools
of thought are kind of like intellectual baggage
that we need to get rid of.
We need to go back to the Quran
and Sunnah and look at them fresh ourselves.
So they're also sometimes called Lamalhabiya, like we're
the people who don't believe that Madhhabs bring
anything.
Like we don't need to read any of
those scholars of the past, they just confuse
us more, we just go directly to the
Quran and Sunnah and we authenticate.
Hadith, kind of like the brother was mentioning,
this Shaykh Al-Bani is one of the
authenticators, one of the Hadith scholars, very prominent
Hadith scholar among the modern times.
So his view is very similar where he
just creates a Hadith himself, he's like if
the Hadith is authentic we just go with
the literal meaning of it.
So that's kind of what Salafi is.
Sometimes I get Salafi referenced in the people
who are Wahhabist, confused.
Sometimes people say like, oh the Salaf said
and I'm like oh wait, we should be
cautious about this.
Then they say something that's like reasonable, like
okay they're referring to this kind of like
how do you know?
So there's a difference between the Salaf and
the Salafi.
The Salaf means the early generation of Muslims.
That includes Imam Abu Hanifa, that includes Abdullah
bin Rasul, all the companions, their students, like
Al-Qamah and all of them.
So all of that, everybody agrees that the
Salaf are our role models and we're supposed
to be getting our Islamic knowledge from them.
Nobody will ever disparagingly refer to the Salaf.
If they know anything about Islam, they would
never do that.
Salafi is a claim that it's a group
and they put their own title as we
are the true followers of the early Muslims.
Everyone's supposed to be the followers of the
early Muslims.
But they basically make the claim that that's
what we are.
No one's going to make a claim that
like we follow the fourth generation of Muslims
or the fifth generation of Muslims.
So there's a difference between Salaf and Salafi.
I think some of these questions allow me
to piggyback because I was going to ask
about Salafism basically.
A lot of the people, there's not a
method in particular, but for a lay person,
I don't know how much you touched on
this exactly, but what is that process of
formulating opinions?
Because like you said, for Ahlus Sunnah wa
Jamaah, there might not be things that were
at that time, whereas now we have these
issues kind of come up.
So what is their process in formulating certain
opinions?
And Ahlus Sunnah wa Jamaah, who are the
scholars or who do they follow basically?
When you say formulating in Ahlus Sunnah wa
Jamaah, what's the process of formulating?
Yeah, what's their process of formulating for this
day and age?
If something comes up and they're not part
of the Malah, then what does Ahlus Sunnah
wa Jamaah do?
Okay, let me define that term for everyone
first.
So there's this term called Ahlus Sunnah wa
Jamaah.
Ahl means the people of Sunnah, we defined
already, wa means and, and Jamaah means the
community.
So Ahlus Sunnah wa Jamaah means the people
who follow the Sunnah, and the Jamaah means
like what the majority of Muslims follow.
Sometimes we call these Sunnis, sometimes we call
these mainstream Muslims.
This is to differentiate between people who follow
other schools of thought when it comes to
either, you know, political beliefs or other creedal
beliefs or something like that.
So that's what Ahlus Sunnah wa Jamaah means.
Let's define who is Ahlus Sunnah wa Jamaah.
The people, there's two fields.
There's Aqidah and there's Shafah.
When it comes to Aqidah, there are three
main schools of thought that are accepted.
It's the Athari school founded by Ahmad ibn
Hanbal.
It's the Maturidi school founded by Imam Maturidi
and the Ashari school founded by Imam Ashari.
So these are the three schools that are
kind of known when you get deeper into
the subjects.
All three of these are in the category
of Ahlus Sunnah wa Jamaah.
Sometimes you find a rivalry between them.
So some Atharis will say, we're the only
Ahlus Sunnah wa Jamaah.
Some Maturidis and Asharis will say, Atharis, they're
not real Ahlus Sunnah wa Jamaah.
The more balanced scholars, I translated a book
on this, the more balanced scholars, they don't
have that narrow interpretation.
They have a more wide view including all
three.
When it comes to the fiqh, who are
the people that are accepted in fiqh according
to Ahlus Sunnah wa Jamaah?
There's main schools.
There's the independent scholars who kind of either
studied the school or independent.
So for example, like Ibn Taymiyyah, but he
had many opinions of his own.
You have Shaukani, Ibn Hazm, who has a
school called the Zahiriya.
It's known as the more literalist.
But he's also a very well-respected scholar.
So there's pretty much a categorization of scholars
that are known to be mainstream scholars and
acceptable in each field.
In the field of hadith, they're acceptable Ahlus
Sunnah, Sunni scholars, mainstream scholars.
In the field of fiqh, they're acceptable scholars.
In the field of akhira, they're acceptable scholars.
It's a long list that's out there, but
you know, that's the short answer.
You're saying we have to close it?
Okay.
That was it?
How about if I give a 30-second
answer?
You ask 30 seconds, and I give a
30-second answer.
And then you debate for 30 seconds.
My question comes from a science point of
view, but I'm saying usually us as humans,
we took science from like, okay, someone does
progress.
I take that progress, and I put it
a step forward.
I'm actually quite curious how methods are taken
in this aspect.
Are people who are Meleki trying to push
it further, or is it because of innovation
or invention?
These ideas, it's like, okay, we have this,
which was what was said about these methods,
and now people just study it to the
highest level, and then they make their own
decisions.
But we don't try to establish maybe their
new methods, or how, I don't know.
Okay, so in a sense, there is an
evolution of that takes place.
So, people look at the books of the
past, and so that they don't have to
repeat the cycle of reinventing the wheel, they
go and they look and see what these
genius minds have written, and then they try
to develop and build upon that.
How much is there to build?
On some issues, there is new stuff to
build.
Cloning, and you know, embryos and AI and
all that stuff, you're going to build upon
stuff that is somewhat similar to the past,
but you're not going to rebuild on wudu
and like principles of, it's like basic principles
of fasting and things like that.
So, there is some to build, but the
whole process is to learn from the past,
so that we don't repeat the reinvent the
wheel, basically.
That's it?
You had a question or no?
Are you going to take 30 seconds to
think of whether you want to ask a
question?
I'm going to stick around, so I can
stick around, we can close, and anyone who
wants to come and ask me, you can
ask me, inshallah.
Alright, salam alaikum guys.
Just five minutes, I just have a couple
of quick announcements.
First one...