Nouman Ali Khan – What Is The Difference Between QA

Basically, what happened in our cultures is first

you said who is a Alem and who's

not? Who's a sheikh and who's not? Then

well, the sheikh from this the one who

learned from this sheikh and this sheikh and

this sheikh, now that's a sheikh, but who

learned from this one and this one, that's

just a milkshake. That's not a sheikh. Right?

So that's just

so there there's different levels of sheikh

sheikhdom. Right? And then then they have you

know, they're taking each other down. They're doing

shakedowns.

I'll ask 2 questions in 1.

What is the difference between nastaz and nastaz?

And what is the difference between tadabur and

tafsir?

So what's the difference between an Ustad and

a Sheikh? An Ustad is simply the Arabic

word for a teacher.

In modern standard Arabic, in Arabic, it's used

for a professor in college also.

I started getting called Ustad when I first

got a job at NASA Community College teaching

Arabic, and my students called me Ustad and

my colleagues that were teaching Spanish or German

or professor or whatever else, you know,

So that's how I got the term Mustav

getting used for I'm not I don't have

a title. Is this this is a thing.

And for you guys, I'm not a start

anyway because you're not technically I mean, you're

kind of sort of students, but not really

because you don't have a notebook. And I'm

not I'm not you do. Okay. That's great.

That's I just so so for most of

you, you're an audience. You're not students. You're

actually an audience. Right? So I'm,

so the term just got became,

kind of formalized over time, but I don't

really ascribe to it myself. I'm just Norman.

I'm certainly not a shaykh.

Shaykh in classical Arabic means old man,

which I I'm becoming more of a shaykh

every year in that sense. But,

sheikh also means someone who has,

social

clout.

So, you know, the 2 women that Musa'adhi

said I was trying to help by the

waters of Madyan,

when they saw a strange man coming offering

them help, they

said, Right? We we don't feed our animals.

We don't give our animals water until the

entire flock of men is done feeding their

animals. And by the way, our dad is

a big sheikh,

sheikhun Kabir, which is two meanings. One meaning

is he's an old man. That's why we

have to do this. And the other meaning

is

watch out. Our dad's a big deal.

So they're they're kind of telling him back

off because our dad's a big deal. Right?

So they had that duality of meaning. Now

in Muslim culture, we developed a lot of

this terminology over the centuries.

Islam didn't came come with the term Sheikh.

There was no Sheikh among the Sahaba.

You understand? So these are later sociological

developments

that made it easy for us to understand

the word imam, the word, you know, sheikh,

the word Adam. These terms

are sociological in nature. And we, because the

more the more the religion spread, the more

we created formalities in our cultures. And so

we said, Oh, you have to be a

'alim to be able to speak about Islam.

Right? So, but, but if you went to

1st century Abyssinia,

and there were 100 of Muslims,

nobody was saying that and nobody even knew

what that meant. And in fact the word

Alem in the Quran

in the Quran the word Alem refers to

someone who knows that there's only one God.

Right? So that that's actually Alem.

Is actually referring to people who know there's

one God and people who don't know that.

Can they be equal?

You know, or

You should know that Allah is 1, that

no one should be worshipped and obeyed except

him. So,

these terms, yes, they do have value

in our civilization, Muslim civilization,

but they have also been abused.

They have also been overly magnified.

They've been turned into some kind of an

official,

designation

that takes away from the original beauty of

the term.

Our our religion was a religion of investigation,

of inquiry.

And

basically what happened in our cultures is first

you said, who is a'alim and who's not?

Who's a sheikh and who's not?

Then well, the sheikh from this the one

who learned from this sheikh and this sheikh

and this sheikh, now that's a sheikh. But

who learned from this one and this one,

that's just a milkshake. That's not a sheikh.

Right? So that's just

so there there's different levels of sheikh sheikhdom.

Right?

And then then they have, you know, they're

taking each other down. They're doing shakedowns. Get

out. Anyway,

so my dad jokes will go on forever.

But anyway, so the the the but the

point is then people become like,

associated with certain kinds of clergy. Oh, well,

what's your aapida? Where did you get your

ijazah from? What do you know? And they,

I, I adore the ijazah system. I have

tremendous

regard for the system, but when it starts

getting used for,

you know, inter religious,

intra religious polemics and people just dismissing each

other for it, then

you're loyal to your group or the Sheikh,

but you're not loyal loyal to the knowledge.

Right? Our loyalty is supposed to remain to

the truth.

And sometimes

to whoever I ascribe to, I learn from,

may have a lot of truth that I

learned from them, but some things I just

don't find convincing.

That doesn't mean I'm abandoning my sheikh, but

I can disagree with him on some things.

Right? And to this day, I I do

that. There are people I learn from so

much, and the few things I disagree with

them, I disagree with so much passion,

but it takes nothing away from my relationship

with them.

Okay. So yeah. That's the So to to

answer briefly, I'm not a shaykh.

I hope you guys enjoyed that video clip.

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