Hadith Extraordinaire of Texas
Omar Suleiman – Mufti The Machine Muntasir Zaman – After Hours
AI: Summary ©
The speakers discuss the importance of the Prophet's Sun-Mattel and the significance of the sun job in shaping one's life and the context of their political and cultural moments. They also discuss the importance of learning hadiths and the Herds of hadith in the Arabic language and the transmission of ideas and actions. The speakers stress the importance of verifying hadiths and learning the Prophet's Sun-Mattel.
AI: Summary ©
Assalamu alaikum warahmatullahi wabarakatuh, dear brothers and sisters,
welcome back to After Hours.
Alhamdulillah al-Rameen.
We're here, very privileged to be with our
beloved brother, Mufti Muntasir Zaman, also nicknamed Mufti
Machine Muntasir or Mufti Machine Muntasir, I forgot
which one it is.
We'll have to talk about that at some
point inshaAllah, inshaAllah, but a wonderful scholar of
hadith inshaAllah.
Although he wouldn't accept that for himself, but
we certainly benefit from his presence.
He's an instructor here at Qalam, alhamdulillah.
He's also a part-time resident scholar, our
neighbors at the Islamic Center of Irving, alhamdulillah,
at ICI, and inshaAllah, not too long ago
became a new father, right, as well, inshaAllah,
alhamdulillah.
So we're blessed to have you here, how
are you, Sheikh?
BarakAllahu feekum, jazakAllahu khayran, it's always a pleasure
to have a chance to speak with such
noble people such as yourself.
I didn't know, Sheikh, you're from Jamaica, Queens.
Well, I get right into Queens, New York.
Well that's Sheikh Abdul Nasser's joke that I'm
from Zamaika.
Zamaika, Queens, huh?
So you grew up at like Jamaica Muslim
Center?
I'm actually from Astoria, Queens, not too far
away, and yeah, born and raised in Astoria,
lived there for a good part of my
life until my teenage years.
So yeah, New York, through and through.
Although the New Yorkers wouldn't be too comfortable
with me laying claim to the New York
title because I wasn't there long enough, but
I think 13, 14, I think that should
be enough.
I mean, you're the scholar of hadith, you
should know that five years is enough for
you to be attributed to a place.
Sheikh, at what point did you go overseas
to study, by the way?
Was that the age 13, 14?
So I actually began studying in Canada.
Not sure if we would label that as
overseas, but it was just across the border.
I went to an institution in Ontario, Canada.
I spent the first three years studying the
preliminary years of the Dars al-Nawwami curriculum
over there.
And then after three years is when I
took the step for more broader travels and
I went to South Africa.
And when did you decide hadith was going
to be your field that you would absolutely
immerse yourself in?
The decision to, I don't like using specialization
because I don't consider myself a specialist in
anything, but at least my passion for hadith
began toward the ending of my formal study.
I still recall vividly, it was actually a
very specific moment when the transition happened.
I was an avid reader of books on
Islamic theology, particularly Kalam, and I remember one
afternoon while I was in our Madrasa library
sitting, reading a particular book of Kalam and
a friend of mine came passing by and
he picked up the book and he started
reading it and he's like, you know what,
it's actually a really good book.
But I feel in addition to these studies,
you would do well also specializing in not
only the more surface level conversations of hadith,
we need a similar amount of dedication in
the science of hadith as well.
And he gave me a list of books
that I should read and I remember the
moment he gave me that list, I was
a bit overwhelmed.
And as I started reading it, I said,
you know what, I think if there's anything
I would love to spend my day and
night doing, it would be this particular science.
What if someone says, and this is I
think something I think we certainly will see
eye to eye on, but it's important to
actually answer the question.
You know, you live in a world now
where everything's digitized.
You can go to al-Shami, al-Maktab
al-Shami, you can go online, sunnah.com
or whatever it is, you can find, try
GBT's.
Hadith GBT to make it even worse.
Definitely a problem.
What's the point of learning the manual science
of Sanad and Hadith and having an ijazah
and six books and dedicating yourself to a
study that now has been simplified through the
digital tools that are available to us?
Sure.
The same question was posed to a current
scholar of Hadith who responded by saying, ultimately
these are just tools and a tool is
as useful as the person who holds and
uses the tool.
So if I have a tool and I'm
unable and I don't know how to use
it, then I can end up not only
abusing it, I can even harm myself in
the process.
And this is just the general plight of
knowledge in general, that when something becomes easily
accessible and not regulated properly, then people may
underestimate the responsibility that comes with it.
And a particular incident comes to mind.
There was a Turkish scholar whose name was,
and may Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala relieve
the difficulty and suffering that's happening there right
now and Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala raise
the ranks of those who passed away.
There was a Turkish scholar who was the
last deputy to the Ottoman Sheikh of Islam.
His name is Sheikh Mohammed Zahid al-Kawthari.
So during his, we can call it an
exile in Egypt, one day he attended a
lesson in which a Sheikh was teaching Sahih
al-Bukhari, the most revered text after the
Quran.
And as the teacher was reading through the
chain of transmission, he wasn't too particular about
the pronunciation of some of the names, so
he was misspelling them in the process.
Sheikh al-Kawthari, he says, after the session
had ended, I went to the teacher and
I said to him that, you know, your
lesson was phenomenal, it was great, but if
you don't mind me just asking, don't you
think it was inappropriate for you to not
pay attention to the correct adopt and pronunciation
of the transmitters?
Do you consider it a form of tazakhruf,
just an adornment, adornment to the matan?
And that scholar, he said, you know, we
don't need to focus so much on the
chain of transmission because there are libraries of
books already written on it.
And al-Kawthari's simple answer was, we can
have these libraries of books, but if we
don't have people who know how to use
it, what's going to happen?
And if you don't educate your students at
this point how to navigate the intricacies of
the chain of transmission, what's going to happen
eventually is we're rearing a generation of students
who don't know how to use this tradition
or have subpar competence, and then the generation
after that will completely forget about it, and
then we may have the libraries but not
the literacy to access those libraries.
And I think when I think about just
the overall, you know, engagement with hadith in
the Anglophone world or in the English-speaking
world, the problem that we often face is
we want to simplify everything, not realizing that
simplification comes at a cost.
And this isn't only true for people who
speak in English, this also applies in Arabic.
The digitization of knowledge is very helpful, but
it's also a tricky tool.
So I mean, I don't mean to get
too technical with this, but just to give
you an example, there's a very famous computer
search program that even scholars use very often.
It's known as Al-Maktabatu Shamila.
So it's kind of like the Google version
of all the textbooks.
You want a question or you're looking for
a particular passage and you search it, and
you'll type something in and you'll get the
results.
It's a very easy way to get some
of your research done, but again, if not
done properly, you're going to end up falling
into more errors than getting guidance.
I have a personal experience with this that
I'd like to share, but before that, I
want to talk about a scholar from Al
-Azhar.
His name is Sheikh Ahmed Ma'bad Abdul
Kareem, one of the leading scholars of hadith
in our time, hafidhullahu ra'a.
He was speaking to his students one day,
and he's more old school.
He's not as tech savvy as many of
his students, and he said, okay, we all
know that one of the main common links
in madars of hadith, his name is Ibn
Shihab Az-Zuhri, one of the nodes of
hadith.
His name is Ibn Shihab Az-Zuhri from
Medina.
I have a simple task for all of
you, since you guys are so comfortable with
using a computer program, just go in, check
Sahih al-Bukhari, and find how many times
his name is mentioned in this text.
You can be illiterate, and you can still
do this.
Go ahead.
Come.
You can use the advantage of a computer,
and let's see what results you get.
So the next day, the students come, and
they all come, and they say that Ibn
Shihab Az-Zuhri is mentioned X number of
times, and he said, each and every one
of you is wrong.
And he said, why?
And they're all kind of shocked and wondering,
like, how are we wrong?
We just put it into the computer program,
and he said, the reason you're wrong is
because when Imam al-Bukhari cites Ibn Shihab
in the chain, he doesn't always say Ibn
Shihab Az-Zuhri.
He would say Muhammad ibn Muslim.
He would say Az-Zuhri.
He would say Ibn Shihab.
There's a plethora of variations with which you'll
mention his name, which you wouldn't know how
to do if you didn't know his name
was mentioned in those different ways.
So that's an interesting example of where you
can have the different programs and the databases
in front of you, but if you don't
know the science properly, you're going to make
a mistake.
The sheikh who did the same experiment with
Ibn Mas'ud radiAllahu anhu, because obviously he's
a Abdullah.
A lot of times it's not Ibn Mas
'ud in the text, so he said, find
how many times Ibn Mas'ud is cited
using Al-Shamilah.
SubhanAllah.
It's very true.
You're too techy.
So there's no escaping having an intimate relationship
with the text if you want to reach
scholarship.
It's not something that you can simply just
search and like the problem with that, of
course, is if a person is searching for
something and then they try to compile all
of the hadith mentioned on a topic, for
example, for them to be able to come
to a conclusion or a judgment on something.
And they're just depending on a search, they
might escape many important hadith or many important
issues that are cited in Bukhari, for example,
right?
So they miss out on a lot of
information.
Absolutely.
And I think expertise in any field should
be honored to the point that someone who
can speak fluent Arabic, is an expert in
multiple sciences, may not have the same fortitude
in the science of hadith, which is equal
for a scholar who spends his life in
hadith.
He may not have the same fortitude in
theology or fiqh.
And that's why expertise ought to be respected.
So if within the field and sub-disciplines
of Islam, there is that respect that they
accord to one another, then if I don't
even have the bare minimum knowledge of the
language, then it becomes much more tricky.
It's interesting that you say that because, subhanAllah,
I think that one of the main issues
is that people who might speak Arabic think,
I know Arabic, I can figure this out
easily.
And I see that many of hadith denials
come from people that actually are very skilled
with the Arabic language.
And they think that because they understand the
language and they're able to eloquently put forth
a very baseless interpretation of the Qur'an
due to their eloquence, their eloquence betrays them
and they start to say, well, hadith isn't
really this, and hadith doesn't make sense here,
and hadith doesn't make sense there.
So the undermining of hadith has come from
some of those very same places, right?
A lot of it's come from within al
-Azhar.
You mentioned the great Sheikh, right?
And I'm not taking shots at al-Azhar,
we love the Al-Azharis, Sheikh Yasir Fahmi
would attack me for this.
We love our Al-Azhari brothers and sisters,
but it's, you know, sometimes you'll find people
that try to undermine from within that space,
right?
And try to take shots at Abu Huraira
radiAllahu anhu, and the integrity of hadith and
things of that sort, using, you know, fancied
language.
It's interesting when we look at the intellectual
history of hadith, the genre of hadith ranges
from like commentaries, to indices, to recensions.
The first genre of writing hadith that emerged
after the books of hadith themselves is the
genre of gharib al-hadith, which we can
simply translate as difficult words in hadith, kind
of like a dictionary, a lexicon to hadith.
And that fact in and of itself, to
me, speaks volumes to the requirement of knowledge
beyond just language.
Because these are scholars who are writing to
other scholars of words in the hadith that
require further exploration.
So I speak Arabic, but I'm sitting there
reading this particular hadith, and I'm not entirely
sure what this hadith means.
There are instances even in the hadith where
the Sahaba would speak to the Prophet, al
-Islam, and say, Ya Rasulullah, what does this
word mean?
What does this mean in the Qur'an?
So language is an inevitable tool that we
all need, but it only takes us so
far.
We need to sit by the feet of
these scholars to better appreciate the sciences.
So separated from the English language, separated from
the Arabic language, in the English language, do
you see a need for people to study
hadith in English?
If you mean I study hadith in English,
but that's it with no knowledge in Arabic,
that is different than somebody who understands the
science and then disseminates that knowledge in English.
The reason I say this is because like
any other discipline, the study of hadith is
a journey.
A person shouldn't feel that I can't reach
the final goal, therefore I should just call
quits right away.
As they say in Arabic, that half a
loaf of bread is better than nothing, it's
just more about what my priorities are and
what will I do with that knowledge.
So if my objective is to educate myself
on who the Messenger of Allah was, what
were the sayings that he conveyed to his
companions, then the bar is set a bit
lower.
So I can read Idiyab al-Saliheen, I
can read a translation of that, and I
can get to know more about the Prophet.
Now beyond that surface level, I now want
to delve into the intellectual tradition of hadith.
Then I start reading introductory texts.
This is all fine because the purpose is
self-enrichment and it doesn't get into the
aspect of propagation or research, which would require
a completely different skill set.
So can people study hadith in English?
Absolutely, if it's in the beginning level.
It's very interesting because when you look at
the Western Academy today, Western universities churn out
a number of academics and scholars who write
on hadith, who understand hadith and may not
be as competent in the Arabic language, but
there's a difference between studying hadith as a
historical Islamic hate science versus delving into the
traditional works of these scholars like Ibn Hajar
to Nawawi and others.
Two different, I would say, areas.
But for the average person, I think they
can study hadith and really benefit from it.
But if they want to reach a level
of expertise, I think there's no doubt that
you can't accomplish much unless you start studying
the lingua franca of these scholars and then
engaging with their texts.
So, Sheikh, when someone comes to you and
says, look, let's say someone converted to Islam
a month ago or two months ago, and
they're already googling things and seeing a hadith
that are problematic or fabricated a hadith being
passed off as being authentic within these articles.
And then they're reading critiques of Imam Bukhari
or critiques of Abu Ghayr al-Ali, and
you know, attempts to undermine this.
And someone comes and says, listen, how do
I know hadiths are authentic?
How do I know hadith is preserved?
I don't know the Arabic language.
I'm just learning Quran, right?
How do I know that hadiths are important,
instructive, an integral part of the tradition?
And how do I begin to sort out
what's preserved and authentic versus what's fabricated and
baseless?
That's a very important question, and I feel
there are two parts to it.
The first is the question of significance, and
the second is the question of preservation.
And both are equally important, because even if
I believe the tradition to have been preserved,
some people labor under this assumption that for
some odd reason, I'm not bound by the
precedent of the Prophet alaihi salam.
That's much more harmful.
But that is something that needs to be
addressed.
And anyone who even has like a cursory
glance to the Quran, the references to the
Prophet alaihi salam, قُلْ إِن كُنْتُمْ تُحِبُّونَ اللَّهَ
فَاتَّبِعُونِي The Ittiba' of the Prophet alaihi salam,
the idea of following the Prophet alaihi salam,
that's such, it's like a no-brainer when
it comes down to reading the Quran and
the fact that his life served as an
authoritative compass for even his immediate followers and
companions speaks volumes to what our approach should
be to his life.
So the significance and the importance of the
Prophet alaihi salam is very important.
And I think the first question we ought
to ask ourselves is, if the Quran is
telling me to follow in his footsteps, what
is the only practical method for me to
tap into that legacy of the Prophet alaihi
salam?
We have the sunnah, which is like the
lived practice, and then we have the hadith,
the documented sayings, actions and silent approval of
the Prophet alaihi salam, and they both work
hand in hand.
And this brings us to the second question
in terms of how do I know that
the hadith was preserved?
I think it goes without saying that Muslim
scholars will be the first people to tell
you hadith were fabricated, will be the first
to tell you there are weak hadith, they
will be the first to tell you there
are unreliable hadith, they will be the first
people to tell you that.
But what often is kind of glossed over
or not shared in these sentiments is that
the scholars resolved this problem and took it
head on immediately in the first generation of
the Sahaba.
So yes, people had ulterior motives and they
began spreading lies about the Prophet alaihi salam,
but we had the likes of Abdullah ibn
Mubarak, we had the likes of Yahya ibn
Ma'in, the likes of Ali ibn Madini,
who stood up to this challenge.
And through different means, the words of the
Prophet alaihi salam was preserved.
It's very interesting, there's Khatib al-Baghdadi records
an incident about Abdullah ibn Mubarak, a person
who's about to pass away, he says, you
know what, I fabricated X number of hadith,
what are you guys going to do about
it?
He says, you don't have to worry about
it, we have scholars, we'll take care of
your fabrications.
So we have a tradition for that, and
subhanAllah, that tradition is both an oral tradition
as well as a written tradition as well.
It was orally transmitted, and there was a
written tradition as well.
What makes the science of hadith very unique
is this process of what we call Isnad,
the chain of transmission, which began very early
on with people like Ibn Sirin saying, سَمُّوا
لَنَا رِجَالَكُمْ If you ever open your mouth
about the Prophet alaihi salam, you better tell
us your source, otherwise don't even bother speaking
to me.
Coupled with that was the field of narrator
criticism, الجرح والتعديل.
The moment you open your mouth, you're not
just going to share a string of names
that are meaningless.
I need to know who these people are
and whether they have been vetted or not.
Once that information goes through this twin process
of verification, Isnad and الجرح والتعديل, we take
this matan and then we give it a
particular grading.
If it's on the highest level of authenticity,
we will use it in particular areas, and
if it doesn't meet that criteria, we're going
to put it in other collections.
Now, when we're having this hypothetical conversation with
that brother who may have accepted Islam, Let's
say the elevator pitch, the elevator got stuck
and you just gave him a class on
hadith.
And if we're to, you know, if I'm
to tell him that the preservation of hadith,
you know, there's a scholar, his name is
Sheikh Manazir Ahsan Gilani, he would say that
a lot of people feel uncomfortable with the
idea that there weren't that many written documents
in the life of the Prophet ﷺ.
Show me one book on the life of
the Prophet ﷺ, and he says, I'll show
you 10,000.
Give me Isabah ibn Hajar, and I'll go
through the different bios of the Sahaba.
Each of them lived his legacy, lived his
aspirations, and fleshed out the details of the
Qur'an in their respective lives.
So if I had a few seconds left
before the elevator started working again, I would
just tell him if Allah wanted me to
follow the Prophet ﷺ, there's only one verifiable
means of doing that, and that is through
his sunnah and through the hadith which accompanies
it.
I feel like a lot of, you know,
the science of hadith is one that is
very unique to the Muslim world or to
our tradition, and so because of that, people
who suffer from inferiority complexes feel like it
can't be something that is just ours, like
it can't be, the Muslims couldn't have come
up with something that didn't exist in other
cultures and what have you.
But I think, you know, I have this,
I'd actually like to run it by both
of you guys, I have this example that
I like to give, and that is if
you were seven feet tall 100 years ago,
what use would, what use would the world
have for you?
Like what job would you have if you
were seven foot tall?
You might be in the circus or something,
you might be like, but now if you're
seven feet tall at 12 years old or
13 years old, there's a very, very clear
route for you.
They're going to put you in basketball training
from that age because there's a career for
this gift, for this talent.
And during our, you know, during those periods
that, of the collection of hadith and, you
know, these great names that you mentioned, and
Bukhari, and Ahmed, and these brilliant memories, that
people have these brilliant memories now, like there
are people who can watch documentaries, people who
remember every single day of their life.
Like you tell them, you know, and I
think I saw like a Nightline documentary, they
asked them like October 12th, 1996, tell me
about it.
And they're like, I was wearing this, I
was wearing that, and this is, this is,
this is what happened, it was a Tuesday,
and this was, and, but there's no real
use for that type of memory now.
But in that period, especially the period of
the collection of hadith, if a person had
that type of talent, you had the development,
you had the direction, they had the guidance,
they were sent to go study, or they
went to study ilm, and they were directed
to this pursuit that the entire world was
doing at that particular time, which is the
collection of hadith.
You remember Sheikh Abul Fadl from Tampa, you
know, Sheikh Abul Fadl from Al-Muhaddith?
Yeah.
MashaAllah, photographic memory, like with hadith even until
now, like it's like, you know, like there
are these people that walk around, you're like,
how do you even exist in this time?
SubhanAllah, there's an incident mentioned of Sheikh Abdullah
Sirajuddin, a very famous scholar from Syria who
had just passed away maybe in the early
2000, 2001, and a person took an oath,
who was a close student of Sheikh Abdullah,
and he said that, I swear to God,
my teacher knows 100,000 hadith, and if
he doesn't, X thing is going to happen.
And everybody's like, are you sure about that?
I don't know if it's a good idea
for you to be so confident in your
teacher.
So then he goes to his teacher, and
he says, you know what, I kind of
took an oath that I'm going to do
X, Y, and Z, and you better know
100,000 hadith.
And he's like, that was a foolish move
on your end, but don't worry about it,
your oath is perfectly fine.
Because he had memorized the Kutub al-Sitta,
Mishkat al-Masabih, Jamil al-Usul, SubhanAllah.
We had this one sheikh come visit while
we were studying in South Africa, and he
said that in his Madrasat al-Banat, madrasa
for females, majority of their students had memorized
the Kutub al-Sitta.
It's part of their curriculum.
The six books of hadith, that amounts to
easily, easily over 20,000 hadith.
So yeah, but to get to your question,
which SubhanAllah, the first thing I think important
to address is, for sure, the science of
hadith and Isnad and Jarhawat Ta'dil has always
been seen as a meeza, khususiya, a unique
characteristic of the Muslim ummah.
The German orientalist Alois Sprenger, he's famous for
saying that no one like the Muslims has
ever recorded the lives of people like the
way the Muslims have, like over half a
million, he said, maybe some of an exaggeration,
but it's true.
And the funny thing is, you have some
early academics who try to show rival projects
that were similar to the Isnad and other
traditions.
And the problem with each of these is
either the chains were broken or you have
no idea who these people are.
So they would say like, oh, here's this
ancient text and there's a chain of transmission
in the beginning.
And then they would say, first of all,
this chain is missing like four or five
links.
Second of all, we don't even know who
these people are.
So what benefit is that chain of transmission?
So definitely it's something that brings us pride
and has always brought the Muslim ummah pride.
The question, though, is what's the function of
the Isnad given that we're past the era
of documentation?
And again, this was something.
Scholars actually contemplated themselves at the turn of
the fifth century of the history calendar that
now hadith is all recorded in these collections.
What purpose does an Isnad serve?
What purpose does memorizing these hadith serve?
And I think it's become a topic of
much study today.
But I think there are two ways to
approach this.
One is more from like a spiritual angle
and one is more a functional angle.
I'll get to the functional angle in a
moment.
But the spiritual angle is responded by Ibn
Salah in his famous Muqaddimah, he would say
that we are part of this Isnad because
we want to be part of that chain
that connects us to the Prophet.
We want to die as people who are
the people of hadith.
Qala qala Rasulullah Sallallahu alaihi wasallam is the
last word we want to say after la
ilaha illallah.
So there's that spiritual element to it as
well.
But functionally speaking in the modern day, when
I see the availability of knowledge at my
fingertips, what benefit is learning all of this,
this entire science of hadith?
And there are a few things, right?
When I think about, like just take a
step back and I look at the disciplines
of knowledge of Islam from Usul Fiqh to
Kalam to Balagha to Hadith, I see them
serving two purposes beyond their own direct purpose.
So, for instance, when I think about Balagha,
Islamic rhetoric, it helps me to appreciate the
nuances in the Quran, but it also allows
me to speak more eloquently in whatever language
I speak.
When I think about Usul Fiqh, it helps
me to process scripture, but it's a process,
it's a method of thinking and processing information
in general as well.
When I think about Kalam, it may be
some could say it's a very niche way
of thinking about aqidah and theology, but it
helps me rationalize and think about the divine.
Hadith serves the purpose of verification.
Hadith is perhaps the best example of robust
journalism.
And it's really interesting when you look at
here at Kalam, one of the classes that
I do with the students is a class
on humanizing the science of hadith.
So it's not seen as like a set
of theoretical tools, because oftentimes we hear, OK,
this is sahih, this is da'if, this
is hasan, and this is what it means
to be authentic, unreliable.
But when you go and you dig a
bit deeper, you realize how intuitive the science
is.
So someone like Imam Al-Bukhari, when he
would narrate a hadith, if you take his
process of authentication, you can apply the same
standards today and you would come to the
exact same conclusion.
So the function of the science of hadith
today, functionally speaking also, it's a mode of
verifying knowledge out there.
So whenever somebody comes to me with information,
I want to know where is the source?
How weighty, how valuable is the information that
you're giving me?
Should I accept it, not accept it?
And once I do take it, what dimension
of my life will I apply it to?
So I don't think it's obsolete.
And the most important thing that it goes
back to all the time for me every
time is no matter how rich a science
is, if you do not know how to
navigate the rough terrains of that science, not
only will you get lost yourself, you may
harm yourself as well.
And I can sit here, give ample examples,
but there's no need to derail.
It's just, yeah, studying the science of hadith
is much needed, especially today, because it's for
critics, it's low hanging fruit.
It's, OK, you know what, I can prey
on the lack of knowledge or the ignorance
of people who may not know better and,
you know, throw out very outdated cliches of,
oh, hadith were undocumented or look what the
Prophet ﷺ said and not giving it much
thought.
You know, one of the papers that I
had published for Yaqeen Institute was on this
very subject of give it a second thought,
give it a second thought.
Yeah, yeah, give it a second thought.
Don't be so rushed and hasty to just
throw the baby out with the bathwater.
And I list some principles of, you know
what, the hadith could be metaphorically understood or
there's some questions about authenticity and so on
and so forth.
So I think if anyone in the West
or the English speaking audience needs to study
hadith more so than others, in my opinion,
given that this is where much of the
critical material is coming, like people are criticizing
Islam from the same region.
So whether it's the West in general, whether
it's America or Canada or UK, Australia, so
we have an equal responsibility to educate ourselves
and deal with these same historiographical concerns.
You know, and I don't want to be
one to just brush aside all these concerns.
People may be coming from a right place.
Their heart may be in the right place.
It's just they require some clarification.
I'm going to ask you two last questions.
One of them is a serious one.
The other one is kind of serious.
So the one that's serious is, look, you
mentioned the spiritual component too.
As students of knowledge, I want to have
that sanad, even when we do our sanad
in Qur'an, right?
Like you get to Obey Ibn Ka'b
radiAllahu anhu, then to the Prophet ﷺ.
There's a spiritual connection with the Qur'an.
I want to have that spiritual connection, right?
Can you just explain what a sanad is
for people?
A chain of narration and memorization.
So there are chains that you receive certification
reciting to someone with a chain who recited
to that person and memorizing.
All the way to the Prophet ﷺ.
1400 years.
Absolutely.
And spiritually, that's significant, but maybe to the
student of knowledge.
But what about the average Muslim?
And we're talking about on this podcast, da
'wah, in, you know, not just in the
21st century, but specifically these last 20 years,
these last two decades and where we've come.
What spiritual significance is it to me to
connect hadith to my reality, which seems so
distant from the reality of the Prophet ﷺ?
Why do I even need to study the
tradition?
Why even know anything about the tradition when
my contemporary is so distant?
That's the first question.
Second question is, where did the name Mufti
Muntasir, Mufti Mashin Muntasir come from?
I want to understand where Mufti Mashin Muntasir
came from.
To answer the first one, what's the significance
of studying a tradition, a life of an
individual ﷺ who may have addressed concerns vastly
different to what we may be experiencing today?
The beauty of the sunnah and the beauty
of the Qur'an is that though there
are particulars, there are universals that are applicable
at all times.
So when we think about the sunnah of
the Prophet ﷺ, the fact that I should
not overeat, and, you know, one third for
food, one third for water, and one third
empty, that's a universal maxim and a principle.
The fact that I should be kind to
my neighbors, the fact that I should respect
my mother, the entire system of law.
And the beauty of that is, and that's
why we need to study the tradition, is
ultimately the life of any individual has so
many components to it, but piecing it together
and making it meaningful requires a degree of
expertise.
And scholars have sat down and said, what
the Prophet ﷺ did in this instance is
very specific to him.
And what the Prophet ﷺ did here is
universal.
And the relevance of the Prophet ﷺ today,
for me in particular, is two things.
Number one, it's my immediate window to what
Allah ﷻ wants from me.
I can never hope to achieve the happiness
of Allah unless I follow his commandments that
were embodied in the life of the Prophet
ﷺ in his sunnah.
And the second is, I feel, and I'm
certain everybody else feels, he left a legacy,
he left a lifestyle that when imparted, and
we kind of just polish that fitrah of
ours a little bit from all its contamination,
you'll appreciate it so much.
The simplicity, the effectiveness, the impact, the loving,
compassionate nature of the Prophet ﷺ sunnah.
Once you put aside a lot of our
preconceived notions, you look at that and you
realize that's the person who I want to
be.
SubhanAllah.
And I've seen this so many times.
I remember once I was coming back from
South Africa.
I was on the flight and I'm dressed
like this, you know.
So there was a person who wasn't a
Muslim and she was sitting next to me,
elderly woman.
And she sees the way I'm dressed and
she asks me that, you know, you look
like a Muslim and can you tell me
something about your faith?
And, you know, one thing leads to another.
And I said, you know, I was young
that time.
I think I was like 16 or 17.
And I said, you know, I read this
one hadith.
I was to explain to her what a
hadith was.
And I said, I read that the Prophet
ﷺ, our messenger, he said, help your brother,
whether he is an oppressor or oppressed.
And if he's oppressed, obviously you make du
'a for him and you stop.
And if he's the oppressor, you hold his
hand and stop him from doing the oppression.
And when she heard this, I thought it
was an ordinary hadith.
She began to cry.
And she says, those are the most beautiful
words I've ever heard.
And I thought to myself, how many of
these hadith we come across every day, but
perhaps our hearts have gotten hard and, you
know, subhanAllah, we don't really have that same
feeling.
You know, Malcolm X had a very similar
experience on Hajj Malik al-Shabazz.
He heard, he actually says in the autobiography,
he said that when he met Dr. Shawarbi,
he said that he dropped this, he said
he dropped this statement on me.
No one of you believes until you love
for your brother what you love for yourself.
He said, it blew my mind.
Like that's such a simple hadith that we
share.
And he writes in his autobiography that blew
my mind, that one hadith like completely shifted
his entire world.
That's how we were before our hearts became
hard, right?
You start to take these things for granted,
just circulate them.
And yeah, and I think that to answer
your question is like, the more we read
the life of the Prophet alaihi salam, the
more you'll fall in love with his legacy.
And the more we practice it, the more
in tune we become with our fitrah.
I think that's the most important thing.
The second question was the mufti.
Yeah, mufti, the machine.
Okay, the machine just has to do with
like editing work.
So whenever somebody is going to publish a
book, they usually once in a while, they'll
send it over to me.
And particularly Dr. Jonathan Brown, he sent me
a few of his books.
And so this is another thing related to
the science of hadith.
The one thing you'll notice about any talibu
ilm al-hadith, anyone who's a student of
hadith, is they're very pedantic.
They're very pedantic.
It's just, it's in the nature of hadith
that you can't even let one harak out.
If you're, because the moment you change the
name of a narrator from Aliya to Ulayya,
then you're talking about somebody completely different.
So you're so laser focused on specifics that
oftentimes you may be attentive to details that
other people aren't.
So then whenever they send this, I start
picking on like footnote, like footnote number 153
has an extra unnecessary reference.
So yeah, that's where the name machine came
from.
But hopefully there'll be better alqab in titles.
I would love the term, you know, somebody
beloved to Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta-A
'la or somebody close to- So if
they're now searching in Maktab al-Shamila in
200 years and they say, find Mufti Muntasim
like, you know, Rawal machine.
They'll reward you.
Allah reward everybody and I seek everyone's forgiveness.
If I've said anything wrong, anything I said
right is from Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta
-A'la anything wrong is from myself and
from Shaytan.
And we're all on this journey of learning.
And I think the advice to myself is
how can I improve myself on a day
-to-day basis and never remain stagnant.
Jazakum Allah khair.
Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta-A'la bless
you.
Jazakum Allah khair.
We enjoyed it.
Jazakum Allah khair.
Jazakum Allah khair.
That was a lot of, that was very
beneficial.
Jazakum Allah khair.
I know I hear you say that you're
not eloquent.
Yes, seriously.