Suhaib Webb – An Introduction to Usul alFiqh Part Two The Teen Foundations
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This is the coronavirus
version of SWISS again.
Just trying to make sure that I get
content out to you guys as best I
can and forgive me for not having all
bells and whistles. But
man, you know, this is,
this is how things are sometimes.
Make it easy for us.
And, you know, just like a lot of
us, especially in New York City in quarantine,
not us. We're in quarantine, but then ask
kind of the whole city
to be somewhat careful how we live our
lives. But
for disdain and for us being together, and
we're starting this really important subject.
Let's pick up where we left off last
time. We were talking about.
Right? Those ten
building blocks of learning that are so important
that you wanna know,
before you go into a subject. And that's
one of the things I really hope that
I can do at SWIS is my background
is education. I did a degree in education.
Like, I love it, man. It's my field,
and it's something that I I I treasure.
So I also like to teach how to
teach, That makes sense. So as I said
earlier, you can use it as a rubric.
And now we're gonna do is we're gonna
apply what we learned the theory
of those 10,
and see how it plugs into the subject
of soda fill.
So here we go.
First of all, let's talk about its definition.
And scholars of osuletafik,
they tend to define in 2 ways. Number
1 is by taking the compound word,
is one word, is another. If you take
an Arabic with me, is a
is a a,
gem of tuxir. Right? It's it's plural.
Broken plural.
Like rijab,
So it's the foundations
of Islamic law. So they would take that
first word, and
the second
word, define
and then define and then bring them together.
That's the classic style. It's called
tarif,
morakar,
where
you bring 2 words together. So
is made up 2 words.
Osul
is the singular, you can see it right
there.
You can see my
the foundations, it's singular.
It is awesome
foundation.
Means to understand.
The definition applies that.
A firq is the process needed to understand
religious text.
There was a great, great scholar
of of old
Imam Safarini,
who said that, not Safarini, a Lustes,
Razi who said that the word actually doesn't
mean to understand, but means to understand something
something like really subtle, like a deeper level
of understanding.
So, you know, you don't say like,
You don't say to someone like, I feel
like you're here.
You you say,
Like, you you would use it to imply
that you were able to discern
something that there was this set of what's
called the isharat or delil.
There were a set of delil that directed
you to something that wasn't apparent.
Right? So
So like if you see far like smoke
from far away, you could say, like, I've
understood that the smoke
is indicating the an indication of a fire.
So fiqh,
according to him and also Imam Ibn Qayyim
means that you understand
something very, very subtle and deep that it
involves inference.
That's very important because fiqh is really the
science of inferring
and deducing
what the hital of Allah is, what the
message of God is. So Allah says in
the Quran, Quran,
like
those people cannot understand
the deeper
speech. Right? They can understand what you say.
We don't
we don't understand
a lot of what you say. Quran, they
said to their prophet, like, we're not really
getting the deeper meaning of what you say.
That's why the
prophet,
whoever Allah wants good for gives them the
a
deeper understanding of
The second way is we talk about the
hadd of is
a scientific definition where scholars said, listen,
is so popular. Now it has its own
definition. There's no need to break down the
compound definition.
So they would say,
and actually it should be here. And this
is a mistake I made years ago when
I wrote this. And this is the definition
of the Imam Abu Dhabi al Baydawi in
a book called Al Minhaj.
Right here, it should be
For there shouldn't be an here.
Man, this definition is very important. Very important.
If you look at it look. There's 3
parts to it.
1,
knowing the evidence is
2, how to benefit from those evidences.
And the third is, what are the qualities
the one who can
benefit? What are the what's the academic
criteria?
Criterion.
So you see there's 3 parts. That's why
it's called
not
It's called
because there's 3 foundations.
Knowing the evidence knowing how to benefit with
the evidences, and knowing the qualities of the
person who can employ those evidences for benefit.
And there's
a lot happening here that,
I wanna share with you quickly. Number 1
is, when you
that, I wanna share with you quickly. Number
1 is when he says
how do you benefit? So that implies that
if someone doesn't know how to use these
evidences, they won't make istifed.
They'll make.
They'll make istifsed.
So if if I don't know how to
use them correctly, I may actually do
contribute to corruption.
So the idea here is someone has to
learn how to use the evidences properly to
bring benefit.
We're gonna talk about that in a minute,
but remember what I just said. And then
look what he says here. He didn't say
He doesn't say the conditions of the Adam.
He says, what are the conditions of the
benefitter?
Mostafid is an active partisan.
What is the academic
qualifications
needed for somebody who brings benefit to people?
So in other words, the ethos of scholarship,
the ethos of the is
to benefit people
by bringing them closer to Allah.
Excuse
me. That's really cool though.
And you can see where,
Imam Al Baidlaw is is taking his joint.
It's like thorough.
As I just said, there are 3 parts
to his definition.
The first is that osulefaka is a science
having its own definition.
This means knowing what can and cannot be
used as an evidence. So this is the
first part,
So the Quran is an evidence. The sunnah
is an evidence. Is an evidence analogy.
Evidence but what happened last night on the
gram, that ain't evidence. Oh, well, last night
on the gram, I saw this, so this
must be and this is Haram. I went
to Costco and slipped and fell, so must
be Haram to go Costco.
Personal experiences aren't allowed to be used as
evidence.
So
means 2 things. Not only am I learning
what the evidences are, I'm also learning what
is not allowed to be used as an
evidence. That's why I put at the bottom
here, there is duality happening here. And oftentimes,
that's the case with classical scholars. You read
one thing, but what's inferred is the other
reading of what of what's going
on.
The word Dalib, this is where we hear
a lot of people talking about. Right? The
word Dalil means
an evidence.
Dalilunar.
We say Adduhan
Dalilunar.
So right here, there should be the word
Adduhan
smoke, dalilunar.
And it's defined by scholars, and this is
Imam al Bayjat,
Baidji's definition of dalil.
This is amazing. Check this out.
Man, it's not easy to translate this.
But what Al Baji is saying is that
a daleel is what can lead to a
definitive
or presumptive
conclusion.
I want you to remember that
that there are 2 types of. A definitive
self explanatory,
doesn't need a lot of work,
and a Delil, which is based on a
presumption of a scholar.
So now you can see where there's the
etiquette of differences because everything is not definitive.
In fact, most of filk is gonna be
the opposite. It's gonna be
presumptive
Presumptive.
So a dahlil is what
can lead to a definitive
or presumptive
conclusion
by properly learning and understanding.
Here he's talking about
recognizing it, recognizing how to use it and
how to employ it. So actually, right there
is almost another definition of what I talked
about knowing the evidences,
how to benefit with the evidences,
who can benefit with the evidences impact in
that. If you look here,
there are 2 type of evidences. What's called
definitive Qata'i
Qata'i,
a self evident text that requires no interpretation,
investigation, or understanding.
Imam Ibn Hajib, he said
It's a text that doesn't doesn't allow for
interpretation. Like when the Prophet said pray 5
times, they're like, what's 5? How do you
interpret 5?
It's very clear.
All I said, if you fast 3 and
then 7,
or understanding.
Imam Abu Hajjib said,
What allows for interpretation?
And what
demands
meaning a scholar working to try to understand
the text.
So again, Dalil,
because he said, We're
talking now about the first of the 10
parts of the, of the building blocks of.
We haven't got to.
We're still in the 10 building blocks.
What's
daleel? The plural of daleel. Daleel is also
Jamaatakseer for my Arabic students. What does daleel
mean in evidence? And and just for your
information, a daleel is an evidence for something
besides itself. So the smoke isn't the fire.
My footprints isn't me, but my footprints are
an evidence for me, and the fire is
an evidence for me. So the evidences of
the Quran and Sunnah often are going to
be brought together
to prove a ruling that they're not explicitly
associated to.
In that process, there's gonna be 2 type
of evidence. Is number 1,
self evident.
Right? So that's gonna be the unique one
that is actually evidencing itself,
rarely.
And the second
speculative, which is
the mass majority of.
That's why Imam Abu Baydawi in Al Minhajid
said,
You know, he said that in the process
of coming to a fiqh conclusion, there is
a a a bit of speculation speculation
or, like, a presumptive process.
That's important because there's no takfir in that.
There's not calling someone who's qualified an innovator
out of Islam. What we see sometimes with
some of the neo traditionalist movements or even
some of the Salafi movements, is that they
will actually declare someone out of Islam who's
a qualified scholar or groups of scholars,
not based on the definitive issues, but over
the speculative issues. At ground 0 in communities,
do you think taweeh is definitive or speculative?
It's speculative. But what do people fight over?
Do
you think, for example,
the,
eating meat outside is definitive or speculative? It's
speculative, but people fight over it like it's
definitive. So you can see where there's a
lot of issues that will solve for
Masha'allah local communities that we'll talk about in
the future.
The word dalil means, like, as I said
earlier, an evidence
for something besides itself. And what did I
mean by speculative? There's a spelling error there
implying that scholars assumption is so strong, such
that it will guide his approach or her
approach on an issue before and after he
reaches a conclusion. We're gonna break that down
in the future inshallah.
What do we mean by concrete or katay
explicit implying that conclusion of the scholar based
on principles,
and his assessment is definitive, meaning
his or her engagement in that process
was limited.
There was not a lot of scholarly engagement
in that. So if you ask most children,
you know, what's the ruling online, haram? They're
not scholars, but that's.
Final thoughts on Dalil here again is the
definition.
So here you understand why he says,
You you you trying to seek
a a
a knowledge based
presumption
based on either habari or vani habari or
vani.
This implies there's gonna be some leeway.
The right process, meaning
following the process of
in that process,
which is going to help and aid that
person's conclusion
or presumption.
It's not easy to translate that, man. Next
time, inshallah, we're gonna start to talk about
the evidences.