Suhaib Webb – Fiqh & Fatwa – Part One- Two Challenges Facing Fiqh Practitioners in the U.S

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The importance of sharia and the negative consequences of sharia, including false assumptions and false predictions, are discussed. Sharia is built upon recognized customs and practices, but it is not a recognized culture. The segment also touches on the negative consequences of sharia, including false assumptions and false predictions, and how it impacts behavior and income. The speaker emphasizes the importance of moral depravity and the need for behaviors and behaviors to achieve success.
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Assalamualaikum warahmatullahi wabarakatuh.
A few days ago I put an article
up on Substack that talks about evaluating the
growth of Islamic law at a practical level,
not an abstract level in the United States
over the last 10 years, what I've seen
traveling almost like everywhere in the United States
and examining what's going on as well as
fielding questions and listening to people and talking
to practitioners of Islamic law in the United
States of America.
And I noted that I had two real
serious concerns.
The first concern is the inability for American
Muslim scholars to self-validate and the inability
for many within the religious circles to validate
those scholars.
What I mean by that is everyone's kind
of looking in their rearview mirror, like I
went to Azhar, I was at Dar al
-Iftar, those things are very important to me,
but at the end of the day, I
trust like local practitioners of fiqh and fatwa
here to give the right answer than say
over there.
An incident happened to me around 15 years
ago, I was traveling with a mufti who
I was studying with and we were in
Chicago and a question came to me and
I can't remember this question subhanAllah for the
life of me, and I went to him
and asked him and he said to me,
why did we train you?
Like why are you here asking you this?
You need to figure this out for yourself.
You know your people better than we do.
And that of course is not to reinforce
some kind of nativism or anything like that,
we definitely want to partner and cooperate with
people overseas and benefit from scholars and the
academic presence of councils overseas, but there may
be times where American Muslims have to make
calls, scholarship, in ways that differ with overseas
simply because the situations are different.
That takes me to the second concern and
that is the reliance on classical fiqh manuals,
especially in the areas of mu'malat in day
-to-day dealings and the customs that generated
those answers to answer particular needs within the
context.
I'm speaking to where I live, United States
of America.
Imam al-Qarafi in Farooq, he says that
you know any like fatwa that is rooted
in a custom can change if that custom
changes.
Imam Ibn Qayyim talks about this in Al
-Anwaqqain, he talks about this also in the
in Al-Turuq Al-Hukumiyah, you know that
that these kind of particular changes demand not
simply holding on to texts which are answering
particulars from centuries ago, but are taking into
consideration the situation at hand.
And that's really the job of the faqih.
I mean you can tell me all day
long what we accomplished in Andalus, but I
want to know what you're accomplishing now.
Like we can live in an abstract romanticized
sort of sense of success, but if we're
failing to serve the people in front of
us and generate answers that show the value
and life of the sharia, we not only
risk losing the broader non-Muslims, but we
also risk failing to model the value of
Islam for Muslims.
So that's the second concern and there's some
quotes, I have the article in front of
me here, you know by scholars that sort
of address this, you know Imam al-Shatibi
says sharia is built upon the recognition of
people's customs when needed and practices as long
as they align with its objectives, as long
as those customs align with the objectives of
sharia and do not you know contradict the
foundations of Islam.
And I mentioned earlier al-Qarafi al-Farooq
volume four page nine has this really powerful
statement a religious opinion based on custom changes
when the custom changes.
So what I'm getting at is no doubt
I believe that taqlid in acts of worship
is central, but I believe in the areas
of mu'malat this is where day-to-day
actions, where jurists, practitioners of fiqh, scholars, fiqh
councils have to come together and begin to
answer the questions of the day because there's
a great statement al-Qarafi said it as
well as Ibn Qayyim is very similar that
says you know sticking to those classical texts
is a failure to appreciate the true intent
of the law, the way of the salaf,
the way of the jurist in fact is
going to lead people astray, is trying to
fit two puzzle pieces that don't work.
One of the areas that I think we
may be failing to address and to sort
of explain to people why certain fatwas are
the way they are, there's like eight parameters
that impact fatwa right and one of them
is moral depravity.
Now Amr ibn Abdulaziz a famous statement he
says new rulings will be introduced for people
in proportion to the corruption they introduce.
So the ruling is going to take into
consideration because it's not only about enforcing the
good at times the job of the mufti
could be to mitigate evil, like to step
in and stop greater evil and greater harm
from happening.
There's a great example of this we know
that Imam Atik radiyallahu anhu had different opinions
for people based on their geographical areas like
if a person came from a place where
people are known to be liars, if a
person came from a place where people were
known to be not upright in certain ways
the answer may change it may even be
more difficult it may be like a disciplined
answer that creates a sense of like you
know sternness or it may be dispensation just
because that person's surrounded by certain challenges that
are impossible for them to escape.
We also find the Prophet ﷺ in the
hadith related by Imam Abu Dawood, Imam al
-Ayni mentions this when the young man asked
him can I kiss my wife while fasting
he says no the old man he says
yes right two different realities happening in this
situation two different situations happening that demand same
question different answer.
When people will come to the Prophet ﷺ
some say ayoo a'mal al-afdal what's the
best action I can do the answer is
different as Asha'at if he mentions and
al-muwathaqat because that person's ability and needs
and situations are different.
We're not talking about the fundamentals of Islam
here we're talking about those things that sort
of animate and bring a cadence to Islam
that impact people individually or even communally but
we're not talking about salah and hajj and
fasting of course we're talking about other things
the periphery here so let's be careful fatwa
not sharia is the word I'm using.
A great example of this is Imam Abu
Hanifa who you know he actually allowed the
family of the Prophet ﷺ to receive zakah.
Why?
Because in his time that institution had become
so corrupted that they could no longer rely
on the state to take care of them
so here we see Sayyidina Imam Abu Hanifa
taking into consideration the moral depravity the institutional
failure to issue a fatwa.
We find also for example in Surat al
-Tawbah verse 91 right Allah says that there's
no blame on the benefactor.
Benefactor are those people like I go somewhere
to get something fixed and they ask someone
to like hold that garment for me or
I go somewhere to to have something handled
and between it the service that I paid
for there's there's someone who's handling that for
that service.
That person like let's say I have a
new garment and I take it to a
tailor and somehow that garment has a problem
right it goes back to the one who
made the garment not the tailor in the
ideal situation okay based on this verse.
Imam Abu Hanifa he changed his opinion on
this and he noted that the moral integrity
of the people the benefactors in his age
service providers would be a great way to
understand this their religious commitment and their piety
had decreased so the craftsmen and the laborers
so if I hire someone to fix my
house and something happens in the house right
that at that time people begin to use
this verse in a way that undermined what
the verse was trying to accomplish the goal
of the verse was masaleh because generally benefactors
are bringing good so I wanted to open
the door for benefactors these people unfortunately began
to use it for the opposite right and
take advantage of people so Sayyidina Imam Abu
Hanifa he issues the fatwa that no these
people are actually liable for things that happen
in this situation which would seem like he
actually is contradicting the Quran but he's not
he's actually affirming the overarching goal of the
Quran which is to bring benefit so now
craftsmen and now laborers construction workers and others
they can be held accountable because Imam Abu
Hanifa is not sticking to the apparent meaning
of the text but the implicit meaning of
the text to affirm the broader goal of
Islam which is to bring benefit the point
here is he takes into consideration the moral
condition of the people in order to what
we say tell the youth right to offer
a change that sticks to the not the
letter of the law if you will but
the meaning of the law we find the
prophet sallallahu alayhi wasallam he took into consideration
people when he came after conquering Mecca alhamdulillah
a non-violent you know if you will
conquering and he says to Sayyidina Aisha is
related by America in the Muwatta if it
wasn't that your people had just become Muslim
I would order that the Kaaba is destroyed
and rebuilt on its original foundations you know
Imam Anowi reflecting on this and it's also
related by Imam Muslim he says like here's
a great example of not doing something to
achieve something greater not doing something good to
achieve a greater good uh sallallahu alayhi wasallam
I experienced something like this a few years
ago we know that the methamphetamine epidemic in
this country has gone insane Oxycontin was destroying
people for years and I was asked by
Muslims who are clinicians about the practice of
medic medication assisted recovery or MAR or what's
called a harm reduction where a person is
given an intoxicant which is less dangerous less
addictive but slowly weeds them off more addictive
opiates and so on and so forth and
my answer was that that is allowed if
done under the supervision of medical professionals because
the overarching good is greater than just allowing
people to continue to use these devastating narcotics
which are opioids which are impacting their family
their wealth their community many times it's targeting
certain races in this country absence of parents
absence of fathers statistics show what all this
does so the overarching good would be under
medical supervision to help wean people off those
dangerous narcotics with the hope of a full
recovery I say that and feel free to
differ not a problem to show like how
we have to be number one self-validating
amongst ourselves oftentimes I see Muslims they have
great scholars in their community in America but
they ignore them or they're not aware of
them or they even ask I want to
study this subject I'm like but you have
this guy in your city they're they're completely
unaware of that person number two is the
bravery needed to push in and provide answers
for today not yesterday we can all be
brave in classical texts we can all be
brave in the arguments that happened centuries ago
but the people have a need for the
beauty the light and mercy and discipline of
the sharia and to mute the khitab of
Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala in that metaphoric
sense means that you're no longer someone who's
working in and importantly my experience is that
when we push in in these scenarios and
we attempt that we have bravery to be
wrong or to be right when we push
in we show people the true value of
Islam the beauty of Islam that impacts not
only Muslims but also brings solutions for non
-Muslims so public practitioners of fiqh in America
fiqh if they intend to do it right
must be brave enough to serve the people
and work together I always encourage people to
think about like working with other practitioners not
going it alone I'm on two fiqh councils
I think it's important that that happens and
also to push beyond just simply looking at
things from the past especially when it's related
to mu'malat but answering questions for today in
the future