Suhaib Webb – Kalam As A Centering Force For the Umma
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The importance of learning and asking questions to achieve proper thinking is emphasized, along with the need to educate non-M pizzas and pressure on religious pride. The discussion delves into the issue of Muslim pride and how it is not supported by historical records, as well as the influx of new Muslims needing to serve and educate their community. The speakers argue that the methodology of teaching specific qualities of God is not a common practice and that it is a way to equip Muslims to deal with their own issues and engage in their own growth operation incorporateively. The specific actions being taught are designed to address issues and find commonality, affirm obligations, and allow individuals to engage in their own growth operation incorporateively.
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Muhammad
Sallallahu Warihi Wala
Asshai Biheeh Echmain Welcome back MashaAllah to the
masses creed
towards a public
theology.
And last time we went over kind of
the sources of knowledge,
how to acquire knowledge, and then mentioning some
of, like, the important quotes
of, Al Qadi Abu Bakr ibn al-'Arabi
who who said, you know, like, the way
of knowledge is another, is to think. So
then anything that's gonna help us think correctly
and guide our thoughts
then becomes like a means
to achieve proper thinking.
And one of the most important,
means
that we can utilize is the people of
knowledge.
That's why Allah
says
right as the people who know, if you
don't know.
And the prophet
said
the remedy for any illness is
is to ask a question. And we have
a famous axiom. I talk about this a
lot. Right?
That means take on the rulings of their
objective. So, if the objective is proper understanding
and the means to the proper understanding is
learning,
and then asking questions is a means to
learning, then then those 2 asking and learning
take on the same ruling as proper understanding.
You see that? SubhanAllah. It's very important. So
for that reason, we're going to move now
into what are called the 20 qualities, the
20 attributes, sifet al eshrine.
And and there's a reason,
that this school, the school of
Kalam, which also is a reformed school in
theology
constantly working throughout Islamic history to reform,
to to address, to protect,
utilize these twenty principles, and there's 2 or
3 things I want you to think about.
Number 1 is that the majority
of theological schools within the Sunni tradition
largely developed as minorities
even in Muslim lands.
Meaning that up really until the 6th century
in in after Hijri, in the Muslim world,
Muslims were still religious
minorities. This kind of debunks
the the notions of like Islamophobes
and even some of the quote unquote secular,
especially secular Arabs,
and some people in the academy who've always
tried to kind of categorize Islam as this
colonizing
aggressive
theocratic,
you know, political state that just took over
the world. And perhaps that's a way of
pivoting
away from, like, the history of western colonialism,
to be honest with you.
But but the reality, the historical record shows
that these minorities,
Muslim minorities were there for like the first
600 years. So the idea of this sudden
takeover
and forced conversion
is not supported largely by the historical record.
But because of that, you can imagine that
early scholars, like imagine Imam Shafi'i when he's
in Iraq, when he's in Egypt, is part
of a religious minority even though though the
power, the political power belongs to Muslims.
So for that reason, sometimes you find
in earlier texts in Fiqh,
in earlier texts in the aqidah, a freedom
of thought, an explorative
kind of ethos, which is not found in
later texts as things begin to come like
crystallize.
And that's
because Muslim scholars not only had to think
about how to serve
their own community,
they also had to think about how to
respond
and serve
non Muslims.
Right? So that means you have to make
it digestible.
Right? Understandable.
And that also means you have to look
for, like, commonalities
to start conversations
the second thing in I I alluded to
this is that you have a large influx
of new Muslims
who also have to be served and kind
of fed. And the third is within the
Muslim community early on, the first 2 or
3 100, 400 years, you have this, like,
massive, massive, massive kind of attempt
at trying to negotiate what's orthodoxy.
So all that's happening, and you have complete
political turmoil, that's in total different discussion.
So the reason that scholars,
the majority of Sunni scholars employ
the 20
attributes
is because of the 20 attributes that we're
going to talk about or qualities of God
are meant to encapsulate the 99 names of
Allah, all of the theological discussions about
Allah in 20
universal principles.
Think about that. If you have a group
of Muslims
who are minority,
you have a bunch of non Muslims that
you live with, you have to equip the
Muslim community to publicly engage at the same
time you need to educate the non muslims
in a way that creates commonality.
Are you going to use particulars
or are you going to use universals?
Now we can appreciate,
the depth and deliberate
focus and professionalism
that early Muslims used to educate people.
It wasn't simply like let's just write this
book and throw it out there. It's like
how do we equip
Muslims to engage public life? The masses creed
towards a public
maybe not strong. Actually, there's about 30 or
40 of them that scholars don't agree on.
Are these names of Allah or qualities of
Allah?
Qualities of Allah? Is that how we want
to introduce ourselves into society? That doesn't even
work in our own communities
or do we want to use universal
principles,
right? These kind of general things that are
gonna bring people together and then slowly
iron out specifics and particulars
when needed
when needed. I would argue now
that on both sides of the coin,
the Salafi side of the coin and the
Sufi side of the coin, Aqidah is taught
with particulars first and
oftentimes, universals are never addressed.
And this is the opposite
of the methodology of early Muslims, and
that's why subhanAllah, imam Asuki said all of
my students succeeded except those who begin with
those particulars.
Those who begin with those particulars.
So scholars have 20 attributes, 20 qualities of
god, I like to use word qualities sifata
e sharin which are universal
that Muslims can agree on, non Muslims can
agree on and then can be unpacked
to address
specific needs and issues
when they arise,
or to strategically jump in front of them
before they happen. Now we can see
that the purpose of the 20 sifat
is to equip Muslims
to deal with their own issues,
to engage in public
life, to educate the non Muslim, community
and to find commonality
before we begin to unpack the differences. As
Allah says in the Quran after
Let's come together on common terms. When the
prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam has sent say the
to Yemen, he said you're going to the
people of the book, didn't he give them
a bunch of particulars?
Or did he say the first thing you
should call them to is the oneness of
Allah?
If they accept that, then teach them about
salah. If they accept that, then teach them
that zakat is an obligation.
He didn't give, like,
and this is one of the remarkable beautiful
things about Islam. That
the methodology of teaching generally doesn't fall under.
So if you find someone that said that
tohid is 3 parts, wubiyah, uluhi, esma, uasifet,
that's not that's not a bida. If you
find people say that we understand Tawhid through
the lens of 20 Sifat, this is not
Bida. These were methodologies
employed
to address certain issues. One of the things
I like to ask Muslims now is what's
your framework for teaching Tawhid to the people
around you? We can't even imagine that
because we're so busy arguing about the past
that we can't live for the future. So,
this is very much meant to in in
introduce 20 ideas about God that prepare us
to walk into any situation
and be conversant,
on the issues.
So the 20 obligations
really are about a method
of instruction
and oftentimes, we find people say this is
a biddah, this has no precedent. But if
we look at different texts and if you
see in the book, you find, for example,
Imam Ghazari in his 40 principles of the
foundations
of Islam, he says
He says that god has no beginning, no
ending. His existence is constant. It never has
an up and down, doesn't start and stop.
Again, he's alluding to the 20 principles that
we've talked about, we're gonna talk about now.
The great scholar Al Qadir Iyad in his
book on, it's a very great book actually,
on clarifying the foundations of Islam. He says,
right? That the the details of the are
40.
You know? 10 you have to believe,
there are obligations to affirm.
And then there are another 10 which you
have to deny, right? What we have to
affirm to God, what we deny to God,
how many is that? 20. So you see
something there.
We studied this book last time, right? What
is due to God? What is due to
the prophets?
What is due to the angels? So imam
marzuki,
is
now going to begin talking about these 20
principles, their opposites, so the total is 40.
We're gonna add more to this inshallah as
we continue, but what I want you to
understand now is the wisdom behind 20 attributes
is to equip you and I to walk
into any situation and say how many of
you believe God exists? Those who believe in
it? Okay. We can start there. Christians believe
God exists. Jews believe God exists.
Hindus believe God exists. We may differ in
the conceptualization
of existence,
but we agree in the generality of existence.
So, that's an important starting point that equips
you and I to walk into any situation
and be conversant and be able to bring
people a better quick understanding of our deen,
equipping us for public life, as well as
allowing us to engage in our own
kind of growth spiritually.