Suhaib Webb – Kalam As A Centering Force For the Umma

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.