Suhaib Webb – Maliki Fiqh For Newbies AlAkhdari (Part One) What Is A Madhab
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I I tried to give an analogy for
this, I hope that will make it easier
for everybody.
When we think about med hebs, we should
think about a factory.
A medheb is a factory
and what it produces
is filk.
And what do I mean by filk here?
Religious guidance. Do this, don't do that, you
can do this, you can't do that, it's
okay to do this, maybe not a good
idea,
and so on and so forth.
So Ahmed Heb is like a factory, its
job is to produce fiqh
for people to ensure that their lives align
with worship.
Let's talk about
what are the makings of that factory, like
what would you find,
What is needed
to produce
firq?
This is paramount like that I address this.
First let's talk about the resources.
There are resources that are agreed upon by
everybody,
these are the raw materials of all of
these factories of filk,
and then there are resources that aren't agreed
upon.
The resources that are agreed upon
to produce Fiqh are the Quran, of course,
the traditions of the prophet, peace be upon
him, his sunnah,
a binding consensus, what's called Ijma'a,
and then analogy.
Analogy means that if we have something in
front of us that doesn't have a ruling
in the Quran and Sunnah, we look to
the Quran and Sunnah for some similar trait.
And if that trait is present enough,
it's applied. For example, smoking.
The majority now of scholars say smoking is
forbidden. Initially, they didn't say that. Initially they
said it was disliked.
Because there's nothing in the Quran that talks
about smoking.
And initially, they they said smoking was in
the atman period because it made people's breath
smell bad. So they said, you know, it's
like onions, when you go to the mosque,
here's the analogy.
But of course, in the last 100 years,
as medical science has grown
and, you know,
time tells how many people have died from
smoking,
find the majority the majority of scholars say
smoking and now is now forbidden,
as an analogy to anything
from the Sharia which prohibits harming ourselves. It's
called qiyas.
Analogy.
Alqa' is the is the is the
the the tailor.
Because when he measures you,
he tries to make the clothes fit you.
So is the attempt to make a ruling
fit something that doesn't have a ruling.
Which means you bring 2 issues together because
they have a shared quality between them.
But we're not gonna talk about that now
but the point is that the factory agrees
on these four sources.
Quran,
sunnah,
Qiyas,
and consensus.
We can see now the danger of people
to say, I only want it from Quran
and Sunnah.
I just want it from Quran and Sunnah.
I don't want it from anything else. SubhanAllah,
the Malikis, we have 17
instruments used in the factory.
Not just the Quran and sunnah.
Some at the hab have more, some at
the hab have less. The Quran and sunnah
as the foundational interpretive source interpretive sources, yes.
But there are other sources like ijma and
qiyas.
So if we look at the factory of
Fiqh factory of Fiqh, we find that these
are 4 foundational raw materials.
However,
even with those raw materials,
scholars differ over their application
and their interpretation.
So again the danger of just saying, I
only want it from Quran and sunnah. How
many issues do you think from the Quran
and Sunnah
reached the level of when there is no
debate?
Less than 6% of the rulings in Quran
and Sunnah.
So that means the other 94%,
when people tell you it's only like this,
they're not informed.
And what we also take from this is
the depth and breadth and width
of this journey
that you and I are about to go
on through one of the factories,
not all of the factories.
At one time in Islam's
history, there were 91 factories, 91 madhhabs. Bukhari,
he had a meth hab. Al Zahi, his
meth hab was in Spain.
Abu Dawood al Zahiri, he had a meth
hab. We'll talk about briefly why those medhabs
are no longer, like, around in the way
that they used to be. Alayth, you had
a medhab.
Had a madheb.
Al Hazan Abbasri had a madheb.
But we're talking about 4 major factories,
and in particular we're gonna go on a
journey through 1,
of those factories.
So while they agree on those 4
major evidences,
they differ sometimes on what they mean.
That's why I always like to tell people,
I wanna own the opinion of the salaf.
What do you do if the salaf had
more than 17 opinions on an issue?
Which salaf do you follow?
So the idea of creating a myopic Islam
on issues of fiqh is actually counter to
fiqh.
That's why for example, imam Ahmed,
out of there only being 6 rulings in
Islam or 7, on one issue he had
13 opinions throughout his life. It means, like,
he experienced things that caused him to change.
Imam Sha'afi. He has 2 madhhabs actually. Al
Kadeem al Jadid.
His older madhhab was more influenced by Malik.
Later on, he's largely influenced
by people in Yemen, by his travels, and
by the students of Imam Abu Hanifa.
An old madhab,
and a new madhab. SubhanAllah.
So to make something like fiqh
monolithic,
and to make it
simplistic and myopic,
is actually to run
counter to what Fiqh's purpose is.
That's why someone came to Imam Ahmad ibn
Hambal,
and they said to him,
I wrote a book of Fiqh, and I
called it a book of differences.
And Ahmed said, no, call it a book
of mercy.
Some examples of how scholars differ over even
the 4 major raw materials. If you look,
and this is in the document that I
sent you in Surat Al Baqarah, the second
chapter verse 237,
Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala is talking about he
who has the contract
of the marriage. Who's that person?
Imam Malik said that's the father.
Imam Sha'af, he said, that's the husband.
There's no way you can conclusively
or definitively
say which one it is. So what do
you do?
What muslims did is something very important.
They exercised
maturity and responsibility
and tolerance.
Another example is the hadith of the prophet,
peace be upon him, who says that there's
no prayer for the person who does not
recite fatiha
in salah.
The majority of the scholars because here in
Arabic, the predicate of the subject is missing,
Mahdufa.
That's how Arabs talk, like,
Right? There's no god, what, worshiped but Allah.
It's understood. What's called al muqaddarat,
assumptions.
So, the majority of skabras said, the salah
is not accepted
for the person who doesn't read fatiha.
Imam Abu Hanifa said, it's not complete.
So in his madhab
it's salaad according to him,
according to the others it's not. The point
is, here's the sunnah, here's the Quran, and
what do you see? You see differences.
So while they agreed on the 4 sources,
that doesn't mean that they agreed on the
conclusions.
That's very important to know.
And sometimes I remember when I was in
the college of Islamic law, they actually will
have 2 different opinions based on the same
text like the one I just gave you.
Reading Fatiha's. They both use the same text.
Another one is the famous hadith, you know,
if I could go and burn down the
houses of people who didn't come and pray.
That's why if you go to Saudi Arabia,
what happens? When the adhan is called, what
happens?
Everything's shut.
What's the evidence? The prophet salallahu alaihi wasalam
said in Sahih Muslim. If I could, I
would burn down their houses.
You go to the majority of of of
of jurists, they say, no, no, no. It
means it's recommended to go to the masjid.
Sadatul Hanabi'lah,
they asked them, what's your evidence? He didn't
burn down their houses. He just said he
would.
Same hadith, 2 different opinions.
Because if the prophet said it and he
was gonna do it, he would have what?
He would've done it, but he didn't do
it. So this is like hyperbole, just like,
you know, and it's impossible for us also
to believe that the prophet salallahu alayhi wasalam
would damage people's property.
But you see the same evidence,
2 opinions.
2 divergent opinions.
Then there are secondary raw materials that make
up the factory. What do I mean by
secondary raw materials?
Things that people don't agree over.
To be used as a source of evidence.
For example, the actions of the people of
Medina, the scholars of Medina,
according to Mattic, if they agree on something,
it becomes a
proof.
That the origin of all things is permissible
until there's a text to show it's forbidden.
This is the majority of jurists except the
Hanafis.
Meaning, now when people write on Instagram,
you have to show me that this is
this is halal. No. I don't. The foundation
is halal. You have to show me it's
what?
You have to prove it's haram, but most
Muslims don't know that.
There's 2 different opinions on this issue as
a source. So when we first
come across something,
is Bitcoin haram or halal?
Depending on what school you follow and the
foundational
secondary
material or lens you use to interpret law,
it's gonna depend on how you look at
it.
So we have raw materials
and the disagreed upon secondary materials like and
so on and so forth. And we're not
we're not gonna talk about those now, but
I just want us to have this idea
of the factory
and what goes into the factory.
There are 4 major factories in Sunnifilk.
The factory, the factory,
the Shafi factory, and the factory.
You should know that.
And then there are supervisors to each of
these factories. Sorry. I was even gonna use
union as an example, but I was like,
I'm getting too crazy with
it.
But might get in trouble too.
But the supervisors, of course, Imam Abu Hanifa,
Imam Malik,
who's not related to
as we'll talk about later.
And the Imam Ahmed Abuhambal Al Sheibani. These
are, like, the 4
supervisors
of these factories. It also allows us to
think about something else, that Ahmed have isn't
really the work of 1 person.
It's the work of a factory.
And those factories are still open,
still evolving, still engaging, still moving,
and still growing.
Let's talk about Imam Malik as we try
to narrow it down so we can get
into reading our book,
tonight. Inshallah. Imam Malik was born 94 after.
His family is originally from Yemen. Don't know
if we have any Yemenis here, but,
from the tribe of
and also Aspah. So 2 tribes his family
came from.
He studied with over 700
people in Medina.
Most of them were the students of the
Sahaba.
And he was recognized as, like, the inheritor
of, like, what's known as the Filch of
Medina.
It's important to note there there was some
geopolitical
battles happening back then, like East Coast, West
Coast in the nineties,
but amongst much more, you know,
Muslim Muslim people.
So in Kufa, you had the the Amal
of the people of Kufa,
the Amal of the people of Basra.
People who follow the don't think that it
was just Medina that claimed an Amal. There
were a lot of different cities in the
Muslim world at that time, like Kufa and
Basra, who claimed to take precedent when it
came to practice
because of the Sahaba
that lived there.
So Madoc is seen as kind of the
champion, if you will, the seal
of these early generations in preserving
the understanding and
of the city of the prophet.
Imam Malik in his does two important things.
He marries
the centrality of prophetic tradition
with the need for what we call an
al aqalwan nakal,
that he brings together
the centering foundational
presence of hadith, hence he writes a book
called the Muwata,
but also with the need for
in the employment of Ma'asuri Sharia.
The
broader aims of Sharia, which are found more
so in the Hanafi school
and through his teacher, Rabiya Arra'i.
His sheikh was known as Rabiya
ibn Abdrahman Arra'i. Arra'i means the guy that
always had opinions,
who was very theoretical.
And this is going to as as we
go through a text, you're gonna see this.
Like hadith
coupled with what's called.
Who are some of the major, Imam Malik,
by the way, dies 179 after Hijri? I
didn't mention that.
And I'm not of course, I'm not doing
him,
justice, but our our goal here is not
to go through the history of the imams.
Like, a lot could be said about I
mean, you could do classes all summer about
all of them.
Who are some of the major factory workers?
Who are the people that worked in the
factory of Malik's workshop?
Versus Imam Shafi. When we read, Imam Shafi
was the student of Malik.
Imam Shafi said that Ma'ik is the star
of the ulama, al Najib.
Imam Shafi dies, like, 204 after hijra.
The second is Abdul Khan ibn Qasim. He's
considered the most important student of Madik,
and when there's differences of opinion in the
mad hub,
we refer to what he has said,
largely.
Abdulrahman ibn Abbasin studied with Malik more than
20 years.
He said, I studied with Imam Malik 20
years.
17 years, I learned character.
3 years, I learned fiqh,
And I wish I could take those 3
years and transfer them for etiquette in Edin.
So out of 20 years,
saying, like, you know, I wish I could
have just focused on Edeb and Akhlaq.
Abdul Ahmed Al Maqasim, remember this, is from
Egypt.
Imam Shaifi originally is from Azkalem, Palestine,
But, of course, he was an orphan
born to his mother in Mecca from Ahlabei
from Ashraf.
Imam Shafi, when he came into Medina the
first time, he sat in the gathering of
sayin' the imam Malik, and imam Shafi'i was
very young. He took a piece of grass
like this, and when Malik would relate hadith,
he would write on his hand.
Because, you know, back then people didn't have
paper, man.
That was that was, you know, it was
difficult. So he would, like, go like this
and write on his hand. And afterwards, he
went and he said to Imam Malik, you
know, salaam alaikum. He said, why you come,
what's wrong with you? He said, why I
said, why are you playing with your hand?
The whole the whole class, you're playing with
your hand. He said, no, no, no. That's
how I memorize what you said. He said,
okay, tell me what I said. He said,
hadefani, Madik.
He said, I heard from Madik. Then he
related 13 hadith that Madik narrated that day
be
And then Madik, he said,
I gotta take care of this kid.
Look at the in those 8 days, great
scholars, they weren't insecure by talented people.
That's the challenge of this age. Everyone's a
hater because everybody wants to be Jordan jumping
from the free throw line with that tongue
out dunking on somebody. That's the problem of
Western society. It makes everyone wanna be what
they can't be, so nobody's happy.
Whereas the prophet sallallahu alaihi wasalam said what?
That happiness isn't more. That's in being humble.
Like being honest.
What I can do, what you can't do.
Look at Omar when Jibreel came, and then
he's asking the prophet what? What's Islam? What's
iman? What Omar, he knows the answers, but
did he butt in once?
And we're talking about Omar. So, you know,
he's passionate. He's a Thundercat.
He's very passionate.
And even when Gibril leaves, he said, I
stay quiet.
Because he was proud of himself.
I didn't see anything.
The prophet said, yeah, Omar.
Yes. You Rasulullah.
Do you know who that was?
Man, if that was now, everyone wanna have
a 1,000,000 opinions. That was Jimmy Hoffa. That
was Pac. I knew Pac didn't die. What
does Omar say? Allah who are those Allah
and his messenger know. I don't know. Look
at Omar's transformation.
He says that was
Jabiru. So Imam Malik is not insecure by
Shafi'i's greatness. He recognizes it,
and he fosters it.
Because Imam Malik's teacher, Azobri,
was like that with him.
He saw that young man's greatness.
And where did Imam Malik start? With his
mom always.
Dear mama,
it's always the mom
in our history. Saladin, his mom. Buhari, his
mom.
Imam Malik,
his father was a sheikh. His brother actually
was expected to be the imam of Medina.
Imam Malik was busy with the PS 5
of his era. What was the PS 5
of Imam Malik's era? Pigeons.
He used to play with pigeons.
I wish Mike Tyson can hear that story.
Right?
The therapeutic value of pigeons.
And one day, his mother, she started to
get worried about him as mothers do.
So instead of putting him on blast, she
bought him a turban.
She said, let me let me let this
boy see what he should be.
Let me show him his potential,
not intimidate him into being,
but to invigorate him and motivate him to
be his best self.
That's what great teachers do.
So she dressed him up in the clothes
of.
He was about 13 or 14, he was
still young. And she said, go walk in
the street. So I started walking in the
street, man. People started
shaking.
And then he said, I realized who I
was,
and I stopped playing with pictures.
His mother's name was Arya, by the way,
so redirected
him.
Then after Abdulrahman al Makasim Abdulrahman al Makasim
is Egyptian. Remember this. Imam Shafi goes everywhere.
I mean, Imam Shafi travels
all over the world. Imam Shafi was a
social anthropologist.
He went and lived with a better one
so he could learn language. Like, he was,
like, on some kinda, like, Anthony Bourdain type.
Like, he was into everything, traveling and seeing
and learning and soaking because he knew as
a, I gotta understand people.
So he goes to Yemen. He goes to
Iraq. He goes to Medina.
Then he goes to Egypt, which is basically
Manhattan
at that time.
And Baghdad, he goes everywhere. So everywhere he
goes, whose teachings is he taking with him?
Manic.
The next is even Wahab. Also, he's Egyptian.
He dies around 214.
Then Ashab was one of the major students
of Imam Malik, has a major influence on
everybody,
especially through some important texts that we're not
gonna talk about now. He does also 204,
the same year as
Sayidna Imam al Shafi
and Ashraf also is Egyptian. There's there's actually
a masjid in Cairo called Sadaat al Maliki.
I used to go there and visit their
graves.
There's Abdulrahman in Maqasam, Yahia, Yahia and El
Ashem.
They're buried over there.
The 5th is Yahya ibn Yahya Elaysi.
Yahya ibn Yahya was from Spain, from Andalus.
He came to Medina when he was 16
years old with his father. Can you imagine
that trip?
Where are you going, dad? Oh, we're going
to Medina. Okay.
From the far west coast of Andalus.
And he comes to Medina. He's a teenager.
He's a young man,
and he sits in the lessons of,
and he listens and he hears the more
than once, the famous text of Imam Malik.
And one day, elephants come into Medina, and
everyone runs out.
You know, elephants in Medina is like a
Bugari. You know what I'm saying? Like, wow.
Elephants in Medina is like crazy.
So everybody runs out except Yahya.
And Maddox says to him, don't you wanna
go look at the elephants in my jituli,
actually feel. I didn't come for elephants. I
came to learn.
Took him and he raised him. 16 years
old and invested him and taught
him.
So there's something else important about Imam Malik's
students, they're young.
They live a long time.
And then Yahia goes back to Spain
and teaches the meth tab, and he's known
as Marek Sarih.
And because of him, Andalus becomes Marek. Before
that, it was Auzay, and the madhab became
a mama Auzay.
The last student, because of time, is Alpadi
Ismail Ishaq,
who's from Iraq.
So now you see something.
What cosmetics
men have to grow
is great students,
great factory workers,
who geographically
all over the place.
So they're able to go back, and they're
well equipped
to spread and teach
Islam. Back then, they didn't see, like, crips
and bloods.
I'm going to teach my method.
No. They said, I'm going to teach Islam.
Yahia ibn Yahia is a second generation Muslim.
Let's put that in perspective. His grandfather has
a Christian name.
There's something that we should do is study
the early converts to Islam. From the earliest
generations, you see that some of their grandchildren
are the great scholars that you know and
love.
So his grandfather, actually,
because
because they were close to people who converted.
So those of us who converts,
are we gonna produce the next?
You gonna produce the next?
Can happen.
The development of the school happens in 3
phases, and I have to make this really
quick.
And I know that we wanted to do
some discussion, but tonight, I may just have
to fly through. That's okay. I'm sorry. My
apologies.
But we can also continue after.
Three phases. The first starts a 110 after
Hijri when Imam Malik begins to teach.
Begins
to give fatwa in Medina.
And back then, giving fatwa in Medina is
like being on Twitter, being on TikTok,
being on Facebook live. Right? That's that's where
influencers are gonna be heard. This is the
mastiff of the prophet, alaihis salatasan. What I
mean by this is he has access to
people from all over the Muslim world,
and they're coming, and they're hearing fatwa. There
was a famous statement,
Nobody should give fatwa if madinah.
That's why people would come from Morocco.
They would say, I came to ask you
a question
because I heard that you answer questions.
So Sayna Imam Malik
starts to teach officially
in Medina, and he said, I did not
teach until 70 people gave me permission. I
did not open my TikTok or Instagram account
and start talking about Dean until 70 people
told me. Go on, man.
Handle your business.
That lasts from a 110
to 300 Hadrian. What is this phase called?
This is called, like, the developmental phase,
the birthing phase. The madhab is birthed.
You see that ibn,
Ismail ibn al Ishaq, the the Iraqi scholar,
he dies, like, towards the end of 3rd
century. So from 110 to that point, you
find the Medheb starts to spread out. Go
places like Egypt,
places like Spain, Libya,
Tunis,
Morocco,
Mali, Senegal,
Sudan,
Kuwait,
what's now known as the Emirates,
Qatar, which used to be on the of
Sayidina Shafi, Sayidina Imam Malik, and the vast
majority of the Hejaz of Saudi Arabia
until the last 200 years was on the
madhep of Imam Malik.
And Iraq. The Maliki's left Iraq because of
the fighting. Malik is like, we're out of
here, man. We ain't about all this fight.
When Qari Abdul Wahab left Iraq and came
to Egypt, they asked him, how was it
in for you in Iraq? He said,
He said, I was like the Quran in
the house of an apostate.
Like, I had to get out of there,
man.
I had to run for my life.
The second phase starts around 300 and lasts
till 600 after Hijri,
and this is the phase where the Maliki
madhab becomes the state.
State law is ran in Andalus,
in the majority of Africa and Muslim communities
by the Maliki madhhab,
as well as Hejaz.
So now the Maliki madhhab is synonymous
with governance,
just like
the
Hanafi. And this is what makes the Hanafi
and the Maliki.
And I'm not,
you know, a Med Heb war guy. But
what makes them very robust is that they
functioned
as government.
They did not function as theory.
They functioned as states.
Then from 600
till the modern era, I like to say
the industrial age
is largely an era of the meth have
settles.
It figures out who it is. These are
the opinions of.
These are the correct opinions of the school.
And then the industrial age happens, you have
colonialization,
you have modernity,
postmodernity,
and that's gonna be the phase we're in
now, which is a phase of great difficulty.
How do you balance the traditional success
with current challenges
and calibrate that to
success in the future.
That's a challenge within the MedBed.
Let's talk about the text quickly because we
have to get started.
But before we do, let's talk about the
author. The text we're studying is Al Akhtar.