Suhaib Webb – The Ten Ten Concepts That Prepare Us To Honestly Study Tauhid
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Welcome back to our explanation of the master's
greed here at Swiss. Do me a favor,
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So by you letting other people know
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that helps us, alhamdulillah. If you find benefit,
there's no pressure. We're talking now about the
10
launching points, 10 things you need to know
before you get involved in any subject. And
don't tell yourself
this, I'm not, you know, I'm not this
kinda student. I'm not This is for everybody.
Because these 10 building points or 10 launching
points are are what are going to help
you become
conversant in the subject so then you can
push into the subject. Have you ever gone
to classes or lessons and the class just
starts and you're like, I really don't understand
what this is about.
So this is meant
to systematically
eradicate that problem. The problem of ambiguity
in relationship
to a subject.
Here you can appreciate how scholars
in in in the vein of the
prophet is sent to clarify to things clear
for
people.
The Quran
clarifies things for people. So the idea
is that a scholar that's why it's called
fatwa, because the word fatwa
means to remove
any type of doubt or confusion on an
issue. So the role of scholars as public
intellectuals
is to be clarifiers.
They clarify things. They remove ambiguity.
So here,
the are meant to help you push into
a subject.
To be conversant,
to be self evaluating,
or to be evaluating
educators.
And as I said,
for homeschoolers and Islamic studies teachers and imams,
it's a great rubric to use, man, when
you start teaching.
And we mentioned this poem,
What are those 10?
We said, number 1,
definition.
Number 2, subject issues that it's going to
address. Number 3, what is the actual value
prop? Number 4, what are the virtues in
this in the hereafter?
Number 5,
what faculty does it belong to? Number 6,
who's the first to organize it as a,
like, pedagogy?
Number 7, its name.
Number 8, we said, what are the prerequisites
if needed to study the subject?
And number 9, we said, is the, the
hokum shara'i, the ruling, the shara'i, a ruling
for it. And then number 10, we said,
what are the questions that it answers? So
now we're going to model that for you,
Vygotsky, for you educators,
through the lens of our subject, which is
theology.
So the sheikh, he begins, he says what
is the definition
of
a tawhid?
What is the had of tawhid?
Of course, in in the language,
tawhid means
to know that something is 1. And according
to the Sharia definition,
So according to
the theological
definition,
the the the the word Tawhid is a
science
which enables a person
to affirm
Islamic beliefs
and that this this learning is acquired,
muqtasavun,
from what? From
certain evidences. What do you mean by certain
evidences? Evidence of certainty, excuse me, the Quran
and the sunnah of the prophet sallallahu alaihi
wasallam and recognize scholarship. So that's the first,
the
had.
Either one you can you can say but
the fa'al is not not
mentioned.
Right? That it is the science
of
which empowers a person
to affirm Islamic faith, to defend Islamic faith.
And that this knowledge, the science is an
acquired learning
from
sound sources,
sources of certainty.
What what is the subject matter of?
This is the second from the 10.
So understanding Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala
in relationship to what we have to believe
about him.
What's impossible for us to believe about him?
And what's allowed for us to believe about
him,
and
and and what
what also is in the realm of Allah
can and cannot do, it's up to him,
which also falls falls kind of under
my
and the same applies to the prophets. Let
me summarize this in an easier way. And
it looks like this text wasn't edited edited
and perhaps the shayhi died, Raheem Muhullah, before
it was done.
But when we say the subject matter of
tawhid let me make it easier for you.
It's 3 issues.
Number 1 is Allah. Number 2 is prophets.
Number 3,
what we call.
So those foundational issues are what this this
subject,
what this top,
this class and this subject,
theology,
tawhid, aqeeda, almukalam,
usulodeen are gonna address.
Allah, prophets and the unseen. The unseen is
angels, jinns, the hereafter, all those things.
So now we did 2.
What is the fruit of it? The fruit
of it is knowing Allah Subha Ta'ala
based on conviction, knowing Allah with conviction. It's
nothing better than that.
That's why Sayyidina Imam Al Muhasibi says,
Oh, Allah, take us from the the the
punishment
of doubt to the life of certainty.
Certainty is seen as life in Islam, achieving
certainty.
Answer Allah and his messenger when you're called
to what will give you life. SubhanAllah.
Frames our relationship with faith very different than
the post Hellenistic western world.
And then, of course, who knows Allah and
and understands Allah and these things we talked
about, the prophets in the hereafter is going
to experience success in this life and the
next.
What is the the blessing of it? The
blessing of it is like this is the
greatest science.
Imam Al Amidi he says
that
He said that the, you know, the honor
of any subject is based on the honor
of what its subject is about and there's
nothing greater than studying about Allah, faith, the
prophets and the hereafter.
SubhanAllah.
Exactly kind of what I just said.
What
what, faculty does this belong to? These answers
are a little bit vague.
It belongs to the faculty of Usuluddin.
If you go to Al Azhar, you wanna
study theology, you go to Usuluddin.
Within Usuluddin is the college of
Issues of Faith and Philosophy. Walwadiruhu,
who are those who
who first sort of,
crafted this as a as a curriculum to
be studied? He says, Abu Hasan al Ashari
Wa Abu Mansur al Mahturi.
He says that the first were these 2
great early scholars, 2 of the major founders
of the 3 Sunni theological schools. Right? Al
Asharia and Maturidiya wal Atharia. And their imams
are who? The imams of the Ashari school
is the imam Abu Hasan al Ashari. The
imam of the MaTuri school, which is followed
largely by the Hanafis, is Abu Masur and
MaTuri.
And then the Imam of the Athariscu, Imam
Ahlih Sunnah, wamashaa Allah sautal ummah is Imam
Ahmed ibnuhambal
Stay away from these divisions you find online,
all this nonsense stuff. These are all being
put together to create disunity and destabilize the
Sunni community. Think about how much effort is
spent
in arguing amongst Sunnis,
amongst themselves.
That's why I like to tell people, you
don't need interfaith. You need interfaith.
You wanna talk about interfaith? Look at intraphaith.
It's it's it's a mess. It needs to
be cleaned up.
And a lot of times, these are intelligence
agencies working to do this. I'm a follower
of the Ashari school, but I'm going to
tell you, as sheikh Elishi mentions Abu Hassan
al Ashari, Abu Mansur al Maturidi, and also
Imam Ahmed Muhambo, they are not the first
to organize this as a science to be
taught. And that doesn't align with the historical
record. For example, Imam Malik radiAllahu anhu, he
wrote a book on Qadah.
Qadah and Qadr,
So there were other ulama who came before
them
that wrote about this. Those texts may be
lost.
The historical record may not be able to
uncover them, but we see glimpses of those
texts and those ideas,
Imam Al Haramain
and others,
who come later on.
But but the point is,
Allahu Adam,
the best
to the prophet in the Quran
taught us the foundations of aqirah. And then
as these
of aqirah begin to, you know, slowly evolve
with are
going to come teaching resources.
It's just natural outcome of that. But Allahu
Alam, what
is the name of this subject?
I told you this before. There's no arguing
over terms over names. You can call whatever
you wanna call it. Faith, belief.
Nobody cares. It's not something we should argue
over.
What's timdaduhu?
What what does
learning the science kind of rely on?
Sheikh, he says
Of course, that and this is very important,
what he says, that
learning this subject requires
access to sacred texts as well as correct
thoughts. As we're gonna talk about in the
future.
What is the ruling, the shara'i ruling for
this? The 9th out of the 10 mabeiri
is that it is farda'in.
It is an individual individual obligation
to learn those things we talked about earlier.
The usu, like faith in Allah, faith in
the prophets, faith in angels, faith in the
books, faith in the day of judgment, faith
in qadhanqadr.
We all have to believe in that on
our own. There's no taqleel in that. But
also it's for the
ulama on issues,
which demands scholarship. And if you wanna make
it easy for yourself, it is an obligation
upon you to learn the answers to the
questions in the grave.
Who's your lord? Who taught you this? What's
your deen?
What are the questions that it answers
an infinite number of questions? There's no there's
no end
to the number of questions that this science
is going to address, especially as human beings
continue,
to move into different eras and different experiences,
different technologies, different
awarenesses.
So the sheikh, he says,
what I basically just said but in a
very simple way. So
we did now the 10th mabari of a
tawhid.
We talked about its head.
We talked about its subject matter, we talked
about its fruit, we talked about its virtues,
we talked about its college, the faculty it
belongs to, we talked
about those who you know sort of first
laid it out as a pedagogy we said
that's largely unknown
And everybody jocks jockeys to be the first.
It's interesting that each school, their imam is
the one who did it.
Kinda
that's that doesn't set off some red flags.
You know? The the the book is not
a sheikh. Remember that. The sheikh is the
one who teaches. The book is not a
student. You're the student. So we have to
critically engage books also.
Except, of course, Al Quran in in a
negative way,
or the hadith of the prophet
but these kind of texts can critically engage
them.
We talked about the name of it. Now
there's numerous names. You know, scholars mentioned, like,
more than 30 to 40, 50 names for
the science of theology in Islam, which shows
you it's important, al Muqalam. Why is it
called qalam? Because people talk about it a
lot. It's a great argument for Islamophobes and
others who are anti Muslim or even Muslims
who are somewhat influenced by secular thinking,
you know, post colonial hangover. Like, you know,
Islam doesn't encourage discussion. It's called the ilkalam.
Theology is called the science of talking because
so many people talked about it. So we
should continue those conversations in our classrooms.
We should continue those conversations in the homeschools.
We should continue those conversations with the people
so that our maseil
will continue to grow and will be current
and answering the issues of the day.
What are its prerequisites? We talked about that.
And then finally, we talked about the hokum
sharay and the questions that Ilham Tawhid addresses
next time. Going to begin the twenty
qualities that we have to know about
Allah in a in a way which allows
us to maintain our worship and devotion.
What should you take from this session
here? Look how detailed our scholars were, man.
Look at how they system systematically organize things
for us, and then compare that to what
you have been sort of maybe furnished to
think about religious scholars
and and push that back now by saying,
no. No. Our scholars were on it. Maybe
the problem isn't the scholars.
Maybe the problem is the dummies.
Right? Maybe the problem isn't the scholars. Maybe
the problem is people that are speaking or
teaching
who don't have that background and are confusing
people and misguiding the masses.