Suhaib Webb – Uqud alJum’an of Sheikh alIslam, Selim alBishri (Lesson Three)
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On the road,
working, alhamdulillahi here in New York City at
the moment.
But
these courses have to continue, especially for our
Swiss students. And we're reading from
And,
this text is one of our core text
in our series on theology at Swiss.
We believe in functional religious literacy, not dysfunctional
attempts at scholarship.
And within that, we have a tiered system
to 3 I would say 3 to
5 tiers where we teach
really 3 core subjects along with a an
innumerable number of electives. But the 3 core
subjects are faith, practice,
and,
purification of the heart, and character.
So,
iman, Islam, and ihsan.
So reading from this great text which kind
of falls into that kiddie pool area of
theology which is important. There's nothing wrong with
that. It doesn't mean it. I don't mean
that as a pejorative.
I mean that as being honest. And what
I see a lot of times, especially in
religious sciences, are people who orbit around scholars
but haven't fully studied
or have heard lessons here or there or
watched videos here or there and have, you
know, a relatively decent grounding but there are
things missing.
And when that happens,
I I find myself concerned especially when those
people are like public intellectuals.
So our job here is to kind of
give you a soaked experience
instead of a rushed experience.
A cultivated experience of religious literacy that is
functional.
And what do I mean by functional?
Deals with your own challenges and doubts,
assists you in the personal dawah that you're
engaged with, and allows you to maintain Islam
amongst your family. And for those of you
who are educators at SWISS,
we hope to be able to train
you to be teachers,
right, so you can teach this in the
community at a grassroots level.
What he means here is from these 20
attributes that we've been that we're going to
talk about that we affirm to Allah subhanahu
wa ta'ala
is what?
That Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala is in opposition
to creation,
the material world, and the material world is
in opposition to Allah. They are not alike.
These twenty attributes actually do something really remarkable
when it comes from the perspective of Islam.
If you look at other theologies and philosophies,
they
often found themselves pigeonholed in trying to define
what God is
or what God isn't.
What God is or what God isn't.
What the scholars of Kalam were able to
do from Ahri Sunnah
and the majority of mainstream theologians within the
Sunni community
were to do both.
And that's what the Quran does. It tells
us who Allah is.
And also it tells us who Allah subhanahu
wa ta'ala is.
That there's nothing like him.
Is negation.
Is is is
isbet. So it's actually remarkable. SubhanAllah.
And what these twenty
attributes are going to do is marry 2
opposites
that human beings have struggled with in trying
to find true faith really since the beginning
of time.
And this is one of the reasons Allah
send prophets and books, and that is
to
bring together,
to weld together
the uncompromising,
unapologetic
stance that Allah is transcendent.
That there's nothing like him.
With the also
important idea that Allah is near to us.
Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala is merciful.
Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala is loving.
Allah is forgiving. Allah
hears and answers our supplications.
So you have this powerful idea of transcendence
coupled with
the heartwarming,
and comforting notion
Allah is with you wherever you are. By
his knowledge,
by his answering of our prayers.
As we'll talk about in the future.
And oftentimes we have to be careful
if we're teaching or for content providers that
we emphasize one over the other.
To emphasize
transcendence
without the opportunity for a real relationship with
Allah will lead people to despondency.
This was the way of Tizal like the
Mount Tizilites.
To emphasize nearness
without transcendence,
right, could lead to debauchery or even idolatry.
So we see other,
religions
fall into.
Say Christianity, who in its
profound kind of amplification
of what it understands God's love to be,
justifies
the sacrifice and murder of his own child
for people's forgiveness.
Islam sits in the middle
and
affirms
Allah's
transcendence,
his power, and his might. So we find
very similar narratives in the Old Testament.
God is a vengeful God. God is a
wrathful God. God is
like presented there as a bully. He's being
mean.
The other end you have the extreme of
Christianity where
God is unconditional love.
That leads to the sense of no responsibility.
I'm gonna sin
on Monday through Saturday and on Sunday I'm
gonna get myself together.
Islam on the other hand,
settles itself in the middle.
Where there is this absolute affirmation
of Allah's perfect
transcendence
at the same time
making it very clear that anyone can have
a relationship with Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala. And
that comes with responsibility.
So these twenty attributes do that really well.
The Sheikh, he says,
That Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala is in opposition
to created things. And creation that created things,
the material world, the physical world as we
know it, anything in creation
is an opposition to Allah. Meaning they're not
the same.
Allah Subhanahu wa Ta'ala is not like anything.
Means partially like something.
Means completely like something.
So that's why
we
say, Right? That there is no nothing that
is partially like God or completely like God.
Either way, that's unacceptable in Islam. Allahu Allah.
And that's why in the Muslim community we
have concerns with the domestication of transcendence where
people now are saying, this guy is a
God guard. This guy's a God guitar player,
this guy's a God emcee, this lady is
a God on the
in her field.
No, man. God is God.
And nothing is like God. And that's concerning
for us. This domestication, if you will, of
transcendence.
Falisa Jisman. So Allah does not have a
physical body.
Nor was he described
with the attributes of a physical body.
He's not in any direction, any physical direction.
Or any physical place
or in a
physical time.
He has no physical form.
Or measurement.
Or shape.
And he's not described with, like, physical
largeness
or
physical
smallness.
Nor is he described as being like physically
tall.
Or physically short.
Nor is he described with depth or width
in physical terms. And this is the meaning
what the Sheikh just explained of
That there is nothing like him.
The third to the last chapter of the
Quran. If you're interested in Islam, you wanna
know who God is, read that chapter.
Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala.
And he says like, you know, in summary,
in brief,
Anything that you can imagine is not God.
Anything that that rolls through your mind
is not God, is not Allah. I like
to do this exercise with some of my
younger students.
I ask them, close your eyes and try
to imagine a new creation, a new color,
a new shape, a new size.
No one can do it.
So if we are unable to imagine creation
because it's not written on our hard drive,
how do we expect to be able to
imagine the creator within physical terms?
That's why we say
SubhanAllah,
translated as glorified, be Allah. But actually Subhan
is from Sabaha to swim
because the mind will drown
trying to really ascertain
Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala. That's impossible. So that's
why Allah sends books and prophets sent books
and prophets and signs
for us to know him through his qualities
and to know his presence
through his qualities,
Subhanahu
Wa Ta'ala.
Then the sheikh, he says,
and this is really from the foundations,
the crux
of Tawhid, this idea.
As is mentioned by the scholars of theology,
this interesting axiom
that
is to affirm an existence.
Who is not comparable to other existences.
We talked about that before.
Without also, and this goes back to what
I said earlier, without
cancelling
any of the attributes of that transcendent creator.
So I affirm that Allah is not like
anything in existence, any creation
without denying the fact that he's forgiving, loving,
knowing,
hearing, seeing
but in a way which aligns with ideas
of transcendence
and protects me from idolatry
or corrupting and defiling
the idea of
Allah's
purity.
Then he mentions a number of verses,
from the Quran to try to illustrate how
we should apply this understanding.
And that's why in the classical system,
Theology was studied before Quran. Because without having
the proper theological
lenses, a person may read the Quran and
become misguided. It's very possible.
And that's why sometimes you find either Irresponsible
Liberalism or Irrational Conservatism. Those people who just
read the Quran, I don't need the scholars,
I don't need any system, I'm good. And
you find they come even from the Quran
with some strange opinions.
So the Ulum of Quran,
right, and the Ulum of theology are actually
taught
before someone just jumps into the Quran.
So he says
He says, as for those verses in the
Quran,
who a person may assume that the correct
interpretation
is the explicit meaning
of those verses
Thereby, affirming
for God
a direction,
a place,
an attribute of that is like temporary
or a limb.
As for those verses and then he mentions
a few of them. The first is in
Surat An Nahal verse number 50, Allah says
after
Talking about the angels.
Translated literally, it says they fear their Lord
above them.
So the word
above. The statement of Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala,
the 5th verse of Surat Taha.
Arrahman,
the most merciful,
Allah
Istiwa. Istiwa.
We find Sayidina Imam Al Tabari mentions
6 possible meanings for Istiwa.
Sayna Imam Al Khortubi does the same.
And all of them agree that is
no way that it means to actually
as to ascend,
physically to ascend.
Say the imam in the of
the Tabari, it says,
Right? I've seen this with my own eyes,
which means that Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala,
that Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala has established his
dominion
over all things.
Not literally meaning that Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala
rose.
And that's why the previous verse, if you
look in the tafsir of Sayna Imam Alqortabi,
Imam Ibn Kathir,
Even those who may not have followed the
madhab of Ahl Kalam, none of them say
that this means that Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala
is physically
above the malaika.
What they say is, yaghafuna
adab.
That's what Sayna Khurbi says the first interpretation.
They fear the punishment of Allah that will
come from above them.
Others mentioned it means Allah's power. Right? Transcendence,
his
in his
subhanahu wa ta'ala his absolute control.
And that's why Sayyidina Imam al Qurtubi,
commenting on verse
number 210
in Surat Al Baqarah.
He
says that
there's no way this is
There's no way that this is talking about
a resemblance to physical bodies or a physical
action in the terms that you and I
understand.
In that verse
Allah
says
Are they not waiting for Allah to come?
We find
numerous interpretations from the earliest Muslims that imply.
This doesn't mean
like Allah is physically
coming. As mentioned by,
the Salaf.
And so on and so forth from these
kind of different texts.
The point is that Sheikha, I'm gonna read
each one of the texts he mentions, is
going to give us a rule for understanding
this which is not,
going against the way of some of the
salaf and this is where we have to
be very careful
that we cannot
locate
the opinions of the salaf
as being like static and anachronistic
in a way that they do not allow
for there to be an idea that maybe
there were other opinions held by the salaf.
It's not just like, you know,
a monolith.
And I just mentioned, right, early scholars Al
Tabari, Sayna Urtubi, Imam Ibn Kathir, Al Baydaw
in his tafsir.
Go and read what they wrote, Sayna and
Nasafi.
And what happens is if someone adheres to
this notion that there was only one opinion
on this issue,
then ask them
to cancel out and not listen to any
of the scholars that differed with them on
that issue.
They're going to have maybe 2% of the
mofasirin left.
The scholars of hadith maybe less than 3%.
So then they either have to come to
grips with the fact that maybe there's more
to this than they realized
or in fact that there were some differences
of opinion on some of these
issues amongst even the early Muslims.
Okay.
But to split and divide each other on
this is really a disaster.
May Allah protect us. So the sheikh, he
says,
Sheikh, after mentioning these kind of verses and
and hadith that imply,
you know, a similarity to created
beings in the material world, he says that
there are 2 options and he mentioned the
first. This was the majority of Ahlus Sunnah
in later times. Al Khalaf.
And that is he says, that
we believe in these
text, of course.
We affirm them unlike the Martuzilites who denied
them but we interpret them and we interpret
them with a way which is supported by
the Arabic language
and supported most importantly by affirming Allah's transcendence.
Subhanahu
wa ta'ala.
And here he says, so we
do this by number 1, clarifying what is
the meaning, for example, of above.
Meaning transcendence.
Meaning
awesomeness.
And
that doesn't mean to rise and settle like
you and I do. Right? Allah
says
Allah
says in that you arose and you settled
on your mouth.
There's no way we can believe that in
regards to Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala. That's what
you and I do
as I just
showed but in the Quran, istila means istila.
Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala is
all powerful
in control of all things. Subhanahu wa ta'ala.
Well,
And like the hadith
that every night Allah descends meaning the angels
descend by his command, Yani, by his
and in Surat Baqarah
The command of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala.
We understand
yet doesn't mean physical hands. It means as
found in the Arabic language,
power and will.
Or other type texts,
we have to affirm them in a way
that,
maintains the transcendence of Allah. And this is
called
meaning that it's impossible to take the explicit
meaning of the text. Because to do so
would be undermined to undermine one of the
major,
qualities
or foundations of our religion.
The second method is the method of the
salaf.
Most of the salaf. Not all but most
as we'll talk about in the future
and that is that a person affirms these
texts and leaves them true meaning to Allah.
They don't comment. They don't say anything.
And this was was was the methodology
of many of our great scholars until this
day.
The
sheikh, he says,
and this is the way of the salaf
and this is safer. Safer for who? For
the awam.
Safer for the masses unless needed.
He says that one of them and who
he means here is, so we'll talk about
next time, is attributed
with 7 asanid.
All of them are weak. All of them
are dai'ifa
to Imam Malik,
to Salama,
and Tarabiya
ibn Abdurrahman, the sheikh of Imam Malik. All
of the asanid
attributed to them are weak. We're gonna focus
just on the one of Imam Malik inshallah
in our next clip. We're gonna try to
walk through those 7 different chains.
This is very important because you see this
all over the place
And that is the statement
that al istiwa ma'alum,
right, al is
known wal kaf and
how it happened is unknown
and having faith in it is an obligation.
And then the narration states that satan Malik,
he ordered for that individual who asked him
about it to be thrown out of the
masjid.
The sheikh mentions that here just to support
the idea
that there were large number of early Muslims,
Alhamdulillah,
from the salaf who did not engage in
discussing these
things, but there were those who did.
We need to be very very careful
when we're studying and learning
to make sure that we expose ourselves to
the sources
of what we're studying and learning and if
we can't
then hold our judgment a little bit. Don't
be so harsh on people man because there's
a lot more depth here, alhamdulillah, as we'll
see.
So next time inshallah wa ta'ala, we're going
to go through this narration attributed to Saydni
Imam Malik, I believe 7 asaneed,
mentioned by Adurami, mentioned by Al Bayhaqi,
2 of them mentioned by Al Hafali ibn
Abdul Bar
and others
based
on the research of Doctor. Hassam
Abdulmanen
who's masha'allah, one of the great great scholars,
of
critical,
like, analysis of texts.
But up until this point, we address this
idea of these
texts and hadith,
from the Quran and from the traditions of
the Prophet that seem to imply
Allah has a physical or created
likeness or a likeness to creation excuse me
and how there were two
methodologies. This is mentioned by Imam Al Nawawi.
This is mentioned by Ibn Abd al Baru.
This is mentioned by Al Bayhaqih. This is
nothing new. This is mentioned by Saidi Imam
Tabari.
You just can go through it and they
would say there are always two ways of
looking at this.
Always 2 ways of looking at this. So
instead of continuing to fight
and argue
and I think we have to be very
very careful accusing
contemporary salafis,
many of them are being also anthropomorphic.
You can't just do that without having a
conversation with someone.
Some of the people that they rely on,
right, it may appear especially
that some of their opinions lean towards that
direction and that's something that can be unpacked
over time.
But we need to talk and come together
instead of continuing to divide. I have
a way that I feel comfortable with, that
I grew into,
but I can do that Insha Allah respectfully.
And what I need to be firm, I
can be firm, what issues if that's needed.
So So next time, insha'Allah, barakallahu fikum, we're
going to go through the statement attributed to
Imam Malik ibn Anis and those 7 asaneed.
Jazakamalahu
karen. Wassalamu alaikum.