Suhaib Webb – Usul alFiqh Lesson Fifteen (Commands Review)
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AI: Transcript ©
Before we continue
reading from the Warakat and getting into the
discussion around Anawawi,
the prohibitions, I wanted to do a quick
review of the section on commands,
for a number of reasons. Number 1, to
clarify a few things, a few points that
al imam
al Haramain
makes in his text.
And then secondly, to start to prepare you
for what you're going to need when we
move on to other texts. The is
a basic text. We
should be teaching it to very, very,
young people,
to familiarize
them with just sort of the terminology
of osulefiqh.
That's why I like to tell people
Right? That the warakat, its job really is
to provide definitions
and to give you sort of an introduction,
but it's not a text which is considered
with a lot of precision, as I heard
from
some of some of our teachers.
The sheikh, he says,
We talked about that before.
He says,
So now he's going to provide a definition
of amr.
He's gonna provide what's called ahad.
There's 2 words you need to be starting
to familiarize yourself with with me, al Hudud
wa rusum, al had wa rasa.
The had
is the definition of something. The wasm, to
make it simple, is a description of something.
So that's why we say in the science
of logic,
the
had, right, it deals with the of
the subject.
And the, it deals with the benefits
and virtues of a subject.
Just just put that in your mind.
What does had mean? Think about it, the
hudud of a country,
because it borders a country. Our scholars were
so disciplined, they created a hudud tarifat,
definitions of things, so that it would be
bordered in your mind, and you and I
won't be sloppy.
So when we talk about something, we're not
allowing anything important
to exit the discussion or to enter the
discussion.
Wa'il kha. We'll talk about that in the
future, inshallah,
but these things are important
when we study usurufah.
Waamalamru
fa'u'a.
This fa'u'a
is it's called the mirror of Shek.
The purpose of this hua doesn't mean he.
It means it is exclusively.
It brings about a sense of exclusivity.
That's why, for example, if you study the
La'a Jaromia, he says,
These are the conditions. These are the ingredients
of this
subject that we're talking about, exclusive to this
subject. So
is
from
the word dua.
But here
means
a request. And this is important. This is
what we're gonna talk about in a minute.
And
this is the first step in beginning to
border
the idea,
because the goal of al Hudud and al
Muslim is atasawwur,
is to conceptualize the subject.
And the outcome of that is
to affirm what is and what isn't
part of that subject.
So so this is called
al. Now he's restricting it. So
There's so many different types of request.
Istida.
But, for example,
is
not requested.
Mubah,
muskutanhu.
So when he says istidayah,
he's excluding the permissible.
It is the request of an action.
When he says,
this is the second
the second kind of restrictive measure
to now reduce
our sloppiness, to keep us precise in what
we're thinking about and envisioning
and conceptualizing, the
subject.
Is the request of an action. So that
immediately excludes what? Haram, because we're Haram is
not requesting us to do something. And
it's requesting us to stop.
So up until this point, we see how
just in a a few words, he's parsing
the subject
so that by the end of it, the
only thing we have in our mind
is.
And here you
see
the precision of our scholars
and and how in many many ways,
like any other art or science, the golden
age of Islam raised the bar so high
that it's very difficult for Muslims today
to have access to that information
and then also to, like, have the resilience
to learn it. Sheikh,
Salaq Adeen
used to tell me, when you want to
read books of,
you need to turn down the lights,
turn on the lamp,
have some tea,
and have silence.
The the major books because it it requires
a lot a lot of things.
Is an expression
which could have meaning or not have meaning.
Like suhayb,
that's my name. But if I say it
backwards,
right,
has no meaning.
And that's why we find urama here.
They begin to think critically about this definition.
But again, Bil'Ow
is a restrictive measure. It's not with an
action. It's not with like isharat.
It's not me writing something. The ou.
Fadah,
the 3rd Qayd in the Qayud of the
tareef.
So it excludes Kitava,
Isharat,
you know, making signs with my hands, and
so on and so forth.
But because the word alba'u,
yashmal,
it
includes
things that have meaning and don't have meaning,
You find people like Abu Noor Zuhair and
Marik
the great asadi scholar,
who said,
Because the word kalam means something has a
meaning.
Right? Almufid.
As Imam al Mabadiq says in the alfiyyah.
So
a perhaps a better way to explain it
would be
as we're gonna talk about in a second.
This part
is very important, when he says,
so let's step
back for a minute.
There are here 5
restricted elements in this definition that by the
time we finish saying it, the only thing
in our mind
is what?
It is the subject.
Khalas.
And we'll talk about this in the future
when we when we teach logic, which
is very important in understanding these books.
But this statement,
that the
has to come from 1 in authority to
1 in lesser authority.
This is not the opinion of the majority
of,
but this was an idea introduced by the
and
you may be asking why because in the
different schools of also,
the which are the Hanafis
and the not
in Aqida, in
Although there there's a reasons why they're called
because
of that relationship
with.
But the
in Usulofiq are made up of the sheiferiyah
and the Ma'atazilites
primarily,
the Madakis and the Hanbalis to a certain
degree.
So in its early iterations,
you have sort of a battle between
the scholars of
Ahlus Sunnah and the Ma'tesilites. And at times,
there's gonna be, you know, inadvertent
blending of ideas. So
Imam Al Haramay when he says
is actually projecting the opinion of the Ma'atazilites.
That's why imam al Badi al Bir Dawi
in the Minhajid says, wa
He says when he's talking about Al Amr
commands, he says, and the Ma'tazilai school,
conditioned
is the meaning here,
Recognize, but the idea is here. They conditioned
and are that it has to be from
1 in greater authority to to 1 lesser
in authority.
And then he talks about Abu Hussain al
Basri who also was Maher Tazili.
He conditioned Isti'ala.
So Ulu Isti'ala.
Ulu is dealing with the speaker. Isti'ala is
how the communication is happening.
No need to break that down now. We'll
talk about it in the future. But the
point is the Martazilites, whether it was the
majority of them or Abu al Hussein al
Basri,
they
conditioned this idea of superiority
authority.
And Imam al Haramain, he mentions it here
because he's following
from Alunah, which we're going to read in
the future.
And you even find if you studied logic,
the sullam of Imam al Aqdari
who said,
walamru
mastiallahi
wadunahudua'a.
He said, walamru mastiallaa.
He says that that the the command has
to come, Isti'allah,
authority,
waqsuhu
dua,
and the opposite is dua.
Wentisah,
Wentisah,
feltisah,
mulwa'a.
I forgot some of it long time ago,
but and if if they are equal, the
one giving the order and the one receiving
the order, this is called
timasun.
This this
definition and this approach
is the approach of the Ma'atazilites,
and we need to
purify ousolelofek from them because
anything that the Ma'atazilites have done is going
to address their issues to support their issues
of aqidah.
And number 2, the trait of the Ma'atazilites
is that they make things much more complicated
than they need to be.
They they in fact, if if you, you
know, read like a Ma'atamat,
you find that it's like everything about usool
al Firkyan.
And so one of the symptoms, if you're
reading a book of usool and you find
things getting really, really, really theoretical and complicated
and problematic,
usually, not always,
This is the Marchese lights are involved.
So then what is the proper definition
of
al Umr?
And how do we respond to this contention
of the
as shared here by Umaha Haramain
So the simple definition is provided by Al
Qadhi al Berdawi, and this is also the
definition of the Madikiya who said al amruhuwaal
kalamapalib
lil fihil.
That the that the amr
is a
correct
form of speech
which requests
an action.
You understand something also here that you're gonna
find some of them considered
different degrees of that request.
The highest degree
is, of course, the,
the. The second is going to be what?
The.
So that definition
And we can talk about in the future
how there's actually majaz here.
But we don't need to talk about that
now.
What is the evidence that we respond to
the Mu'tazilites
in this fact this this idea of
mimanhuadunahu. Number 1, Allah
says about,
the people of, Firaun, and Firaun speaking to
them, he says,
What do you command me? We know that
Firaun, he considered himself faqalaanur waqala faqalaanurabukumu'ala.
He considered him their Lord. So when he
said famataatamurun,
he's in greater authority than them, but he's
asking them, what do you command me? Famadhatamurudi.
We also find Allah
commands,
You must command your family to pray.
But don't we find saying Ismail
speaking to his
about his people? Allah says,
They used to command his family to pray,
his people to pray. He's equal to them.
Timas, but this is still.
And also the statement of saying,
you know, you must command your children to
pray
at 7 years old.
So we see this whole complicated
business
that was introduced by the is
unwarranted.
And this is where we need to make,
like,
We should distance from
these innovators
in a in a negative sense. It's heterodoxical
kind of thinking
that is really being used
to mask a broader agenda which deals with
their understanding of Allah and other
and good and evil and so on and
so forth.
So let's quickly review.
Said Nas Sheikh, he says,
We talked about this.
Talked about this.
A few other things that we talked about
was
what does a command imply?
To make it simple, there are 5 opinions
about this or 6. But we mentioned 1,
that a command means something is obligatory
unless there is supporting evidence to show that
it's not.
The second thing that we talked about is
a command after her prohibition implies that the
command is permissible.
So for example, in Shultz
said, you know,
leave off
selling and buying things. Then let on seek,
this is a command, ifal.
Does that command mean you have to seek
it, or it's,
like, permissible? It's permissible.
So
The other thing that we talked about is,
does halal alamruifidu taqr?
Does a command mean you have to do
it over and over and over and over
and over again? This is the opposite of
prohibitions.
We said, al amru al mutlaq.
Right? A a a command which is not
associated with repetition is understood to be once.
But a command like to pray, you understand,
we have to pray 5 times a day.
So it's conditioned on the context of the
verse, the context of the hadith
of the prophet
The last thing we talked about, and there's
more,
Do you have to do it immediately, or
can you delay it? And again, this is
based on the context.
I can't delay salatul Dhuhr if it's time
to pray. I have to pray in its
time.
So there's a micro delay which is allowed
up until waktadu Rura, for example.
But, for example, something like Hajj,
there's a difference of opinion between the Sheffees
and the Madakis on this issue.
Right? Then then there is an allowance to
delay,
because I have my lifetime to make it
up. So we ask
Allah
So quickly, just to review,
responded to all these things and showed
the the more Sunni
approach towards this understanding of Ulsu,
especially within the frame of the