Tofael Nuruddin – Community Hub Connecting Back The Intellectual Heritage of Islam
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As-salātu wa s-salāmu ʿalá Sayyidinā Muḥammadin
ʾashraf al-khalq wa Sayyid al-mursalīn wa
ʿalá ʾālihi wa ṣaḥbihi ajmaʿīn Allāhumma lā sahla
illā mā jaʿaltahu sahla wa anta tajʿalu l
-hazna idhā shiʿta sahlan sahla Allāhumma shrah lana
sudūrana wa israh lana umūrana wa istir'ayūbana
wa aslih ahwālana Allāhumma fir dhunūbana Allāhumma fir
dhunūbana Allāhumma fir lana mā qaddamna wa mā
akharna wa mā asrarna wa mā aʿlanna wa
mā asrafna wa mā antaʿanū bihi minna Allāhumma
bārak lana fī jamʿina hādha Allāhumma jaʿal jamʿana
hādha jamʿan mubārakan marhūma wa jaʿal tafarrukanan baʿdihi
tafarrukan maʿsūma wa lā tajʿal fīna wa lā
minna wa lā maʿna shaqiyan wa lā mahrūma
Allāhumma rabbana bārak lana fī shaʿbān wa ballighna
ramadān Allāhumma bārak lana fī shaʿbān wa ballighna
ramadān Allāhumma aʿinna ʿalā siyāmih wa ʿalā qiyāmih
ʿal wajhil ladhi urḍīka ʿanna wa ktubna fīhi
min aʿtaqāika minan nār Allāhumma aʿtaq riqābana wa
riqāba ābāina wa ummahātina wa ikhwānina wa akhawātina
wa azwājina wa dhurriyātina minan nār wa adkhilna
aljannata maʿal abrār ya ʿazīzu ya ghaffār O
Allah, we call upon you and we pray
to you, we beseech you, we ask you
by your names and attributes to bless our
hearts with iman, to fill our hearts with
your abundant mercy and to fill our homes
with your abundant mercy and to bless our
pursuit of jannah and to bless our pursuit
of understanding our deen O Allah, we ask
you to bless this masjid and to bless
this space and to fill it with dhikr,
ibadah and ilm and community and brotherhood and
sisterhood O Allah, we ask you to bless
us to witness the month of Ramadan and
to make us of those who they're emancipated
from * in the blessed month of Ramadan
Allahumma ameen, Allahumma ameen, wa akhiru da'awāna,
alhamdulillahi rabbil alameen amma ba'd, it's a pleasure
to have a special guest for the community
hub today and as I mentioned to you
guys last week, alhamdulillah, this month leading up
to Ramadan we're going to have multiple guests
inshallah three out of the four community hubs
is gonna be all with guests we also
have another special guest next week inshallah with
us and today we have Shaykh Tufayl Nooruddin
Shaykh Tufayl came to us all the way
from Montreal, Canada that's where he grew up
and was raised and Shaykh Tufayl actually is
someone who has an extensive background in shari
'ah he studied the deen in South Africa
and elsewhere as well he's very learned, masha
'Allah, and he of course along with many
accolades hafidh al-Qur'an and teaching in
many institutes and doing research for Islamic institutes
some research on different topics he also regularly
teaches in a local institute in New York
called Bayt al-Hamd and that's in Queens,
New York and he does that on a
regular basis alongside many of the other efforts
that he's doing so we ask Allah subhanahu
wa ta'ala to reward him for coming
and to spending the time with our community
he has a special topic for tonight and
he's gonna explain it more but the title
is Connecting Back the Intellectual Heritage of Islam
so please give him your full attention and
take advantage of his presence and if you
have any questions please prepare them and you
can ask them in the end insha'Allah
ta'ala so with no further ado insha
'Allah I'll leave you with Shaykh Tufayl to
begin the topic shaykh
Tufayl recites surah al-Fatihah shaykh Tufayl recites
surah al-Fatihah so
the idea for today's discussion is basically
to explore a dilemma a problem that as
a North American community it's something that we
face very regularly and it's something that we've
been facing for a while and it's something
unfortunately that maybe not a lot of people
have actually put thought into and the dilemma
is something that I would call a new
world problem so what happens is that many
of us live in a North American society
so we have a certain understanding of the
world from that perspective and then we have
an Islamic understanding as well and trying to
synthesize between the two, trying to make sense
of the both of them a lot of
times we end up in utter confusion we
have certain ideas, certain notions of right and
wrong what is good and what is bad,
what is good and what is evil and
harmful and then we have certain things that
the Qur'an tells us, the hadith of
the Prophet ﷺ tells us and we find
it difficult sometimes to reconcile between them and
this is something that any Muslim teenager, adult,
senior person has faced in their life whether
it's when they hear that in Islam they
had Bilal who was a slave and then
he was freed later and certain people they
remained as slaves and then how do we
reconcile that with the utter good, the complete
goodness that Islam is or many other such
issues, for example in hadith certain things are
mentioned and then we have a certain understanding
of the world I'll give you an example,
a hadith comes in Sahih Muslim about the
sequence of the rotation of the sun and
the Prophet ﷺ explains that the sun, it
rises and then it sets and then it
prostrates, it does sujood to Allah ﷻ and
it asks Allah if it can rise again
and Allah ﷻ gives it permission now astronomically
we know that the sun never sets, does
it ever set?
does the sun set?
no right, I mean it's just something that
we perceive but if it's setting here it's
rising somewhere else at all times it's rising
somewhere else so then where exactly does it
do sujood?
and then for example in hadith we know
that on certain nights in the month of
Ramadan Allah ﷻ comes down to the first
sky does this mean night for us here
or night back home or night somewhere else?
I mean if there is day somewhere there
is night somewhere so does that mean that
Allah is at all times in the first
sky?
so sometimes with the understanding of the modern
world we have certain precepts, certain notions, certain
ideas, certain concepts of reality and then we
have the shariah that comes, the Qur'an,
the hadith that tells us something and we
try to reconcile the two and we end
up in confusion and then certain things that
the Prophet ﷺ talked about especially supernatural things
for example about the coming of the Dajjal
the Prophet ﷺ describes the days and he
mentions that one day will be like a
whole year and then one day will be
like a month and one day will be
like a week and so on and so
forth what does this mean?
in another hadith the Prophet ﷺ Jibreel ﷺ
comes and he's holding a book and he's
saying in this is the names and the
actions of all of the children of Adam
now if we take just the people in
the United States currently living and you want
to put it in a book how heavy
would that book be?
and then if you forget the United States
you take the 7 billion people that are
alive how big would that be?
and then not only that but all their
deeds like from birth till death how big
would that book be?
and so what exactly was the Prophet ﷺ
carrying?
and how do we make sense of that?
so we have certain notions of the laws
of physics and then we have a hadith
that seems supernatural and so how do we
reconcile between the two?
so I'm just giving a few examples obviously
there are a lot more there are certain
hadiths like for example the Prophet ﷺ talks
about women being a certain way men being
a certain way and the interaction between men
and women and inherently sometimes that can come
off as oppressive so how do we reconcile
all of that?
and in this pursuit there are different paths
that people have taken so some people they've
simply left the fold of Islam unfortunately and
this is maybe something that is more of
a common occurrence that we might like to
think so this is a very very old
survey very old survey according to Pew Research
25% of Muslims in America are leaving
the fold of Islam this is something that
is very old more recently just a couple
of years ago one of my colleagues Mufti
Wasim Khan from Texas very very well known
he conducted some research and it was a
survey that was there only for youth thousands
of youth responded from all different states and
he found out that more than 50%
were saying that either they are not in
the fold of Islam anymore or they only
say they're Muslims because that's what their parents
do and now this is not something that
we of course blame them for there's a
certain issue that they're facing and that's something
that we have to acknowledge and deal with
so that's one aspect of it some people
simply couldn't make sense of it and they
just left because that just didn't make sense
to them another group of people they've decided
that since these texts don't make sense to
us we will just reject them and from
there you have the Quranist movement which is
basically the Quran only movement basically they believe
that only the Quran is decisive and all
of Hadith we cannot trust it which obviously
we know is problematic on so many levels
because historical proof exists of its codification and
its transmission and the reliability and strength of
it so some people and especially that was
there early on the Mu'tazila for example and
even current day a lot of people they
can't make sense of Hadith so they're like,
you know what I'm not going to trust
Hadith and then some groups they decided that
the vast majority of Hadith is there but
maybe these ones that don't really make sense
to me maybe they were fabricated by people
and so they decide to put away those
Hadith even though they might be in Sahih
al-Bukhari they might be in Sahih Muslim
they dismiss them and then there's a group
of people that do Tawakuf they say that
you know what, this doesn't make sense to
me if I try to process it logically
it doesn't make sense but here's what I'll
do I believe in Allah and so what
I'll do is I will just simply believe
in these texts because this is what the
Prophet ﷺ said without actually trying to process
it rationally and although this is something that's
very commendable in many ways it's not a
necessary truth and what I mean by that
is that everything the Prophet ﷺ said is
rational everything the Prophet ﷺ said is logical
everything Allah ﷻ said makes sense and this
is in accordance with the hikmah of Allah
ﷻ the wisdom of Allah ﷻ and the
knowledge of Allah ﷻ if I were to
say that you know there's a certain verse
of the Qur'an or there's a certain
hadith and this doesn't make sense to me
but I'll accept it in essence, maybe a
part of me is saying that maybe this
is not a logical hadith you know, maybe
I just need to have faith and this
is not a Muslim perspective this is more
of a Christian perspective that at a certain
basically what the Trinity what do Christians say
about the Trinity very famous philosophers if you
look back in the past theologians, Christian theologians
like Thomas Aquinas medieval philosopher he agreed that
you can reach the conclusion about the existence
of Allah ﷻ or God through your reasoning
but many things you have to just have
faith and one of them is the Trinity
how does it make sense?
it doesn't make sense but we just have
to have faith and Islam is not like
that in Islam we make sense of things
and throughout the Qur'an Allah ﷻ talks
about this He asks us أَفَلَا تَتَدَبَّرُونَ He
asks أَفَلَا تَعْقِلُونَ and then He talks about
the Qur'an being a means of guidance
لِأُولِي الْأَلْبَابِ for the people of intellect for
the people of knowledge for the people of
understanding and He asks, do they not understand?
so what we can derive from there is
that the Qur'an is something that is
in accordance with logic it's something that intellectually
we can process and actually it wouldn't make
sense if Allah ﷻ gave us the Qur
'an and the Prophet ﷺ said certain things
and then those are things that we cannot
process because He is addressing us as humans
so now the question is us as Muslims
in the West what should we do about
these texts?
and so today is basically the discussion revolves
around this a solution to this to this
dilemma, to this problem so far does everyone
understand what the dilemma is?
does everyone understand?
or it was like a wave above everybody's
heads and this is confusing man does everyone
understand what the dilemma is?
everyone understands?
right?
okay and I don't want anybody to raise
their hands or anything but just ask yourself
if you've ever encountered an issue like that
like you heard a hadith or you read
an ayat of the Qur'an or someone
came maybe a friend or a co-worker
or a classmate or maybe a professor or
a teacher and they've mentioned something about a
hadith or they ask maybe why didn't Islam
abolish slavery?
or something like that, whatever it is and
it's like whoa, I don't have an answer
for this right?
ask yourself if you've ever come across this
and so today basically what we'll do is
we'll explore the answer to this like how
do we become stronger in our faith?
I don't want to use the word faith
actually how do we become stronger in our
deen?
in our religion?
how do we become stronger in our Iman?
and so for that what I propose is
connecting back with our roots right?
and we need to basically shift our world
view our notions of reality they have to
be processed again so to understand this let
us take something in the last century or
in the last couple of centuries what's been
happening?
if we look at the trend in history
is that there's a certain group of people
that gained power politically right?
and in terms of military aspects by whatever
means and then their notions of truth have
been kind of imposed on everybody is this
true or not?
like for example, you can say that this
is alright, this is okay but if that
dominant culture tells you no this is not
right, then that's what you have to follow
do we see anything like this in our
community?
actually if we look at very recent occurrences
if you look at things that have been
happening just take the war in Ukraine for
example if a certain country invades another country
then oh wow it's terrible, really bad whatever
they're doing but if that same country that's
been blaming if they attack like 20 different
countries for the last 20 years then nobody
complains about that is this true or not?
if we look at what's been happening in
the middle east for the last god knows
however long nobody ever complained nobody imposed sanctions
nobody on the media was saying and subhanallah
if you want to look at the hypocrisy
recently there was mention of a certain soldier
in Ukraine that went and blew himself up
and they were like, he's a hero imagine
if a Muslim did that just for one
second, picture if a Muslim in Afghanistan or
Iraq did that, what would happen?
what would the media be saying currently?
so there's in the last century or maybe
two centuries, this has been happening there's a
project of colonization that's been happening and colonization
is not only politically and geographically but it
happens also in the mind that whatever our
notion of truth is or whatever our notion
of good and beautiful and aesthetic is and
that's the one that will be imposed upon
you so if I say that wearing a
shirt and wearing a pant, this is what's
professional then you better accept that and if
you wear your traditional clothes, well that's not
so professional do we see this or no?
so everybody now has to look a certain
way everybody has to talk a certain way
everybody has to adopt certain traditions and adopt
certain ideas of right and wrong and if
you don't, then what will happen is that
you will be an outcast, you will be
ostracized sanctions will be imposed upon you armies
will be sent to you you will be
called a dictatorship, an autocracy all sorts of
reasons will be found to eradicate all of
your beliefs.
We will go to free you that's kind
of the idea that's there.
So this is something that's been happening recently
and so how do Muslims get out of
that?
so this is something that I call decolonizing
the mind decolonizing the mind whatever notions were
put upon us let's go back for a
bit, let's look at what the Quran says
and what the Sunnah says and what Islam
says about right and wrong, about ethical concepts,
about truth, about reality what does it say?
and so this is what we call a
world view this is what we call a
world view.
A world view tells us these big questions
basically what is reality?
what is real?
how do we accept something as truth?
what is right and what is wrong?
what is the purpose of life?
what is going to happen after life?
these are all all of these questions, the
answers to all of these questions is what
we call a world view.
Now Islam has a world view as well.
Islam has a world view as well.
Unfortunately what's been happening with Muslims is we've
been ignoring the Islamic world view for the
longest time now so just to give you
a few examples in contemporary society, what do
we consider real?
Any opinions?
You can just raise your hand and answer.
What do we consider real?
Anyone?
Nobody knows what's real?
Something that you can very good answer, very
good answer so in contemporary science right, whatever
you can see, touch, smell, whatever is empirically
proved is something that we consider real.
Now if someone tells you for example that
you know what, last night a certain man
went to the heavens in the contemporary world
view, would this be something that's real?
No, but do we believe in this?
Of course we believe in this, the Prophet
ﷺ did it.
So we have certain sources of knowledge that
transcend the contemporary world view and this is
what we call theory of knowledge or epistemology
so in Islamic epistemology for example that which
you can touch this is something that we
accept also Al-Khabr Al-Khabr we accept
as a source of truth so for example
if you know hundreds of people from the
time of the Prophet ﷺ until now have
been narrating a certain thing then we consider
it true.
We say in no way this can be
untrue this cannot be falsified and if you
look at the Ahadith of Isra and Mi
'raj this is the case, you have you
know hundreds of Sahaba and then past that
in every generation you have hundreds of people
narrating this and this is something that is
unique to Islam, there is no other nation
in the history of mankind that has preserved
the life of a person like the Muslims
have done.
For example, I'll just give you an example
if you hear for example you know Einstein
said whatever whatever whatever or like Abraham Lincoln
said whatever whatever do you actually know that
he said that?
Do you actually know?
Do you have someone that you can say
this person told me and then that person
told him and then that person told him
and then he heard it from Abraham Lincoln
do we have a certain chain like that?
No, right?
But we just take it you know prima
facie, we just accept it.
For the Ahadith of the Prophet ﷺ from
now until the time of the Prophet ﷺ
1400 years in every era we have narrators
that have narrated those incidents to us and
not only that those narrators their biographies have
been written down can they be trusted what
kind of memories they had you know what
their contemporaries said about them so on and
so forth and actually western academics have been
mesmerized by this tradition that the Muslims have
kept and actually some of them have accepted
Islam just looking at Hadith like they're just
mind blown like how did people preserve every
single action of a certain person how he
walked, how he ate how he went to
use the washroom how he interacted with his
family and friends every single one of those
things have been recorded and with chains they
were just mesmerized and they accepted Islam so
Aloy Spregner a German Orientalist in his book
he's extremely surprised that Muslims have written the
biographies of 500,000 narrators just to make
sure that whatever the Prophet ﷺ said is
true now this is something really to think
about the gift that Allah ﷻ has given
us, the intellectual tradition that Allah ﷻ has
given us so I was saying that Khabar
is something that we accept logical deductions, Al
-Aql is something that we accept as truth
in contemporary in the contemporary world view empirical
facts like the things that we can touch,
see, smell and perceive by the five senses
are accepted logical conclusions are accepted but Khabar
is not such a serious proposition Wahi for
example is not a source of knowledge for
us it is so this is an example,
another example is metaphysics things that we consider
real and we don't consider real so as
Muslims for example, if someone tells you that
you know how me and you we can
see each other, we have human beings but
there are also another whole species that are
called the jinn and they are invisible and
they have whatever whatever powers and we believe
in that as well as Muslims do we
believe this?
of course we believe this angels, there are
angels, invisible angels that are taking care of
the world by the command of Allah ﷻ
70,000 angels prostrate to Allah ﷻ and
they stay like that and then the next
70,000 the next batch of 70,000
comes and they also prostrate to Allah ﷻ.
Does this exist?
Yes it exists.
Do we see it?
No we don't see it.
Do we touch it?
Feel it?
Smell it?
No we don't.
But do we consider it real?
Yes we do.
Why?
Because it's been revealed and it's been transmitted
from the Prophet ﷺ to us this is
a standard of truth but in the contemporary
worldview we don't accept this so actually if
we look at if we look at the
things that we consider real there's a lot
more we have a richer tradition than whatever
the contemporary world has to tell us so
this is what I mean that our worldview
first of all basically the bases have to
be set like this is what I consider
true, this is what I consider true and
this is what I'll accept and anything beyond
that I'll consider.
So we have to first realize that ourselves
that whatever the Qur'an says is true
whatever the Prophet ﷺ said is true.
Now is that just based on faith?
No it's not.
The ulama, the fuqaha, the muhaddithun they've discussed
all of this in great detail and they've
explained all these concepts in great great great
detail and it's just up to us to
kind of connect with that and unfortunately what
happens today is we're willing to connect with
all sorts of other intellectual traditions but we
don't really look back at our tradition so
for example if I ask if I ask
just an open question out there what can
you tell me about Imam al-Tirmidhi or
Imam al-Bukhari, everyone hears his name or
his nisba, what can we actually say about
him?
Does anybody know for example which period did
he live in?
Date of birth, date of death What's his
actual full name?
What kind of works did he do?
So I'm just going to take volunteers, just
let me know whatever you know and I'm
looking especially at the youth I feel like
you guys have zeal for this stuff but
anyone it's open to anyone just raise your
hand and tell me whatever you know about
Imam al-Bukhari of course we know that
but tell me a little more, just anything
actually He was born in Bukhara Bukhara, Mashallah
this is good, where is Bukhara?
Sorry?
Current day it's Uzbekistan Uzbekistan, yes that's good
as well Back in the days we used
to call this Transoxiana or Mawra-un-Nahar
In Arabic the term is Mawra-un-Nahar
In English we say Transoxiana Anyone else, anything?
He had a great memory, okay that's kind
of vague Can you tell me something about
his memory?
Any incident or anything that you know?
He knew the wrong ones too That's a
good point He knew the wrong ones too
Anything else?
Don't google it, you're not allowed to use
your phone I see people slowly pulling up
their phones Okay so Here's what I'll do
Let's just explore a little bit about Imam
Bukhari, who he was as a person and
the intellectually gifted man that he was.
Imam al-Bukhari his name was Muhammad ibn
Ismail Ibn Ibrahim, Ibn al-Mughira Ibn al
-Bardizba Al-Bukhari, Al-Ju'fi Al-Bukhari
because he was from Bukhara Al-Ju'fi
because when he accepted Islam the tribe that
he had connection with were basically Banu Ju
'fa Imam Bukhari like you said he had
a great memory There are certain incidents about
his memory that are recorded Hafiz ibn Hajar
in the Muqaddimah in the preface of his
commentary on Sahih al-Bukhari called Fath al
-Bari he records some incidents Hafiz al-Dhahabi,
a great historian of Islam, he also records
some in Tathkirat al-Hufadh one incident about
Imam Bukhari so when he was very young
he went to one of his teachers, Imam
Bukhari he travelled a lot he went to
over a thousand teachers at one point he
goes to a teacher and he is learning
hadith from him so the teacher everyday he
comes and he narrates about a thousand hadith
he takes a couple of hours and he
is just narrating hadith and the students they
are writing down the hadith that the teacher
is narrating to them Imam Bukhari is not
writing anything so just like other classmates let's
say for example you go to university and
everybody is taking notes from the lectures but
you are just there you are kind of
just chilling or maybe you are on your
phone at some point some student or somebody
is going to come to you and they
are going to be like maybe you should
be taking notes just like everybody else so
this is exactly what happened, Imam Bukhari he
says by the 16th day 15,000 hadith
have been covered they have been narrated so
they come to him on the 16th day
and they say, what's wrong with you man
you are wasting your time so Imam Bukhari
said, if that's what you think open your
books where you took notes and you recorded
the hadith so Imam Bukhari from the very
first day he starts narrating the hadith from
his memory and actually Hafidh Zahabi records that
the people that took notes some of them
had mistakes and they corrected it from the
memory of Imam Bukhari so this is Al
-Bukhari there is another incident that Hafidh Zahabi
also mentions about him when he went to
Nisapur I believe it was Nisapur if I
am not mistaken Nisapur is a city in
does anybody know, modern day sorry Iraq, now
you are confusing me I feel like it's
Iran it's Iran right so yeah he goes
to Nisapur and everybody heard about him he
was like the celebrity muhaddith of his time
so he comes to Nisapur and the ulama
the muhaddithun of Nisapur they are like let's
see what Bukhari is about let's test him
so what do they do, 10 scholars go
and as soon as Bukhari comes they start
narrating 10 hadith and for every single hadith
Bukhari says I don't know this hadith I
don't know this hadith and then he goes
through all 10 people every one of them
narrated 10 hadith how many hadith is that
100 right, easy math so then the crowd
they are like we heard a lot about
this guy but he is saying he doesn't
know any of these hadith what kind of
muhaddith is this guy anyway so then Imam
Bukhari goes back to the first person and
he says you narrated the hadith to me
like this, with this chain and this is
the hadith that you narrated but I know
it with this chain and then he gives
him the correct one and then he goes
second hadith, third hadith and then he goes
to the second person, third person all the
way to the 10th person and the amazing
thing about this story is not that he
knew all of those hadith what's the amazing
part it's not so amazing that he knew
all of those 100 hadith the correct version
what's the actual amazing part the one that
he actually remembered what the wrong chains were
from this guy so these guys they just
mentioned it once 100 hadith and then he
goes back and in sequence he tells them
all the wrong ones and then he tells
them no no this is the right one
that I have so this was Al Bukhari
so now the question is amongst the muhadithun
there were hundreds and thousands of them how
many of them do we actually know about
how many of their lives do we actually
study and like I said we have an
obsession for studying the intellectuals of all sorts
of other traditions western tradition we know about
them chinese tradition we know about them we
go to university and we study all of
their lives how many of us actually know
about the intellectuals of our own history it's
a good question to ask ourselves very good
question to ask ourselves and now if we
don't know can we really be surprised if
we kind of feel this inferiority complex in
front of other people actually let me tell
you something you might be surprised at this
or maybe some of you actually know this
the current society that we have the united
states of america it's based on certain ideologies
certain ideas of politics certain ideas of the
law the rule of law certain ideas of
ethics and do you know where all this
comes from does anyone know like western society
what is it based on sorry the constitution
yeah but the ideas of the constitution where
did they come from not really the church
there's a big divide between the church and
state the english we're getting somewhere now the
english where did they get their stuff from
the muslims which muslims it's good that you
said muslims what they actually base a lot
of their philosophy on for example ideas of
law or democracy democracy was discussed by aristotle
and actually I don't know how many of
you know about this but according to aristotle
democracy was the second last worst form of
government did anyone know this so democracy was
discussed by aristotle and he had five stages
of government and the last one was anarchy
where like basically you have no government and
the second last one basically the second last
worst one was democracy the ideal form of
government according to aristotle was something that we
call an aristocracy an aristocracy is basically you
have intellectuals deciding who the leader will be
do we have some memories of this from
anywhere the khilafa was based on the shura
deciding who the political leader should be so
if you actually look at western tradition we
don't judge the islamic tradition by any other
tradition but even if we were to the
islamic tradition has the highest standards that you
can think of so anyway what i was
saying is that a lot of ideas in
law a lot of a lot of ideas
in politics in ethics it comes from the
greeks and actually the philosophy of the greeks
would have never survived if it were not
for muslims if it were not for muslims
so actually current day works of Plato current
day works of greek philosophy their translations from
arabic did anyone know this anyone raise your
hand if you knew this i'll be very
impressed if someone knew this so current day
works of greek philosophy that exist their translation
they're in english so their translation is from
latin and it was translated to latin from
arabic so the history goes like this the
greeks their philosophy was kind of they used
to hide it and the reason for this
is because it usually ended up going against
the state we know so many greek philosophers
were either outcast or killed so they used
to hide their works and so what happened
is during the abasi period the arabs paid
a lot of money to find their works
find the works of greek philosophy have them
translated into arabic there's a whole history behind
that as well it caused some confusion amongst
the muslims but alhamdulillah we had people like
al-ghazali we had people like abu mansur
al-maturidi and many other scholars that explained
islamic concepts even as per logic so then
in modern day what you have is you
have translations from arabic into latin and then
from latin into english so the basis of
this society wouldn't even exist if it weren't
for muslims so sometimes when people come to
muslims or come to arabs and indians and
what not and they say this is our
tradition, well it's not your tradition it's not
your tradition, you wouldn't even have your tradition
if it weren't for muslims, this is a
fact, this is a reality, anybody that's educated
knows this so basically the idea was that
we restructure our minds, we revisit our intellectual
heritage, we revisit our scholars and the works
that they did and who they were we
study their lives so that we can be
connected with that tradition and then we'll be
proud of being who we are then we're
not confused anymore because we know that these
were some of the most intelligent minds in
the history of mankind and so this is
what I propose that what we should engage
ourselves in is to study the intellectual tradition
of islam to connect ourselves with the scholarly
tradition of islam to sit in the halaqat
to benefit from the scholars and to find
out about what actually our deen was about
instead of what ends up happening a lot
of times is we end up devaluing our
deen if someone says that this hadith doesn't
make sense to me so I put it
aside what just happened, you devalued your deen
you're saying that a certain notion of reality
that was given to me by x, y,
z people I give that preference over the
hadith do you understand what's going on?
does everyone understand?
like if I say that this hadith doesn't
make sense to me then what I'm essentially
saying is that this version of truth that
was given to me by another person I
would rather prefer this than accepting the hadith
so we need to restructure this understanding we
need to study the ulema of Islam the
fuqaha, the muhaddithun and actually even if you
look at the fuqaha, you will see the
minds that they had subhanallah a lot of
contemporary issues that exist like for example issues
in cryptocurrency, issues in bioethics, like euthanasia issues
in IVF a lot of these were hypothetically
discussed by people like Abu Hanifa and his
students they used to discuss one of the
recent fuqaha that they discussed 3000 hypothetical scenarios
that never even happened just in case they
would happen in the future this is basically
the minds that they had our pious predecessors
had and this is how intelligent they were
Imam Malik one time he was asked, did
you ever meet Abu Hanifa and he says
yes I've met him, he's such a person
that if he were to try and argue
that the pillar in front of me is
made of gold he would successfully be able
to prove that even though I'm seeing that
it's not made of gold he would be
able to logically prove to me that it's
made of gold so this is how intellectual
and intelligent many of our scholars were so
just to summarize what we've been discussing is
that when we have confusion in deen, when
we feel like maybe maybe the things that
are posed in front of me I'm confused
about them, I'm not sure about them I'm
not sure what my deen is saying and
maybe I shouldn't really accept this thing that
the deen is saying well we should reconsider
that we should reconsider that we should consider
studying the lives of the scholars of our
deen and then we'll have a much much
better perspective and then a lot of claims
that seem like they're wrong we can actually
completely understand these in a different way, so
I'll just take slavery as an example, since
I talked about it I'll take it as
an example if someone asks why didn't Islam
abolish slavery what's a good answer to that
how do you make sense of that as
a Muslim, how do you respond to that
so this is a very common answer but
there are issues with this answer the issue
is that something like wine we know that
Allah gradually, gradually, gradually he made it haram
and even though people were obsessed with it,
he made it completely completely haram, so eventually
if Allah wanted, he could have completely abolished
slavery that's something that he could have done
so why didn't he do that like other
things were made slowly, slowly, slowly, they were
made prohibited why didn't slavery get abolished anyone?
any other ideas?
anything?
but Allah fixed many other things there were
many other things that were happening amongst the
Arab of the time and Allah came and
fixed it, actually it is the responsibility of
Allah to if he sends a prophet then
the prophet comes and solves the issues of
the time this is what every prophet did
if you guys give up I'll give you
the answer it's sort of a test to
see how we deal with it it's a
good answer but it's not the right answer
anyone else?
I'll just give you guys the answer since
you're all waiting for it slavery in Islam
was actually much better than corporate employment that
we have today the word slavery is completely
wrong to use in the Islamic system, so
let's think about what a slave had in
terms of huquq in Islam, right?
what did the prophet say?
he said, feed them what you eat, clothe
them with what you're clothed with so if
you're wearing an Armani suit that costs $10
,000 the command of the prophet as per
the Sahih Hadith in Sahih Muslim he's telling
you that you also have to give your
slave a $10,000 suit yes or no?
now compare this to 17th century or 16th
century slavery in America, is there any comparison?
there's no comparison can you even call that
slavery?
no, you can't even call it slavery similarly,
what happened once, Abu Dharr Al-Ghifari he
was arguing with the Sahabi, in some narrations
it comes that it was Bilal R.A.
in other narrations it was mentioned that he
was a slave and he was dark in
complexion he was a darker person so Abu
Dharr Al-Ghifari said, oh son of a
black woman what did the prophet do as
a reaction to that?
he said, he got very very angry his
face turned red he said, you're a man
who still has ignorance in him, you still
have the traditions of the days of ignorance
so the prophet was very very serious about
that you know how serious he was?
to the point that Umar R.A. one
time, he beat a slave and then he
realized his mistake as a khalifa, he came
back to that slave and he said, whip
me back he said, whip me back this
is the kind of rights and responsibilities that
a person had upon a slave can you
even really call it slavery?
I don't think so and now, some of
the wisdom let me explain some of the
wisdom behind that system that was there I'm
not going to use the word slavery because
it's the wrong word but let's try to
see the hikmah in why Allah kept it
so now in contemporary society or in those
times if you went to a group of
people and you conquered them right?
now you have three options you have three
options, so let's say for example there was
a threat to the Muslim empire by a
neighboring state and they go and control them,
so now they have three options one is,
they kill all the people obviously no one
is going to agree with that that's not
moral, that's not right the other is, you
just leave them to be, just leave them
alone then what happens, eventually they'll rebel against
you the third option is, you include them
in families, and this is the system that
the Prophet ﷺ left behind so actually if
you look at slaves you know, slaves in
the historical period in Islam some of the
greatest scholars were actually slaves or freed slaves
so the whole Maliki tradition it rests upon
certain key figures there were the Fuqaha al
-Suba'i in Medina and mainly or what
we consider Silsilat al-Dahab in Hadith, does
anyone know what Silsilat al-Dahab is in
Hadith?
does anyone know?
according to Bukhari the golden chain, the highest
the most authentic chain that you can find
is Malik al-Nafi' al-Ibn Umar Nafi'
the teacher of Malik was a freed slave
if you look at some of the judges
in Mecca and Medina like Ata ibn Abi
Rabah he was a black slave, he was
a judge if you look at the whole
Mamluk dynasty these were all slaves so the
slaves what ended up happening to them they
came from a different tradition the Prophet ﷺ
said keep them in your family and you
have to also feed them, you also have
to educate them you also have to clothe
them and what ended up happening is you
had some great scholars, you had some great
politicians some of the greatest minds were actually
slaves and freed slaves so can you really
call this slavery?
let's go back like 2-300 years just
in the United States and see how slaves
were treated here they were whipped, they had
no rights some of them were killed there
was no prosecution for a person who killed
a slave is this how it was in
Islam?
you had Umar r.a who beat someone,
who beat a slave and then he goes
back to him and he says beat me
back is there a comparison?
so this is basically our response that if
you look at slavery in Islam, there was
no slavery they probably had more rights than
a lot of people have today so this
is one response and again there are many
many other issues that people ask and there
are logical intellectual, scientific responses to them, at
the end of the day here is what
I want you to do I want you
to have trust I want you to have
I'm not going to use the word pride
but I want you to have confidence in
your scholarly tradition and I want you to
study your scholarly tradition because there is a
lot there inshallah may Allah give us the
ability to connect back with our intellectual heritage
honestly if we want to speak about this
there is a lot more to speak about
just the sciences that they've studied is amazing
it doesn't exist in other traditions I'll just
give you one example does anyone know about
Tajul Arus?
Tajul Arus Sheikh?
tell them about Tajul Arus it's a 20
volume dictionary in the Arabic language if you
take Lisanul Arab it's another lexicon, another dictionary
in 9 volumes these things in other languages
in other traditions, you don't really find this
actually the richness of the Arabic language I'm
a person, Alhamdulillah who is fluent in 5
languages and when I say fluent I mean
native level proficiency inshallah and I cannot find
any other language that is richer than the
Arabic language I hope to learn more languages
and I still don't think I'll ever be
able to find something as rich as the
Arabic language so let us be proud let
us connect back with our intellectual heritage and
may Allah give us the ability to act
upon whatever was said Alhamdulillah if anyone has
any questions inshallah I'll take them yes what
should you do?
what should you do?
there's a very simple explanation to this, so
for those who haven't heard the question, the
question is a lot of times when we
wonder about a certain thing a certain Islamic
topic then we go and we google it,
we check on YouTube and we listen to
different different opinions he gave the example of
taking interest to buy a house he saw
that one scholar said it was jaiz, he
went to Sheikh Qutnani and then he said
this is probably someone who was trying to
appease the authorities so the question is, when
you have a question and you go on
Google and you go on YouTube, you find
different opinions so what should you do?
well you should do what you do for
every other field of expertise if you get
sick, what do you do?
do you go on Google?
if you go on Google and you rely
solely on Google then I feel bad for
you and I'm very worried for you what
if your car breaks down?
you're in the middle of the highway you're
on your way to Chicago from here and
there's nothing around and your car breaks down,
what do you do?
you google it?
you go to a mechanic you go to
the expert of the field if you're sick,
you go to the expert of the field
you go to the doctor all I'm saying
is apply that same principle in Islam you
have so many local shuyukh Alhamdulillah as time
goes, we have more and more and more
scholars, especially in North America if you look
back 30-40 years ago you had one
or two in an entire state Alhamdulillah now
there's young scholars like Sheikh Osama and many
others that have knowledge that have studied, they
have qualifications they have expertise in the field
and they can give you reliable answers so
that's what I would tell you to do
yes so
the question is basically there's a more recent
issue that maybe a lot of people have
been dealing with it's how do we include
for example the LGBTQ and how do we
deal with the gender issue so what do
we do about these he's not worried about
himself but for future generations and children and
other people so this actually comes back to
the main point that I was making about
solidifying our world view like what do we
consider as real what do we consider right
and wrong and what are authoritative sources for
that so this is something very interesting how
do we define what is good and bad
like let's say someone says that you know
homosexuality is good right let's say or someone
says that it's bad like how do you
determine inherently if something is good or bad
or let's say this is your bottle and
I just come and smash it now we
would all agree that this is wrong but
how do you know that this is wrong
what if this is right how do you
know sorry very good answer sorry sheikh you
wanted to say yeah
so yeah so for Muslims once you've figured
out what you consider as real and unreal
and good and bad you have an answer
to that so you know what's good and
you know what's bad now what happens is
if a person does not believe in a
god right like let's say you take you
know anyone from from outside right and a
person does not believe in god there is
actually no way for them to know what's
good and what's bad there's no way because
it's just one man's word versus another right
like let's say you have one person he
doesn't believe in god and he says that
this is good pyromania is good pyromania means
a person has a psychological obsession to burn
things and he says you know that's ok
and someone else says it's not ok well
what makes one right over the other so
you actually need a higher being Immanuel Kant
a German philosopher actually says this is one
of the strongest proofs for Allah that you
need a higher being to tell you what's
right and wrong or else you're always going
to be confused you're always going to say
this is good and this is bad but
to answer your specific question in Islam we
consider harm we consider societal harm so some
of the things that we consider for example
there are studies that show for example that
increased rates of that kind of action it
leads to a lot of STDs and I
don't want to go into the specifics of
their practices but some of them are very
dirty they're not very healthy as per anybody's
standards not me and you as a Muslim
but anybody would say it's not exactly right
so there's transmission a higher risk of transmission
of diseases there's also the possibility of the
extermination of the human race so if every
man decided to be only with the man
and every woman decided to be with the
woman what would happen in the next generation?
there would be nobody left and one of
the inherent reasons why we get married what
did the Prophet ﷺ say?
تَزَوَّجُوا الْوَدُودَ الْوَلُودُ الْوَدُودَ الْوَلُودُ and then he
says فَإِنِّي مُكَاثِرٌ بِكُمْ يَوْمَ الْقِيَامَةِ because I'm
going to boast about your numbers so one
of the reasons why we even get married
is for procreation and one thing that Islam
really looks at and I really want you
to remember this and this will solve a
lot of issues one thing Islam really values
is family ties connections, good solid connections within
the family and for this so many things
have become halal and haram so many laws
so many Islamic laws of the sharia come
back to this point Allah wants good connections
between the family when we talk about the
family I'm not talking about brother, sister, father,
mother this is just the nuclear family that
we think is a family today the actual
family is like the qabail of the Arab
which we should be going back to like
my idea is that every larger family should
just stick in one neighborhood have like 50
members of your family living all together this
is how Muslims live that's how you can
raise there's a saying in the English language
that it takes a village to raise a
child so many of the issues that we
have today, so many of the marital issues
so many of the issues that we have
with children it goes back to that because
there's no sense of identity if you don't
grow up with a good solid family structure
then you don't have anything you're bankrupt and
this is why studies also show that if
a child is raised by a single mother
a lot of times they end up being
criminals why?
because they didn't have a good strong support
system while they grew up and Islam wants
a good support system so a lot of
these issues they go back to that they
want to Allah SWT wants to remove that
kind of harm and just as a general
principle let's remember the ayah Allah SWT says
Allah knows what He created He knows what's
good for it He knows what's bad for
it and if you make something haram it's
because it's good for you and so that's
something that also we need to keep in
consideration any other questions?
but you know nobody's saying it's a fault
or not so let me explain that that's
a very simple concept so if a person
has for example I gave the example of
pyromania there's also kleptomania kleptomania means a person
has a natural tendency to always steal it's
compulsive they can't even control it that doesn't
mean they should go entertain that will we
say that you know what, he's kleptomaniac, just
let him steal he's a pyromaniac let him
burn down buildings are we ever going to
say that?
so in Islam to have a homosexual tendency
is not haram like if you have a
desire by nature you can't do anything like
let's say you look at a guy and
you just really like him this itself is
not haram what Allah tells you at this
point is control that and again Islam comes
down to submitting to Allah so the same
way we would say a kleptomaniac, they should
get treatment and they should control themselves we
would also say that Islamically we see this
as a harm and again in a free
country you're allowed to have your opinions no
one can tell you that this is wrong
you believe something is harmful no one can
force it down your throat that this is
okay so that would be the answer for
that Allah doesn't consider that natural tendency it
could be genetic so what if it's genetic
many things are genetic doesn't mean you should
go and act upon it so to have
that tendency within if you keep it inside
Allah will reward you but it doesn't mean
you're not allowed to go and practice it
that's what the answer would be any other
questions?
yes this is a very good question I
encourage my students to we have many institutions
like this where we produce male and female
scholars that have grown up here and they've
studied so what I encourage is that we
should actually have a systemic or a standardized
system of Islamic schools without this there is
no future for Muslims in the West we
need to have our own systems of education
where we teach our children the things that
we want to teach them without this really
we don't have too many other solutions that's
one solution, another solution is that you have
evening programs so if children go to school
in the morning then you should have evening
school where the alternative of these things are
taught so for example at school they'll tell
you that watching certain kinds of things on
the internet is completely fine doing certain sexual
activities with yourself is completely fine it's healthy
so you teach in the evening school what
the Islamic standard is so
evening programs like if you have what we
call a maktab system evening programs they're usually
a lot cheaper so that can be a
solution where they go to school in the
morning but in the evenings the Islamic standards
are taught to them Alhamdulillah this has been
happening a lot more in bigger cities like
in New York in Chicago, in Texas, California
in Toronto, these have been systemized and especially
in England in England they have an amazing
system for this and we see a lot
of good change through this inshallah so this
is something that we have to start working
towards so
we need to start establishing these institutions in
New Jersey as well does anybody else have
any other questions?
we can complete it sounds good for everyone
who came especially Sheikh Tufail for spending this
beautiful hour with us, mashallah I think it
was very informative and we really enjoyed the
lecture as always we have refreshments on the
right and on the left for brothers, sisters
there's pizza, there's some other nice things there,
I think there's tea or coffee, one of
them tea, ok good tea so feel free
to have the refreshments barakallah fikum and inshallah
we'll see you guys again next week with
another special guest, he's a doctor medical doctor
and he's going to be talking about suffering
he's going to be talking about it from
a psychological perspective and a mental health perspective
do I need to keep suffering, how can
I deal with suffering from a spiritual perspective
as well, so that's going to be next
week and inshallah we'll see you guys then
by the way Sheikh Tufail is here for
a few minutes, any of you guys want
to ask direct questions, feel free to come
up and hold him for another half an
hour or one hour or something