Riyadh al-Saliheen and Women’s Q&A #11

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this one on Rahim Al hamdu Lillahi Rabbil Alameen wa salatu salam ala Ashraful MBI. One was serene the Vienna will put Latina Muhammad Ali he offered to slough or eschar to Slean. Allah who might eliminate we've made a vow in our Van Allen tonight I was using it and many other but

welcome everybody. Thursday night, women's class Rio de Sala Hain plus the fifth of marriage.

We've got a lot of juicy marriage issues to get into.

So I'll try to be strict with the 20 minutes to half of that time for the rail side of heat. We were talking last class about

I will write a we talked about his biography. And we started to talk a little bit about some of the doubts that Orientalist scholars have raised about his reliability. Could he really memorize as many Hadith as he memorized? Was it really possible?

And I had kind of mentioned in a

general way.

So sort of how to respond to this sort of doubt that's been raised. But I was kind of struggling to be timely. And so I didn't really

recall the specific text. It's an Arabic of course. But just for those who are interested,

because some people will, will cherry pick quotes that yes, there were companions as well that were kind of alarmed or surprised or even skeptical that I will write or could memorize so many Hadith. And so there were some people who doubted him in his lifetime, both among the companions, and from their successors that 17.

However, the vast majority of the companions not only believed but defended him. And there were several instances where I will write or was tested

about his veracity, or his reliability as a narrator of Hadith. And he passed every time with flying colors. So we have just mentioned one example. So there was a group of people, lay people, not like, you know, very learned and they came to follow her even obey the law. Right. He was a very famous companion, and they said to him, hey, look, they call him by his Konya. Oh, father of Mohammed. Have you seen this Yemeni guy, basically, because Abu Hurayrah was from Yemen.

So they're talking about Mr. Like, he's like, check out Have you have you checked out this Yemeni guy? Are you telling me? Have you read the Arabic that's right here? Are you telling me that he's more knowledgeable about the Hadith of the Prophet salallahu Alaihe. Salam,

then you all then the people of Mecca, the people of Medina.

He says further, we heard things from this guy, this Yemeni guy, things that we all hurt here anybody else saying?

Or is it that he's making up stuff? He's directly accusing Navajo writer of lying.

So called her response, though, and he says,

of course, you're going to hear things from him that you haven't heard from us. No doubt, for that. Schottky said. He's like, and I'm going to explain to you why.

He says we were people and by way he means the inhabitants, the people who were from Mecca and Medina.

We were people who had houses, we had property. We had livestock. We had work, we had jobs.

That is said we used to come to the Prophet salallahu Alaihe Salam at the two ends of each day meaning it more in the morning in the nighttime.

Other than that,

they used to be at work, taking care of their business. And he on the other hand, he was a poor guy. He was a guest. He was a guest he says Allah Bobby Rasulullah is a he was a guest at the door of the prophets always said them.

He said they were hand in hand together every moment.

He says so no doubt he heard things that we didn't hear.

And then he says and you're not going to find somebody or anybody that has such good in them as I will Hurayrah that would make up stuff about the Prophet, Allah his thoughts. So why I bring this up is because a lot of kind of Orientalist doubts are built on like half truths, right? They selectively quote from here and from there that kind of insinuate things right so it's like oh, look like it's true. For example, that I Isha, once questioned Abu Bakar about his is he making up Hadith

All right. And it's true that I will that, excuse me, Rama threatened to banish Abu Hurayrah

if he kept on focusing on Hadith so much, but they don't give you the rest of the of the story. And so they let your mind connect the dots and say, Oh, maybe I will write was not as reliable as I thought he was. But then you learn that Aisha also defended double hoodoo Ira after the matter became clear to her after other companions, kind of after they vetted him, and, you know, cross referenced what he was saying with with other things. And a role model actually was threatening everybody to not talk about heartbeat so much, because Ahmad was concerned that people were abandoning the Koran. So that was his, he wasn't doing it to imply that a whoohoo writer was lying.

He was just somebody who was very concerned about people's relationship with the Koran. And in his time, he saw people going overboard with their focus on Hadith to the extent that they would neglect the Koran. And so he threatened everybody, he wasn't just threatening the whole writer, because he might be unreliable or something. No, he was certainly everybody. So knowing the whole story kind of helps. All of that, because I will write it is the narrator of our seventh Hadith.

And so that kind of brings full circle everything about him. If you're interested more about the details of his life, you can go back to the recordings,

which are on YouTube, from last class. This hadith is very short as very straightforward. I before I said that the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam said that Allah does not look at your figures, nor at your attire.

But he looks at your hearts, and not your accomplishments.

Allah does not look at your body's know your figures, but he looks at your hearts and your accomplishments or your actions.

So

we find in many different parts of the Quran and the Hadith, kind of the vast difference between the way that Allah accounts for and judges the world, for example, and the criteria that we use. So one of these areas

can be seen in his mercy. Right? Because a law for example, will continue to forgive anybody who comes to him sincerely with repentance, no matter how many times

they mess up or make a mistake. As for you and me, you know, twice, three times, maybe I'm really patient. But if you come to me 10 times with the same mistake, there's, there's no chance I'm going to be able to be patient, just like Musa and Heather, right? Like in sort of a Cath. No human beings there, we're just not. We're not that patient or not that merciful.

We might be able to, okay, I know I'm supposed to do this and that and the other. But after a certain amount of time, the ruse is up.

Also, when it comes to what Allah chooses to write, as your reward, that we're going to have a hadith in the same chapter, just a couple of Hadith later, that tells us that if you intend to do something bad,

and then you're, you decide to not do it,

that Allah writes that as a good deed and rewards you for it.

Imagine that you found out that somebody you care about was plotting against you to do something bad to you.

And then you learned that they didn't do anything good. They just decided to not do that bad thing to you.

You would probably still be upset,

I would still be upset. I would no longer trust that person, I assure wouldn't reward that person or give that person anything.

To encourage them, I'd probably you know,

keep my distance from that person. Right? So we have a law constantly being more merciful than we can ever imagine using a different criteria entirely. To evaluate who's eligible for mercy and who's and who's not, or in what scenarios it doesn't apply? Or in what scenarios justice dictates something else be done, then forgiveness, right, because there's mercy and everything Allah does, even in his punishment,

though, we're not used to thinking about it that way.

So this was kind of one of the subtler points behind this hadith is that Allah is using a different criteria. He's weighing us on a different scale than we're weighed. In this life, between people between society, especially in the society we live in right now.

It's kind of late capitalist society where

Every single one of us is

valued.

In terms of dollars and cents, in terms of productivity,

why do you think our society and we'll come to this point as well, and a few Hadith favors the youth so much more than elders?

Because our society in the United States of America views the youth as the future as eventual producers and consumers,

whereas the elderly are no longer productive.

They don't contribute to the GDP.

Right, their spending habits are marginal.

And so they're kind of cast to the side and our society.

So Allah is using an entirely different criteria. What's the first question? You know, in non Muslim culture? What's the first question you get after Hi, what's your name? What do you do?

Right? What's your contribution?

What's your product productive contribution to the society that we're part of.

And as women, you all know, if you choose to be a,

a homemaker, quote, unquote, whatever you want to call it,

you choose not to have a career. You know, we have a kind of different micro culture within the Muslims, but outside the outside world, they say, Oh, you just stay at home.

As if it's something that's lesser, and this is no, no disrespect, or no taking away anything from who has a career. That's a great thing, too. But we're worried about everybody having respect. Right. And so in general, in general, the career gets the respect because our society values this kind of capitalistic productivity. Whereas if you stay stay at home, as if you're not doing a million things, and I'm really working, is kind of,

if it's not looked down upon, it's certainly not looked up to, it doesn't get this thing, the same response as Oh, she's a doctor like, Oh,

this is actually something Obama said about Saudi Arabia.

During his presidency, he said, something along the lines of a society will never get ahead, if half of its workforce stays home.

Right. So Obama was using this kind of capitalistic criteria. He's looking at every individual as a potential producer.

And so if you're not running at maximum efficiency, you're not you're wasting your your potential.

Well, a lot and this hadith looks at us with an entirely different criteria, and subjects us to an entirely different calculus. He doesn't look at our bodies. He doesn't look at our forms our attire. He doesn't look at our

capitalistic productivity, what we contribute to the GDP.

He looks at our intentions.

He looks at your hearts, and he looks at your actions and accomplishments, your deeds.

And so, on the Day of Judgment,

when the reckoning happens,

the people who have honor are going to be the people with the pure hearts, the people who tried to purify their hearts,

the people who dedicated

a good amount of their deeds to Allah,

not necessarily to the GDP.

So we have an entirely different calculus and criteria.

Our next Hadith, the eighth hadith is

Narrated by Abu Musa and Ashari.

Abu Musa Ashari is also from Yemen. He has a very similar story actually as a vocal writer.

He actually accepted Islam

while traveling to Mecca, before the Hijra to Medina.

After he accepted Islam, he disappeared, he went back to Yemen, to kind of spread Islam among his people.

He didn't come back to Medina

until around the time that Abu Hurayrah came to Medina, which was in the year of hyper the seventh year after the Hijrah to Medina, and he stayed there with them with the Muslims until the conquest of Mecca which was only a year or so after.

Then he returned back to Yemen once more. After the death of the Prophet Muhammad sallallahu alayhi wa sallam, he fought a lot alongside Arma in the conquest of Persia. He was

points of the governor of Missouri and then Kufa by Omar. He was one of the quote unquote four judges of the companions. There were four of the companions that were specifically known to be very wise and erudite judges of the law. They were Zaytoven phablets.

I will Musa Ashanti who we're talking about now, and then Earl, and Ali.

Once the fitna came the fitna, between the killers of man and the fighting between Ali and more IWEA

he favored non involvements.

And because of that he was actually removed he was deposed by the people of Kufa, who wanted support wanted to support Ali and his descendants.

After that happened, he was made the mediator from Ali's side during arbitration with why we aside and after that episode, he died soon after.

So the text of the Hadith, Abu Musa Ashati, reported that the messenger of allah sallallahu alayhi wa sallam was asked about who fights in the battlefield, who's really doing real jihad, we're talking about outwards, you have not the energy head,

somebody who fights out of Valor,

somebody who fights out of zeal, somebody who fights out of hypocrisy,

which one of these is considered fighting in the Cause of Allah visa vie leela, as we hear the Prophet salallahu Salam, he responds, but he responds with neither of the choices that was presented to him. He says, Whoever fights so that the word of Allah

become supreme, he is the one who is considered fighting in the Cause of Allah.

So here we see a delineation between, again, intention, the entire chapter is about intention.

And we know that outward actions

have to adhere to law, legal things, right. So like for jihad, there's a lot of legal issues that govern jihad, you cannot fight non combatants, you cannot be unduly aggressive, right? You have to be responding to a threat in defense or an imminent threat. Right.

All these other sorts of you know, you have to respect treaties, you have to it has to be through the authorities, you can't there's no vigilante violence, you can't cut down a tree, you can't destroy a building, you can't even hurt animals or the elderly, or monks or religious people, oh, these sorts of rules that govern the outward practice of legitimate jihad.

And this hadith is talking about governing the inward aspect of jihad, which has to do with your intention. Because just as somebody can make sujood

and intend to buy that sujood, to please Allah subhana, WA, tada, somebody can be making sujood right next to them, and be intending to show off, we're seeing really pious, or take a selfie of themselves and put it on Tik Tok, and, you know, try to catch the attention of some young guy or young girl.

Right? It has to do with the inner dimension. What's your why are you doing this?

So just as with the sujood, and with the prayer, even something as kind of worldly, in some sense, as Jihad has its outward laws and limits, rules, guidelines, and it has its inward criteria as well. So the inward criteria is that you're not fighting for even courage, even bravery, even to you know, so you can go back and tell your bros how brave you are how, you know, awesome it was.

And especially not if you're doing it out of hypocrisy. But it's only to serve a law.

It's only to serve a law and to ensure that the guidance that a law provided to human beings remains on Earth and remains accessible to people.

Some might ask right in our society, right, where we kind of skew skew pacifist in the US, especially because we've seen so many times where violence goes wrong, where war goes wrong. You know, we live in a country that commits war crimes and gets away with it. And it's very, it's not controversial. Everybody knows it.

So we get kind of squeamish. It's like, oh, wait a second. We're talking about war.

We're talking about fighting, we're talking about all this sort of stuff. There's so many examples of how to do it wrong.

But that doesn't mean that categorically, it's the wrong thing.

It has to be under strict guidelines and strict rules, it has to be reined in. And it has to be done with the right intention. And if it isn't, it can be. It can be a force for good. There are poor and oppressed people in this world that need defending.

And the guidance that Allah has provided, it would be so easily lost. If no one were to ever defend that,

to defend that guidance or defend, to keep that light alive, Allah's word, so that other people could at least have the opportunity to make up their own minds.

If Muslims were just turning the other cheek, as Allah says in the Quran,

it would end up being that all mosques or churches, all temples, all religion would cease to be

all of the most crass and callous and ruthless people would reign supreme and would oppress.

So we have been given the right to defend ourselves

both individually and on a societal level.

Okay, that is just over half of the class. So

on to and anybody has any questions? Of course, pop them in the chat box, or unmute yourself and speak. Any questions are always welcome. No topic is off. No topic is off topic. And no question is too controversial.

So, we're talking about marriage. And I address something that one of the sisters had brought up last time about what's the ruling of marriage in the first place, and the pressure that's put on converts to marry right away and how I think that's a terrible idea in general, in general, you know, making major life decisions

within a year or two from making another life decision that's going to change everything is kind of a recipe for disaster. There's exceptional cases, their success stories, but I wouldn't really recommend it as a default rule. I think that people who are new to Islam should try to stay put, refrain from making major life decisions, if they can help it, and kind of reassess where they're at. Once they're more comfortable with their Muslim identities. It's certainly not a requirement. I know that in some Muslim

communities. It's like a woman who becomes a Muslim who doesn't have a who's not married. It's like, oh, my god, get her married right now. That's not, in my opinion, that's not

typically in the woman's best interest. But today, we've got a lot more juicy issues to get to because we have entered the meat and potatoes of the the book of marriage, and it has to do with

the prerequisites are the conditions that make a marriage valid. Okay, now there's three primary conditions, each of those conditions is going to take up at least one class because there's some juicy issues to talk about. The first condition is Wilaya. guardianship.

The second condition is Shahada. Witnessing the marriage contracts, we talked about secret marriages. Somebody asked about secret marriages last class, it doesn't look like we'll get to it this class, but we'll get into more specifics next class or the class after insha Allah. And the third condition of marriage is the matter, which is the dowry paid from the man to the woman. So right there. From a female perspective, you need to know that you have these three rights that they are conditions of the marriage. Okay, guardianship

witnesses dowry,

we'll get into the differences of opinion. But just to make it easy, if a marriage is conducted without one of these three things, throw it out. It's just ink on paper. It's not worth anything.

Right. And anybody coming to a woman trying to convince them

to, to cut corners or to kind of, you know, not worry about not having one of these three things. Ah, nope, that's a red flag.

Red flag.

Oh, but Sister, you know, we need to make the marriage easy.

So, you know, you can just accept, you know, something very, very small for your dowry. Is it permissible? We'll get into that. Is it best practice?

As a default, no, it's not.

And there's a reason for that. There's a reason why Islamic law gives the woman a dowry. It's called an insurance policy. Right.

But that we'll get there. First condition is we lie we lie or guardianship.

So what's the idea behind guardianship?

The idea behind guardianship

is that the world of men can be a treacherous place

that men can lie

and fudge the truth in order to get what they want out of a woman.

And so there should be

a male relative, or a male party who has the best interest of the woman in mind.

In order to

deal with this male sphere,

this male world,

keep them at bay.

Keep them straight, and prevent abuse, deception,

or anything like that. That's the wisdom behind the concept of Wilaya. It's not

trying to imply that women are weak, for that women are less intelligent, or that they're incapable or that they're naive. No, not at all. It's about this PHARMAC law understands that marriage works when there is accountability. Because the purpose of marriage in the first place is to have accountability.

You are accountable to this other person, you're accountable when it comes to the consequences. Now you have a kid, now you have responsibilities, the man has to pay this the woman's obliged to do this, and we'll get into all of that. But this accountability is the key aspects of marriage. It has to be safeguarded. And so in order to establish that accountability,

the institution of guardianship exists.

Does a woman always need a guardian? That's something else we talked last class about how a woman with who already has experience whether through marriage or sexual experience, depending on what school of thought you're following,

does not require this guardianship.

So the guardianship is intended for women who are unexperienced. They're not quite used to having to deal with men, right? Even in American culture, even in American culture.

Women are kind of more naive about the nature of men than they should be. They did a study recently, I think it was Stanford. I'm not sure. It was a study about and so the What the It was a brilliant study, they took co Ed friends, okay, friends that were in college, that were men and women, okay, pairs.

And they split them up. And they swore them to secrecy. They said, You guys cannot talk about any of the questions, any of the responses, anything to each other once you're out of this study. So condition of a study. And then they asked each side, their feelings about did they have romantic feelings for the other one?

Right. And then they asked, would if you knew that the other party had romantic feelings for you? Would you be open to a romantic relationship? What did that study find?

That study found that women tended to think that they were really actually just friends with the guys.

And at the same time, the guys consistently thought that they had a shot at a romantic relationship with the girl

consistently.

So this, even like even people who grow up, you know, girlfriend, boyfriend, this thing is normal to them, the non Muslims. Even still, there's this kind of naivety that goes on about it's the age old question, can guys and girls be friends? Right? When it comes to that level of friendship, like you know,

usually, the guy's in it for a potential romantic relationship. And a woman is innocent and thinks that it's just innocent, she has no idea.

So because of that guardianship exists.

What are the conditions of a guardian? There is scholarly consensus that a guardian has to be a Muslim.

He has to be

have surpassed the age of puberty

and he has to be a man

because again, we're talking about dealing with the sphere of men. So it would be self defeating. If it was a young kid, or it would be self defeating, if it was another woman.

And he must be a Muslim, because as we see in the society,

our religion

pushes us to think about these things.

Right? So if you have a guardian who's not from this kind of thing that we have going on in Islam, they might not see the big deal. Indeed, if we look at the predominant American culture, they don't find it a big deal. They consider it sexual exploration, exploring your sexuality, go ahead and date this one and the other one and the third and go upstairs and have fun and I'll be down here when you're done.

Yeah, that's actually American society. I'm sure Dana could back me up here. That's the American society I grew up in. Anyway. So the Guardian has to be Muslim, he has to be a surpass puberty and he has to be

a he has to be a man.

Let's see what else the

these things are not really applicable. I'm trying again, not to give you an exhaustive issue by issue but only the things that are applicable to this age. Okay. What let's say okay, a doubt that comes up. I doubt that comes up. We know that sometimes there are

oppressive guardians,

that happens. There are guardians who do not let their children get married when they should.

When somebody who comes to them

makes a proposal or respectable young man

with good intent.

So some fathers, some guardians are so jealous.

Were so extreme,

that they will prevent their daughter from marrying until the daughter is basically too old for marriage. This happens.

Does the woman have a way out?

Absolutely. Industry? Yeah, absolutely.

The scholars have consensus that if someone's guardian,

is being is receiving or being proposed to for a certain woman,

and he is unjustly keyword unjustly unduly without reason.

Refusing that woman to be married.

We're talking, everything's in place. It's a reasonable dowry. It's a reasonable prospect.

And he refuses, that he kept will forfeit his guardianship. His guardianship will be taken away from him and will be given to the Sultan, if you're in a Muslim country. The Imam, if you're in a Muslim community center, whoever can represent the best interests of the woman.

So we have here again, all of these things, the guardianship, the witnesses, the dowry, they're all about what's in the best interest of especially the bride, what's going to protect her what's going to protect her rights, what's going to stop her from getting taken advantage of

the system of guardianship exists to protect her interests. If someone tries to use the institution of guardianship against her interests, Islamic law says take that guardianship away and give it to somebody else.

And this was actually the act of the Prophet Muhammad sallallahu alayhi wa sallam.

There is also scholarly consensus

that a woman can refuse to be married to somebody.

If somebody is trying to marry her off against her will,

especially if there is

asymmetry

a non suitability

when it comes to people's religious, comparative religiosity. You have somebody who makes all their five daily prayers a woman who makes all their five daily prayers

See,

her father is trying to marry her off

to somebody who doesn't pray.

There's consensus that that woman can refuse.

If you're saying like, why is it just for the issues of suitability because last class, we talked about the difference of opinion. We talked about how, in my opinion, the stronger and preponderance opinion is that a woman always has her right to refuse. And this is actually again, the act of the Prophet Muhammad Ali said, um, she can't be forced. But there were some scholars who disagreed if there's suitability and religion. But if there's not a suitability in religion, all of the scholars agree that she can say, no, she can refuse everything.

And it actually goes vice versa. What if the woman just became a Muslim, she's not really that practicing.

And the father wants to marry her off to, you know, the shed some as home or wherever she has the right to refuse.

The scholars also agree that one of the most that a valid criteria

for evaluating suitability, is piety

is religiosity.

And they disagree about every other

characteristic or quality, whether it's money, whether it's

lineage, family, all this other stuff, we'll get into it. But they agree, there's consensus that

piety is a valid criteria to judge whether two people are suitable in marriage or not. And they also agree in consensus that

beauty is not a valid criteria to judge suitability. So if two people are in love,

and one of them happens to be very attractive and the other not so there is no legal grounds to refuse the two from being married at all, even on the according to the opinion that anybody would even have a say in that in the first place. Those are all the points of consensus. And we start with points of consensus because they give you your terrain.

We've exhausted all of our time on this. So next time, we'll get into the areas of different differences of opinion concerning Wilaya concerning guardianship specific issues. Does anybody have any questions quickly before we close out the class or it's closed on us?

And as always, if anybody has a question, you're up in the middle of the night and you think of a question you can WhatsApp me you can text me or you can text the women's Whatsapp group. You can find me on Facebook, you can hit my email, anything at all.

You want to keep it anonymous. You want me to talk about something in class? No problem. I mean, well, yeah. Okay, I'll see you guys next time inshallah. So don't worry. We're up to life.