Yasir Qadhi – The Legacy of Shaykh Abdul Majed Zindani – A Pillar of Yemeni Scholarship
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The umber of Yemen is a global reflection of his work as a scholar and worshipper of Allah. He was a liberalist and a worshipper of Allah, and had a reputation for being a worshipper. The speaker discusses the importance of Khquini's work in globalizing knowledge and advancing science, as well as his use of subhanous language to benefit um rights and criticize Islam leaders. The speaker encourages individuals to become more aware of the umroom's global reach and benefits.
AI: Summary ©
Today, the Ummah
buried one of the most prominent global scholars
of our time.
And so today's khatr will be dedicated to
him a brief biography
of that sheikh and Alem. And even though
I'm sure some of you, might not have
heard of him because obviously he was, in
Arab lands,
I guarantee you that almost all of you,
99% of you, have benefited from his works
directly or indirectly.
And
the sheikh I'm speaking about is none other
than
who passed away today and was buried.
Sheikh Abdul Majeed e Zandani.
Sheikh, Abdul Majeed e Zandani, I'm giving a
biography of him, even though
it was not my fortune to meet him.
I wasn't able to meet him. He was
a scholar from Yemen.
But
I have
admired and respected and loved the sheikh without
having met him, wallahi, for over 40 years
of my life. Even before going to my
Islamic studies,
when I was growing up as a teenager
and reading his books, One of the first
books that I read as
a teenager here in this land was translations
of Sheikh Zaidani Booh, as I'm gonna come
to. And it was not my honor to
ever meet and interact with him, so my
biography is gonna be as that of an
outsider. He's not somebody that I was able
to interact with, and yet his impact is
global, and I think that there's much to
benefit in his, biography.
He is, of course, from Yemen.
And before I talk about his biography,
I must
bless and
ask Allah to bless the people of Yemen.
Not because I said so, but because
our Prophet salallahu alaihi wasallam prays to the
people of Yemen.
And he prays them in such a powerful
manner that
it makes me positively jealous. I wish I
was a part of that
peoples and places. Halal to be positively jealous.
Our Prophet, salallahu alayhi wasalam, said, hadith is
in Bukhari.
Allahumma bariklana
fee shamina wafi yamanina.
Oh Allah bless us in our Sham
and our Yemen.
And He said this when neither Sham nor
Yemen were a part of the Ummah, were
a part of the Islamic empire, were actually
had converted, yet he said these are our
core. Sham is ours. Yemen is ours. Allahabadaklana
fee shamina wafi yamanina. And our prophet, salallahu
alayhi wasallam,
once a group came to him from, Yemen.
He said, Ja'akum ahloo Yemen. The people of
Yemen have come to you. They
have the softest of hearts.
Al Bukhari, they have the softest of hearts.
Their akhlaq are the best akhlaq. They're the
most humble people. And I know the people
of Yemen themselves, amongst themselves, they have their
issues, that's between them. Us outsiders,
how is our interaction with them? We all
know them to be the most
humble, the most kind, the most always smiling
and what not. This is from our Prophet
salallahu alayhi wa sallam. They
have the softest of hearts. And then he
said, al imanu yamanin
walhikmatu
yamaniyya.
Iman is Yemeni
and wisdom is from Yemen. Iman will always
be in the people of Yemen, and wisdom,
yani, scholarship will be from the people of
Yemen. So our prophet, sallallahu alaihi wa sallam
said, scholarship will be from the people of
Yemen. And since the beginning of Islam, some
of our greatest ulama have been from Yemen,
and we hope insha'Allah, the Adam that passed
away today is also included in that hadith
of our prophet, salallahu alaihi wa sallam, telling
us that Yemen is gonna produce many Hakims,
many wise,
scholars. And of course, the people of Yemen,
they played a vital role, especially in early
Islam. In all of the conquest, there was
always I don't know if you know this
or not. If you read Islamic history, they
would divide the armies based upon tribes and
ethnicities.
So because it will help them cooperate together.
So you had this group at one tribe,
this group another tribe, always the people of
Yemen
were at the forefront
of every single major battle. In Qadisiyyah,
in Yarmouk, in the Fata, the conquest of,
Andalus, there was the army of Yemen. So
the people of Yemen were actually at the
forefront of all of these great military conquests
as well. And so we hope, insha'Allah, all
of those blessings, they are also demonstrated in
our scholar of today, walanu zakki a'allahi ahadah.
Sheikh Abdul Abdul Majeed is Zandani, he was
born in 1942
in Yemen. 1942 in Yemen, so he passed
away at the age of 80 2, 83,
Gregorian years. And
what is amazing about this person
is that he combined between so many different
disciplines and fields. He was a politician,
and he gave up politics. He was a
alim. He was an academic and a dean.
He also participated in Afghanistan,
which makes him, you know, what it makes
him. And all of these, it's combined in
that one person that throughout his life, he
was also known throughout his life for being
very ascetic, very humble, never living in grandiose
palaces, always the most humble person. He was
known to be an abid and a zahid.
Like, you rarely get all of this combination.
He began to study in the sciences, I
believe it was, if not engineering, maybe it
was,
maybe, pharmaceutics or something. He began studying the
sciences in Egypt back in the sixties under
Nasser, but he was always an Islamic activist.
So under that time frame, he was jailed,
he was thrown in jail in Egypt, and
then he was banned from Egypt. So he
decided to change the course of his career
from medicine or or or or something into
Islamic studies. So from that time forth, he
started studying Islam, and he traveled on his
own to other various lands. He traveled to
Arabia, Saudi Arabia. He went to other lands.
And then when he came back at that
time frame, very few people were educated to
that level, and so the government gave him
a position. And he continued to rise
until he became,
the the the second in command of the
minister. So he's the vice minister. He's literally
going to now become the minister. This is
back in the, seventies or so. He was
very popular in his political party, and he
decided to resign
and start teaching and preaching full time. He
gave up a career in politics. They say
he was on his way to become, if
not the prime minister, if not the president,
then within that in inner circle. And he
gave up politics, which is so rare. At
the prime, he was in his forties. He
gave all of that up. Why? His dream,
his vision was to teach Islam. So what
did he do?
Single handedly, without any government support, he founded
one of the most interesting amazing universities
of Islamic studies in the whole world, in
San'a in Yemen, Jama'atul Iman it is called.
And I was hearing about this university even
when I was in Madinah, and we would
meet students who would come for umrah. We
would meet them, and we would be impressed
and surprised at their curriculum.
It is said that he devised one of
the best curriculums in the whole world. It
was a 10 year program.
There was no bachelor's, master's, PhD, just one
you study, 10 years. And single handedly, without
any government support, he opened up a massive
institute and university with free tuition,
free room and board for any student from
anywhere in the world. Yani, this is just
mind boggling. And as you know, Yemen is
not a wealthy country. Yemen is not, you
know, a country, yet, subhanAllah, Allah blessed him
to do this.
5,000 students will study at any one time.
This is a massive university
and free of charge, and he's teaching students
from every single country. And along with this,
even though he resigned from the government position,
he never resigned from political engagement. He was
always involved influencing
the politicians, wanting his country to be better.
So he had a lot of positions that
made him popular,
unpopular
along the way. And,
one of the things that
he was known for, as I said, was
his humility and his ibadah.
Everybody who knew him, knew him to be
a worshipper of Allah. He would constantly cry
in his salah, he would pray tahajjud every
night. Today I called up one of his
main students in America, one of our Yemeni
Mishaayikh, He studied with him, he graduated from
that university. I called him up to give
him my condolences, and I said, tell me
what do you know about the sheikh? He
goes, wallahi, I'm telling you privately, so you
don't know the sheikh's name, so that's why
it's private. It's still private. I asked permission
without his name. I'm telling you privately I
accompanied him in his journeys and his tours
for years,
and I saw him always
crying in salah. I saw him when I
would go to sleep in the room, he
would stand up and pray tahajjud. He would
pray tahajjud thinking I'm asleep, and he would
be praying tahajjud and crying to Allah subhanahu
wa ta'ala. That level of scholarship,
and of being a politician, giving it up,
and of teaching and preaching, and of constantly
worshiping Allah. This is something that we hear
about in the books of the past, and
it's rare to find in our times.
And he had, as well as this, a
a well known, humility, humbleness, like he was
never arrogant. He was always down to earth.
Anybody would come and teach and preach to
him. But I want to,
I want to emphasize 2 things.
The first of
them, why did I say every one of
you in this audience
is indirectly,
if not directly affected by Him? Because
he single handedly
carved out
and globally
popularized
an entire strand of knowledge
that was hitherto almost
unknown, untouched, undiscovered.
Single handedly, from the late seventies, eighties, nineties,
30 years, single handedly,
his name is associated
with the whole aspect of scientific miracles of
the Quran and sunnah.
You know, all of you have heard lectures.
Right? The scientific miracles of the Quran. You
grew up. I grew up. This is my
first exposure to him. I told you I
read him as a teenager. This is my
first exposure to him. His name
became associated
with sponsoring
conferences,
bringing top notch non Muslim researchers who would
compare and contrast the Quran, the hadith with
modern science.
All of these Khutab and Durus around the
world that you guys are accustomed to, we
can honestly say, he's the one who began
the first domino. He's the one who started
all of this, and it just trickled down
and became a global. He would sponsor conferences
across the globe, in Jeddah, in Yemen, in
across the places, and he would bring many
scientists, Muslim and non Muslim, to discuss those
aspects of the miraculous nature of the Quran.
And perhaps the most famous product of that,
one of the most famous embryologists of the
eighties nineties, Keith Moore. He was what he
attended that conference.
And Sheikh Zendani
suggested to him to co write a book
together, because he spoke English, he wrote he
understood English, Sheikh Zendani. And so Keith Moore
and Sheikh Zandani
coauthored a book that some of you might
have seen, Embryology in the Quran.
That's his name is on that book, Embryology
in the Quran. And Keith Moore at the
time was one of the world's leading embryologists,
and he said, I have never seen any
book, you know, from
from the past, like the Quran, that is
so vivid in its description of the human
embryo. And he goes, I don't know how
to explain this. We don't know whether Keith
embraced Islam or not, but he co authored
the book with with, Sheikh Zandani, and it
is still available online. Now,
again, for the record, some people said that
perhaps he's reading in too many miracles, and
that's a criticism to be given. But the
point is he began the project. And, you
know, you can agree or disagree about every
single ayah, was it actually you know, in
its place or not, but that's fine. The
point is he began and he popularized. And
that's why I said, everyone amongst you, even
if you haven't heard of his name, you
have been impacted by his thought. He has
benefited the ummah in a way that hardly
any scholar has in our times. And when
he saw atheism began in Yemen, Yemen had
no atheists, they're beginning to have atheist associations,
he wrote one of his most famous books.
It is still available in Arabic English, Kitabul
Iman, the book of Iman. And in it,
he defended belief in Allah in a way
that was meant to appeal to the modern
minds, to appeal to the modern scientists. And
he wrote a book that is one of
the most popular books,
of his in the Arabic language. It is
available in English as well, the book of
Iman. So this is the first point, is
that, subhanAllah, he really did an amazing thing
in this regard. The second point that I
really admired about him, and this was something
I admired since I began to know of
him and hear of him, and that is
that without a doubt,
he was an independent
thinker.
He did not follow
any one particular group or strand, even though,
you know, he was associated with, let's say
the brotherhood, he studied with many of the
Salafi scholars, but in the end of the
day, he wanted to benefit the global ummah,
and he didn't just stick with 1 group,
or 1 jama'ah, or 1 strand. Because you
know, if you look at the ulama, and
this is I'm being factual, I'm not being,
I'm just telling you how it is. Most
ulama,
they stick with the group they studied with,
which is fine, no problem. Most ulama, the
institute they study with, they will just replicate
those views and preach those views, and that's
good, and they're gonna benefit the people. Some
ulama,
they break away, and they become
global. They want to benefit the ummah.
And so because of this, I wanna bring
this point up, I was in Madina at
this time, and because at the time Sheikh
Abdul,
Sheikh Zendani was at his prime as the
president of the university, the professor of the
university, being involved in politics, advising
politicians, constantly,
whatever he would do, some people would praise,
some people would criticize.
Constantly,
this is the reality.
And you know, subhanallah, you get caught up
like, what do you believe? Well, this guy
is liking him, this guy is not liking
him. But you realize as you grow older,
that
when a person wants to unite and bring
about benefit for the broader society, not just
any one strand, then that person will be
attacked, that person will be criticized. Because when
you break away from your jama'ah,
you no longer have a base, you no
longer have one group. And so, whoever attacks
you, you're an individual, because now you don't
had he been subscribing to one group, then
he has, you know, allies. But he's he's
not interested in that. He wants to benefit
the ummah, and so that's exactly what he
did. At times, members of the brotherhood would
attack him, at times, the Salafi group, at
times, this and that, but he did not
care. His goal was to benefit the ummah.
And now that he's gone,
all the criticism is gone, and the good
remains. Now that he's gone, all of this
back and forth that happened in his lifetime,
everybody has forgotten,
and everybody recognizes
what an asset he was to the ummah.
And I know one thing as well, and
I confirm with the person I spoke with
today as well, that despite all of the
criticisms people would give him, he would never
stoop and go criticize them back. In fact,
the person I spoke with today gave me
another benefit. He said wherever the sheikh went,
wherever the sheikh went, he would always have
a private non public gathering with members of
other groups who would criticize him. He would
invite them, and just have a gathering of
brotherhood,
Islamic brotherhood, which would usually solve the problem,
or at least, you know, lower the criticism
about that. The level of humility to be
invited as the Sheikh of the city, and
he's the one who says, no. 2 hours
before, I wanna meet so on, so on,
so on, so on. And he would invite
people from people outside of his entourage, outside
of group, and he would ask them, get
to know them, find out what's happening. Once
upon a time, he would visit America as
well in the eighties, but then as you
know, our country bans everybody they don't understand
or like, and so he also became eventually
banned as well, but he would come here
regularly in the eighties. And so his humility
at interacting with all people and hearing their
side and never stooping to their level of
criticism, subhanAllah, this one, hearts and minds. It
is this type of level of scholarship, and
of ibadah, and of sincerity,
that truly it is the mark of an
alim. And now that he has gone, now
that he's passed on, subhanAllah,
all of the critics are gone. But his
positive, and his work, we now recognize what
a revolutionary
thinker he was. And he was, as I
said, involved in multiple fronts. Unfortunately, because of
the, civil war in in Yemen, you know,
the other group that came
and attacked, they wanted to assassinate him. You
know, the other group that is now in
charge of that place. And so they literally
targeted his house. This is, I think, 2
years ago. They targeted his house. Allah saved
him. Before the attack, he managed to flee,
and so he fled to, the northern the
southern borders of Saudi Arabia. And then from
there he fled for his life to Turkey,
Turkiye, where he died because the country now
is in civil war there. So he passed
away in Istanbul and he is buried over
there. May Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala have mercy
on him, grant him for those salaala. And
I wanna make one final plea. And I'm
being blunt because I want us to grow
as an ummah. Please excuse me if this
offends anybody, but I want us to grow
and benefit.
All Muslims,
understand
that
the religion of Islam
is broader than one strand, and one maslaq,
and one madhab, and one firqa.
And my humble,
sincere
advice to all of you
is to listen to ulama outside of the
strand you happen to like.
Just listen,
because
you will be surprised
that actually there's a lot to benefit.
Actually, there's you will I'm talking about mainstream,
I'm not talking about fringe.
Every mainstream
movement
within Ahlus Sunnah,
every mainstream jama'ah,
it has people of iman and taqwa and
ilm. And they will benefit you to think
in ways you did not think before. And
a person like Sheikh Zandani is an example
of this, that in fact, you cannot classify
him as this or that. He had independent
opinions, and in the end of the day,
he left a legacy that truly is global.
That is the type of scholarship I personally
admire the most. And my sincere advice to
all of you, don't just stick with the
same type of people that's in your bubble.
Don't just stick with the same, because then
your mind will just become exact same. Be
brave enough
to go listen to ulama, I'm talking about
ulama, who have massive followings in mainstream Ahlus
Sunnah. It's not you're not gonna die. You're
not gonna have a heart attack. Believe me.
You're it's still gonna be okay. And you
will be surprised that, wow, okay, this guy
is making sense, and, wow, I'm actually benefiting.
And in that benefit, you will gain in
knowledge,
you will gain in iman, you will gain
in tolerance, and you will realize
the ummah as Allah has promised is an
ummah that is marhuma,
an ummah that has rahma in it. And
the ummah of the Prophet shalallahu alaihi wa
sallam is way bigger than my and your
one small jama'a. Fikullin khair. There is good
in all people. This is my sincere advice
and Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala knows best and
will continue next week.