Zakariyya Harnekar – LockdownLectures An introduction to the Uloom Shariyyah
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The speakers discuss the importance of learning in religious sciences and the sharia framework for the use of laws. They emphasize the need for educational schools and a reading circle for overall success, and emphasize the importance of a Texian-centric approach to learning. The speakers end with a thank you and a recognition of the MSA.
AI: Summary ©
So, How are you? Yes, please. Please introduce
yourself. Please introduce your your topic and why
you will speaking about it.
Also, while you're introducing yourself, maybe
say what you're currently yes. You should say
what you're currently doing, obviously.
And,
please just, like, highlight your MSA service,
briefly.
Okay. I see somebody commenting, so that must
mean that I'm live.
This is quite odd for me,
teaching or talking or whatever without actually
really engaging with people either
visually or verbally.
But we ask that Allah make it beneficial
and easy for me and
everybody else as well.
If you were in a little bit earlier,
you might have just overheard
rather Anwar,
giving me some instructions later to introduce myself.
My name is Zakaria Hanicker,
and
I think I can call myself an MSA,
now.
I've been there for for quite a long
portion of my own life, not that I've
been alive too long.
But for that. So,
introduction,
a normal guy, really. I went to school.
After that, I studied
a 2 year course at Tarun Nairim, then
I went to UCT. I did a BSc
mathematics
and, did major in Arabic as well.
Day after, I went to the Darul Al
Holm, Al Arabiya, Islamiyah, and Strand.
I complete the ALIM course there,
and I stayed on as a teacher at
the school,
I
also teach part time at the Mizan Institute,
and I'm currently
doing
a master's in Islamic studies. No. Master's in
Arabic,
actually, at UWC.
Having completed the honors in the same thing
last year.
None of that really matters.
If the knowledge that or if it hasn't
benefited me, you know, in my life and
in my being, and if other people are
not able to benefit from that, may Allah
make it worthwhile,
Yes. Not to forget,
most importantly, in relation to this series,
what I need to introduce about myself is
the fact that I was part of the
MSA, and I still consider myself part of
the MSA.
I was at university in when was it?
20
started at 2011. So I think from the
1st year,
I was a member and I became an
exec member of the MSA in that same
year.
At UCT,
the following year, I became the chairperson of
MSA UCT, and at the same time, the,
the chairperson of the MSA of the Cape
for a while. I I can't actually remember
how long it was in the. But I
think in some degree, I remained,
active with the MSA,
whether it be,
in the Western Cape well, mostly in the
Western Cape,
and then
also spreading to MSA schools, which was started
by,
a good friend and colleague of mine,
So yeah. And that brings us to now
your MSA alumni.
Into the topic.
The topic that,
I kind of chose and was brought thrust
upon me as well was
that of,
the or rather the topic title is the
introduction to the religious sciences
or the.
Now I must mention,
that
though happy to speak on this topic,
I myself have a critic of the title,
and that is what on earth are the
religious sciences on? What what is meant by
the religious sciences?
Are the sciences that are
religious and sciences that are non religious? What
on earth does it mean? So
what I understood from the title and what
I intend speaking about, Idi al Haydala, is
are those sciences
that would generally get studied by somebody who
will be considered in society as an Islamic
scholar,
like as a sheikh or Maulana or something
like that,
who who generally consider himself a student or
dean. So that's what I'll be speaking about
in a bit. Right?
The the main thrust of this talk is
for me to run through what gets studied
in those courses
by actually telling you the subjects
and a little bit about what those subjects
entail.
We'll get into that in due course. Getting
on with my critique of the title,
I
I actually you know, the critique was I
was that
what is religious
sciences?
As a Muslim,
from our perspective, it should be that all
sciences are religious.
All knowledge, in fact, is something that is
religious as long as it is something that
can take me closer to Allah.
As long as it's something via which I
can attain closeness to Allah and attain the
objective of my existence that being expressing my
nature of being a slave of Allah, Subhanahu
Wa Ta'ala.
Whether it be by
giving me more knowledge of him, Subhanahu Wa
Ta'ala, or giving me knowledge of things by
which I can benefit myself,
in relation to my spiritual actions, or whether
it be that I can benefit myself in
relation to actions
that can, enhance my dunya in such a
way that I can, you know, devote myself
more in a more focused manner to Allah
in a personal capacity as well as in
a a societal capacity and a, in a
communal sense, in that if I attain knowledge
that benefits my society,
and I benefit my society thereby,
with the with the intention of pleasing Allah
through that, then that knowledge essentially takes me
closer to Allah.
And,
with that understanding, that knowledge is not separate
from the religion of Islam.
This the idea of there being, you know,
like, religious sciences and, like, non religious sciences
or, like,
science
and natural science, physics, and all of that
stuff,
whatever it may be,
that that idea that there's a religious knowledge
and secular knowledge is something that's not native
to Islam. It's not something born from an
Islamic mindset.
That's never the way that Muslims conceded over
the world. That was actually thrust upon us,
and we somehow succumb to it,
and adopted that mindset.
But, that is it's it's more a a
product of,
you know,
secularization,
the enlightenment,
would go together and Colonialism,
which thrust that upon us. In Islam, we
never had contradictions between,
religion and science, religion and rationality. We never
had those
problems. Those were problems, you know, that were
precursors to the enlightenment, but it was about
the church. It was about Christianity and their,
their contradictions with science, etcetera. Those were not
our problems.
Throughout,
Islamic
history, there have been people interpreting the Islamic
sources,
that being the Quran and the Sunnah, in
light of the knowledge of the world that
they had available to them.
And, that's why we find oftentimes, you know,
when when science makes a discovery, we find
somebody coming out with a quote that says,
you know, so many 1000 of years ago
or sometimes 100 of years ago, you know,
a Muslim scholar said something even Khaldun said
something about, you know, something like evolution.
Just today, there were things going about. Even
Sina saying something about,
quarantining, etcetera.
Even Sina himself who was a to some
degree, would be considered the Islamic philosopher, Islamic
scholar.
So so we didn't have this this idea
of separation of of religious sciences and secular
sciences. It's knowledge
knowledge that can benefit you by taking you
closer to Allah whether
directly
or,
as an intermediary to that closeness to Allah
by you applying it and benefiting your society,
that was considered to be beneficial knowledge.
So, yes, I I was just touching on
the on the idea that,
it's a product of
of the enlightenment,
which was infused with secularism
that separated religion and state,
and then colonialism that imposed that on the
rest of the world,
that actually
led to us now as Muslims in our
time also buying into this division of knowledge.
You know,
this brings to mind the scholar of a
of a great, Ottoman Sheikh Islam, Jamustaf Asabry,
who lived
at the end of the, of the Ottoman
Empire, he said that, you know, what when
he was in Turkey, but when, you know,
things got a bit hectic with,
Ataturk, etcetera,
he moved to Egypt. And what he found
in Egypt is that many of the scholars
of the Azar at the time were influenced
by Western thought, and, they were, in a
sense, adopting
Western ways of thinking of the world,
that were not necessarily coherent with,
Islamic philosophy. And he he commented on this
saying that
that he found that the Egyptian society
or what was what is being done to
the Egyptian
what could only rather he said what what
could only be done to the Turkish society,
to Turkish people by force
in that, modernization was being forced on them,
was being done to the Egyptian populace by
will,
through them adopting
those, other philosophies and ways of, of thinking
as opposed to looking into Islamic thought to
actually, solve their problems.
To show the the this unification of of
knowledge that, that was always present in, Islamic
society, in Islamic history and tradition,
some quotes come to mind of, of al
Imam al Ghazali or some readings
that I have, head of Imam al Ghazali
is Ichiya al Muuddin as well as other
works, where he speaks about different types of
knowledge. He speaks about medicine. He speaks about
mathematics. He speaks about astronomy.
He speaks about,
you know,
physical sciences. He speaks about all of these
various things, obviously, in a more primitive sense
than what they exist
as today, but he speaks about them as
being potentially beneficial knowledge.
Even Sina categorized knowledge knowledge into that which
relates to, you know, the natural
order natural sciences. He spoke about mathematical knowledge
or rational sciences, and then there's sciences, that
are metaphysical or or theological.
And,
he categorized knowledge like this not to say
that some of them are bad and some
of them are good or some of them,
you know, should be left alone. No. In
fact, he excelled in,
in in medicine, you know, as is being
promoted
and identified by people in our time and
has been identified before. But at the same
time, he was the same person that felt
that the metaphysical knowledge, the theological knowledge is
of greatest virtue because it's most directly linked
to taking you to giving you a better
understanding of Allah and,
in taking you closer to him
In fact, that
metaphysical knowledge
is what separates people of,
you know, the Abrahamic faiths, people of religion
from people who have completely,
materialistic worldviews.
In that, we have a source of knowledge
that is, that's divine,
that is outside of us as human beings
and our minds and the physical world and,
you know, the mental realm,
and then our and then our rationality.
You know, both Muslims, non Muslims are all
endowed with. They can, you know, have intellectual
pursuits to the physical, into the material world,
as well as think of rational things just
as much as people of religion can. But
the added thing that we have to our
epistemology
is that we have the Quran and the
Sunnah, which are sources of divine knowledge.
In that,
obviously, the Quran is the word of Allah
and the sunnah of Rasool
Allah and his hadith and his statements,
they are also
a form of,
divine knowledge as Allah says in the Quran.
He does not speak of his own accord,
rather it is a revelation that has been
inspired,
to him, that he has been inspired with.
So,
yeah, there's no dichotomy. That's my critique of
the title before we get into it, Introduction
to the Religious Sciences.
And that is simply,
as Muslims, we buy into a unified idea
of knowledge, not the separation of, of religious
and secular. We don't have the dichotomy. There's
no, there's no
fight between
rationality and religion for us.
Many scholars have written on this. The the
the, you know, the Asherites in in Muslim
thought, they harmonize between
a religion or or, you know, beliefs and
rationality.
Ibn Taymiyyah
he,
you know, one of his major works was
on the,
you know, refuting
the incoherence or refuting the contradiction between,
the texts or, you know, the the religious
texts and rationality.
And so the idea that there was no
contradiction
between
what can be known rationally
and, what our religious texts tell us as
something that also permeated Muslim society from its
inception.
And that's just with the understanding
that,
you know, that's with the understanding
that
everything in existence comes from Allah essentially.
Allah
is the sole source of everything in existence.
You know, when we study nature, we study
in the creation of Allah. When we study,
we study belief that we reveal to us
by Allah. When we study mathematics, we're studying,
you know, laws by which Allah
everything. It's all from Allah. And so, that's
the reason we we don't make this decision.
Then moving on to why the topic.
I probably spent too much time on that
already. But, anyways, why the topic?
A number of thoughts, you know, come to
my mind as a as somebody that was
at university, very much part of university culture,
etcetera,
but at the same time,
very much bought into Islamic worldview,
Islamic learning, etcetera, is that oftentimes Muslims
are disconnected
from their own tradition of knowledge.
And
the you know, one of the reasons for
that may be that we've never actually been
brought up in a society where all of
our learning was infused with Islamic thought,
from the time I don't know about other
societies, but here in the Western Cape, I
went to primary school. It wasn't Muslim primary
school.
There were Muslim teachers. I don't even know.
I think there were probably only Muslims at
the primary school, but, essentially, this primary school
was no different,
in terms of the syllabus
apart from having maybe Islamic studies from,
any other school. You know, we studied math
in the same way. We studied, national sciences
in the same way. Yes. There was a
great benefit to the fact that we had
teachers that were conscious of our loads of
hunger. Definitely, there's benefit in that. But,
essentially, in the syllabus and the underlying philosophies
of what we're taught is no different way,
from any other school.
Then I went to a, you know, normal
public high school.
Wasn't a Muslim high school,
but still one that I appreciate very much,
the life, etcetera,
and the values
that were installed, which were very much come
came from a religious people and so were
good,
because it essentially stemmed from the from the
religious thought and teaching.
And then I went to, you know okay.
That's when,
you know, a stark change happened. Change happened
rather
In terms of formal learning,
why I make that distinction is because, you
know, throughout this entire period, I was learning
from my parents as well. I was learning
from my family, from my society, and they
were very much people that didn't separate between,
Islam and
secular or anything like that. They were very
much
both my mother and my father were people
that, you know, constantly,
drove
this unified idea of the world,
to myself and and my family as a
whole.
Then I went to Darunayim,
studied a bit over there. Islamic studies was
very beneficial, and that's where,
there was a stark
focus
on,
the Quran,
this divine knowledge. Before that, yes, that was
the I went to Madrasa,
etcetera. But,
that's where the sole focus of my day
was centered around that type of knowledge. Went
to university,
again,
probably because of, you know, my father's and
mother's background in in MS activity, etcetera, and,
you know, whatever they instilled in us of
of,
values
led to partaking in the MSA. So university
wasn't a solely secular,
pursuit despite it being, despite me studying mathematics.
But, essentially,
I was going to Western University.
The syllabus in high school was a was
a secular syllabus. The syllabus in primary school
was secular syllabus.
And so
we don't actually have
pedagogies
that are underpinned by Islamic thought.
We don't actually learn about
physics
as
learning about the creation or the laws of
Allah's creation. We don't
try to see Allah through them.
People have individual pursuits in doing that, but
it's, it's generally that individual pursuits are not
built into the syllabus. It's not the philosophy
of how we learn everything. And so
for that reason, we feel disconnected from it.
And only really if you go to, like,
a Darul al Anwar or something, then you
get exposed to the depth of the Islamic
tradition.
And even then, at times, it's it's not
a full picture
depending on on on where you study.
And one actually has to
seek out the tips of that to appreciate
it. And,
as I mentioned, some of the subjects are
perhaps I'll show you a book at my
library. It's very ugly. That's why I have
a nice book behind me. Not it's not
ugly. It's just not organized.
In fact, it's really beautiful.
Maybe I'll show you one book that, later
that that may inspire you in some way.
But,
yeah, so that is the first point to
add as to why I chose the topic.
Because oftentimes, as, you know, normal Muslims that
don't necessarily,
you know, fling themselves into the Darulun, etcetera,
and and it's not possible for everybody, We
don't we feel disconnected from the the the
tradition oftentimes because we actually know it.
We just know what gets exposed to us,
maybe on YouTube, some lecture that we heard
or what the imam says on a Friday.
And oftentimes, he doesn't really,
you know, even touch the surface of the
depth of that tradition of Islamic knowledge.
As a as a result of that
as a result of that that lack of
connectedness and knowledge of the depth of that
Islamic tradition, we oftentimes have a lack of
appreciation for Islamic scholarship and Islamic scholars.
What that, you know, that obviously has lots
of negative implications on the way we think
about the world.
Because
if we don't appreciate them and appreciate the
level of scholarship and the depth of the
tradition from which they're coming, then they would
not be our natural resort when looking for
solutions
for the world around
us. And, I'm not saying that
Islamic scholarship in our time has no blame
in this regard.
Oftentimes, we have become stagnant.
Oftentimes, Islamic institutions have become stagnant in some
regard with a,
you know, apprehension to change syllabi and update
syllabi and
adapt to subjects that are more important for
our time than what they may have been
in,
century
or centuries old syllabus. So I'm not saying
that Islamic scholarship or Islamic institutes have no,
blame in this regard, but the reality is
there are still scholars in this world,
you know,
easy to to access for that matter. Scholars
that are well read, well grounded in the
tradition in its entirety
that should be able to guide our thought.
Guide our thought not in relation to some
centuries old stuff, but guide our thought based
on those sources in relation to the problems
that we have today,
the social problems that we have today,
the philosophical problems that we have today.
And it's important for us to actually appreciate
that scholarship so that we can seek out
solutions from that tradition that those scholars represent.
So,
yeah, there's also another
misconception
or,
you know, wrong thought
that I think is prevalent in society for
which I also chose this topic is that
oftentimes we think that Islam is disconnected from
our modern or postmodern world that we live
in.
But
the reality is actually when we when we,
you know, dive into the depths of our
tradition, oftentimes we find many discourses that Western
society is only engaging in now
with things that,
you know, scholars
long ago in the Muslim world have been
thinking about.
And I mentioned some thoughts
of and even a bit earlier.
But you'll find that there's a pleasure trove
of thoughts that Muslim
thinkers had that we can develop,
or that will at least remove some of
our apprehensions
to engage,
in scientific problems with the fear that, you
know, this may contradict,
this may contradict,
my religion or something like that. No. All
knowledge comes from a unified source
comes from a unified source, and so we
should never really run into any problem as
long as we are thinking about things correctly.
And this was the the mantra or the
motto of,
many Islamic schools of thinking that really incorporated,
rationality
that there is no possibility
for
there is no possibility for
a contradiction
between
rationality
and revelation
because of the unity of the source on
which it comes.
Yeah.
In addition to that,
I just think it's important for us to
reconnect with our own tradition as opposed to,
being,
you know, subject to the inferiority
complex imposed upon the whole world really through
colonization
in that, you know, through colonization,
they colonized us intellectually as well, you know,
made us buy into the types of schools,
and and that's prevalent throughout Europe. The Muslim
world India started having with colonization, India started
having different types of schools separate from the
religious schools with the dosing of army that
used to be the the seat of all
types of knowledge.
People would go, they learn astronomy, mathematics, all
of those things would be studied in that
type of school. But now they got shifted
to other schools on account of colonialism.
Universities started forming that had that had bought
into western thought world technologically.
So
I think we need to free ourselves of
the shackles
of that inferiority complex that we have towards
western knowledge because it's what we've grown up
in and all that we've known.
In fact, much of our thought throughout our
life gets shaped by those, philosophies. We
we may be insulated from it somewhat on
account of the fact that we still have
some connection to the Quran, etcetera, But oftentimes,
that's still relegated to certain spaces in our
lives.
And so to read ourselves with that, I
think just knowing a little bit about the
fact or just knowing that there is a
vast tradition of Islamic knowledge
should perhaps peak our interest in looking
into what that has to offer for us.
So just before I get into actually mentioning
the subjects,
I see that there's a question that we
have here,
and, I think I'll take that question.
Question
is.
Yeah. Sounds odd saying that myself.
Just a second here.
Can you perhaps share
of those colors we could turn to?
So
I think oftentimes,
we may or many of us may have
accessed some of them via the Internet, etcetera,
like Sheikh
Ablakim Murad, brilliant mind. Sheikh, Omar Farooq Abdullah,
Sheikh Amin Gulwadia in in in the states,
Sheikh Hamza Yusuf, doctor Yasser Sheikh Yasser Kaldi.
You know, just just to name a few
of the international scholars. But oftentimes, we don't
necessarily have access to them,
in Elmwood.
So in terms of
so, you know, speaking to South African student
base, what are some of the people here
that we can,
that we can access? I don't know all
of the scholars up currently in Johor, in
all of those places, so forgive me for
if there's a lack of representation.
But
in in in in the Western Cape, I
can tell you honestly, I've been to university.
I studied mathematics. This is not just because
he's one of my teachers, but Mullana Taha
Karan is a man of
immense knowledge.
I've sat in conversations that he had with
Sheikh Abdul Hakim Murad, with Sheikh Yasir Qaldi,
with, you know, some of the the biggest
thinkers in in the Muslim world, and,
I can tell you that
we
we don't need to feel that we we
lack those scholars.
Is somebody that we can turn to. Many
of the students of
Now I'm just a weak student, but there's
others that are that are, you know, much
more learned.
Mohammad
doctor Yousuf Patel,
a number of others. And some of them
that even come through the the MSR.
Even
even our our our brother, Anwar,
continuing studies as well. He he was a
for a period student at the school of.
And then these other, you know, bigger, more
serious scholars that, like,
like.
Like,
I know I just pointed that out to
me. Sheikh Al Khardawi, Sheikh,
amongst other scholars. There's a right teams of
of previous scholars that we can access, like
Mohammad Saeed,
and, Sheikh Taha Abdul Rahman. But, you know,
those are in Arabic for the most part,
and so they're not accessible,
too much of our viewership. But, you know,
even so, they really their writings can be
accessed through other scholars,
and through other students of Dina. As a
student of Dina, I would be more than
willing to avail myself, especially to university students
that want to,
you know,
just know a little bit more about the
Islamic tradition. I'm sure Radha Anwar would as
well, and and I'm sure I can get
a number of others more learning than me
as well,
with me.
Upcountry,
like I said, I don't know too many
of the scholars, but I do know some
guys,
like a very open minded and, and and
and well versed scholar,
Molena
Abu Ureyra,
Bobat.
Probably
I don't know if most of the people
know him, but those are some of them
that I've encountered that that seem to be
very,
open minded and and well versed with the
tradition.
So so, yeah, those are just some of
the scholars. Although, Alan, we need to engage
with him more.
If anybody has any questions, whatever, you can
post them, and then I'll try and and
answer.
Okay. So now getting into the actual sciences,
I'm flies. I don't know if I'm just
waffling.
Anyways,
getting into the sciences. So now you hear
what I'm talking about there in terms of
the religious sciences? I'm talking about
when you go into a
when we speak about the Islamic tradition of
scholarship,
specifically pertaining to those matters,
they,
directly linked to
Islamic
thought,
Islamic
action,
whether that be spiritual action or
physical action,
these are the subjects that that generally get
studied.
The first would be
luwah or language.
Now you may think that's absurd.
Why don't you mention the Quran first?
Quran is obviously the
the the, you know, the most important thing
that gets studied.
However, the Quran is an Arabic book.
Allah
mentions that in the Quran,
that that it is an Arabic Quran. And
so
what gets studied
foremost or firstly in these institutes is language.
Now
language has a number of,
of subjects that actually allow one to understand
the Arabic language, understand how it works, understand
the intricacies of that language.
Most important to them,
are 4,
that would be
vocabulary,
like
the the meanings of words.
The second would be,
this
Arabic grammar.
Thirdly would be almusarf or almuntasrif,
morphology,
and fourthly would be bilagha
or literik. So just to give a beef
brief introduction as as opposed to just mentioning
the names,
it's actually just understanding what words mean,
because
it's a it's an extremely important thing.
If the Quran is an Arabic book,
we actually have to look at what are
acceptable meanings for words in the Arabic language
to know what are valid ways to interpret
the Quran, how to how we can actually
understand the Quran, what Allah is saying to
us as a, you know, non native Arabic
speaking people.
We wouldn't have a natural
understanding from our society of what Arabic words
mean. And even people that grow up in
in
Arabic societies won't necessarily
understand
the use of Arabic that apply to the
prophetic period.
So even they will have to study,
the
the or
the the meanings
or, you know,
potential array of meanings that a single Arabic
word can have in classical Arabic.
Is the sub the science of grammar
that that deals really with how words interact
with each other, how Arabic words interact with
each other and convey meaning in that way.
So to form coherent meanings from from sentences,
if you want.
Then the science of Sarf
Arabic is a very structured language.
So the science of Sarf deals with how
word forms change and how those changes in
the form of a word,
affect the meaning of a word. In fact,
this is one of the, the subjects that
actually make
Arabic easy to learn, in my opinion.
And that's like for example, if you learn
a certain template of a word like a
template fa'ilun
which is the form of an active particle
you can take any set of Arabic letters
and put it on there and you'll know
that it will be the active particle of
the word or of the image that's attached
to that set of letters. For example, nasora
means to help. If I put it in
the form, fa'alun
nasirun, then it means a helper.
Fa'atihon,
fa'atiha means to open. So fa'atiha means an
opener or fatah can also mean to conquer.
Fatihomile,
conqueror,
the active particles. So those forms of structures
of words you learn in the science of
surf, and that actually helps one to understand
when when one is hearing, reading, listening to,
or speaking Arabic. And,
and, yeah, it actually facilitates great understanding of
it. Then,
teaches us how figures of speech, etcetera, are
used in Arabic language because not everything in
language is literal.
In fact, it's part of the beauty of
the Quran that allows
many of these,
aspects of rhetoric to beautify speech, and we
recognize that from things like,
I mean, English language has the same,
not necessarily the same aspects of Malaga, but,
it also has its salivary dialect. So that's
what this learned. And that's just a precursor
to getting into study of the other Islamic
sciences and
and Islamic sources.
It's rather a key to that because those
sources are primarily in in Arabic.
However, in addition to that, in terms of,
language, there's a number of other sciences. There's,
literature, adab, there's insha, there's istirqaka. Our word
meanings are derived.
There's arud and qawafi, things that pertain to
poetry and poetic meters, etcetera. There's Arabic poet
classic Arabic poetry because that's, you know, Arabic
the the meanings of Arabic words, if you
want to justify
that a meaning of a word is valid
for an Arabic word, you don't actually quote
the dictionary.
That's what I arrange the meanings of the
words. You actually quote a verse of poetry
or aya of Quran to show that the
word,
has a specific connotation or meaning. And when
you're using that to interpret the Quran,
for for example, I have verse a in
the Quran. I want to know what a
specific word means in this verse.
I'll either have to show a meaning that's
established elsewhere in the Quran through other ayah,
or I will take
a piece of Arabic poetry that shows me
that that meaning for that word is potential
one.
So Arabic poetry is an important subject as
well.
You know, this critique of literature, this, you
know, Arabic
writings, all all of those get put,
but the primary ones are the first four
that I mentioned.
Thereafter, as I mentioned,
Luwai language, Arabic language specifically, is just a
key to getting into the Quran.
So from there, we move to,
sciences
directly related to the Quran. And, actually, the
Quran is a source of all Islamic knowledge
to a large degree.
So
the sciences related to the Quran directly would
be, firstly,
That would be,
the interpretations or valid interpretations
of the Quran
and
the sciences related to that,
the sources or the principles related to understanding
the Quran. So, for example, in, Usulut Tassir,
you'll learn certain
you learn
principles as to how to be consistent in
interpreting the Quran. For example, just to give
one,
a principle would be,
One principle would be that
we give consideration to the generality
of the wordings as opposed to the specificity
of the context of revelation.
So, for example,
an ayah comes in the Quranic context and
even in terms of its reason for revelation,
it comes in relation to a specific incident.
And there's times in the Quran where Allah
uses words that show that the verse is
specific to that incident. And sometimes, though it
comes in context of that incident, Allah uses
general words. So how do we understand that?
From Usul Qasir, we would study how to
understand that. And so as the principle that
I mentioned,
says, we'll look at the generality of the
wording that Allah used to be. We understand
that Allah doesn't, and even this is part
of the Surah to see that Allah doesn't
word anything in in a specific way without
ease. When Allah wants things to be specific,
he words it specifically. When Allah wants things
to be, general, he was it generally, or
there's something that indicates to us from the
Quran and from the that
it must be understood,
specific in a specific way,
and other
principles in tafsir.
Then there's the study of tafsir itself and
if you mean I'd honestly, I don't wanna
show you what my library is right now.
But,
they are
copious
amounts of interpretations of the Quran.
One that I that I read quite often
now, is the the tafsir of.
That's 1 tafsir. The tafsir is 30 volumes.
There's other tafsir of similar size. You know,
there's
tafsir mobile that they use, but often 10
volumes. There's, tafsir of Razi that's like, oh,
I don't know, 2 volumes.
You know, just the other night, I was
preparing for a for a Quran clause,
And I went to Razi, and I thought
to myself, and I actually just read the
whole night.
But the scope is the amount of. Like,
you know,
I would love to be able to show
you
how much the is written on interpretation of
the pronounce that you can actually gain that
appreciation,
but, you know, I'm not able to do
that. However, I can tell you there are
lots of works written on both classical mufasin
and from contemporary
mufasin.
And,
basically, it's what people
it's
people
understanding the Quran,
writing down the lessons that they derive from
the Quran
based on
principles that give them consistency
in the understanding of the Quran in light
of the Arabic language and in light of
other principles. So there's a variety of categories
of tafsir, of explanations of the Quran. Sometimes
they focus on linguistic aspects or linguistic beauty
of the Quran.
The
the. Sometimes they focus on,
perhaps laws that can be derived from the
Quran. Sometimes they focus on maybe
ethical matters that can be derived from the
Quran. Sometimes they focus on all of them.
Sometimes they focus on, you know, verses that
pertain to material aspects of the world and
and what we can derive from them. Sometimes
they they, they look at matters pertaining to
belief. Sometimes they look at matters,
pertaining to history.
There's even different genres of of ways that
Mufasilin
make tafsir. Sometimes they
interpret the Quran in light of of what
prior scholars have said. Sometimes they interpret the
Quran in light of other sciences like language
and rhetoric, etcetera,
Though that's always a consideration,
sometimes they,
interpret interpret the Quran
via illusions. So maybe not necessarily the direct
meanings of a verse, but rather lessons that
can be derived from verse.
So, you know, those are some of the
different subcategories of tafsir that exist. In this
the subject of Quran.
Quran, as opposed to dealing with the meanings
of verses, like, the actual interpretations of the
verses of Quran, this deals with
this deals with sciences related to the Quran.
So what does what does what makes something
Quran?
How do we know when something's possible in
the Quran? How does,
chapters of the Quran ordered? How are the
chapters of the Quran,
you know, how are verses in a chapter
ordered? The history of the of revelation,
the history of the compilation of the Quran,
the history of, the preservation of the Quran,
matters pertaining to the different modes of recitation
of the Quran. Also perhaps at times some
aspects of,
of rules pertaining to interpretation.
How do we incorporate incorporate the context of
a revelation of a verse into our understanding
of that first?
How do we deal with translations of the
Quran?
Are translations of the Quran considered the Quran
as well? So those are some of the
questions that get answered in its object called
the Ulmul Quran.
And, obviously,
then all of the other sciences are in
fact a
an explanation of the Quran.
And I'll I'll clarify what I mean by
that in a moment. Then there's also sciences
pertaining to the preservation of the Quran. This
would be the or the science of Tajweed.
How do I properly articulate the Quran?
That's the science of Tajweed. It's a science
on its own.
Then there's the science of, the different modes
of recitation,
the different ways that words can be pronounced,
verses can be pronounced. Obviously, then with the
study of
how those different modes of recitation
arrived at us. It's a very critical study
of that. And it is the science of,
orthography
or ways in which the Quran can be
readily written,
and
what is correct in that regard. So those
are some sciences related to the Quran. So
I first spoke about language, and I spoke
about those that are directly related to the,
Quran.
Oh, where am I gonna go to for
you?
After that,
we have sciences related to Hadith,
Hadith being prophetic narrations.
Anything that
that reaches us of these statements, actions,
tested approvals,
physical
or characteristic descriptions of Rasool
Allahu.
And at times, the science also includes, you
know, had specifically Hadith, but at times, the
books of Hadith also include things that that
pertained or statements, actions, etcetera, of the companions
of Rasulullah and the generation
that followed them, the Tabi'in.
So what do we study
in the science of hadith?
Because, you know,
this is a science that has come under,
you know, a lot of scrutiny in our
time specific,
but
it is essentially
the second most important source of Islamic knowledge,
after the Quran, in fact, giving its authority
by the Quran itself.
That's al Hadith. So so what are the
sciences pertaining to hadith? I'm first gonna get
to the the technical aspects of it, and
then we'll look at the actual content of
hadith. So what we do is we study
mustallahooldhadith.
Mustallahooldhadith
is a subject that pertains to the technical
terms used in the science of hadith. It
may sound like a simple thing, but there's
actually lots of technical terms. Hadith are categorized
in lots of different ways according to, you
know, the chain of narration,
according to authenticity,
according to the number of people that transmitted
that narration.
For you know,
maybe I think I need to introduce the
idea that a hadith,
though it may be a statement or a
action of Rasool and that's reported to us,
it's always accompanied by a chain of narration.
So when I have a piece of information,
for example, Rasulullah
said,
x.
I don't accept it just like that.
I
will say, oh,
how what makes that a valid hadith is
that I can say, Umar
said that Rasulullah
said this,
but it doesn't just stop there. The chain
continues. So somebody narrated it from Omar Radiallahu,
who narrated it who in turn
narrated it to someone else, who in turn
narrated it to someone else, who in turn
narrated it to someone else.
So in the books of hadith, we'll have
a chain a complete chain of narration of
that hadith from Rasool Allah alaihi wa sallam
till the author of that compilation of hadith.
And then we'll have chains of narration from
the compilation of that hadith book until
us. So for example,
in this book here, I have
this is just just a book that I
one of these books, but
here's an example of a,
a chain of narration that I have. So
I can say, for example, I narrate from
I, Zakariya Anika,
narrate from my teacher, Mulla Taha Karan, who
said that,
Sayyid Al Imam Abu Hasan ibn al Hayy
al Hasan I nedawi, said from his teacher,
Hayd al Hassan who said
who said that his teacher said, his teacher
being,
said Nadir Hussain,
who narrates from his teacher Shah Muhammad Ishaq.
And then a alternate narration for the same
book would be and I also narrate from,
Sheikh Nasir Ahmed
Albulland Shahri,
who narrates from Sheikh Islam,
Hassan Ahmed,
Al Madani, who narrates from the Arabic is
very ugly. But,
who narrates from this teacher essentially,
I can I can when I narrate to
you a hadith, I can give you a
chain of narration from myself
till the compilation
wherein that hadith is found? We, in turn,
will have a chain of narration, which, in
turn, will have a a chain of narration
for that narration
from the the compiler of that book and
Torah.
So that's very important to know to understand
sciences that relate to Hamid.
So we have
and, yeah. So I must mention also that
Muslims have are very critical.
Traditional Islamic scholarship is very critical
in we are very critical in the science
of hadith because there's a great impetus
to only accept those things that can correctly
be attributed to our Surah lessons. In fact,
we have probably the most,
detailed
science of authenticating
reports from a person,
that being Rasoolullah
There's no historical method that's more critical than
our method of, Hadith criticism. So we have
the science that just deals with the terms,
that pertain to the science of Hadith.
So for every type of Hadith is a
name. Either Hadith is, it's a canonical relation
narration. If it's narrated by, like,
more than 10 people, for example, in every
single rung of its chain of narration,
or chain or hadith is,
or or harib if it's only narrated
if at any point in the chain of
narration, there's only one person,
that narrates it, for example.
Then we have,
following on from that, we have studies of
the,
the science of.
Is when I take one of those chains
of narration and I subject them to scrutiny.
I check, did everybody in this chain actually
meet the person that they say they narrate?
And now you may think to yourself, oh,
how on earth am I gonna find that
out?
We are able to find that out because
we have another sense that I'll mention in
a moment that comes under the sense of.
But we we check,
did everybody meet the person that they're narrating
from? Or,
if the person lived in the same period
of time as indeed they actually meet them,
did they actually okay. So we we can
assert that they meet each other. But do
we know that that person actually had hadith
from them, that they didn't just meet in
the marketplace?
That's the detail to which we actually go
and scrutinize the change of narration of hadith.
Then
to do that, we actually need to study
the biographies of every single narrator of hadith.
We think, how on earth am I gonna
do that? In our tradition of Islamic knowledge,
and I think this is something that most
people don't know, we actually have sciences that's
specific to this.
Yeah.
I'll mention that in a moment, but
we have sciences that's specific to that. A
science called the Al Muir Real, the sciences
of,
literally men, but it includes females as well.
Obviously, female narrators of hadith, and there's many
of them. Karima Mawazia,
Amra,
Aisha radiya. Some of them are the most
promising. In fact, the most
precise
narration
of Sahih al Bukhari, just for those that
like this kind of thing, the most precise
narration of Sahih al Bukhari
that we have today comes via a lady,
by the name of Karima Al Marwazia.
Right.
And then in addition to actually having the
biographies
of those scholars
documented, of those narrators of hadith documented,
we have signs a science called,
vindication and verification.
So we have,
what we call hadith critiques or narrated critiques
that lived close to the time of those
people or slightly after them that assist their
biographies, that give rulings on them. This person
is a reliable person. This person,
he has a good memory, but, you know,
he used to do odd things. He used
to stand and urinate something that's considered socially
acceptable, so we're not gonna accept Hadi from
him. Or,
this person,
he's a good person. You know? He's never
done anything unjust. We don't know him to
have sinned or anything like that. But his
memory his memory is okay. It's not not
to say he did make mistakes, but we
can't be sure. His memory is not, like,
on the level of those people that,
hardly ever heard. So
we have then rulings that are given to
people or people assist based on these biographies.
And, yeah, just because I think, you know,
this is a sign set that not many
people know about.
And on account of not knowing about it,
I think they they quick to criticize Hadith
and our dependence on Hadith and the importance
that we give to Hadith. I'm just gonna
show one example of a book that I
have in my own personal library that speaks
about biographies of people, and this is just
one amongst me.
That's the first part of the book.
That's the second part of the same book.
Yes. Three other volumes of the same book,
and then there's 5 4 volumes of the
book that's out of my reach right now.
But, essentially, yeah, I don't know. I I
can't lift the book up
all at once to show you, but,
that's just one book
that we have that documents
the biographies of people.
And and this is, like, only the the
the people that come in the 6 main
compilations of Hadith. So so, really,
scholars went to town with being precise in
documenting the biographies
of people that narrated hadith. Why? With the
sole person of critiquing every aspect of their
life
to decide whether we whether that person is
worthy of us taking
his word that what he said actually came
from Rasoolullah
or came from the person that he narrates
from.
Yeah. So
that he will come out as married.
That's just one
amongst many. We have
really this the the the stands in Islamic
Cloudry.
Right. And then, obviously, then only after we
can assert that things are reliable and authentic.
And and I can tell you there's no
signs of authentication or static authentication of transcriptions
that can rival what we have in relation
to HADI. I think that must be said.
The brother says here,
The chain of narration is the weapon of
the believer.
If he doesn't have a weapon with him,
then with what has he fired?
So some of the scholars have said, other
statements, you know,
that
the
the chain of narration is part of our
deen. In fact, this is time isn't permanent.
You know, it's the means by which Allah
chose
for
for Islamic
for revelation to be preserved. The Quran as
well as the statements of Rasulullah,
via people. Allah chose for it to be
preserved via people,
as is the norm that Allah
uses means generally when he does things.
And so we're very critical
of reports because we want to know what
actually comes from Rasool. So when a scholar
says this hadith is authentic,
that means
they really really critic
the lives of the people that are in
those chains. Then we actually get into the
study of the hadith. So here we study
the text of the hadith, what it's saying,
and we derive lessons there from,
what laws can be derived there from how
the hadith the actual the Quran, we use
the hadith, interpret the Quran,
to understand the Quran in light of, you
know,
only explanations of the Quran because the Quran
itself means
that to both teach the Quran and to
clarify its meanings to us.
And then we also have studies where we
not just critique a hadith based on the
critic of its chain of narrations, but we
critique hadith by comparing them to each other.
So we'll see.
Here, I have 5 narrations.
4 of them seem to be saying the
same thing and one says another thing. Even
though the chain seems to be fine, because
it's contradicting
more authoritative people than him,
We we say that, no, that hadith is
at high it has a healing defect or
there's some,
deviance from the norm in that hadith, and
then we discard that hadith or call it
weak or fabricate it.
SubhanAllah.
Those are just the first, you know, two
sciences, and our time is back to the
upper limit. Then we have sciences of Aqaid,
and I'm I'm through them now because time
doesn't
I was not gonna go over an hour.
Here we have
Islamic beliefs. What do we believe in relation
to Allah, the qualities of Allah,
Allah subhanahu, is doing in this world?
What do we believe about messengers? What do
we believe about angels? What do we believe
about the afterlife? What do you believe about
the end of times? What do you believe
about all of those things that are unseen
to us,
as well?
That all comes under the subject of aqid,
how they are derived from the Quran and
from the sunnah of Rasulullah
then we have a subject called Almal Kalam,
which is a rational defense
of those beliefs.
So this is a a a subject that
was that also often tell people don't know
about. But our Islamic scholars, the likes of
Imam al Ghazali, the likes of Fakhruddin al
Razi, great thinkers in Islam, Imam al Haramain
al Juwayni,
they wrote extensive
works and, you know, applied their minds extensively,
to
defending
the beliefs that Muslims hold from a rational
perspective
without using Quran to justify it, without using,
the Hadith of Rasul to justify those beliefs.
How do we defend the beliefs that are
asserted by the Quran in Sunnah using only
our rationality?
So they would come up with arguments that
later got taken on by, you know, say
Thomas Aquinas and and other, you know, Krishna
thinkers.
They would
think up how do I prove the existence
of Allah
using only my mind? So they they would
say, well, I'm just gonna give you an
example. They'll say
that everything in existence,
it doesn't it's not a rational necessity.
All the material things that we see in
the world. The universe existing is not a
rational necessity.
It would not lead to any rational contradiction
if the universe didn't exist.
Right? But the universe does exist.
So if something that's not a necessity and
that doesn't have its own intrinsic existence, it
begins to exist, there must be a being
that brought it into exist
into existence. And if that being
is also a contingent being, meaning it required
something else to be made into existence,
then
there there has to be something before that.
And either there's a never ending chain of
things, which is impossible because there has to
be a first.
Right? So that option is ruled out. They
would conclude there must be a first being
that existed but was not grown brought into
existence.
And so it has not a, contingent existence,
but a necessary existence.
So,
that's just, you know, proving the existence of
Allah, then they'll put some of the qualities
of Allah
Well, if that being brought things into existence,
he must have ability the ability to create,
etcetera etcetera.
So it's a rational defense of those beliefs.
Then,
there's a study of
deviant beliefs. Beliefs
that
beliefs that
were brought into Islamic thought via rationality,
and sometimes via misinterpretations
of Surah Al Quran and Hadith for that
matter,
and setting them right. So those who form
different firoq. Maybe, for example, in the epistemology,
there's a group of
people that felt that there could be contradictions
between rationality and religious sources. And in that
instance, they would give preference to rationality, for
example, or they started interpreting,
things that didn't need to be interpreted
in a in a in a very like
in a more materialistic or naturalistic way.
They would form a different sect
as opposed to the
the Muslim orthodoxy if you want. And that's
that study is called the study of firoc.
Like, you know, the main one that got
studied was Mu'tazila or the rationalist.
And Muslim scholars,
the from the, you know, the jama'ah,
they then went and refute those wrong interpretations.
There's also a study of different religions.
And
more recently,
incorporated into this, bracket of studies or sciences,
there is the study of,
philosophies.
Actually, it's not more recent. Muslims have always
been studying, different philosophies, but I think it
got revived. It's it's given more preference now
than religions also. As opposed to studying Christianity
in our time, people who study
postmodernism
or modernism
or,
you know, Marxism, secularism,
socialism, all of these isms,
in
that's permeates the thinking of people in our
time.
So Muhammad Saeed Ramadan al Boute also has
a very important book on the subject.
The various Unitarian schools of thought,
Wafaa Safaa, Al Muhasa'a, and modern philosophies.
So
given that's that's part of our tradition,
it's not always prevalent in our modern syllabi,
which is very important that it should be
incorporated into them so that we can actually
interpret the world through an Islamic lens as
opposed to trying to Islamize,
thought that's not native to Islam or that
doesn't come from the Islamic sources.
I I could have forget. It should have
probably come earlier, but there's a study of
logic as well.
I will monitor.
Logic is extremely important
because it guides how we use our rationality.
It's like,
in fact, I studied
logic not in,
not at the.
I studied as part of my master degree
in logic and computation, and the laws are
practically the same transitivity in all of those,
how to form arguments, how to form
coherent logical arguments. Obviously, if you're going to
be defending
your creed logically,
you need to know how good logical thought,
is structured. So
logic is a is an important subject that
gets studied.
And then more broadly, we, we study as
well Islamic thought.
Something that may form of may form part
of Islamic thought, for example, is how we
conceive of the self.
Are we just matter? Are you
your body, or do you have a body?
Yeah. Are we just if we admit that
I'm more than my body, am I just
mind and matter, or am I more than
that?
Questions like that, you know, would fall apart
of Islamic thought. So
am I, for example
do I have you know, what am I
made up of? Do I have a a
heart, a spiritual heart, a soul,
you know, a basic self, a rational self.
You know, how all of those parts work.
That's part of, Islamic
Then we have, the study of,
I don't know. I'm I'm probably gonna go
quite a bit over time here. In,
what we do within
is we come we the pursuit in is
to come to a conclusion
as to what Allah's law is in relation
to every human action.
Right? So every single human action will have
a law from Allah attached to it. So
what we what we're trying to find out
is what does Allah say regarding a?
So what a faqid does
is he, you know, jumps into the Islamic
sources, all of them,
and he tries to conclude
what is what does Allah say? What is
the hitaw of Allah? What is Allah's instruction
to human beings in relation to action a?
The and that applies to every single action
that human beings can do.
So that's the pursuit in firq. How do
we actually,
study that? So firstly, what we do is
we study usool al firq, the principles that
govern firq. So what we do here is
it's almost like, you know,
Islamic legal epistemology if you want or,
Islamic legal theory if you want. So we
look at the what are the firstly, we
look at,
what are the sources of Islamic law? If
I want to know if I want to
be able to say Allah says that this
thing is permissible,
or Allah says that this thing is compulsory,
or Allah says that this thing is haram,
or Allah says that this thing is,
disliked, or Allah says that this thing is,
you know,
it's it's something that is praiseworthy. How do
I come to the how do I conclude
that this is what Allah is saying? So
we look at what are valid sources of
assumption.
And, obviously,
the the most important source of Islam everything
Islam is the Quran. And then we look
at what does the Quran assert as other
sources.
So the hadith. And then what do the
Quran and hadith assert as other sources?
Scholarly consensus of all of the scholars over
time and then analogies. And then there's other
sources as well. For example,
the statements of companions.
The,
you know,
that is a different upon, but the legislatures
or the the laws of prior nations,
the concept of public interest,
that's what that that people speak about very
often in that time. All of those, we
study the the sources of law. Then we
study with we study the framework in which
we use those sources of law. So, for
example, when I have a Quranic ayat, how
do I understand this Quranic ayat? Do I
just go to some figurative interpretation of the
eye, or do I first understand it literally?
And then if there's no evidence to say
that it shouldn't be understood literally, I I'll
leave it like that. Or if there is
a,
a
or a,
another evidence that tells me that I need
to understand it,
differently,
then move to that understanding. So we we
study the frameworks in which we use these
sources of law.
And then we also look at what are
the conditions for a person that does this
action.
What qualifies a person to do the process
of deriving laws from the sources of Islam?
That's what we're studying in Uxwudufir.
Then we study
framework in which to assist the laws that
are arrived at via us. In fact, in
our derivation of law, we don't use the
Maqas, Sharia. We don't use the the the
the objectives of the law.
We use
the sources of law,
the the adila firkhiyah as opposed to the
maqasid,
the the source of Islamic law as opposed
to the intents of the lawmaker.
And then we check that that law that
we arrive at is correct
by assessing it in light of the Maharsid,
ensuring that it doesn't go against any of
the,
any of the, Maharsid or the high objectives
of the Islamic law. There is a certain
framework in which we do use the Maharsid
Sharia
in the derivation of law. But then we
don't call it the Maqas, we call it
Maslaha. And Maslaha
also has a very defined,
sphere in which we go through. Like, for
example, we won't take our subjective understanding of
justice
as opposed
to something that the Quran clearly mentions. For
example,
the Quran mentions that,
you know, in inheritance, for example, a male
gets double the share of a female.
Obviously, the Quran also assigns the responsibilities
that he has in relation to that share
that he gets. So we should apply things
holistically.
But, we won't say that, no, our understanding
of justice is that,
that both human beings, they should get the
equal share.
No. So we won't go to to that
understanding
of, you know, that's completely subjective understanding. It
fits into the hierarchy of of of sources
of law in a specific place. If we
take it out to that hierarchy of,
of evidences,
then we,
you know, face the risk of
making the sharia subject to so subjected to
our own,
you know, subjective thoughts. And that's actually the
the idea of the dawn of.
Then what we study is,
we study
legal maxims. So we we study trends in
the law. So we'll see, for example,
in in all laws,
Allah is ensuring
that no harm,
is either done to the self or to
others.
So that becomes a legal maximum now. So
this legal maximum also help us to assist
when we are arriving at laws for new
things. For example,
what's what's in Newcross? Here, we have the
coronavirus now. Should we should we,
still be going to the Masjid
en masse.
In light of the that says,
or no no harm should be inflicted upon
the self or others,
we would understand that saying or maintaining the
normal law goes actually against the trends or
the general trends of the law, and it
also goes against the intent over the Mahbazir
of the sharia. And, therefore, it doesn't seem
to make sense in this context. That's just
one aspect of the thinking of
a fakir or jurisdiction
in such matters. Then we have also the
study of,
fiqh according to the schools of,
of law. So for example,
we are Shafi'i community in the Western Cape,
so we generally study Shafi'i firk. And why
we actually have these badaip is because
in terms of the usool al firk, there's
certain
sources or certain,
points in that usool that people prefer upon.
For example,
one little example would be that,
Imam Malik says that
if I have find a single person making
a statement about the,
about the sunnah of Rasool
Allah and then I have all of the
people in Madinah doing an action different to
that. The action of the people in Madinah
is a better representation of the sunnah than
that
that hadith narrated by one chain, for example,
or even by 2 or 3 chains.
Whereas, Imam Al Shafi'i says no.
Muslims spread all over the world.
So there may be somebody that has a
hadith that's now in,
Kufa
or Basra or somewhere else,
and the people of Medina,
don't necessarily have that hadith with him. So
we should give preference to the hadith over
the actions of the people of Medina.
So they actually look at that
that hierarchy in that way. And and because
we have differences in principles via which we
derive law, that's why we actually have differences
of opinion in relation to those that are
arrived at, via the principles of the equation.
So that's why I would define my. So
scholars study
law according to those different
sets of,
principles.
Then there's obviously the comparisons of those various
laws that we put into detail. And there's
a number of other laws, like, what are
the etiquettes of
of being a jurist, how do I pronounce
this? How do courts work, etcetera?
What is the fiqh of,
of,
when you how do I derive fiqh when
new things occur? For example, the whole, you
know, this industrial revolution, the whole way that
people interact or transact with each other changes.
How do I then update the law, etcetera?
So has
built into itself the I the the ability
to update itself in relation to how the
world is structured.
Then we have the study of history.
Again, I'm just gonna mention the subject because
I'm way over time already. We have the
study of the the prophetic biography and then
history history of different sciences, how they developed
and how they crystallized and how they were
formed, as well as history of the world.
You know? History of,
and and, generally, it's it's it's what gets
studied in the Arun Lusi 3.60 from the
time of the companions of Rospondyluson
until the end of the Ottoman Empire, we
should give a lot more emphasis on what
happened after that and outside of the festival
that must be acknowledged.
And then
but to forget,
very importantly, there's the there's the subject of,
Tasawoff,
the subject of, of Tezgia, the subject of,
you know,
the the the the internal sciences that don't
relate necessarily,
to our rationality. They don't necessarily relate to,
the the material world around us, but they
relate to our our,
you know, our conduct, our inner self. How
do we train ourselves? How do we how
do we journey closer to Allah
with our spiritual selves? How do we purify
ourselves of, of our, you know, of our
basic desires, inclinations, etcetera?
How should our conduct be? How do we
imbibe within ourselves those conducts, etcetera? And and
there we study books like,
the,
as, as well as a number of other
texts that relate to spirituality,
those hidden aspects of human beings.
I probably did an injustice to the various
sciences, but that's what I what I had
jot it down for the moment.
If I could just take, like, 3 minutes
to if I could just take, like,
3 minutes to to to wrap up.
It's important to note that what I've mentioned,
those are just some of the topic headings.
If one actually goes
ventures into an Islamic library, you can find,
you know, the library in Turkey. It's, you
know,
a number of floors filled with books.
So I I can't even explain to you.
I have to actually just go to an
Islamic library to see the depth of Islamic
scholarship. It's something that we really need to
appreciate. We need to rid ourselves of that
inferiority complex that our,
you know, religious heritage does not have something
to contribute to the real world that we
live in. That will actually allow us to
solve problems with a greater connection
to the Quran, the guidance of Allah Subhanahu
wa Ta'ala, with a greater connection to the
sunnah of Rasool Allah. In fact, this should
should should be the basis of our thinking
as Muslims.
So, you know, just as a solution, how
do we remedy this?
How do we remedy this?
I see, well, Anwar just made me touch
on that. Now he's the one that gave
me the time.
But, anyways,
how do we remedy this? I don't have
all the solutions,
But I can tell you what scholars are
attempting to do,
and what I think we should attempt to
do as well as a community.
On one front,
scholars are or on the front of what
scholars are attempting to do is, number 1,
they're getting more engaged in studying
western philosophy.
Why?
So that we can understand
the underpinnings
of how the world in our time operates.
So that we can understand what permeates through
the thinking of our,
of the world we live in today. And
then to critique
those
those philosophies or those thoughts in light of
Islamic thought that originates from the Quran.
Right?
That's on one front. On another front,
well, they're
just trying to access
the tradition
of Islamic scholarship to a greater degree. On
account of of of colonialism in many parts
of the world,
Islamic education was very much focused on preservation.
So you'd find people just memorizing the Quran,
just memorizing hadith, not actually looking into the
depths of interpretations
of those things, not looking at those things
in light of thought as opposed to just
mere,
action and a ritual action for that matter.
So scholars are trying
to,
get to grips
with how to view the world through an
Islamic lens by understanding
the way the world works and this understanding
how people think in our time,
and bringing that back to a more Quran
centric approach or,
Quran hadith centric,
approach to dealing with these things.
Ask with,
you know, the world becoming a global village,
Scholars also collaborate with each other,
all around the world just this afternoon. Actually,
every day since the beginning of the lockdown,
we've been having 4 hours of class with
Munat Baikaran, with,
scholars scholars from all over the world,
listening to a hadith, and then when they
give some interpretation of the in light of
the world that we live in.
So so scholars are trying to do that
within their own circles.
In addition to that, how I think we
can remedy the situation going forward
is that we need to create
pedagogies
or syllabi or schools
in which
our Islamic worldview
and our religious worldview can permeate how we
learn everything.
So for example, we need to have schools,
not just a school that takes
a western syllabus and then adds to that
Islamic studies,
and there's only Muslims at the school. No.
That's not what I mean.
What I mean is we should try and
have schools that children from a very young
age, they learn,
logic
that
that
that the before logic, that that they learn
the Quran, they learn to understand the Quran.
I mean, how many of us have been
are deprived of having understood the Quran for
most of our lives?
It's only those that actually really find some
time in their life to take out a
year or take out 2 years that actually
go through the meaning of the Quran, you
know, with a teacher that can actually explain
to that has read the Tasik of this
Quran. It's a it's a privilege.
So we need to make that more normal
in the lives of,
our
coming generations, people in our own lives to
start with, but then in the pedagogies of
of coming generations,
we need to have people learning, We need
to have people learning science
with the with the understanding that all of
this comes from Allah. We need to always
be engaging our learning with, how does this
bring me closer to Allah, and how do
I see Allah through this?
How do I see Allah through the creation?
And then when it comes to matters of
assigned subjects of more
more philosophical subjects, I need to take guidance
from the Quranic source, from the Quran, from
the hadith. I actually need to read them
and understand them and then let that shape
up.
And, we also need to,
yeah, we we actually just need to engage
what our tradition actually
mention,
what what what our tradition has to say
on these things. So we need to untap
that we need to, like,
tap into that, untapped source
of Islamic thought. To be honest with you,
I teach and
I'm, you know,
delving into Islamic thoughts at a deeper level
myself now. So it's something that's a that's
a work in progress. But once that gets
established,
in our syllabus, then perhaps,
we will have scholarship that's a lot more
relevant to the world that we live,
in and that can provide solutions more immediately
to the problems that we face. Because, you
know, oftentimes, problems that we face in the
world,
oftentimes, we go to different isms like
I I I I don't wanna
critique any,
aspect of activism or anything like that. That's
that's not my intention. But oftentimes, we buy
into
other movements,
and we try to Islamize our participation
in those movements rather than actually having
our our thought process solution,
building mechanisms
based on that thought from the very inception.
So that's something that, very important that we
need to do. Two questions that are just
coming in. How do MSAs engage with these
concepts at a very basic level? Obviously, taking
into account the primary purpose of the MSA,
how do we capacitate MSAs and the union
specifically?
Brilliant question.
Brilliant question. The first suggestion that I have
in relation to that is
try and get a panel of
and and and this will comes from discussion
with.
Try and get a panel of scholars that
are in touch
with the world the struggles of the world
that we live in, and, you know, have
them as a as an advisory,
committee
to direct the MSA's activism to ensure that
we never stepping out of line of what
acceptable is.
Secondly,
you know, that's an external thing, but how
do we actually upgrade the people that come
through the MSA? Here, I think we need
to go back to the system of Halakhon.
Okay. When I say Halakhon, maybe think of
old things. We need to have reading circles.
We need to have learning circles, and it's
so easy now. We can use Zoom. We
can use whatever.
Let's read articles and discuss with each other.
Let's no, dear. I have understandings from them.
Yaqeen institutes you. Brilliant work in this regard.
Let's read the articles. Let's, let's discuss it.
We don't have to restrict ourselves to that.
Many we have, you know, bright people within
the MSA that are dealing with challenges in
society. Let them engage,
you know, with
scholars that are available to them, and then
let us become those who produce knowledge, based
on this,
Islamic epistemology, if you will.
So so two things over there.
Have scholars that we can rely upon and
engage with them. And secondly,
I think for those of us that have
already been through our schooling, we need to
get into reading circles,
with with people of various levels. So I
would advise that if you can have somebody
that that that understands Arabic in a reading
circle, that that will be brilliant. Somebody that
already has exposure to the tradition to some
degree, that will be brilliant and benefit, to
enhance the circle to clarity. But those leading
circles are extremely, extremely important.
Are those classes open to the public? It
is open to the public,
but because
you can contact me, privately if you'd like
to. However, everything in the class is in
Arabic,
and it's like that's at a very, very
fast paced reading of the hadith.
But anybody's welcome because it's a reading of
hadith primarily. So there's blessings in that if
anybody wants to listen in public, you can
you're more than welcome.
Or would it be too intense? Or there's
a little no prior knowledge.
Yeah.
The intensity comes from the fact that it's
all in Arabic and it's the the place
is very, very fast. So
yeah. However, if somebody would just like to
listen to the hadith, anyway, you can,
contact me somehow through somebody in the image,
and then I can hook you up inshallah.
But yeah. I hope, you know, my Allah,
Barakay and what this long discussion that we
had. I'm sorry for going over time
because I was prepping without you know? Well,
I should have mentioned my time. But, anyways,
I hope it was beneficial, and I hope
it stimulates us engaging with our tradition more.
And I hope it it
it it plays some part
in giving us confidence in what we have
and the the the desire to actually tap
into that.
If there's no more questions, then I'll end
there for now.
I must lastly, I must just thank the
the MSA for putting this thing together, all
of the talks. I haven't been able to
listen to all of them yet, but what
I have has been very beneficial.
I encourage,
everybody listening to actually subscribe to the MSA
channel and, the MSA
channel. And to watch this space, we'll have
more,
similar discourses taking place. Maybe this can be
the starting point of our of our reading
circles. We engage a variety of topics relevant
to us as, Muslim youth,
in South Africa and as global citizens.
That would be very beneficial.