that's why when you learn those tools
you've become a formidable enemy if
you're from these other cultures Malcolm
is a good example of that who learned
the tools of the culture who could go to
the Oxford Union on December 3rd 1963
and hold his ground toe-to-toe with
masters of that tradition because he
knew their language he knew their
cultural references he quotes Hamlet in
that speech because he actually read
Shakespeare if you read his biography he
he was interested in literature he knew
English very well he mastered the
language he knew rhetoric very well he
mastered rhetoric and he was a master of
logic if you listen to his arguments
he's always making solid logical
arguments and this is what this is what
the dominant culture is very afraid of
when people actually
learn these tools that they use to
empower themselves and and so the Muslim
civilization was a civilization
predicated on learning these tools and
if you want a really beautiful study of
this fact then I would recommend reading
John Wall bridges book about the kata
fate of Reason in which he shows that
the Muslims were obsessed with the arts
of language with grammar with rhetoric
and logic and this is what was at the
center of their teaching because they
knew if you try to access revelation
without these tools it'll be a disaster
and that's what we're seeing all over
the Muslim world now we're seeing people
trying to access the Quran without
understanding the tools that will enable
you to access the Quran now people will
say well the Sahaba didn't know those
tools absolutely they did they were
masters of rhetoric they were masters of
the Arabic language they knew grammar
intuitively they knew if they heard
something that was wrong said no model
delano saw some people shooting arrows
and he said so we will so we will run
your comb you know straighten up your
shooting and one of them said an animal
Pythian were beginners and that's that's
that should be a Joomla is MIA it should
have a muqtada and a hubba the move
today should be national move Teddy own
is the hopper so it's mark or because
they're both myrfor so he didn't he they
said nano move Teddy in as if it was
among super active US National move
Teddy in learn anima darica you could
say that they're there at mon-sol
practices but they said Nana move Teddy
in he said wallah he in the lagna cone a
shed do earlier I mean how to configure
Michael this mistake in your in your
grammar is harder on me than missing the
mark
because Arabic was already diminishing
because of the ajan that we're becoming
Muslim
the Milani just like if you go to some
Gulf states you have these little Arab
kids that speak English with the order
do accent because they they grow up with
and then they use like if you go if you
go to certain Gulf States
there's Arabic terms that come out of or
do now or if you go to Egypt they have
all these terms that came out of Turkish
bottle do include Bri because the Turks
were living there and so this is what
changes the language in the same way
that you've got all of this type of
language degradation that's happening
because of all of these slangs
interestingly enough some of the ulama
actually prohibited inventing words
there were animal that considered the
invention of words and slang to be
prohibited because they said through
that communication breaks down and the
purpose of languages to communicate so
people should not have private languages
and it's very interesting so share
Abdullah bin Vega grew up in a place
that has had this tradition and what is
unique about these people is that they
were Bedouin and we as far as I can tell
we are the only civilization that ever
created highly literate Bedouin people
they're better when people live all over
Aboriginal peoples they live all over
the world
but this is the only civilization that
ever created highly literate Bedouin
people it's this is one of the miracles
of Islam and when I was in Mauritania
and seeing them studying logic
Aristotelian logic Bedouin living in
tents studying Aristotelian logic I once
saw when what up that Hajj was trying to
explain what Jawahar thought was to a
Bedouin boy he was studying Arpita and
one of the concepts 'as in in inanimate
Kanab there's the atomic theory which is
similar to the string theory that that
the entire world is made up of
indivisible atoms
not what we call the modern atom that
can be split and massive chaos comes out
of that splitting no the atom that is
indivisible the Monad so this is the the
the particle that cannot be split it's
like a geometric it's like a geometric
point you know if you look at Euclid's
definitions the point is is really a
mystical concept because it has no depth
breadth or width the point so this is
like the Johanna father in the Arabic
Jews
so what up that has took some sand and
he said if the veil was lifted from you
and he threw the sand up he said you
would see the whole world like this so
he was explained in the Sahara
explaining to a young boy what we now
know is the field this is extraordinary
so this is this the culture that he grew
up out of but now he is obviously what
we would call in in our culture a genius
so he was gifted with a phenomenal
intellect but there's other components
there spiritual components that are part
of this Imam al-ghazali said that that
our theology is not based simply on
discursive thought but it's also based
on spiritual states and and so there's
an element that which we call the fattah
ya fattah if defin enough attend Kariba
allah is le citta he is the one that
opens the intellect people that are they
they can actually we know now that
intellects grow with learning the more
synaptic connections you have in your
brain the more effective the brain
becomes we know that learning will
actually make you smarter we know that
the saint-omer sets a limit arrabiata in
the heart Aziz will often learn Arabic
because it increases your intellect so
you you you you you can actually become
more intelligent
the more you learn and so this is the
environment that he grew up in and with
his brilliance at an early age he was
mastering the the sciences of Islam and
we called him Sciences or loom our
sciences the modern word science has
been has been relegated to mean the
material sciences like biology or
chemistry but in our tradition a science
is something that can be learned
unlike intuition
what what what the Greeks called news
what we call alkyl there's a deuce
between alkaline and alkyl understands
it grasps but science can actually be
imparted you can't impart grasping you
either understand something or you don't
if if I say you know this cup is heavier
than this cup you have to understand
that if you don't understand that I
can't really prove it to you I could put
it on a scale but you're still not going
to understand the concept so so you you
have to just grasp certain concepts and
upon those concepts you can base other
knowledge so what we don't know is is
based on what we already know so
learning is like building blocks you
build upon what you already know to
arrive at things that you don't know so
if you know grammar you can learn logic
but you cannot learn logic without
grammar if you know logic and grammar
then it's very easy to learn rhetoric if
you don't know those two then rhetoric
becomes very difficult because they're
all related
so sciences are imparted this is nothing
so you have outcome and nothing Apple is
understanding knock'em is what's
imparted and these are the sciences
traditionally the first thing that
Muslims learned was memorization of
Quran the reason for this is a child
does not have
capacity to understand their
understanding is very limited but they
have an extraordinary ability to retain
knowledge most children I mean obviously
memory is is there's a genetic component
is also in Chinese medicine it's related
to kidney strength stronger your kidneys
are the better your memory is there are
things that diminish memories sinfulness
diminishes memory is well known in our
tradition obedience strengthens memory
they say 21 raisins every morning
strengthens memory that's Imam zone
Mooji says that and then obviously there
are other things that are used but the
having a retentive memory is a blessing
having a photographic memory I've only
met a few people that I that I think
have I met one moody tiny and man in
Medina whose father he was from the
tissue Kanak clan his father said he
never read anything that he didn't
understand and he never read anything
that he forgot everything he read he
retained I met a man in Mauritania that
memorized the entire post the dictionary
but there was a body I also met a man
that knew all nine books of the hadith
by rote with this nad and in fact I gave
him my copy of vacati which was
handwritten it was the most precious
thing in my possession I think and and
he opened it out and he found a mistake
in one of the rewire so I said you can
have it
yeah so that's true story and it was
actually a really precious book it was
had gold it was written in gold and has
done done from the zeliha De La Hoya and
Morocco in any case I mean I've met
those people so when we read about Imam
Abu Hadi I know that it's true because
I've met those people shared although
one of the things that he does that's
interesting to me is he does not show
off his knowledge like he doesn't you
know he wants it he'll only take what he
wants to convey the meaning he wants
conveyed and I've seen many examples of
that in translating for him I'll give
you one example
he mentioned once a hadith which is in
stocky Muslim and he just mentioned one
part of it and I was curious about the
hadith and I asked him about it later
and he said so long hadith and then I
said I said you know which which book is
intention he says a long time we thought
we
he says long-headed and then I said
where does that come in it and then he
recited the whole hadith to me which was
probably about a page and a half but he
will often quote hadith by meaning he
won't even quote the nufs even though I
know he knows the nuts
he'll just quote the meaning from the
hadith so he has mashallah
phenomenal memory blessed with a really
extraordinary understanding and those
two are rare in individuals Imams you'll
be said God usually gives a retentive
memory but the the understanding is
diminished or he gives a lot of
understanding but the the memory is
diminished and he said and he said and
the wisdom between that is is they the
nude orichalcum at the rarity of
wholeness or completion because it's
just a rare thing in the world to see
that in the world but in most you'll be
said but when they come together like
they did in me that's what he said he
said when they come together like they
did in me then you'll see wonders but
Imams you'll see himself you know they
say that there's a Persian proverb that
says
the the peacock only looks at its ugly
feet it never sees the beautiful plumage
and any mom seal 'they could not do
mathematics for the life of him
he's a brilliant man but he just could
not understand math problems and and he
was actually opposed to logic because he
because the iruma considered it a
condition for the most ahead so he a
bridge even Tamia's refutation of the
logicians but there's an interesting
story because his logic teach teachers
stole a book that he'd done in also
thick and he never forgave him he was he
was only 16 when he was studying logic
with him
and he stole his book and he said i know
that he's going to go back to Turkey and
claim it as his own anyway that'll
that'll get you against logic if your
logic teachers stole your work
so when sheikh abdulla was in his early
20s he was sent to tunis with a group of
judges one of them and very interesting
chef Don I both share a teacher because
one of my teachers in fifth was his
teacher in Oakland Bay you been setting
a brilliant Mauritania scholar really
one of the most amazing people I ever
met and he was his teacher and Lolly
will def have a mastani Ninh Medina who
wrote a book on on Medina
that's quite well known it's in all the
bookstores in Medina Holly I was reading
his book one day and I saw a footnote
and I went down he said and he wrote and
and I didn't know that he knew sheikh
abdullah but he wrote in the book I
first heard this from an alum ah the
great scholar abdullah bin billah and he
said he was my companion during my
student days in in the madara which is
what they call the madrasah and he said
one of the things that about him that
struck all of us was if he ever heard a
line of poetry he would say who wrote
that and then he would go find the posse
and memorize the whole casita and he
said he had amazing him map and so he
learned all of the pre-islamic poetry by
rote and his his mastery of the Arabic
language is phenomenal which is but he
has a distinction that I think is is
really important to his development and
understanding of the modern world that I
haven't seen in other scholars and that
is he mastered a European language when
he was if he came back from Tunis and he
graduated number one even though he was
the youngest of the group and they were
all accomplished jurists he graduated
number one in 1961 he was actually
interviewed by The Voice of America in
Tunisia which I'd love to find that
interview because they put him as the
spokesman for the Mauritanian group as
they'd gained their independence he was
involved in the independence movement
one of the first positions that he he
went to a city a town where a lot of the
because this was a time when Mauritania
still had Ric which is this servitude
they still had the rep and there were
runaway slaves he went and taught them
and he has always been opposed to
slavery he was against the slavery in
Mauritania and he went and taught them
these runaway slaves he went and taught
them Arabic and reading and writing and
Poron and Basic v and this was the first
thing that he did and then he became a
minister he was Minister of Justice he
held several ministerial posts he was
the permanent secretary of the he also
convinced the President to implement the
Sharia and he wrote all of the marriage
laws for Mauritania and and the the he
was involved in all the Ted we know
these that are still intact in
Mauritania so these are the laws that
are on the day after the President
signed the the decree to implement
Sharia there was a coup in Mauritania
and and he ended up in jail
so people think you know they see shanab
loading bay and now they don't know the
struggles that he's been through his
commitment to this Deen and but he's a
very pragmatic person he's he's very he
knows the world and he knows how it
works he knows history and he
understands the time we're living in in
a way that I haven't seen in other
scholars he he ended up going leaving
Mauritania he went to Saudi Arabia
became a professor a king out lizzi's
and he's always he's always been
committed to the teaching that he
learned in West Africa from his father
and and then studied also in Tunis where
he got his doctorate but he learned
French in a very short period of time
because all of the ministers new French
except for him and they used to speak
French and then they'd say oh pardon you
know share of the Alumni out of infancy
and then they'd start speaking French
Arabic so he would get a radio and
listen to French news every night and he
learned after learning the alphabet he
listened to the words write them down
and then find them in the dictionary so
he actually taught himself French just
from the listening to the radio and then
one day he came in they were speaking
French and and they said I was here and
he said no no it's not it's not a
problem go ahead and and so anyway what
he's been doing one of the things that
we tend they don't write books using
when they're young it's quite rare
because they really believe that it
takes a long time for no budge to become
mature they tend to write later in their
lives his incredible output has been in
the last 15 years
he's almost 80 and what he's done really
is he has done touch deed of all sort of
thick broth of this banana said that the
scholars of Islam are like regimented
soldiers and he said the generals are
the Oh luli scholars these are the ones
that that really understand now probably
one of his most important books is
called a
Delilah's or Delilah's or dual Allah its
authority it can you can use all three
more Italians use it with delay that
Eastern Arabs tend to say Delilah
so omalley are what you recite from
memory you know you may leave so this is
called Amalia delay that it's what the
the the connotations of the words are
telling us what they're telling us and
so it's a study really a also terrific
but one of the things that he's
attempting to do is one restore the
centrality of Arabic back to the Sharia
and the importance of it because many
many people that go to Shetty at
colleges now do not learn Arabic in any
deep way they learn enough to be able to
read and they still even educated Arabs
make a lot of mistakes when they read
especially if you read the older books
because of soft more than now sort of
his very takes a long time to master but
he wrote this book and then he also
wrote several other books one of them at
high water and bird which is a dialogue
from a distance he wrote another book
which is called
Elliott which is probably somewhat
unfortunate because there's another
minority tip that is associated with
other scholars that has nothing to do
with his minority v and so people lump
them together share abdullah is not a
modernist and he said that before he
said analyst to hadith Ian I'm not a
hadith II I'm not a modernist he is
totally committed to the tradition but
believes that the tradition needs to be
reactivated that it's lay it has lain
dormant for a very long time and
scholars are reluctant to activate these
osuni tools that were so important in
the past and he feels that it's
absolutely necessary because of the
challenges that we're facing as a
community that we've never had
challenges like this we have economic
challenges he said that the traditional
books of commercial law do not deal with
many many of the commercial transactions
he actually gave a talk to a group of
economists in France and the head of the
IMF was in the audience and she was
completely flabbergasted and said that
she had never seen such accurate usage
of economic terms by somebody who was
not inside their community but he he
knows Islamic commercial law and he
wrote an entire book on the the the
authority aspects of commercial law and
he dealt with derivatives the problem of
derivatives he gives an analyses of why
the Western system is so flawed and how
it could be improved on by principles
that have been known for centuries in
Islamic commercial law and he goes on on
he gives all the reasons why usury was
was prohibited and it's a very detailed
study of economics and this is an area
that the Illuma have grossly neglected
I mean Malaysia has done some you know
they've attempted to do it but the part
of the problem is is you don't have
scholars that have knowledge of the
tradition and then knowledge of the
modern complexities and this is where
the crisis lies
you either have traditionalists who
don't know anything about the modern
world or you have modernists who
understand the modern world to whatever
degree but they don't know the tradition
and there's an assumption there there's
a lot of Mythology I'll give you one
great myth that is constantly thrown out
there the idea that the Muslims shut the
door of ish D had that is a complete
myth that comes out of Orientalism and
has nothing to do with our tradition
every single book of o Sole there's a
chapter on HT had all of the unum are in
agreement that is jihad is necessary
until the end of time none of the ummah
have ever said that HT had stops because
there's always new problems
so you have to make you sad where they
where they felt that the HD had one door
was closed which is what is which is
called an HD has an mukluks absolute HD
had in other words they felt that one of
the last people to claim it was in mom
seal T it was rejected which is to say
that they don't have to follow the rule
of one of the Imams that they're outside
of that even Tamia who was a humble
scholar but despite that he broke rank
with the the scholars of his time
arguing that that following the met have
stuck lead of the med hebbs was a
problem and that you needed to work not
just within the methods but allow the
possibility of going outside of the
methods and share Abdullah in certain
areas he will do that although he's
deeply committed to the o soul of Imam
addict Laurel Delano and he knows the O
soul of the other three Imams this book
is a comparative study I mean that's not
the the central point of the book but he
goes into the comparative study of the
of the I mean let me give you just one
example the the anima determined that
language has different types so you have
what are called ha ha yep no hawea these
are how kya
their the the the realities of logo of
arabic or any language but they say
there's a haqiqa Whataya so this is the
the reality of the what we would call in
in Western logic the Dennett ation of a
word what the word denotes in other
words what the original meaning of the
word and the purpose of the word so for
instance marriage is the joining of a
male and a female in Arabic now you you
can change that meaning like they're
doing today but the original meaning is
clearly in fact
Yamato's which is the Greek word for
marriage is where we get gametes
from so age in Arabic is is the the
marrying of opposites so in the Arabic
language you so we Jew means xoj is an
opposite right Allah created everything
in opposites right so the whole concept
of marriage and linguistically the wubba
of the of the word is the joining of a
male and a female now then you have
what's called a happy thought ophea
which is a customary usage is to
conventional it could be slang or it
could be the change in the word overtime
there are many people that argue all
English is influx very little of English
has changed in the last 500 years and
that's that's a fact you can read
Shakespeare with a little bit of
training
I mean Shakespeare who was writing at
the at the end of the sixteenth
beginning of the 17th century
Shakespeare you can read Hamlet if you
have a basic education from you know any
Western school here you know there's
going to be words that you don't know
things that he uses but it's still
English it's the English that we speak
and and so it hasn't changed that much
but there's this argument no there's all
these radical shifts in language it's
not true language has a stability
because language is tradition so you can
change the meaning of marriage to mean
the the marriage of two males
conventionally and you can call that
marriage and you can have a ceremony and
say that that's all but that's not the
wubba of the Doga it's not what the the
word was placed for went went when
people first used the word it's not what
they meant so for the last you know
millennia since human beings have been
getting married nobody ever had the
concept of two women getting married or
two men getting married you just didn't
exist so now there's people that want to
argue no weak marriages whatever we want
it to mean because they don't believe in
essences they don't believe that there's
natural meanings to these terms
and then you have what's called a haqiqa
Sharia which is the what the Chettiar
says the word is used for so for
instance Kadeem to the jahaly arabs
really meant extravagant was a
spendthrift who was extravagant it came
to mean something different in economic
mind a lot it's calm so a lot changed
that meaning for the Arabs and related
it to piety so that's an example and
then you have happy permit jazia which
is figurative meaning what it's used a
figure to like SE dabangg zeta is a
notion we don't mean he's a body of
water right we mean he has an
extraordinary amount of knowledge as if
it was like the ocean so it's metaphors
are similes without the the use of as or
like in in a fool the anima differed
about if a word had a literal meaning
but then it had a conventional meaning
what which one do you use first
so the chavies said that you should use
the a pica Whataya what was the literal
meaning of the word well sort of kinda
Matt how PIPA that's a kinda the the
basis of speech is literal you should
always take something literal if I say
I've got a headache you know you should
take that literally that I feel pain in
my head before you think that I'm just
saying you know all this trouble at the
office is giving me a headache so I
don't really mean I have a pain in my
head I'm just saying it's like a
headache right so you take things
literally before you take them
figuratively in Sharia that's according
to manic and Abu Hanifa said no they
should be taken by customary usage
before you take the literal usage so
what people use and then some made tough
steel Imam al-ghazali from the chef that
he said you should go by the throat
before you go by and Imam and Jelena
said that also you should go by
customary usage before you go by literal
usage so these are differences in
assault and it's going to have a
difference in so if I swore for instance
well la he let out a couple baton right
and then I rode a so I swore an oath and
I'm not gonna ride a camel but then I
rode a donkey now donkey in in the Quran
there's there's a hemudu barrier in the
Quran that is is is actually means
donkey so barrier in the Quran there's a
there's one area where some of them
officer don't interpret it to mean
donkey but that doesn't include when I
swore not to ride about year
I wasn't thinking donkey I was thinking
a male camel so there's an example of
where that difference of opinion would
have some import in how the Ummah assess
it so what this is this is in essence
what what Sheikh Abdullah is trying to
do is really revive also landfill as a
means for dealing with our problems I'll
give you an example of what he did there
was a woman who became Muslim in in in
the United States and she was married
and the man was not Muslim and so all
these Muslims told her the marriage is
no longer valid you have to divorce your
husband now I saw this happen in there
was a young woman who became Muslim with
me in in Santa Clara and then she just
disappeared and I asked what happened
and they said oh they told her she had
to divorce her husband so she left Islam
now this woman they were telling her oh
you the marriage is invalid now because
he's not a Muslim and a Muslim woman
can't be married to a non-muslim man
well shann abdullah gave a fatwa based
on a sound transmission from a situation
that happened in Iraq where Christian
woman became Muslim and the husband was
not a Muslim but he did not have a
problem with her being a Muslim and so
say Nadia actually judged that she could
stay with him
so chef Abdullah said in this time when
people's iman is not strong to where
they would actually leave their family
for their religion that very often
they'll end up choosing their family
over their religion that's an example
where you should take something that
even though the four med hubs don't have
that especially in the lands of
non-muslims because there is an opinion
that if she's in the lands of the
non-muslims she can stay with her
non-muslim husband if he doesn't oppose
her Islam and so that was his opinion so
she called me and I gave her that
opinion which I learned from Chicago I
wouldn't have known that if I did I
would have told her the same thing that
most Muslims know and she might have
left his son but she didn't she said oh
I'm really glad to hear that because
they were telling me I had to leave my
husband her husband became was some six
months later so there's an example where
we could have lost two people to Islam
without having the wisdom or the hikmah
and the vastness of our Sharia because
the Sharia is vast and it's a Rama
before anything else and so this is
these are the the you know these are the
types of situations that he's grappling
with azimu stead and and and really
trying to revive the importance of using
these tools that were given to us but
the tools need to be mastered they take
a long time to master and they need
serious students and that's part of the
problem because the the scholars of his
caliber are disappearing from our
community anyway that's that's a little
introduction a minute does anybody have
any questions they want to ask or go
ahead that was quick usually it's like
few minutes they say you're supposed to
wait for modern day well he's like I
said he's pragmatic in that the economy
is what it is so the the the attempts
you know this idea that Muslims Muslims
can simply get out of the economy
there's a global system that's very
powerful it's a very destructive system
it's caught it's wreaking a lot of havoc
but
his approach is to is is really first of
all we have to understand what it is and
then we have to understand what the
Sharia enables us to do given the
situation and so you know he addresses
different problems like the problem
obviously fractional reserve banking is
a problem even in corporations the idea
of a corporation being a fictional
person is anathema to traditional fit
you can't have limited liability in
traditional fit you have to have
responsibility yeah the corporation
cannot you can't have an entity that's
disembodied that's responsible you have
to have human beings that are
responsible and so granting in in the
United States I don't know what the
situation I mean I know they have the
same type system here but in in the
United States corporations were granted
protection under the Fourteenth
Amendment
which which when you have a corporation
that has five hundred lawyers it's it's
unequal protection under the law because
they can do a lot more if you try to go
if you try to sue a corporation good
luck mm-hmm what's that on what I said
then more on that it's it's a dot on men
had stood in Jeddah it's in Arabic all
his books unfortunate in Arabic was with
the exception of and and I've tried to
get people to translate them I've even
paid people on but his Arabic is just
really difficult so people have a really
hard time even like educated people that
have good background because there's a
lot of technical terms
his Arabic he uses a pre-modern Arabic
in his writing so he's not he doesn't
write in modern Arabic which is heavily
influenced by English and he actually
really hates it I once gave him adopted
Hajj an article from shelf cut I was up
and he read it and he asked me what
language is this I'm telling you the
truth
yeah I said it's Arabic he's that it's
not the Arabic I know and he has a
commentary on the LT of automatic you
know he's