bismillah r-rahman
I'm doing that but the last panel to
understand it was not mr. Fuhrer who
when I would have let him ensure Orion
Ficino and say yeah yeah Medina I mean
yeah he laughs at our model a woman yoga
inferred I had the other hello MA
suddenly was said in my Odyssey in
Mohammed wine and he was happy was an
empty seaman kathira without how would I
run after water in every land ally
darling
hamdullah welcome everybody the the
topic I wanted to talk about today
revolves around what occurred in
Marrakesh and I think some of you are
aware of it but for those of you who
aren't shelepin baya who I think in many
ways represents a type of intelligence
that has been lacking in in our
community in a lot of different areas
he's somebody who doesn't study for
instance all sort of fill as a
historical artifact which a lot of
scholars today do they they study all
sorted fit as a historical artifact
trying to understand how the art
tradition emerged and evolved he studies
all sorted fit and I think he's he's
arguably one of the greatest if not the
greatest Sunni master of the of the the
tool of also in in modern times he
studies it as as an actual manual really
of operation operating manual that
enables us to use our religious
tradition in a way to make it compatible
with the circumstances that we find
ourselves in not compromising it but
recognizing that circumstances have
their realities he calls it fickle waka
the
the jurisprudence of reality that that
the reality of Dorrit the hakama ha like
the AHA say necessities have their own
categories their own rulings and and we
have many many examples of this
historically throughout history of the
Muslims dealing with their circumstances
I'll just give you an example in
historically when Muslims conquered
lands there were two types of ways that
they came into a land one was what was
called an unlit in' and that it was
sullen so uh newellton is where a people
refused they refused the the muslim
demands and so they fought it out and
then the muslims one that had a whole
set of rules that went with it and then
if they conquered them under a treaty
like a celeb then that also they were
able to stipulate things so one was like
a conditional surrender the other was
like an unconditional surrender and you
see this in earliest long one of the
things in unconditional situations that
they would that they would not allow
them to build new churches and so you
will find for instance that there are
periods where a ruler will come and
he'll actually order the churches to be
torn down that were built in the
previous administration so you'll find
that in our history books and these are
things that a lot of people that are
very anti-muslim are pulling out because
they're going into our sources and
looking at our history books and what's
interesting about their methodology is
that they will cherry-pick all the
things that blacken Islamic history and
and just they will look at them as
simply fact this is fact and anything
that puts the religion in a good light
they will say oh this is clearly a
contrived story it's a nice story told
by Muslims to make their religion look
nice and this is a very
and when you get into Orientalist
tradition it's a very common motif for
me it really bothers me a lot because
they don't challenge a lot of these
narratives that I personally would
challenge because the Prophet never
destroyed a place of worship and so if
and he prohibited destroying places of
worship so if I Muslim ruler destroys a
place of worship that was already built
even if it was built against certain
codes or legal restrictions if it's
being used by a religious community I
don't believe the Prophet would have
done that and so to say that this
somehow is normative Islam because a
ruler did it another aspect that we have
to remember as Muslims is that Islam was
a religious tradition that our prophet
told us would only have a polity for
thirty years and then after that he said
it wouldn't be Islam it would be
something else and so after 30 years and
it ends with Hassan vanadis Kedavra
which lasted for six months almost to
the date thirty years after the Prophet
SAW lied to them his death it aligned
with Empire and and Islam becomes now a
vehicle for Empire with all the the
aspects that that entails just like
Christianity in the fourth century
aligned with Empire
so the first 300 years the Christians
had a certain tradition but after that
when they aligned with Empire it became
very different
one of the fundamental debates in early
Christianity was about wealth this was
actually a more significant debate than
a lot of the theological debates that
that will enter into the religion later
on could a Christian be rich that that
was a major discussion many of the
Church Fathers really felt and the
Desert Fathers certainly felt that the
only way that you could truly express
your true Christian faith was in
to completely remove yourself from the
world and but once Christianity became
the religion of an empire it it changed
it transformed and is Lomb is the same
they can't you can't divorce the the the
scholars that worked with Empire and
their decisions and their reasoning from
the environments that they were in you
can't separate those two and then you
will find historically the vast majority
of the scholars that are honoured in our
tradition the vast majority not all of
them but the vast majority of them had
very tenuous relationships with Empire
many of them would not visit rulers they
simply would not go and sit with them if
the ruler wanted to see them they would
say he has to come and see me I'm not
going to him imam at a Posada who in his
early part of his life was was very much
aligned with Empire he worked with nizam
al-mulk he was in his coterie but when
he had his transformation he went on his
pilgrimage at the at the tomb of El
Halil he sworn oath that he would never
visit a ruler that's an oath another
that he actually swore he vowed that he
would never visit a ruler and when he
was called to the court of sun-ja he
went not believing it was breaking the
valley because he was forced to because
he was accused of he was accused you
know of religious heterodoxy and he had
to go defend himself but he did not
after that engage with rulers and so
there are many many examples of that
historically matica panis is a clear
example of somebody who and abu hanifa
and ahmed mohammed all of them if you
look at the four imams all of them were
simply not tied to Empire they would not
allow themselves to be compromised in
that way because they understood that
once you ally with Empire you
compromised yourself and one of the
interesting things about
our legal system is that judges
traditionally were independent so even
the the rulers could not control the
what we would call the judicial branch
in our separation of powers because we
separate legislative the judicial and
the executive branch is based on
Montesquieu's demarcations in in the in
the traditional Muslim world the
legislative was largely an independent
body the Faja and and you had the the
executive branch which would always also
legislate things very often against the
the foot bhai the independent
legislative branch so they would
legislate taxes that the folk considered
unacceptable or unjust so the
legislative branch in Islamic history
was actually an independent branch
generally but it was also co-opted by
Empire and so there was a tenuous
relationship between the Fulco ha what
they called the Ummah of soul bond and
the Ummah of Quran
right this is this so as you know as we
look at also landfill as a as a tool to
deal and grapple with the real
contingencies of time that's something
that I think chef abdullah takes very
seriously and this is why he has he's
come up with certain conclusions about
about things that and and they're very
troubling to some of the ummah which is
interesting also because one of the
things that he does is whenever he
whenever he comes up with something he
always writes his argument from a Sunni
perspective he puts it out there and
then it's like if you have criticisms
write them and then I'll address them
and this was our traditional edible PDF
like you put forward your argument
because one of the things Van Doren said
and and and I think it applies equally
to our tradition as it does to Western
civilization is
that inheriting a tradition is
inheriting a lawsuit so when you inherit
a tradition you're you're grappling with
different lawyers of the past making
arguments and just to give you one
example in the verse which is in Toba
where it says that they're supposed to
pay jizya at its value jizya tenanted
then home sovereign right so there's the
joomla Holly as a home saw her own that
they should pay this tribute in a
humbled manner for whom sahi room if you
read the books of fit you will you'll
see amazing things some of them said oh
we have to humiliate them and so this is
not from prophetic practice this is
their interpretations of a verse in the
Quran so they would say they should pay
it at 12 p.m. 12 noon the hottest part
of the day they should pay it without
their head cover they should always put
their hand offer the money like this so
the Muslim takes the money from above
because yet the earlier hey Romania the
sulla right and and the hand over is
better than the hand under meaning the
one giving is better than one taking so
in this case you know that to offer the
money like that instead of like that
that's one view and the Fuuka ha you'll
find that in the books and these are the
things that these Islamophobes pull out
of our books and say over there look at
this tolerant religion and then you have
people like I borrow bathing tapenade
one of the great folk AHA Islamic
tradition who argues that just paying
tribute is humbling enough so honor them
and treat them well and don't humiliate
them in paying their tribute so there's
another who comes up with a
completely different approach and so
what is it which one is it
they're both from the quote-unquote
tradition and this is the lawsuit that
we inherit and then we have to ask
ourselves what is closest to our
prophets behavior how was he with people
when the Christians of Ned
Ron came to Medina in in according to
one recension in the ninth year of hijra
how did he treat them according to our
books he let them pray in in the Masjid
when they debated with him about for
instance yeah after Harun they said
about Mary you've confused Mary the
sister of Moses with Mary the mother of
Jesus because in the Perron Mary the
Virgin is called
the sister of Haroon and the prophet
said wasn't she and erinite because the
arenites were the the shrine keepers and
Mary was from the offspring of Aaron the
brother of Moses so he was explaining
because the Arabs say yeah after doubt
oh boy yeah uh-huh now table when you're
from a people you call them the sister
of that people so she was an era night
so he was saying that's not a confusion
that's a thought that indicates her
lineage so he explained he didn't say
off with their heads how dare they
question the or on how dare they
question my prophecy no he treated them
with respect he debated with them and
and then when the debate was going
nowhere he he would he challenged them
to the mobile Allah which they decided
not to do after consulting with the Jews
in Medinah said will not do that and
they entered into an agreement with him
and they moved back and he sent an
arbiter with them so there's an example
so the point being is that you're going
to find this in our tradition you're
going to find all of these we've got
1400 years of tradition the same way the
Christians have 1400 years they have
2,000 years of tradition the Jews have
3,000 years it becomes cumbersome
tradition becomes cumbersome hence the
Protestant impulse let's just do away
with all this stuff let's go back to the
original sources and that's handset
a--they Dawa is so appealing to a lot of
people because it's just saying let's go
back to the book in the Sunnah forget
all this 1400 years of
bickering over the meanings of these
things the problem with that is that
there's a reason why the tradition is
there if you read a Gustin on Christian
doctrine he makes very similar arguments
to our scholars about the necessity of
mastering certain tools before you can
even interact with the tradition the
least of which being grammar and we have
very few people that have mastered the
grammar of the Courant we have people
giving commentary of the Quran that are
completely unqualified and in any other
previous time they would be in blocks
you know they used to have those blocks
they put people at their head and arm
they would be in blocks in our history
one of the intriguing aspects of our
tradition is there are actually very few
types years of Quran and if you look at
the men that made toughs here they were
literally the greatest scholars in the
history of Islam because nobody wanted
to touch the Quran it's like I'm not
going to say what I think God means by
that not me
and then when you read the tough seers
they become very tedious because they
just quote the previous tough seers it's
very interesting they all just quote
like you you'll read ten top seers and
they say the exact same thing because
they're all going back to poverty
because they just didn't want to mess
with the Quran move move near Labib I
even Hisham is one of the most important
books in our civilization is a book a
two-volume book just on the meanings of
the particles and prepositions in the
Quran in the Arabic language because
there are so many different types of fur
there's different types of lamb the
otaku who I do what in order for him to
take him as an enemy Moses Pharaoh took
him into the house to take him as an
enemy that lamb can beat a vegan but in
that case it's not because nobody in
their right mind would take somebody
into their house to be their enemy
so it's called lamellae Akiva it's the
Lamb of consequence in other words he
didn't know that was what was going to
happen but that's what he was doing
learning those nuances and then diction
and word choice takes years to master in
the Arabic language because these words
are very subtle and they have very
subtle meanings and there are words in
the Quran that you might think mean one
thing but then when you read the tafseer
you find out it's completely different
meaning from the one that you thought
and that's happened to me many many
times reading the photon where I thought
I clearly understood what it meant then
when I went into the tafseer I realized
my understanding was completely skewed
and so tradition we have to grapple with
tradition but we need the tools to
grapple with the tradition and that's
where we're in trouble because it's very
it takes many many years to master those
tools it takes an incredible amount of
intellectual gifts to master them and it
also demands a really type of divine
inspiration that that it's it's not
something you could just do on your own
there has to be a toe feel involved in
it and so that adds to the challenge but
Sheikh Abdullah has he mastered the
Arabic language
I mean he he is arguably one of the
great masters of the Arabic language in
this time and in fact I saw him in a
debate with one of the scholars from
from Pakistan who's a very very great
Hanafy jurist and he was arguing with
him about you know whom OMA to mademou
meaning and he said the man you know it
doesn't mean they're from the same OMA
it's saying he's with them and she
abdull