Massoud Vahedi

Ahmad b. al-Hasan b. 'Abd Allah b. Qudamah b. Qadi al-Jabal (d. 771) was a prominent Hanbali jurist and a leading student of Shaykh al-Islam Ahmad Ibn Taymiyyah. Skilled and well-versed in poetry, in one of his compositions he beautifully observes the following (paraphrased): The name of my Prophet is Ahmad ('alayhi al-Salam). The name of my Imam is Ahmad (ibn Hanbal). The name of my Shaykh (i.e. Ibn Taymiyyah) is Ahmad. And my name is Ahmad! In light of this beautiful correspondence, he hopes and prays for the intercession of the Prophet ('alayhi al-Salam) in the Hereafter.

Alḥamdulillāh, I am pleased to announce the publication of my short paper, “The Living Tradition: Why Islamic Law Remains Relevant in a Changing World,” in Futuh: Journal of Islamic Research, published by Miftaah Institute. The paper examines the capacity of Islamic law to engage with the ethical, social, and technological challenges of the contemporary world. In response to the assertion that the Sharīʿah is inherently rigid by virtue of its immutable legal principles, the paper argues that Islamic jurisprudence integrates enduring foundational norms with a flexible interpretive framework through which qualified jurists can address novel and unprecedented circumstances using established methods of legal reasoning. You can read it here: https://www.academia.edu/172125539/The_Living_Tradition_Why_Islamic_Law_Remains_Relevant_in_a_Changing_World?email_work_card=title

"...in the madhhab-law tradition, ‘precedent’ is not judicial but juristic. It is the weight not of past court decisions, but of previous juristic opinions, delivered by scholar-jurists, that bind those who follow them: any other person, jurist or layman, whose learning and standing in the madhhab-guild does not equal theirs. On any human act—fiqh, in Muslim schemas of disciplines, being that science that treats human acts—there may be a great number of opinions delivered by scholars associated with a given madhhab. Each of these opinions is verified, preserved, and analysed in the social forums of the madhhabs: in ‘academic’ debates taking place in classroom and in salons, to be sure, but more importantly, and permanently, in the books of fiqh, where commentary especially afforded jurists removed by both time and space the ability to engage with one another.... The forum in which rule-determination occurred in the madhhab-law tradition was neither the court room nor the legislative body, but rather juristic writings. It was in legal compendia, commentaries, super-commentaries, and other discursive genres that jurists posited or argued for the preeminence of one legal opinion over all the others generated and transmitted by the jurists associated with a given madhhab. Until the appearance of the Majalla as part of Ottoman modernising reforms during the nineteenth century, there was no ‘code’ to which inexperienced jurists, judges, or muftis could turn in order to learn the legal rule to be applied in a given case or issue. Rather, master jurists engaged with their equals, often over a remove of hundreds of years, in different genres of legal writing, most important of which for rule-determination were the legal compendium (mukhtaṣar) and the commentary (sharḥ, and ḥāshiya for super-commentaries)." - Dr. Talal al-Azem

The "Matrix" strikes again.

A helpful tip to know for learners of Arabic, that is relavant for Forms V and VI.

They asked the scholar of mantiq: "What is the hadd (definition) of a Western Da'i?" The scholar of mantiq said: "A 400 dollars-an-hour charging animal."

Were the two Imams, Malik and Abu Hanifa, unaware of some authentic Hadiths?

فائدة قال الشيخ ابن قاسم النجدي: "و [يجوز] تُستعمل 1) تارة بمعنى يحل، 2) وتارة بمعنى يصح، 3) وتارة تصلح للأمرين." - حاشية الروض المربع

You don't need any folklore for confirming this. You can confirm claim #1 by searching for a Moroccan wife. And you can confirm claim #2 by searching for a second Moroccan wife.

There are two disciplines which Muslims have uniquely formulated and developed alone, with no other civilization or religion having them: 1. The discipline of usul al-fiqh. 2. The discipline of mustalah al-hadith. - summarized from Sh. Fahd al-Juhani

It's kind of sad that this has to be brought up, but many Arabic publishing houses are just terrible when it comes to the quality of the paper, ink, and binding that they use when printing books. One publisher in particular that I have noticed which publishes books with terrible paper and ink - with the text losing its visibility in a relatively short span of time - is Dār al-Luʾluʾah, which is based in Egypt. I wouldn't recommend buying any of their publications.

If a class - especially an online one - has more than 2 instructors and the instructors rotate every week teaching a specific portion of the material, my general experience is that the class will be disorganized and it will not logically progress in a linear fashion. The student will find the instructors repeating and saying the same things over and over again, since oftentimes it is difficult for multiple instructors to sit together and divide the material amongst themselves in an organized fashion. So when the new instructor comes in a certain week, they won't be able to develop a proper sense of where the students currently are with respect to the concepts and issues they have learned already, so there is a tendency to "low-ball" their instruction. Don't waste your money.

Not Fast, but Furious: Taymiyyan Drift.

"This Section will not be Fast, but Furious."