KR

Let’s be perfectly clear what is going on right now. You don’t get the right to post FB snippets about yourself, sitting in a mosque as you emotionally extol the virtues of the Hadith scholars and their efforts, or gleefully criticise Orientalist academia for their disagreement with the tradition, when you didn’t have the intellectual fortitude the defend the same noble tradition in the academic circles you use to promote yourself. Instead, there, you consider the tradition to be epistemically problematic and inferior Orientalism. You still do - and since then, you have done nothing to disprove the notion that you are regretful for your remarks. Such hypocrisy and doublespeak as you astride the pulpits of the mosque and Western academia is quite frankly disgusting. Your defence of the tradition in Muslim circles in the mosque is now utterly worthless. Go and defend it in the lion’s den donkey’s stable of Orientalist academia. Only then will you perhaps perhaps start redeeming the credibility you so casually shredded at the altar of Western academia. You won’t regain your credibility with FB soundbites from the mosque on how great the Hadith tradition is. If you feel you don’t have the capacity to properly defend the Hadith tradition, move aside and let the experts deal with the mess you left.

Just a few days remaining until the launch of our logic and epistemology course. Much confusion arises from inadequate reasoning and poor understanding of what makes something “true”. If you want to (and you should) address this, then join the course. Our first lesson begins on Friday. Sign up here: https://hujjahacademy.com/logic/

Overly self-spotlighting is the only way to describe Yasir Qadhi at this point in his life. An extremely sad state of affairs. الحمد لله الذي عافانا مما ابتلاه به https://www.facebook.com/share/r/1EyJCuaMGe/

Sh. Hatim al-Awni: It's because of his deep understanding of the hadith sciences that Sh. al-Mu'allimi was able to write an excellent refutation on the criticisms of Hadith stirred up by Abu Rayyah in his time. We need scholars with this type of deep understanding like Sh. al-Mu'allimi, not just superficial knowledge, to respond to the doubts stirred up by Hadith sceptics today.

Important: https://t.me/MakkanMusings/2763

It has been brought to my attention that a couple of hardcore Salafi nutjobs are circulating my comments on YQ. One of them has even suggested this is a civil war between “Awnists”. The offending culprits are Karim AbuZaid and Ali Hassan Khan. Such Salafis are most disingenuous, scoring cheap points. And they know it. Firstly, YQ had a photo shot of him with S. Hatim once upon a time, and he has spoke about him at various forums as part fo his Salafi analysis project. That doesn’t make him a so-called Awnist. In fact, if YQ’s views are put to S. Hatim al-Awni, he would disassociate himself from them. But it is an the Salafi nut job’s interest to make him out to be a so-called “Awnist” and therefore give the perception of a “civil war”. Newsflash: Not even the genuine admirers of S. Hatim al-Awni agree with S. Hatim him on everything he says. This isn’t some cult. What you will get though is a genuine mutual respect between his admirers and readers. Hardly something that can be said for Salafi nutjobs whose threshold for tolerable difference of opinion is virtually nil. Secondly, Karim AbuZaid is the one who thinks the distorter of Surat ‘l-Fatihah, Uthman ibn Farooq, is greater than Baqillani. He believes this Jahil UbF - who doesn’t know any Arabic, who allowed Christians double down on their Kufr, and who think Zamakhshari’s أساس البلاغة is a book on Balaghah - should be the face of his sham outfit, Authentic Ilm Mission*. Not once has Karim AbuZaid ever spoke about IbF's crimes against Ilm and Islam itself. Karim AbuZaid is also the one who holds public inquisitions on people’s faith, and makes them repeat the Kalimah on a public stage, even though this act in itself is an innovation of the highest order. Furthermore, Karim AbuZaid thinks Wajdi Akkari is a serious person of knowledge, citing him as a reference in his long-winded refutation on YQ on Ibadah and Istighathah some years back. If this Karim AbuZaid had any decency, he would retreat from any public engagement until he is taken by the Angel of Death. Such is level of embarrassment this guy is drowning in, but he doesn’t seem to realise it. He is as serious as Arshad al-Masri from The Infidel. Thirdly, no - nobody has “left” Ibn Taymiyyah. He isn’t some god either that we worship. The Salafi nutjob cannot fathom that one can agree and disagree with a scholar while holding him in genuine admiration. So I refuse to give permission for any Salafi nutjob to use my remarks on YQ. YQ might be off the straight and narrow in Hadith, but these sectarian Salafi nutjobs are the last people to be giving anybody lectures on anything. * PS: AJM is more apt acronym name for Karim AbuZaid’s outfit.

His trajectory is no longer uncertain, and it is an adverse one. He has absorbed too much of the Orientalist hyper-skepticism to be in a position to defend the Hadith tradition without flinching. And those who still follow him, especially for matters of serious Islamic knowledge, should be wary. On heart softeners and commentary on current affairs, perhaps there's still some benefit in YQ. But on anything deeper, even something like Islamic history, YQ is not a person I would any longer recommend. That is the being charitable: others in my circles are less generous and believe he should be shunned entirely. For all the reasons above, I say - without any glee or shadenfreude - that Yasir Qadhi no longer enjoys my support. I pray for guidance for him and myself.

My final substantial interaction with Yasir Qadhi was over his recently published book on Salafism. During the height of COVID, he reached out to me, asking to edit certain sections, which I obliged. I offered some edits and recommendations. He graciously reimbursed me for my time. At the time, I supported the project. It was my view that better one of us shape the discourse on 21st-century Salafism than leave it to outsiders. It was also the time when the topic of the concept of Ibadah had become an extremely hot topic - one that Salafis to this day have not recovered from; YQ's contribution to that aspect is welcome. Again, some of my acquaintances maintained that YQ is the wrong person to be heading up the discussion on this. Witht hat said, I had intended for my involvement in the edit of his book to remain private. That, I believe, was the understanding, or perhaps I misremember. But as he acknowledged me by name in the foreword, I am able to speak to the circumstance in which name is present. I did speak to Andrew Booso in Bradford to get my name removed somehow, but he told me it was already in post-editorial. ___ I do not claim intimate knowledge of the YQ, as others knew and know him far better. But I have met him, sat with him, driven him from A to B, and considered him a mentor. But what stands out across two decades (for some, it is three decades) with YQ is this: some of us, myself included, have defended Yasir Qadhi, much to the chagrin of my own other colleagues and associates. It was my view that, love him or hate him, he has been the face of Islam in America, and Western Islam to some extent, for the besty part of two decades. He has helped thousands find a voice, a path, a purpose, and a framework. I also acknowledge how much he and his family have endured. He walked away from a pathway to tenureship because he believed loyalty to the tradition mattered more. Yet, what he has said on the Hadith tradition is indefensible. His recent statements that assert that Hadith scholarship and institutions like HCM/ICMA stand on equal footing to the tradition, and that the tradition is somehow too weak to discredit the academy, is a step too far. He has crossed a line that not even the Quran email leak saga from a decade back did not breach. This is not appear to be principled dissent. This is a slow-motion unraveling of sorts. The doublespeak, the strategic clarifications, the backtracking, none of this feels like someone sincerely working through complexity. It rather quite honestly feels like someone who is testing the waters, probing the limits of Muslim audiences, and gauging pushback. Even if we assume he is sincere and just 'describing' things 'how they are', his defence of the tradition has been weak, hesitant, and riddled with qualification. Not only that, for him to hoist HCM/ICMA on a pedestal should be of grave concern. Perhaps his cumulative experience with the academy has led him to believe the tradition is lacking. But he should be honest about that, and not cloak his skepticism in ambiguity. Worse than that is that he projects his disillusionment as if it we should buy into that as well. It seems that for every decade, he has led his followers up down one hill and marched them up another, only to march them back down again to another. Today’s YQ is an embryonic (or fully fledged - depends on yoru perspective) Hadith skeptic. A decade ago, he was post-Salafi traditionalist. A decade before that, he was a post-Madkhali Salafi. Before that, he was a Madkhali proper based on accounts that I have received. The pattern is clear: this is not merely some intellectual trajectory. It smacks like a case of identitied coming and going a revolving door. It is more instability and less evolution. And at some point, the pattern itself demands scrutiny of the person.

At the British Muslim Heritage Centre in Manchester with YQ delivering the "No Doubt" course for Al-Maghrib, and a meal afterwards with the lads.

In the wake of the “Qurangate,” I wrote publicly in YQ’s defence - much to the frustration of some close associates who maintained that, irrespective of the content, YQ was the wrong person to lead any discussion on the preservation of the Quran. I persisted, believing the moment could be reframed as an opportunity to move beyond the simplistic narratives of many Muta’akhkhirun scholars and open space for a more honest discussion. This is why I was disappointed when I found out about YQ later reigniting the controversy in a now-deleted segment with Muhammad Hijab on YouTube vis-a-vis the preservation of the Quran. Some speculated the controversial question was planted - I chose to think better of him. In any case, the saga soon fizzled out. The next time I met YQ was at "No Doubt" Al-Maghrib course in Manchester, in February 2017, where I participated as a student in my first and only course that I attended at Al-Maghrib Institute. I met some fellow students on the sidelines who thought the content was ok but was not enough to address the doubts levelled against Islam, especially those in relation to evolution. At the time, I though this was a bit harsh and said it was a good effort. Then again, I also paid £67 for the privilege of attending. I think we call that post-purchase rationalisation. After the course on the last day, I drove YQ to a nearby restaurant where Abu Eesa hosted us - and made a funny post on FB about the lot of us including myself, M. Uwais Namazi, and Dr. Ahsan Hanif.

In the wake of the “Qurangate,” I wrote publicly in YQ’s defence - much to the frustration of some close associates who maintained that, irrespective of the content, YQ was the wrong person to lead any discussion on the preservation of the Quran. I persisted, believing the moment could be reframed as an opportunity to move beyond the simplistic narratives of many Muta’akhkhirun scholars and open space for a more honest discussion. This is why I was disappointed when I found out about YQ later reigniting the controversy in a now-deleted segment with Muhammad Hijab on YouTube vis-a-vis the preservation of the Quran. Some speculated the controversial question was planted - I chose to think better of him. In any case, the saga soon fizzled out.

It was a few months later - probably just after Hajj in early 2005 - when we had a farewell gathering at Yasir Qadhi’s flat. Unlike the usual rice in his majalis, pizza was served to mark the sombre nature of the occasion. A good few dozen Western students attended, and Kamal (S. Kamal Taleb from Australia) gave a short talk. He was reputed to be an impressive speaker, but I wasn’t convinced on the day; S. Khalil from Bradford assured me that I had caught him on a bad day. YQ was also doing a fire sale on his furniture and some books as he was packing up to return Stateside. Around that time or shortly after, we learned that he had been accepted into Yale, where he became a student of Tony Blair (and others); I don't say that as a knock but it is what it is. By then, YQ was already a fixture across Islamic media - on cassettes and CDs in Europe and North America, and increasingly visible on home screens as the shift from audio-only format to video took hold. Shortly after his return to America, Al-Maghrib Institute rose to prominence. Though founded in 2002, YQ became its lightning rod, serving as a permanent instructor and contributing to the rise of the institute’s growing influence in North America and beyond. It was a confluence of factors that made Al-Maghrib successful, and YQ was one of them. My next meaningful interaction with YQ came nearly a decade later, in May 2014, when a draft of his Yale PhD dissertation was leaked by someone to the KR email group, the predecessor to the KR Telegram chat. As a token of penitence perhaps, I invited him to join the group, both to receive feedback and to engage in broader discussions. He kindly accepted, and his participation was generous, given his public profile and the criticism he regularly received, particularly from those still tethered to Salafi frameworks. (One might ask why Salafis were even on KR. Then again, one could ask the same about Deobandis. The KR group was a merger of various pockets of emailing lists, so its participants spanned a broad spectrum.) Despite the ideological diversity, YQ contributed to discussions with roughly 100 other scholars and students. While I often found myself agreeing with him on contentious issues, others who also agreed with his views expressed reservations with his person nonetheless: they felt he was not the right figure to front such debates, nor should he be seen as owning them. In hindsight, they were ahead of me in that assessment vis-a-vis YQ. One of those contentious issues resulted in his abrupt departure from KR. August 2016 saw the infamous email leak orchestrated by Faridleaks (who was put on KR at the behest of Bassam Zawadi), who passed it to Abdur Rahman Hassan (not on KR), who mindbogglingly passed it onto Dawahman. Dawahman proceeded to leak YQ's emails all over the net. It was an act that was seemingly intended to boost his own credibility, but which left a trail of damage and destruction in the online Muslim space. (Now the dude is in Dubai, speaking about wealth creation; that's another story in its own right). This started the decline of the email group. But to be honest, the email format for discussions was already on life support. WhatsApp, and later Telegram, had become dominant. KR had launched a Telegram channel in late 2015, with the KR Chat group following in September 2019, replicating the original email format of within an app.

Circa Shawwal 1425, or December 2004. YQ sitting on the left at the front, with Dr Tamimi in between the examiners, for his Master's exam. Immediately in front of me are Abdul Halim (London) and Abdul Rahman Chao (Houston).

On Yasir Qadhi Salam I first met Yasir Qadhi in September 2003 at al-Masjid al-Nabawi, along with a group of other British freshmen newly arrived at Madinah University. We were told he was the kind of student we should all aspire to become. At the time, he was nearing the end of his MA. I’ll admit to being slightly starstruck—perhaps less due to his scholarly status than the novelty of encountering a polished American speaker, for me at least. I met him several times after that, the most notable of which I’ll describe below. The most memorable encounter was in spring 2004, at a flat top near the university where he’d been invited to address younger students, after which we participated in a meal. He presented a summary of his Master's thesis, which he was still writing at the time. During the Q&A, I asked him how one (i.e., me) can reconcile the training received in the Deobandi tradition with the Saudi university approach - a hybrid of traditional Najdi pedagogy and formal academic structures - and how to maintain respect for teachers from both camps. I won’t repeat his answer here, but it stayed with me for years. It helped shape my understanding of how to navigate multiple scholarly frameworks as a student of all. I saw him again the following year, after the Eid al-Fitr prayer outside al-Masjid al-Nabawi. He wore a black bisht and ghutrah, and after some pleasantries, he jokingly remarked that Eid might be the only occasion he'd ever wear such attire. It was only a few weeks after, sometime between Ramadan and Hajj in 2004/1425, during my second year at Madinah, that Yasir Qadhi sat his MA viva. The thesis was titled مقالات جهم بن صفوان وأقرها في الفرق الإسلامية. his supervisor was the respected theologian Muhammad bin Khalīfah al-Tamīmī. By then, YQ had completed his BA in Hadith and was now pursuing his MA in Da‘wah - a switch that was allowed in years gone by. He passed with flying colours, though not with the rare مع التوصية بالطبع (recommendation for publication), which meant he had to publish it on his own accord. His thesis was promptly snapped up by the أضواء السلف publishers. Navaid Aziz was serving drinks in the hall, and many Western students were present. I still have a photo from that day, taken with my old Sony Cybershot, which I’ll share below. The event was held in the pink building on the left as you enter the University’s main gate - a considerable trek from the old Faculty of Sharī‘ah. I believe the building is now called the Qa‘at 'l-Salam (Hall of Peace), adjacent to the new Central Library. I missed a couple of lessons to attend the viva. (The only other time I entered that building was in May 2006, during my sixth semester, for the PhD viva of Muḥammad bin Hādī al-Madkhalī. His topic was on Abū Dāwūd, which he happened to be teaching us then. Wasiyyullāh Abbās was the examiner. I left after about thirty minutes when Wasiyyullāh raised a performative objection to the thesis title. I always found MbH al-Madkhalī a curious figure with his impromptu Khatiras on the correct "Manhaj" after Ẓuhr in the prayer hall over at the old Faculty of Shariah. He was also the only teacher who banned me from recording his lectures. I ignored the ban; my old Sony MiniDisc (Remember those? They looked like spying machines) captured every gruesome detail, all from my pocket. (If any Madkhali wants a copy, they’re welcome to reach out.) But I digress.)

I'm very happy to see M. Thanwi's book on Taqlid and Ijtihad being published. Very happy to share it here, in spite of its unprecedented and weak arguments. What will be telling though is those who promote it - but had nothing to say in promotion of the 20 or so other books on Taqlid from classical scholars starting from Samhudi (d. 911 AH) onwards. If you do fall under that category, you really are the insecure selective reader who isn't comfortable being challenged.

I assume that he is talking about madrasahs (dur al-ulum especially) in the West that offer schooling, which is usually terribly run, doing just the bare minimum to get by and pass ministry standards. Parents send their children earlier than they would have otherwise, because the madrasah allows them to complete their schooling. The students come into a boarding school young and immature, lacking any ability to carry themselves. Their ilm suffers as well, since they are too immature to truly grasp the concepts, and also since their brain must divide itself between these two domains. What you end up with is usually a madrasah graduate who is ignorant of basic information that should be common knowledge, and a complete absence of the ability to articulate themself in the local language in a way that doesn't sound uneducated or foreign, thereby making the knowledge that they studied, which happens to be the most sacred knowledge that Allah has created, look trivial, simplistic, and backwards. That student who had learned something as profound as the Shari'ah had only learned it in his younger years, finishing off the course just as he becomes an adult. Having neither grasped nor appreciated the depth of this tradition, this person must then go out to lecture the rest of the world on how to apply this Deen. Among these madrasahs, and their students, do we have exceptions? Of course, and that is something to celebrate. However, they remain just that: exceptions. As even the public schooling system gets worse and worse in imparting education, this issue will only be exacerbated in the madrasah. This is why some madrasahs just don't have schooling, or have an age limit for the students that they accept. I remember from when I was studying in South Africa, that many students would have just finished their secondary education, or however much of it they saw fit, before they enrolled, which allowed them to study in a more mature and focused manner. These students were very often clearly distinguishable from the rest in their understanding and personal development.