KR

He’s a religious retard

https://www.instagram.com/reel/DOKoBWtCD-9/ What is this idiot chatting

لمن يسأل عن كتاب التاريخ والعلل ، الكتاب متوفر عند متجر نون الإلكتروني: https://noonpublishers.com/products/tareekh-history-hatem-awni

Palestine Part 1 – From Ancient Roots to 1948 | Office Hours By Dr. Roy Casagranda (you've probably seen his viral video on Khalid b. al-Walid!) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U9mLrMSmTKI&ab_channel=Dr.RoyCasagranda

Feedback from someone currently at the programme in Turkey, with previous Arabic study experience in the UK: Really good - The teachers and resources are excellent. Those of us who came from ‘Alimiyyah institutes, the qawa’id side of things feels a little easy across the levels, so not quite as intense as we expected. But we’ve definitely built healthier habits with speaking, thinking in Arabic, writing speed, and general consistency.

Otherwise, we will see more institutions established by middle class Sidis, like Cambridge Muslim College - an institution I graduated from btw in their first year of operation in 2010 - which have little traction among local communities across the country that hail predominantly from a subcontinent religious tradition and find discourse around British Islam to be alien. So, whilst appreciating Dr.Sohail's emphasis on building community in our context, I felt it was important to express the above critique of his discourse with a view to develop a more robust future of the Ummah in the west.

Watched the following podcast last night: https://youtu.be/16deKfCHs-A?si=yjvRR8wpW82nc6xl. Dr. Sohail Hanif is the CEO of the National Zakat Foundation (NZF) and a lecturer at Cambridge Muslim College. He speaks here of the importance of community, especially in light of the failing modern welfare state. Moreover, he proposes 'The Medina Model' which he describes as 'structured leadership', as he argues that our intiatives, in the present moment, are disjointed and there is no overall vision. Thus, in order to bring about an overall vision, structured leadership would be required. Also, he emphasises 'bottom up' approach in order to secure legitimacy of the leadership. However, he says there is 'no meritocracy intrinsically', as leadership has to work, even in the absence of the best people in charge. He uses the analogy of Salah to substantiate his point. Later, he also emphasises the importance of Zakat in building community. Even though Dr. Sohail is right to emphasise community in the face of failing western states, there are some significant nuances that are absent from his discourse. Madinah was exceptionally successful, as a community, in light of qualities of leadership and character that the Prophet and his companions demonstrated. However, there is little discussion, in the podcast, about what characteristics are required in order to have a successful community. Therefore, if we look at the Sirah and the lives of the Sahabah, one Ayat of the Qur'an present itself, time and time again: 59:9 (https://quran.com/al-hashr/9). And if we are to capture this quality or characteristic with a word then that would be Ithar or selflessness. If the leadership does not emobody this key quality of selflessness, then regardless of how many conferences and podcasts we have about leadership, the masses will fall short in developing the desired level of 'Asabiyyah' or fellow feeling, to use an Khaldunian term. Hence, if we see even the generation of our parents and grandparents who came to Britain, then the reason that they were able to establish the religious infrastructure of our community - one we continue to benefit from - is because they demonstrated greater levels of selflessness than us, overall. And they achieved all of this against all odds and with all the disadvantages that they faced; many of which we are privileged to not experience anymore. That brings me to the spiritual problem that we are infected with, especially as we gain social mobility and become middle class: hubb al-Dunya or love of the world. Here again we see in the Madinan period the Prophet pre-empting this problem and preventing it amongst the Sahabah early on: https://sunnah.com/riyadussalihin:456. As we can learn from this Hadith, if we fail to embody selflessness in our lives and have that as the dominant quality, as a community, then the alternative is competing with each other for the Dunya. Therefore, we see that, increasingly, our institutions and intiatives are lead by middle class Muslims, including NZF and the Thinking Muslim podcast and fail to get the necessary traction to bring about change among the mainstream or in working class communities which continue to make up the bulk of the British Muslim population. By all means, social mobility is natural phenomenon in the material progress of a community. However, in order to avoid a cleavage between the growing middle class and the working class masses, the former would have to find ways of benefiting the others, materially. And for that purpose, Zakat would be all means play a role. However, Zakat is the Haq of the poor, anyway, as one can derive from this Ayat: https://quran.com/adh-dhariyat/19. Rather, greater wealth will need to be invested by the middle class in working class communities, for the purposes of institution building, in a manner where there are no strings attached and ownership remains with the leadership that the local communities agree upon.

Some Brillos have lost their way and have ended up in the Mushroom Kingdom through one of those green warp pipes in Leicester. The King of the Koopas, Bowser al-Salafi, is angry.

The Hanafi School is a minimalist school. The higher you go in terms of seeking out obligations, the more evidence you need, and that too must be clear and conspicuous. Anything that doesn’t reach that threshold gets demoted. Spare us all that clutter and emotional baggage. That is against the spirit of the Kufans. I’m sure though the Madanis will welcome you with open arms. Great people.

Sh. Mustafa Razzak gives a walkthough to using a website useful for hadith research: https://www.youtube.com/live/rbFfnYSW3rM?si=yVh0rwM1vYry2bSk He gives an overview of how to use it to: - do takhreej - go back to the original books from the website. - look at certain narrators and who they narrate from - look at commentaries and works of ilal

Nice to see this from Sh. Abdullah al-Judai: Don't make Quranic Tafsir a platform for Fiqh polemics. Keep focused on the actual text and take it on its own terms, as the point isn't to constantly defend legal conclusions.

(Link now live)

Article on Dr. Yasir Qadhi's recent comments of Hadith and "Faith". https://projectihya.com/yasir-qadhis-faith-problem-an-epistemological-response/ To get daily updates from Project Ihya: t.me/projectihya

https://x.com/salyounas/status/1955639251451994458 assalamu alaykum. For anyone interested.

The two contemporary scholars of hadith Shaykh Abdullah al-Judai and Shaykh Hatim al-Awni both demonstrate, in practice, that one can be committed to the critical science of Hadith without adopting a rigid and literalistic framework of law. In reality, the science of Hadith and Law, while connected, carry distinct focuses. The former serves to identify sound and reliable data (while acknowledging varying degrees of probability), while the latter seeks to interpret that data consistently within the larger body of laws and legal arguments. It's really that simple. Classically, scholars have been complaining consistently about students focusing on one science more than the other, and consequently failing to either correctly identify or interpret sound data from the prophetic era. And the concern still exists today (students haven't changed lol), but the two scholars above should at least demonstrate that the two sciences of Hadith and Law can certainly synthesise in a way that is both coherent and provides a rational and consistent framework to law, one that accounts for its overarching goals without appealing to rigidity and without dismissing sound data.

Ended up watching this podcast with Dr. Asim Yusuf: https://youtu.be/aEMTCKPzZlg?si=U6fyiWL6NBffc3uJ. There's a lot that I could comment on but thought it was important to focus on the main topic: unity between Barelwis and Deobandis. As someone who has been engaging with the Barelwi community for more than two decades and having intimate familiarity with their discourse, especially on the issues of contention, I found Dr. Asim's presentation to be underwhelming and not robust enough to bring about long lasting unity between the two denominations. One problem with his presentation was the inability to articulate, accurately, the core issue or barrier from creating unity between the two denominations. He spoke about issues such as Imkan-ul-Kadhib, Mawlid and Istighathah. However all of the issues that he discussed were secondary in the sense that long term unity could still be achieved whilst maintaining such differences. What he failed to mention was the issue of Takfir, in particular, Moulana Ahmad Raza Khan's excommunication of the four Akabir of Deoband in Husam-ul-Haramayn. Furthermore, he failed to give the same level of respect to the Ulama of both sides, in particular, when mentioning Moulana Ahmad Raza Khan, he referred to him as 'A'la Hazrat', whilst just referring to one of the Akabir of Deoband as 'Ashraf Ali Thanwi' without even mentioning 'Moulana', let alone any other honorific. This disparity may be down to his own denominational background which he identifies as 'Khayrabadi' and his dominant religious training in a non-subcontinental Sunni tradition; further undermining his credentials to have the appropriate vantage point to build bridges between the two denominations. So, though I consider the endeavour of bringing about unity between the Barelwi and Deobandi communities, especially at a socio-political level, a worthy cause, I do feel most efforts to do so are far too superficial and involve individuals that are not best placed to bring about such long lasting unity. Hence, much greater rigour will be required, if we are to achieve such collaboration between both groups.