Sources and names › Scholar › Dr Shabir Ally (guest)
ScholarDr Shabir Ally (guest)
Cited in 29 segments across 4 recordings · 2018 to 2021 · scholar/scholar:shabir-ally
Citing segments
Newest first. Each opens the whole segment, not a bare quote.
9 Feb 2021Monday Nights with Mufti Abu Layth
Debate invitations to Abdul Rahman Hassan and 'Danny boy'
Mufti Abu Layth invites Abdul Rahman Hassan to defend Salafi creed and 'Danny boy' to define ijma', saying critics pick on Shabir Ally instead.
machine9 min 38 s1:12:41on YouTube
9 Feb 2021Monday Nights with Mufti Abu Layth
Clips: three critics' videos attacking Shabir Ally
Mufti Abu Layth plays and mocks videos in which three critics attack Shabir Ally's views, including his view on hudud.
machine11 min 43 s2:48:08on YouTube
9 Feb 2021Monday Nights with Mufti Abu Layth
Why do critics keep attacking Shabir Ally?
Mufti Abu Layth says the critics target Shabir Ally as a soft target who will not hit back, and repeats his offer to debate them.
machine6 min2:59:51on YouTube
12 Oct 2020video
Why the circumstances of the marriage rule out a six-year-old Aisha
Aisha cannot have been six when the Prophet married her, because the marriage was meant to give him companionship, household help and support after the year of sorrow, which a child could not provide. Her engagement of several years before that, and the fear that she would convert her fiance, point the same way.
machine5 min 13 s0:00on YouTube
12 Oct 2020video
Writers who place Aisha in her teens, and how narrators exaggerated ages
Several modern writers conclude that Aisha was in her teens at marriage, and the speakers explain the hadith's figures as numbers garbled and exaggerated downwards by narrators. Khadija's age, by contrast, was exaggerated upwards from about twenty-eight to forty.
machine4 min 05 s5:13on YouTube
22 Apr 2020MindTrap with Mufti Abu Layth
Opening: welcoming back the guest and sharing the stream
Housekeeping before the conversation: the guest, Dr Shabir Ally, is welcomed back after the previous session was cut short, and the stream is shared out.
machine2 min 02 s0:22on YouTube
22 Apr 2020MindTrap with Mufti Abu Layth
Have Muslims moved towards giving the Quran primacy over hadith?
The guest says the ummah has split: a traditional strand that in practice lets hadith override the Quran, and a growing body of thinking lay Muslims who already see the Quran as primary. Some scholars agree but are trapped in traditional discourse or silenced by dangerous circumstances.
machine3 min 56 s3:44on YouTube
22 Apr 2020MindTrap with Mufti Abu Layth
Does the Quran prescribe stoning for adultery?
The Quran's penalty for adultery is flogging, not stoning, which the guest says entered Muslim law from hadith and is biblical in origin, so explaining Islam to the public must start from the Quran. Mufti Abu Layth says he agrees completely that the Quran must have primacy.
machine5 min 14 s7:38on YouTube
22 Apr 2020MindTrap with Mufti Abu Layth
Does the Quran prescribe a punishment for apostasy?
The Quran prescribes no worldly penalty for apostasy, only punishment in the hereafter, and 'there is no compulsion in religion' is stated as emphatically as the testimony of faith. Rightly representing the Quran is about pleasing Allah, not the kuffar.
machine2 min 37 s11:34on YouTube
22 Apr 2020MindTrap with Mufti Abu Layth
Why did earlier scholars not see what reform-minded scholars see today?
Past scholars were great but fallible and bound by their time, like people in a smoke-filled room or marchers in a procession, while today we can see the whole history of ideas from the balcony. Mufti Abu Layth adds that the apostasy rule rests on one problematic narration from Ikrima in Bukhari.
machine3 min 57 s15:30on YouTube
22 Apr 2020MindTrap with Mufti Abu Layth
Can hudud punishments such as stoning or hand-cutting change with the times?
Mufti Abu Layth holds that stoning was a pre-Quranic practice abrogated by the Quran and that the Sharia's punishments reflect their age, as Maliki scholars and the Ottomans applied. The guest agrees that the spirit of the law can require departing from its letter, as Umar did when he suspended hand-cutting in a famine.
machine6 min 33 s18:08on YouTube
22 Apr 2020MindTrap with Mufti Abu Layth
Is using reason to interpret Islam just preferring my own intellect over revelation?
The intellect alone is not a reliable guide, but an intellect guided by the Quran is tamed and becomes the right tool for understanding revelation. The word aql itself means the tether that keeps a camel from straying, and the Quran praises its use.
machine2 min 37 s25:59on YouTube
22 Apr 2020MindTrap with Mufti Abu Layth
Why do Muslims treat reason as the enemy of tradition?
Historically the Ahl al-Hadith defeated the Ahl al-Ra'y, which preserved the tradition but left reason demonised; today reason and tradition must work together. Mufti Abu Layth says asking whether one prefers reason to revelation is a false framing, since the real choice is between one understanding of the Quran and another.
machine5 min 16 s28:36on YouTube
22 Apr 2020MindTrap with Mufti Abu Layth
How old was Aisha when she married the Prophet?
Writers such as Ruqaiyyah Waris Maqsood and Jamal Badawi conclude that Aisha was in her teens, and the report that her sister Asma died at a hundred in the year 73 puts her at about eighteen when she moved in with the Prophet. The guest explains the hadith's six and nine as numbers exaggerated downwards, as Khadija's forty was exaggerated upwards.
machine8 min 55 s33:52on YouTube
22 Apr 2020MindTrap with Mufti Abu Layth
Why do the circumstances of the Prophet's marriage rule out a six-year-old Aisha?
The marriage after the year of sorrow was meant to give the Prophet a companion, a carer for his children and a support in the da'wah, which a six-year-old could not provide, and Aisha had been engaged for years to a man whose mother feared she would convert him. Mufti Abu Layth suggests her age was exaggerated downwards after the ifk slander to defend her purity.
machine6 min 34 s41:29on YouTube
22 Apr 2020MindTrap with Mufti Abu Layth
Is questioning Aisha's age just an attempt to please non-Muslims?
The guest says he once made the same accusation, but came to see that a girl of nine is not fit for marriage and that Muslims themselves do not marry girls at that age. A report being in Bukhari does not make it the final word, since scholars have always differed with Bukhari where something more authentic exists.
machine6 min 30 s49:19on YouTube
22 Apr 2020MindTrap with Mufti Abu Layth
Can a hadith in Sahih al-Bukhari be questioned?
Sahih means Bukhari and Muslim verified the chains, which says little about the content, since reliable narrators still err and insert explanations; only the few mutawatir reports, mostly practices like the number of units in prayer, are beyond doubt. Mufti Abu Layth says he believes all the hadith on Aisha's age are weak.
machine6 min 33 s55:51on YouTube
22 Apr 2020MindTrap with Mufti Abu Layth
Can Sahih al-Bukhari be proven to be the book Imam al-Bukhari wrote?
Mufti Abu Layth holds that what is really mutawatir is the living tradition, not any hadith, and that Sahih al-Bukhari cannot be proven to be Bukhari's exact book since it rests on one unvouched transmitter, Farabri. Each report should therefore be weighed against reason, the Quran and the principles of Islam like any other hadith.
machine3 min 59 s1:01:06on YouTube
22 Apr 2020MindTrap with Mufti Abu Layth
How should hadith be evaluated, and did the companions ever misreport the Prophet?
Hadith should be judged one by one against the principles of the religion, observation and reason, as the earliest Muslims did before reason was sidelined. Aisha herself rejected several companions' reports, such as the dog, woman and donkey breaking the prayer, the dead punished by weeping, and the bad omen in a woman, showing how reports were misrelayed.
machine6 min 31 s1:05:05on YouTube
22 Apr 2020MindTrap with Mufti Abu Layth
Is criticising Sahih al-Bukhari an attack on Imam al-Bukhari?
Imam al-Bukhari deserves credit for sifting hadith and his shorter narratives are usually the more authentic, but he was a human being and his book is not the Quran. Mufti Abu Layth says BukhariGate critiques the myth of an untouchable gold standard, not the man.
machine3 min 56 s1:11:36on YouTube
22 Apr 2020MindTrap with Mufti Abu Layth
Does Islam teach that jinn can possess people?
Mufti Abu Layth does not believe in jinn possession, saying the Quran and Sunnah do not support it. The guest recounts a young man at his da'wah centre whose 'possession' appeared only around believers in it and vanished in front of doctors, which he reads as a psychological phenomenon rather than a jinn.
machine5 min 13 s1:15:32on YouTube
22 Apr 2020MindTrap with Mufti Abu Layth
Does the Quran support the idea that Shaytan or jinn can control a person?
The verse cited for possession is about rising on the Day of Judgment, and the Quran as a whole gives Shaytan only the power to whisper and no authority over Allah's servants. Possession would also destroy personal responsibility and let any criminal evade punishment, and Mufti Abu Layth says the claim that jinn can take any form makes the whole idea absurd.
machine4 min 55 s1:20:45on YouTube
22 Apr 2020MindTrap with Mufti Abu Layth
Was Jesus born of a virgin, and how could a jinn father a child?
Mufti Abu Layth says he has recently become inclined to the view of Abdul Karim Athari and Tamanna Imadi that Jesus was born naturally, since the Quran never explicitly states a virgin birth and 6:101 argues from the absence of a companion. The guest sets that controversy aside and says a jinn, being a different species, could not impregnate a woman.
machine3 min 56 s1:25:40on YouTube
22 Apr 2020MindTrap with Mufti Abu Layth
If possession were real, why is there no sahih hadith of the Prophet casting out a jinn?
The Gospels make exorcism a chief miracle of Jesus, but the Quran never mentions it and there is no sahih hadith of the Prophet casting out a jinn, so the guest calls the belief overstated. Following Bilal Philips's study, he says the symptoms match psychological illness and medical treatment should come first.
machine3 min 55 s1:29:36on YouTube
22 Apr 2020MindTrap with Mufti Abu Layth
Is belief in magic spells and jinn possession part of Islam?
Belief in possession and magic spells holds Muslims back and harms mental health, and the guest says it is not a religious teaching because no verse or authentic hadith establishes it, whatever people believe they have seen. Mufti Abu Layth notes that to believers in jinn the ordinary explanation seems the far-fetched one.
machine6 min 33 s1:34:50on YouTube
22 Apr 2020MindTrap with Mufti Abu Layth
Does Surat al-Falaq confirm that black magic is real?
The verse about those who blow on knots does not establish that magic is effective: the guest says it asks protection from the fear such practices create, and Mufti Abu Layth says the surah names things not harmful in themselves but the superstitions attached to them. The question whether Islam is feudal went unanswered.
machine2 min 38 s1:40:04on YouTube
22 Apr 2020MindTrap with Mufti Abu Layth
What does the Quran mean by 'what your right hands possess', and did the Prophet have a concubine?
The guest reads the Quran's 'right-hand possessions' as a category of wife who was not free, since 4:25 speaks of marrying slave girls, and thinks Mariya al-Qibtiyya may have been a wife misunderstood as a concubine. Mufti Abu Layth says Mariya was a wife, as he has taught, and that under trajectory hermeneutics slavery would have become haram.
machine7 min 13 s1:42:42on YouTube
22 Apr 2020MindTrap with Mufti Abu Layth
Closing: thanks, the guest's apology for a short Q&A, and his Facebook live the next day
The guest apologises for the short Q&A and announces a Facebook live the next day on the seven ahruf and recitations of the Quran; Mufti Abu Layth thanks him and signs off.
machine3 min 22 s1:49:55on YouTube
24 Dec 2018From the Mind of a Mufti
Who won the David Wood versus Mohammed Hijab debate on Tawhid and the Trinity?
Mufti Abu Layth calls the Wood versus Hijab debate on Tawhid and the Trinity monumental and worth watching, and says Mohammed Hijab clearly won. He introduces David Wood as an evangelical, anti-Islam preacher who has debated many Muslims.
machine2 min 38 s0:00on YouTube