Recordings › Monday Nights with Mufti #210 | Q&A Unscripted & Unrestricted! 😉 | Mufti Abu Layth · 13 Apr 2021 › Segment 14 of 50
Is it obligatory for Muslims to establish a caliphate?
hadeeth ahadith ahaadeeth hadis hadees ahaadith maaliki malikite malikiyyah maliki school ijmaa muftis wajib waajib wajibat fard farz faraid fard ayn fard kifayah fardh djinn jinnat jinni sihr sihar jadu jadoo kala jadu sorcery khalifah khalifa caliph khulafa khilafah khilafat khilafa 'alim aalim ulema ulamaa shaikh sheik shuyukh shaykhsNo obligation to establish a caliphate: the Maliki scholars, Hamza Yusuf and Akram Nadwi
Most recent answer on Caliphate14 earlier answers on this topic, oldest 2017 ↓Watch this part
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This segment54:24 to 1:01:00 · 6 min 36 sGeneral teaching
What this part covers
machinesummary, machine-writtenNo: Mufti Abu Layth says there is no obligation to establish a caliphate, citing classical Maliki scholars and Akram Nadwi against the claim of consensus.
In more detail
Mufti Abu Layth says this critic has been fixated on him for six or seven years, since he began deconstructing the caliphate idea, to the dismay of Hizb ut-Tahrir and others; when he began, around 2016, to say openly that there is no obligation in Islam for a caliphate system, hardly anyone in English was saying so. When he shared Hamza Yusuf calling it a myth, people dismissed Hamza Yusuf and claimed ijma, so he cited great Maliki scholars of eleven hundred years ago who held there is no such obligation, which he says broke the claim of consensus. Accused of lying when he said Akram Nadwi held the same, he arranged a seminar with Nadwi on jinn possession, black magic and the claim that the Prophet was bewitched, asking him beforehand whether he would answer the caliphate question publicly; Nadwi agreed and said there is no obligation. He recalls predicting some five years earlier that once younger Muslims dominated social media, talk of global dominion would become embarrassing, and says this has happened.
Position stated
Mufti Abu Layth says there is no obligation in Islam to establish a caliphate system, that classical Maliki scholars held this, so the claimed consensus fails, and that Akram Nadwi takes the same view.
“there's no such thing in islam as an obligation for a caliphate system”
Category: ruling
Kind: general teachingTranscript
machine54:24 to 1:01:00 · click a time to seek · dotted terms open the glossary
complex in life so you know it's you know on a side no it's true though people who suffer from you know you know that kind of napoleon complex in life and especially if they're small in all the in all the wrong ways these people they they over compensate and you can see it you know in psychology they show you how to study the the kind of the the uh micro expressions the macro expressions you'll see the patternicity of behavior
kind of obsession for control for power and anyway right yeah so that's it yeah so i i read a tweet from uh right so and i just thought to myself that you know i remember thinking that wow like this guy is so obsessed with me yeah like and i thought why why like i don't understand like you know like what's the big deal like if you think about it this guy has been obsessed with me for something like i don't know six seven years like non-stop
and yes i deconstructed this whole caliphate thing and people who've obviously hezbol taharit and stuff like that that is the whole world and because in english if you think about it there was really nobody who spoke against this whole you know this caliphate obsession nobody honestly when i think it was it 2016 or 25th i can't remember now 2016 i think that i started kind of vocally condemning all this you know that there's no such thing in
islam as an obligation for a caliphate system and it really hurt people but then fine you know and so what you know muftiya laith is a deviant anyway and then i shared something about shaykh hamza yusuf saying you know he has something where he says it but he doesn't really go into the topic he just dismisses it and says it's a myth but then people say well sheikh hamza yusuf's you know he's lost the plot he's a seller blah blah blah and they say there's an ichima there's an each ma you know all the ulama so i am not aware of this of anybody other than me but maybe in in the
english-speaking world that is that uh i i brought out you see i said who do you think has disagreed with this malikis so i brought out the names of these legends you know these great uh huge scholars like from eleven hundred years ago these dawns of the maliki fit so there's no obligation in islam for this now that destroyed the consensus claim because up until today hizbah tahrir and all these things have not even been aware that any scholar has openly dismissed of the past this
caliphate thing especially that classical and i bring one and that too i bring a maliki and then within the uk there was this thing that i remember mentioning that uh you see because people are going to say well mufti is a deviant anyway so you have sheikh nadui and now he's huge and he is such a respected kind of dignified figure and senior figure in age and respect and position in islam within the uk and the west and he's known by you know by arab mahaya and other people and his commitment to hadith so i mentioned that sheikh akram nedui
also has said this i remember on my facebook post and that oh my god they tried to shut me down he's lying he's a deviant people like that are traditional islam people like that are traditional islam so i arranged a uh i kind of uh we had a seminar a presentation i i like to check me down i obviously contacted him phoned him said i want to do a seminar with you so he said cool uh i said i want to debunk these things jin possession demonic possession black magic
the prophet had magic done on him all these things so he said yep he said that's exactly me and i said to him sheikh i said there's also another thing i asked him beforehand i said i wanna also not that i wanna put this to you there as well is there a caliphate in islam uh i said would you be comfortable to answer that publicly because he said no there isn't there's no oblique i said but would you be comfortable because i don't want to be rude and out of character and just present it to you in the seminar um because people would feel you know that maybe you know it's just wrong it's not right and so he said i'm comfortable to say it in public you ask me i'll answer it so
i made a video now now we've got this whole presentation of such a dignified scholar arguing and clarifying there's no obligation so it really hurt people really hurt them they became obsessed and years later they're still going on but you know oh right the reason i mentioned this was because at that time i said you know what i said in my posts and comments i said that i get the fact that people today are still saying caliphate caliphate is global dominion
i said but give it what just four five years i said these younger people who are in their late teens will have i said that obviously five years from today they're going to be in the early 20s the younger lot will be in the late teens they will dominate and become the majority on social media and i said that in five years from today this whole discourse would have disappeared and it will be embarrassing for you people to to claim that we should rule the world dominion you know we should i said that you'd be embarrassed to say this even publicly
and if you go back five years people were they were actually saying it very probably and look today it's it sounds so dumb to say well you know what and that that's why i was just thinking that when i saw that i thought you know i said that didn't i that give it five years and people will be embarrassed to even make such a claim publicly because the muslims have changed the younger muslims don't buy into this kind of nonsense so there you go there you go see i was i should have gambled on it and i'm telling you give it five years from today
Paragraphs overlapping 54:24 to 1:01:00. Full text on the recording page.
Cite this segment
Stable id, transcript version and tier are part of the citation. Every change to a transcript is logged.Mufti Abu Layth Archive, segment 2021-04-13-S14, auto-transcribed, may contain errors. https://muftiabulayth.org/r/8xuhmcz2n3u/s/14/ (accessed 1 November 2026)
- APA 7
Mufti Abu Layth. (2021, April 13). Is it obligatory for Muslims to establish a caliphate? [Video, segment 2021-04-13-S14, auto-transcribed, may contain errors]. Mufti Abu Layth Archive. Retrieved November 1, 2026, from https://muftiabulayth.org/r/8xuhmcz2n3u/s/14/
- Chicago author-date
Mufti Abu Layth. 2021. "Is it obligatory for Muslims to establish a caliphate?" Video, segment 2021-04-13-S14, auto-transcribed, may contain errors. Mufti Abu Layth Archive. Recorded April 13, 2021. Accessed November 1, 2026. https://muftiabulayth.org/r/8xuhmcz2n3u/s/14/
- BibTeX
@misc{abulayth-2021-04-13-S14, author = {Mufti Abu Layth}, title = {{Is it obligatory for Muslims to establish a caliphate?}}, year = {2021}, month = {4}, date = {2021-04-13}, howpublished = {\url{https://muftiabulayth.org/r/8xuhmcz2n3u/s/14/}}, url = {https://muftiabulayth.org/r/8xuhmcz2n3u/s/14/}, organization = {Mufti Abu Layth Archive}, urldate = {2026-11-01}, note = {Segment 2021-04-13-S14, auto-transcribed, may contain errors} }
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