Recordings › Monday Nights with Mufti #204 | Q&A Unscripted & Unrestricted! 😉 | Mufti Abu Layth · 2 Mar 2021 › Segment 8 of 45
Do Muslims whitewash their own historical heroes?
salat salaah namaz prayer salaat namaaz as-salah al-salah salawat muftis jahannam jahanam jahannum ahl al-sunnah ahl as-sunnah ahlus sunnah ahl al-sunna shiah shiite shi'i twelver ithna ashari deen ad-deen ad-din religionDo Muslims whitewash their historical figures? Everybody does; ask the adversaries
Most recent answer on Al-Andalus and the Maghrib13 earlier answers on this topic, oldest 2014 ↓
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This segment39:43 to 43:32 · 3 min 49 sGeneral teaching
The answer in brief
machinesummary, machine-writtenYes, every community whitewashes its heroes, because history records what its writers deem accomplishments; a fairer test is what a figure's adversaries said, as with Salah al-Din or Jewish sources on Umar.
In more detail
Going through super chats, Mufti Abu Layth reads a question comparing right-wing Europeans' praise of Charles Martel with Muslims' view of their own historical figures. He answers that of course everybody does this: history is the biography of men and their accomplishments, and what counts as an accomplishment depends on who writes it, so the Mongol destruction of Baghdad is a tragedy in Muslim histories and presumably an achievement in Mongol ones, and Europeans and Muslims alike make larger-than-life figures of Charlemagne or Harun al-Rashid. For a fairer picture he suggests looking at what adversaries said, citing an Arabic saying that true testimony is what one's adversaries bear witness to, and gives Salah al-Din, praised by many of his adversaries, as an example. He recounts that an academic told him he studied Umar through Jewish sources of the time, as more neutral than Sunni or Shia ones, and found that they praised his justice, which Mufti calls a reasonably objective method.
Question as read aloud · questioner not identifiedDo you think we whitewash Muslim historical figures, the way right-wing Europeans praise Charles Martel for defeating Muslims in France but ignore his slaughter of European pagans?
Position stated
Mufti Abu Layth says that of course everybody, Muslims included, whitewashes their historical figures.
“mufti do you think we whitewash muslim historical figures of course of course everybody does you know in these kind of things”
Category: method
Kind: general teachingTranscript
machine39:43 to 43:32 · click a time to seek · dotted terms open the glossary
[Music] men have not changed in a thousand years [Laughter] why change for the sake of change what's the word these you know these should hindi words why change mufti can you bring muftilia zaman on mind trap i would love to get him on but i don't know if he would come on why don't you ask him and see if he'll he's ready to to to come on that would be great
um all right so uh don't forget the super chats let's take a look i think i may have missed some super chats let me take a look um i see sarasan mufti do you think the historical figures like how right-wing europeans praise king charles martel for defeating muslims in france but ignore his slaughter of european pagans mufti do you think we whitewash muslim historical figures of course of course everybody does you know in these kind of things
people you have to remember that you see history is simply the biographies of men and their accomplishments now who is writing who deems what an accomplishment you see like do muslims deem the tata invasion the mongol invasion of baghdad and the destruction of baghdad and the burning of all the books and do they treat that as an accomplishment of course they don't they see as a tragedy see as barbarism so the muslims will write in their history that this was a
tragedy that befell the world i'm sure in mongol history it's written as a great achievement so it's always it's always biased always and yeah like the europeans will speak of charlemagne and other people and obviously he's a superhero he's not superhero but you know what i mean you get the he's that kind of like this huge larger than life character just as muslims will speak of um you know i'm just trying to think great whether it will be haruna rasheed or it will be other
uh and leaders some people to be fair were deemed even you know sometimes what you can do is to get a good idea you can look at what the adversaries had to say about them you know in arabic there's a saying that a shahada that testimony that your testimony that real witness somebody giving a character reference is my shahid it's what your adversaries will be bear witness to that is true testimony
so yeah so like people like salahuddin allahubi did have you know a lot of adversaries praised him and i think that's interesting it's also interesting that you know dr meer faisal said that to me he said you know he said i i was trying to in a non-biased way study omar or the allah and he said and i looked at well sunnis say great things about him shia say horrible things about him so who would be a neutral source so he said he investigated ancient uh classical jewish literature
that was to do with the uh you know the middle east and at the time of omar when he comes to the middle east and he takes over what did the jews at the time have to say about him because they would be more neutral and he said he found that they actually seem to praise him and they seem to call him a friend and they seem to call him somebody very uh you know just or reasonably just like they praise his sense of justice which i thought wow that's an amazing way a very a reasonably objective way at looking at things because that's true
Paragraphs overlapping 39:43 to 43:32. 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 2021-03-02-S08, auto-transcribed, may contain errors. https://muftiabulayth.org/r/b1ooltqtptw/s/8/ (accessed 1 November 2026)
- APA 7
Mufti Abu Layth. (2021, March 2). Do Muslims whitewash their own historical heroes? [Video, segment 2021-03-02-S08, auto-transcribed, may contain errors]. Mufti Abu Layth Archive. Retrieved November 1, 2026, from https://muftiabulayth.org/r/b1ooltqtptw/s/8/
- Chicago author-date
Mufti Abu Layth. 2021. "Do Muslims whitewash their own historical heroes?" Video, segment 2021-03-02-S08, auto-transcribed, may contain errors. Mufti Abu Layth Archive. Recorded March 2, 2021. Accessed November 1, 2026. https://muftiabulayth.org/r/b1ooltqtptw/s/8/
- BibTeX
@misc{abulayth-2021-03-02-S08, author = {Mufti Abu Layth}, title = {{Do Muslims whitewash their own historical heroes?}}, year = {2021}, month = {3}, date = {2021-03-02}, howpublished = {\url{https://muftiabulayth.org/r/b1ooltqtptw/s/8/}}, url = {https://muftiabulayth.org/r/b1ooltqtptw/s/8/}, organization = {Mufti Abu Layth Archive}, urldate = {2026-11-01}, note = {Segment 2021-03-02-S08, auto-transcribed, may contain errors} }
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